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July 23, 2015 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:38:31

3032 Economic Determinism: Weekend at Bernie Sanders' - Call In Show - July 22nd, 2015

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	Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio.
	I hope you're doing well.
	Welcome to our Wednesday Night Fireside Philosophy Chat.
	I hope you have brought your s'mores and that you have not, as I often did when hiking and camping, put your wet shoes too close to the fire so that they're dry but smoky bacon-flavored leather wrappings for your feet in the morning.
	A couple of shows to check out.
	You might want to have a look at a show I did just on Planned Parenthood.
	And also, we are just working on the edits, the final edits, for The Truth About the Student Loan Debt Bubble.
	Oh, it's so much like the...
	The housing crash that occurred a couple of years ago, that it's eerie.
	So I hope that you will check that out.
	It's a very important presentation to share to other young folks or not so young folks who are thinking of jumping into the giant bouncy castle of debt known as higher education.
	But stuff!
	Bernie Sanders is going to solve that problem.
	He's going to make education free.
	So we're good to go.
	No worries about students.
	He is.
	It's free.
	Because magic and willpower and good intentions.
	Apparently that's all you need.
	Good, good, good, good intentions.
	Because, you know, you've noticed your Obamacare premiums sinking basically into the toilet, haven't you?
	No.
	Insurance in the U.S. going through the roof.
	Thanks, Obama.
	No, no.
	I mean, you just need to read that again because he said he was going to save everyone thousands and thousands.
	I mean, it's true that he's a constitutional scholar, but apparently he also knows so much about how the healthcare system works, much more so than the people who've actually lived in the healthcare system and worked in it for many, many years.
	So he can just fix it because he's just great intentions and just wants people to be healthy.
	That's apparently all you need.
	And a teleprompter.
	Yeah.
	If only I could pay my insurance premiums in tears, then I'd be alright.
	Oh, then everybody would have more than enough to go on, right?
	Well, the reason I bring up Bernie Sanders is because that's been one of the most requested shows in quite a while.
	People want us to do something on Bernie Sanders.
	So FYI, folks, it is on the way.
	I don't understand.
	What do I care about fried chicken?
	What am I missing here?
	Different Sanders.
	Different Sanders.
	Not the guy with, you know, the...
	Oh, wait!
	Is this not the guy with the short hair who's, like, opera man who makes, like, goofy pre-adolescent films with women with big jokes?
	No, it's not Adam Sandler either.
	My goodness, Steph.
	We'll get this squared out before we do the show.
	We'll make sure you're...
	Is it to do with, like, planing down wood?
	Oh, dear.
	Oh, dear.
	Maybe I should get up to speed before I attempt to delve into socialist politics in the American landscape, but...
	You know, it is really sad to think that this is happening in the 21st century after the 20th century was so eviscerated by socialism, but that it's like, let's try it again!
	Oh my god!
	It just didn't do it right the first time, or the first 8,000 times.
	Oh no.
	This time there'll be less blood.
	Really?
	We're at...
	All right, well, we'll put our weight into that because I think it's interesting.
	Of course, we'll have to do the show quite loud so that he can hear it and also with a bass rap crunk beat, I'm assuming, including fair amounts of dubstep beats so that his younger supporters can hear it because they have arts degrees and, frankly, voting in a socialist who's going to forgive their debt is pretty much their only hope for climbing out of the bandwagon, right?
	All right.
	That's on the way, folks.
	And anything else, Steph, before we hop on to the color train?
	I don't know.
	What's new with you?
	How things going?
	I got a little crink in my neck.
	I don't know.
	It's a little upsetting.
	A bit of a massage later.
	No, no, no.
	I think we're ready.
	You know what, though?
	If you vote for Bernie Sanders, that will never happen again.
	Because magic...
	And lollipops and rainbows and unicorns.
	I think there's a unicorn in there.
	We'll find one.
	All right.
	Well, Mr.
	Nate is up first today.
	He wrote in and said, In my experience through the liberty movement as a surplus in nonfiction literature, I notice a lack of fiction and art, which I find troubling.
	Almost all social movements in the past have been able to effectively harness the power of fiction and storytelling to advance their cause.
	Shouldn't the libertarian movement do the same?
	Also, more specifically, as a writer, I was wondering how libertarians could effectively use literature to advance the ideals of liberty, virtue, and peace to reach non-libertarians without sounding preachy or unrealistic.
	That's from Nate.
	Good question.
	What are your thoughts?
	I've obviously tried to tackle libertarian themes in my own fiction writing.
	I was such a staggeringly successful fiction writer that I decided to become a podcaster because I hate success that much.
	Too many movie offers.
	You don't want to get out of bed in the morning.
	What are your thoughts, Nate, on this?
	Hi, Steph.
	I just want to first say that I appreciate your taking my call and it's an honor to meet you.
	My thoughts on this podcast We're prompted when you were talking about in your—actually, forget that, sorry.
	My thoughts basically were just in the question.
	I noticed this lack of art, and I think it's troubling because I don't think a lot of people who are not already interested in the ideas of libertarianism and liberty are—they have little to connect to in regard to what we believe.
	But what I've noticed that when it came to the abolition movement in the 1800s and when it came to – even with Ayn Rand, people used fiction to try to bring people into their movement.
	Like with the abolition movement, it was Uncle Tom's Cabin.
	With the socialist movement and the – or the progressive movement, it's a synonym.
	In the early 20th century, Upton Sinclair with The Jungle.
	And so that's more or less...
	Well, and George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells and a bunch of other writers were following that same thing.
	Right, right, exactly.
	And everywhere you look in the liberty movement, obviously, you know, we have podcasts, we have a lot of commentary on...
	We have current news and contemporary news, and we have philosophy shows like yourself.
	We have all this theory, but I would like to see some more, at least in the literary world, more fiction, because I think Ayn Rand was able to really reach a large number of people with her ideas, not from her treatises, but from Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead and so forth.
	That's more or less what inspired that question.
	No, I get that.
	Why do you think it's not been happening or it's not happening?
	Well, I was listening to the Tom Wood Show and they had a guest on.
	I forget his name.
	He wrote a book called The Art of Persuasion, I think it was.
	And what he was talking about was that they did studies on people who have libertarian leanings.
	And what they discovered was that people who tend to have libertarian leanings, I guess you could say are left brain thinkers.
	You know, they're very analytical.
	And they want – they're very – they want – they like reason.
	They like facts, obviously.
	And I guess – I'm paraphrasing, but I guess people who think more on the right side of the brain, they tend to like fiction, story, aesthetics.
	And basically what I'm getting with this is that I think libertarians tend to be more attracted to analysis, factual analysis than they are towards – Fiction and art.
	I mean, I don't mean to generalize, but I guess that's where I would guess that trend is and why I don't think that there is a lot of libertarian art out there.
	And plus, there's really not too much of a market on it because if you want to get at least into the big media, you have to basically spew out the statist propaganda that they want to shuffle down our throats.
	Not many federal subsidies going around for libertarian art these days, to my nose.
	Right, yeah.
	Yeah.
	No, I think those are interesting points.
	I think you have to remember, so the progressive movement very, very generally was something that occurred in the early part of the last century.
	And what it was was a bunch of socialists who had decided that revolution wasn't the way to go.
	And they were going to play the long con.
	They were going to do the long game.
	They were going to start sowing the seeds of emotional acceptance of socialism.
	They were going to work through the democratic voting system and so on.
	And they were not going to have violent revolutions.
	They were going to do the long con.
	And you know, the left is very dedicated and it's been paying off for the last 50 years or so that they put all of this stuff into place.
	However, it wasn't just out of nowhere and because of the force of their willpower that this became something that became a movement.
	There were seeds sown ahead of time that made people receptive.
	To the movement.
	And a couple of those were, of course, Marxism.
	Marxism contains within it a combination of economic determinism for the poor and virulent our selected hatred for the successful and for the wealthy.
	And so in In Marxism, if you're poor, it's no fault of your own.
	It's the system, right?
	And you can see this all over the place in modern discourse.
	It's the system.
	You know, why are you fat?
	Because sugar companies and health companies, they put stuff in your...
	It's not you, man.
	It's not you, right?
	And why are you poor?
	Is it because on average in America, poor households, two adults work 10 hours a week combined?
	No!
	No!
	It's a system.
	It's oppression.
	It's lack of opportunity.
	It's, oh, you're the world's smallest violin and crap, right?
	And so when it comes to the poor and the failures in life, there's this giant tit that they can suck off, which forgives every mistake that they've made and demands that they never take a shred of responsibility for where their life has ended up.
	But instead, they can blame mysterious forces beyond their control.
	I mean, basically, it's the modern version of the devil made me do it.
	You know, like, well, pastor, it's true, I did do this terrible thing.
	I fought the devil into the temptation, but there's a system and the system has the devil and the devil, right?
	So that stuff was compelling because of Marxism.
	Marxism has this economic determinism, as I said, for the poor.
	It's not their fault.
	Now, Equally, logically, it is not the rich people's fault that they're rich, right?
	Determinism is determinism.
	There's not this economic cutoff point, you know.
	At $45,000 and below, you are economically determined and have no responsibility and cannot claim, there's nothing bad that can be said about you for your economic failures.
	$45,000 and one, whoop!
	Flipperoony!
	Round and round and round we go because now you're an evil rich capitalist exploiter.
	It's not a system, right?
	You're just this nasty evil capitalist exploiter.
	And it plays so much into the masses, the resentment of the masses.
	So first you, of course, had to have universal suffrage.
	And before, early in democracy, there were property restrictions on being able to vote.
	So you had to have a certain income or you had to have a certain package of land.
	The reasoning behind this was quite simple.
	Because the masses of people are poorer than the rich or even the middle class.
	And therefore, if you give poor people in a system where the government can redistribute money, if you give poor people the vote, they will simply vote to take away the property of the rich and the middle class.
	And mostly it will fall upon the middle class because the rich can move their money around more easily.
	And...
	So the poor get the vote, the poor vote to take away the property of the rich, the middle class pay the bill, and society's gap widens, the middle class get destroyed, and bingo bango mongo.
	Next thing you have is some sort of dictatorship or totalitarian or central planning socialist nightmare of diminishing returns.
	And so you had to have democracy in place, universal suffrage in place.
	You had to have Marxism in place.
	And last but not least, you had to have government education in place.
	The reason why governments so much want to educate the children is because we are an upward bonding species.
	So we bond.
	We're not like tadpoles.
	I mean, they don't give a crap about their parents.
	And the frog parents don't give a crap about their tadpoles.
	They just eat them if they're hungry.
	And so, you know, I haven't seen any giant chopsticks in maternity wards lately, so I'm going to assume that we're not so much into the baby cannibalism.
	And so we bond with whoever raises us.
	And so the earlier that governments can get their brains and hooks into the children, the more the children will bond with the government as a pseudo-parent, which is exactly why religious education starts very young as well.
	And so once you've got this economic determinism for the poor, then you can no longer criticize the poor, right?
	The Marxist element has to be there in place because then the poor must always be sympathetic.
	And you can see this turning point.
	Some of the earlier literature where the poor were largely responsible for their own fate.
	You can see some of that stuff going on in Shakespeare and so on.
	Dickens kind of a turning point.
	There was a mean poor, but a lot of the poor were incredibly sympathetic.
	And never responsible for their own problems and no authors of their own misfortune and so on.
	And after that, it became fairly de rigueur that if there was a poor person, that poor person was heroic and noble and ground down and desperate to do their best and did right by their kids and just this Giant noble butterfly rainbow soul trapped under the grinding boot heel of a free market system and struggling to provide for their children and all this kind of stuff.
	Now once you can't portray the poor in anything but a heroic and noble light Then you are on the downward spiral of art, right?
	Because once you get a protected class in art, they're dehumanized.
	They become mere pawns of propaganda.
	In other words, once you can't deal with the poor as human beings, and yes, there are some poor who are poor by misfortune, and there are a lot of poor who are poor Because they're not smart.
	And there are a lot of poor who are poor because they've made bad choices, made bad decisions.
	They've played video games rather than learning a trade.
	They hoped to play bingo or the lottery to get their wealth rather than buckle down and do some hard work and so on.
	And for the less intelligent among us, The dumb poor, and I don't mean useless or anything like that.
	It's just, you know, like there are short people, there are dumb people.
	Dumb people need the clearest signals of what they should do in order to be able to do what's right and healthy for them, right?
	You know, and when you get this Marxist art and the socialist art coming into being, what happens is the poor are told, it's not your fault.
	You have no responsibility for being poor.
	That is really visceral hatred for the poor, because the moment you say to an entire group of human beings, there's nothing you can do, you're not responsible, it is literally a drug.
	You know, I bet you if it's ever studied, it will work.
	Those arguments, those perspectives work on the bad conscience of the poor exactly the same way that heroin or sugar works on the brain of everyone.
	And so when you say to an entire group of people, you know, whether they're blacks or Hispanics or poor people or whatever, right?
	And you say, you, it's not your fault.
	Not your fault.
	Nothing you can do.
	It's not your fault.
	What happens is they get this immediate relief.
	Oh, thank goodness, right?
	Oh, I feel so much better.
	And then it's like this honey that flows over them, like this slow tidal wave of gooey stickiness.
	And they're like, oh man, that tastes great.
	Oh, things are a little cloudy out there, but I'm in a honey bubble.
	I love it.
	It's so smooth.
	No wind, no cold, no rain.
	No sight.
	And then this sticky resin amber flows over the poor.
	It's not your fault, man.
	It's a system.
	You can't do anything about it.
	It's rigged.
	You're never going to get out.
	Oh, thank goodness.
	I don't have to work.
	I don't have to challenge my social environment.
	I don't have to become more functional.
	I don't have to learn skills.
	I don't have to rise up.
	If you rise up from the poor, bam, man, they'll smack They'll crack you down almost every time.
	Just try and rise up from the poor.
	They'll claw you down.
	They'll pull you back down.
	They'll bring all the hatreds and, oh, you're just better than us.
	You think you're just so great.
	Oh, well, we're not good enough for you.
	Pull you down.
	You don't have to go through that battle.
	You're like a narwhal of opportunity trying to break through the ice of lower class hatreds.
	And then the sticky resin folds over these people and they feel this great relief and they're cut off from the elements.
	But what happens is it's sticky, it's sweet, it's great, but it hardens.
	It hardens and it's sticky and it's sweet and it's great and it's comfortable and it's warm and it's secure and it's familiar and slowly you just can't move.
	It slows you down.
	It hardens and then you are stuck.
	And this hatred of the poor that is engendered, a hatred of any group from which you strip free will, is horrifying.
	It is a drug.
	And the socialist artists are literally drug dealers.
	They are giving the endorphins of no responsibility through words, through words, to the poor.
	They're like those skeevy guys on street corners like, hey man, you feeling bad about your life, hey?
	I got some determinism right here, man.
	Right here.
	Oh man, this is the good stuff.
	Man, this is the good stuff.
	It's got lots of syllables.
	It goes all the way back to the Greeks.
	It's beautiful, man.
	Just...
	Okay, listen.
	I'll tell you what, man.
	You think you're going for a job interview?
	Let me tell you what this stuff is going to tell you.
	It's beautiful.
	This stuff is going to tell you that the job interview is rigged.
	It's a game.
	It's going to go to some friend.
	It's going to go to some rich Fat cat, you ain't got a chance.
	This is what this stuff's gonna do.
	You put your little teaspoon up your nose, little teaspoon up your nose, man, and all your problems are gonna go away.
	You don't need to strive for anything anymore.
	Everything's rigged.
	All the rich guys got there because they got connections or they were born rich.
	And no one ever gets out of this neighborhood.
	There's this giant invisible leash fence, you know, like those dog collars with the...
	With a zap to keep you around a particular thing.
	Well, you were born in this neighborhood, man.
	And this drug, put it up your nose, it's going to reveal.
	It's going to tell you.
	It's going to show you this little dog collar.
	You can't chew it off.
	You can't pull it off.
	You can't break it off.
	The only way you get it off is by taking your own head off, man.
	This thing's going to reveal to you.
	You were born here.
	You get to go maybe 500, 550, 575 yards away from where you were born.
	You go any further away or up or out.
	It's going to reveal to you that there are these cats, these fat cats, man.
	They got monocles.
	They got really, really, really close shaves.
	I don't know how they do it.
	It's freaky.
	I don't know how they do it with fire, with napalm, butterfly wings.
	I don't know.
	Great shaves.
	And they got these suits.
	I mean, these suits that look like they're made out of, like, finely ground-up testicles of the poor people.
	These suits that shimmer.
	They're like force fields.
	They walk around.
	They got these ties, man.
	I don't know how they do it, but they tie these ties.
	They don't wobble.
	They just stick there.
	They get these clothes shaves.
	They got these haircuts that look like they're made by laser helmets.
	They got shoes so bright that they're getting like laser light reflections up their nostrils every time they walk around.
	Those guys get out and those are the guys who got all the money.
	They're never going to open it up to someone like you.
	It's never going to happen.
	Not in a million years.
	They come and say, oh, can I get a job, sir?
	And you're on your knees and you're begging and you're crying out and please give me a little something like that.
	They spit on you.
	And then what they do is they say, well, maybe we'll give you a little something, a little taste.
	You know, like when you're cruel with an animal that's starving and you give it just a tiny little mouthful so it gets its hopes up?
	Oh, man.
	And they're going to just throw you a scrap or two.
	They're going to throw you a scrap or two in this drug.
	Put it up your nose, man.
	It's going to reveal.
	Now, this drug is made of ink, man.
	It's made of ink in its letters.
	And it's kind of weird.
	It's like you ever see those things, man, where...
	They're like these pictures and they're in 3D, but you gotta stare at them for a while.
	You gotta let your mind go to some like Pink Floyd place, like shine on, you crazy diamond to picture you.
	And you gotta look at this thing, let your mind go, let your brain relax, let your eyes relax, get all flaccid, like they're gonna go Roger Rabbit flaccid, drip down your cheeks, man.
	Look at this, these letters.
	And these letters will swirl.
	And they'll go around you like a bunch of bees.
	And they'll remind you of the dog collar.
	And they'll remind you that all you'll ever get to do in this life is beg from scraps from people who never had to beg for anything.
	Everyone's born into what they got.
	You born into what you got.
	Never the twain shall meet.
	There's no other side of the tracks, man.
	There's no other tracks.
	There's just this.
	This is our world.
	This is the whole planet.
	This drug is going to Blow your mind.
	It's gonna show you that you are in a tiny biodome of history and nobody ever gets out.
	And the only way to be happy is to relax back and understand that and realize that there's no escape from this trap.
	You're not even caught in a bear trap, man.
	You are the bear trap.
	You're catching other people just like I'm catching you.
	We got these nice socialist writers who grind this shit up.
	Snort it off a table, snort it off a hooker's ass, snort it off a mirror.
	We don't care, man.
	As long as you just don't ever think that you can get out of here, man.
	Because the moment we see some Wile E. Coyote, some fucking Wile E. Coyote outline in this biosphere, the whole gig is blown.
	The whole gig is blown.
	And let me tell you one last thing.
	You're going to get really frustrated, man.
	You're going to get really frustrated.
	Every now and then you're going to wake up and you're going to be like, man, I should not be addicted to this socialist literature.
	I should not be snorting this leftist literature, man.
	It's really sapping me of the will to live.
	It's really telling me there's nothing I can do.
	I try climbing up this ladder.
	There are no fucking rungs.
	The sides just fall down either side like some hooker's leg upside down in a club.
	This just plop falls all over.
	You're going to wake up and you're going to freak out and you're going to panic and you'll be like, oh my God, my life is slipping me by.
	I've got to get something done.
	And then you know what's going to happen?
	Shit's going to come into your head, man, and it's going to be scary and it's going to be bad and this shit's going to come into your head and you know what it's going to be?
	It's going to be, hey man, wasn't there some guy who did get out?
	Wasn't there some guy, God, what was his name?
	Some guy, he got up early and And he read some books.
	And I'm not talking like walkthrough guides for trying three.
	I'm talking like he read some books, right?
	And he had like bookmarks and he had like highlighters and shit like that.
	He got up early.
	He read some books.
	He thought he asked questions.
	He went to the public library.
	He put on some headphones, some headphones that he found in the garbage.
	He put them in and he used to listen to lectures.
	He used to ask questions.
	He wrote stuff.
	Like he actually wrote shit down.
	Like by hand!
	I didn't even know you could do that.
	I thought that was just some weird font.
	Or maybe people got really drunk and put crayons up their ass and squatted and danced around and shit like that.
	But this guy got up early, he worked, he read, he taught himself shit, he taught himself how to like program a computer.
	Like they don't, turns out, do you know this?
	They don't even come like that.
	You gotta make computers do stuff.
	They don't just do it by themselves.
	We're deterministic, but computers can be changed.
	So you're gonna wake up and you're gonna think about a guy who got out or some woman who thought straight and used birth control.
	I hear you can do that.
	And she didn't take any of this social literature.
	She didn't snort any of this shit.
	And she got out too.
	And you know what?
	You're gonna start to wake up in the middle of the night and you're gonna go, maybe this is just a scam.
	Maybe I'm not trapped.
	Maybe I'm only trapped by thinking that I'm trapped.
	Maybe the only cage is in my mind and I can walk wherever I want.
	And maybe I got something to offer the world outside of this, but I gotta stop doing this stupid shit.
	I gotta stop thinking I'm a musician because I listen to music.
	And I gotta stop thinking that I'm a sportsman because I play video games.
	And I gotta stop thinking that I'm achieving something because I got to a new level.
	I gotta actually start doing shit for real.
	I gotta find out what's needed in the world.
	I gotta find out a way to align myself with what's needed.
	I gotta find out a way to make myself valuable to other people in the world.
	And you're gonna get these kinds of crazy thoughts.
	You're going to get these kinds of crazy thoughts.
	And that's what this stuff is for, man.
	When you get those kinds of crazy thoughts that maybe, just maybe, this is all a scam.
	Maybe people are just lying to you to keep you down.
	I don't know.
	Maybe the rich people don't want you competing with them because you can charge a whole lot less than they do because you got a few fucking less yachts to maintain.
	Maybe you can just...
	Compete.
	And that's why you're being told to stay down here in the gutter and only worry about economic determinism.
	So you're gonna wake up in the middle of the night and that's when you're gonna call me, man.
	I'm gonna give you a little burner.
	Speed dial.
	It's got one button.
	Call this guy.
	Because I am a socialist librarian of infinite hookery, man.
	And once I got my hooks into you, when you freak out, I'll be right there.
	I'll like...
	I'll just appear, man.
	And I'll say, hey, this is part of the torture.
	This is you rattling the cage.
	Don't make the cage go away.
	It just reminds you.
	It just reminds you that you got in the cage and there's no way out.
	So don't rattle the cage, man.
	You walk around everywhere but don't touch the cage.
	Bars, and you can feel like you're free, but once you start rattling those cage bars, they're all over you, man, and you freak out, and you want to get free, and you want to get out of there, and you think maybe you can, and then we've got another movie for you.
	Oh, man, we've got more movies for you than you can shake a stick at, and in those movies, let me tell you, The cool guys are the guys who are just like kind of blase and they don't give much of a shit and they do a lot of drugs.
	And those guys would be all over the place in your movies.
	You know, maybe some of them would be Seth Rogen, some of them would be Adam Sandler, some would be someone, right?
	And these guys, they're like kind of cool.
	And all the guys who want to try and achieve something, they're all nerds and they're all keeners.
	And the jocks who get up early and exercise...
	To fight off, you know, lassitude, laziness and maybe even depression.
	Those guys are like really anal and they're really nasty and they're really mean.
	And we'll just surround you again with all the reality of things.
	Anytime you get this impulse and this urge, starting gun, go man!
	Doesn't matter if you're late, just go do something.
	We'll be right there.
	We'll give you stoner music where all the successful people are assholes.
	And we'll give you stoner movies where all...
	The successful people are assholes.
	And all the people who exercise and all the people who get up early are squares and mean.
	And they're like, give me your TPS reports, man.
	Because those guys, they're all out there making movies.
	They're all up there getting up early and getting things done.
	But they don't want you to do that because they want to have all the money.
	So we'll just come back and we'll remind you of all this stuff.
	You have to worry about a thing.
	And we'll just soothe you back down.
	It's like this big back rub.
	We rub your back.
	We take your spine.
	That's the deal.
	But you've got to start with the socialist literature that has you hate people.
	That's the last key component.
	See, you're going to wake up and you're going to freak the fuck out.
	You're going to panic because your life is slipping you by and you're in the grip of socialist drug paradise underlords.
	And you know what?
	We're going to feed you.
	Is that you really hate us.
	You hate your life.
	You hate your history.
	You hate your circumstances.
	You hate your surroundings.
	But what we're going to do is say, the best way to stay with us is the really hard stuff.
	The really, really hard stuff.
	Like this is only emergency, like 3 a.m.
	You're about to change your life for the better shit.
	We're going to come and you know what we're going to feed you?
	Oh yeah.
	You ready?
	Hate the successful.
	Hate the successful.
	Oh God, it's so easy.
	It's so easy.
	Make the successful people your devil.
	Say that all the success people are like, oh man, this is some kind of leave it to beaver bullshit.
	It's all this, oh, you got to get up early.
	Oh, that's not cool, man.
	Sleep in, live a little, stay up late, party, have some fun, man.
	You just can't have any fun.
	You're too uptight, man.
	You just got to hate on the successful.
	And that is the last click, last little click of the last little bar going in that cell.
	Because if we can get you to hate the successful, anytime you have an impulse for success yourself, you're going to hate yourself.
	You're going to hate anything which can get you out of this cage.
	You're going to hate any escalator that can take you out of this underworld.
	You're going to hate any jetpack that can rise you out of this hell itself.
	But you just start with a little of this stuff, man.
	Snort a little Upton Sinclair.
	I mean, yeah, okay.
	Everything he wrote was a lie.
	It was complete bullshit.
	But who cares, man?
	It fits.
	It fits.
	It doesn't matter if it's a lock that you open that leads to a door off a cliff down to the center of the earth.
	The key fits.
	It doesn't matter if it leads nowhere.
	But just start with this stuff, man.
	Snort a little bit of this.
	You'll be ours for life.
	So that's the kind of stuff I think that goes on with the socialist literature.
	A whole bunch of stuff has to be there ahead of time.
	But imagine this right now.
	Imagine, just imagine this, Nate.
	Imagine writing a novel or a movie or whatever where the rich guys were all really wise and smart and considerate and humane and the poor people were all selfish, greedy, irresponsible assholes.
	Imagine that.
	What do you think would happen?
	There'd probably be riots in the streets.
	Well, people would just think you were insane.
	Because the poor have become a protected class, which means they've become subhuman pawns of endless propaganda.
	Because you can write a book where all the poor people are noble and all the rich people are assholes, right?
	Because that fits into a template.
	That's the way that the human zoo is maintained.
	It's to get people to resent success and to get them to feel that they have no chance, that it's all economic determinism.
	Of course, if it was economic determinism, you couldn't hate the successful, right?
	I mean, it's not like the tall guy didn't steal my height, right?
	It's just the way the genetics are.
	The height is largely determined by genetics, right?
	So, for sure, I mean, there may be a certain amount of resentment, but everyone would recognize that it was irrational.
	You couldn't have an entire art system founded upon all the tall guys being asshole and all the short guys being heroes.
	That would be ridiculous, right?
	And like I've gone bald, but nobody stole my hair.
	I mean, there are guys who've got great hair out there.
	More power to them.
	I hope that they get hit by lightning in, you know, ways that only enhance their hairdos.
	But can you imagine just if you put a movie together where the smart and good and wise and noble people were all middle class or wealthy and the poor were all just assholes and anyone who tried to rise out of being poor was just clawed down by jerks around them.
	I mean, imagine that.
	People would, like, they literally would short-circuit their brains.
	You'd never get the movie made.
	Nobody would ever work on it.
	And if you did somehow have enough billions of dollars to get the movie made and get good actors in it and get it distributed, can you imagine what kind of reviews it would get?
	Salon would be having a field day.
	Oh, it would be insane.
	Like, Atlas Shrugged, which is much more nuanced, right?
	Some of the poor people are great and some of the rich people are assholes.
	But it had a sort of theme that intelligence and success, not synonymous with virtue or anything, but, you know, to some degree go hand in hand.
	And people, like, accused her of wanting to gas the poor.
	I mean, like, it was literally deranged, the amount of R-selected hatred that was shown at any K-selected art presented to an R-selected universe provokes full gene fight-or-flight survival or die revolt.
	Oh, sorry.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I was just wondering if I could quickly add to that point about Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged.
	I do believe that is true to a great extent, although I admire Ayn Rand.
	But I'm not an acolyte.
	And I do think that there is a legitimate criticism about Atlas Shrugged that she did kind of bring on her own, you know, the hatred for her.
	Because if you read it, particularly when it comes to the scene with the trains, you know, that goes in the tunnel and she has everyone on the train being basically an asshole and she just offs them all.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	Oh, come on.
	Oh, man, let's not.
	Oh, you want to get into Rand?
	Let's get into Rand.
	Absolutely.
	What do you mean she offs them all?
	I don't understand what you mean by that.
	Basically, from the perception of the reader.
	There's this idea that she just, everyone she didn't like, she just puts on this train.
	Or everyone she doesn't like, she just destroys.
	Come on, man.
	Come on.
	You gotta know better than that.
	Everyone she didn't like?
	Well, you know, I mean, everyone—I mean, she goes through the entire list of who's on the train.
	Do you think it was just, this guy's too short, this guy has pimples, this guy has an ill-fitting suit, I'm just going to have an asteroid fall on them called My Hatred?
	Do you think that was the point of that scene?
	Well, that was the criticism, but I would say that— No, no, you echoed the criticism, man.
	Don't hide behind someone else's criticism, right?
	I've heard on the internet that you're an asshole.
	Hey, you calling me an asshole?
	No, I just heard about it.
	It's like, well, no, you're bringing it up, so let's talk about it like you said it, right?
	And look, you could be right.
	I'm just going to tell you that it wasn't just people she didn't like.
	Right.
	Right?
	You know the point of that scene, right?
	Right.
	It was to say that what these people believe is going to lead them to ruin.
	Well, no, the argument basically is that ideas have consequences.
	Correct.
	Yes, exactly.
	So if you've got a philosophy professor who's been out there infecting thousands of young people's minds with the idea that there's no such thing as truth, there's no such thing as reality, there's no goodness to stand up to, and rich people are all evil, and so on, right?
	I had one, yes.
	Then that's going to have consequences...
	And if you're someone who has never stood up for themselves and has always counseled other people not to stand up for themselves, never questioned authority and all that, what she's saying is that the beliefs...
	that people have have serious consequences in society.
	She didn't just say well I hate all these people so I'm gonna have rocks fall on them.
	What she was saying is that these kinds of accidents and she's not talking about an earthquake or something but these kinds of accidents which are preventable.
	So all the people who say well the government should be in charge of everything.
	Well okay now the government was largely in charge of these trains.
	Which means that the profit motive to protect the passengers was gone.
	And so everybody, like, the train is supposed to stop, but because people have put so much, like, I think there's a Kaffee Meigs is one of his trains is supposed to go ahead or something like that, or he's on the train, or some important guy is on, it's been a long time since I've read it, but some important guy is on the train, and so nobody can say no because the politicians have so much power.
	Right.
	And nobody wants to make a decision because you can just get punished in random ways for opposing political powers.
	And so all the people who said, oh, the government should have more power, the government should solve all of our problems, the government should have all of this authority, well, this has consequences.
	In that if you're stuck on a train where a politician needs to get somewhere, no one's going to oppose him.
	No one's going to try and stop it.
	No one's going to tell him to go to hell because he has got all of this incredible power that you, the population, were desperate for him to have.
	And anybody who suggested this was not a good idea, you shouted them down.
	You called them evil.
	You called them monstrous, poor, hating libertarians or whatever, right?
	And it's a brilliant, brilliant scene.
	She's not saying everybody with an irrational thought should die.
	What she's saying...
	Like, if I say smoking can significantly contribute to lung cancer, right?
	I'm not saying I want people to die who have lung cancer.
	Nobody wants that.
	What I'm saying is that if...
	You smoke, you significantly increase your risk of dying from lung cancer.
	And when someone gets lung cancer, nobody's dancing around saying yay.
	It's just a reality.
	And there are children on the train who are completely innocent of all of these things.
	But actions as a whole do have consequences.
	Like if in Greece, if you want the government to pay for everything and you refuse to pay your taxes and you shout at anyone who's to counsel's restraint, guess what?
	You run out of money!
	Is this, like, if I put that scene, would that be like, well, he just hates everyone who disagrees with him, and he hates people who are status.
	No, it's like, actions have consequences.
	That's all she's saying.
	I don't know how that brings on such bilious hatred to say that the beliefs that you hold are going to have an effect on your life, and if they're irrational, state-sucking, power-worshipping beliefs, it's not going to end well, probably.
	Mm-hmm.
	No, that is actually a very, very, very, very valid point on that.
	Tell me again how she brought on all this hatred by pointing out that actions and beliefs have consequences.
	Well, I guess that she's trying to remember certain parts of the books.
	And I should know it because I recently read it again.
	But let's see.
	There was...
	There's that criticism that only a couple characters are actually redeemed.
	Other ones are just flat.
	So you're either...
	I mean, I guess, you know, they're trying to turn the determinism argument on her and say, well, you have these characters who are virtuous, and they're always virtuous.
	And you have these characters who are evil, and they're always evil.
	And with the exception of the wet nurse, Hank Reardon's intern, you know, there's no changing.
	No, no, no, no.
	Come on, come on, come on, man.
	You mentioned Hank Reardon.
	Does he not change that the entire course of the book?
	Oh, yes, he does.
	I mean, he starts off an incredible producer who believes that he's morally obligated to stay with his wife.
	And then in one of the most tragic and horrifying and powerful family separation scenes towards the end – spoiler, spoiler, spoiler – He recognizes that they're all preying on him and all parasites on him and he completely disconnects from everyone he knew to begin with.
	That is a massive change.
	Dagny Taggart believes that she has to fight until the very end to sustain this system and then she walks away from it.
	Unbelievable, huge, monstrous, massive changes.
	Absolutely.
	Most of the characters go through these.
	Look at Dominique in The Fountainhead.
	Goes through an absolutely enormous change.
	Marries guys she hates and hates the world so much that she wants to destroy the only man she admires.
	She ends up marrying this guy and living a life of happiness and contentment and so on, right?
	There are tons of transitional characters in Ayn Rand.
	And yes, there are some people who seem to be irredeemably evil.
	Yeah.
	I haven't noticed a lot of people saying, you know, 1944 and a half, I'm going to set a novel in where Hitler changes course and becomes in charge of an animal shelter and kisses kittens every morning.
	Yeah, there are people who have dedicated themselves so much to the pursuit of evil that they're functionally irredeemable.
	Well, so?
	I mean, morality is a bell curve.
	There are some people who are pretty good no matter what.
	There are some people who are pretty evil no matter what.
	And there's a bunch of people in the middle who have a choice to make between those two poles.
	Right.
	And I would add to that that a lot of these characters aren't meant to be, you know, portrayed as actual people.
	And she said so very explicitly that John Galt and Howard Rourke are supposed to be the living embodiment of a philosophy and not meant to, you know, be examples for action.
	So it's the clash of philosophies through these characters as opposed to, you Deal with this.
	They're superheroes, people.
	I mean, this is like saying, well, wait a minute.
	Wait a minute.
	How can that Bruce guy get big and green?
	Without working out.
	I mean, Superman flying?
	Come on.
	I mean, that just makes no sense.
	I mean, that's just pedantic, boring shit.
	And it's all these people who've been raised in naturalism, right?
	Naturalism being the kitchen sink dramas that it always has to be like some gritty lower class bullshit where everyone's hopeless and nothing changes.
	No, you can't think of these people as human beings.
	They're superheroes.
	And they're exactly because that's the romantic view of life.
	You know, it's like going to Les Miserables and saying, well, Jean Valjean, first of all, why is everyone singing?
	I mean, I've gone to a lot of places and people don't sing that much.
	I mean, why the fuck would there be an orchestra?
	I'm going over for dinner.
	Why are there all these people underneath the table who are playing instruments?
	I've never seen that before.
	And Jean Valjean, he doesn't go to the gym, but he's super strong.
	It's an analogy!
	It's an analogy!
	For his inner strength, of course he's, oh my god, you know?
	But he's in his 50s and he's super strong, but you never see him working out.
	So that's not very real.
	It's like, oh my god, you ped- like, what are you, an engineer?
	Like, you unbelievably pedantic- Why is a wall missing every time I go to see a play?
	I don't understand it.
	There's a wall missing and I don't think any of those guns actually work.
	And why does it never rain in the theatre?
	I don't understand.
	Because it's art!
	It's not supposed to be life!
	If you want life, turn around, walk outside, it's everywhere!
	You're going into a magic place of creativity, imagination, and hopefully if you're dealing with a romantic author, some inspiration!
	It's more than snorting Rice Krispies in the morning.
	You're surrendering yourself to a vision of what life could be so you can go out and face the bullshit in the world with some fiber in your spine.
	Exactly.
	Not you, but...
	Right, and interestingly enough that you brought up Las Miserables because that's Victor Hugo and Victor Hugo was Ayn Rand's favorite author because he was a romanticist.
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	You know, I just...
	Wait a minute.
	Are you saying Hamlet sees a ghost?
	I mean, that's not a ghost.
	That's a guy in pale makeup.
	What, did he sneeze into a pancake bowl?
	I don't understand.
	I mean, here you go.
	I mean, this is like, oh my, you pedantic...
	Toad, who's masquerading as a human being.
	Neofrontal cortex.
	Throw a little wood on the fire.
	Fire it up a little.
	It'll be wonderful.
	You just love it.
	Just spark a little.
	Oh my god.
	These people.
	I mean, have you ever gone to see a play or a movie with someone like that?
	I mean, I pull apart the metaphors, the analogies, like it's wonderful.
	But, you know, the unbelievable squat pedants are just like, they're literally like the death of any joy of life on the planet.
	And oh man, they're just...
	I find Batman somewhat unrealistic.
	I mean, how much shit can you fit on a belt?
	Am I right?
	I mean, there's so much stuff that he's got there.
	I don't understand it.
	And he never seems to do any work.
	He's supposed to be a billionaire.
	I mean, it's just like, oh my god.
	Let yourself go.
	It's supposed to inspire you to never be heroic in your life by pretending that heroism is only applicable to little penguin guys and guys with metallic tentacles in their ass.
	Anyway, so, uh, yeah, no, I just kind of guys, Ryan Rand, you know, I, uh, I, I, I just, I've never met people like that, so I didn't find it compelling.
	Well, if you've got that kind of voice, I can also guarantee you, you will never meet anyone like that.
	Because they'll hear that voice coming and they'll be like, poof, I'm going to use my exacto erasosphere to get out of the way of this pedant because he's going to take the very shine from my eyes, any sparkle from my heart, and any desire to get out of bed tomorrow morning from my spine.
	The same guys are like, well, how would roads be built in the absence of a government?
	And how would we get the children educated?
	Now, I don't know how we would have national defense in the absence of a government.
	Oh, you pet ants.
	Oh, my God.
	It's not spelled out right in front of my vision, so I have no capacity to generate any answers for myself.
	I need you to do some thinking for me.
	The trick is that I'm never actually going to think for myself.
	I'm like a dead body you've got to keep propping up and pretending to dance with because I've got no animation of my own.
	I'm a soul-sucking pet ant zombie.
	No, fair enough.
	That's my literary review.
	It's the weekend at Bernie's that never, ever ends.
	Yeah, you should definitely think about narrating, do a narration of Atlas Shrugged.
	I think you could get all the characters down pretty down pat.
	You mean just doing that, using that voice the whole way through?
	Oh, are you kidding?
	That's definitely, um, what's his name, Mr.
	Thompson?
	I say Agni.
	I wonder if I could have some extremely rough sex with you.
	Uh, it's another kind of metaphor, but people are going to confuse it with rape.
	Apparently they think that you roll up Atlas Shrugged and insert it into people's anuses.
	After you give them Quailo.
	Anyway.
	I just do the whole thing in that voice.
	After about eight minutes, shoot myself in the head.
	But it's okay.
	I shoot myself in the head and I'd miss my brain by about 14 years, so that's alright.
	Well, I don't want to keep all your other listeners waiting, but I do want to thank you for this conversation.
	It was great to be able to talk about Ayn Rand with you because it's always a subject I love to Yeah, all we have to do, just, you know, when someone comes up and, oh, I got all this and all that with Ayn Rand, you just say, well, who are your heroes?
	Bernie Saunders!
	He makes the best chicken.
	But, yeah, that's our weekend at Bernie's.
	Weekend at Bernie Saunders.
	Mike, we have the name for the podcast!
	Yeah.
	But, no, I mean, just ask them who their heroes are and I guarantee you that they won't have any heroes.
	By the way, watch The Fall on Netflix.
	It's pure, concentrated, R-selected, brain-rotting juice.
	It's called The Fall and it was when it was only 49 shades of grey.
	But you might want to check it out.
	It's pure R. Just watch it.
	It's R, R, R everywhere.
	Men are bad.
	Random sex.
	Threat everywhere.
	Strong women.
	I mean, it's just perfect art stuff.
	Anyway.
	So, yeah.
	I mean, as to why...
	I tried.
	I tried for many years to be a libertarian or objectivist artist.
	And...
	I was not able to achieve it.
	I think I'm a good writer.
	I think that my fiction was fantastic.
	And I certainly got my novel, The God of Atheists, which you can get at freedomainradio.com, was called by a reviewer who had a PhD, the great Canadian novel.
	Like, not just, oh, a really good novel, like the great Canadian novel.
	And it just got the most spectacularly fantastic reviews, and nobody wanted to touch it with the 10-foot pole, because it goes against a narrative that is so foundational, people don't even know it.
	And so, if you give the poor personal responsibility...
	That is anathema and people will fight against it tooth and nail because so much of our existing political power structure rests upon the split broken and finely ground up spines of the poor.
	You must remove personal responsibility from the poor, from women, from blacks, from any underclass you name.
	You must First of all, remove personal responsibility from all the designated underclasses.
	And secondly, you must pretend that there's no such thing as an Asian in a white country.
	That's absolutely essential.
	You cannot pretend there are Asians in a white country because that screws up the question of white privilege because, of course, Asians do better than whites in white countries because apparently they are our overlords.
	So I like sushi.
	Well, thanks, man.
	I know it wasn't the perfect answer, but we've got a ways to go philosophically before.
	Like, you know, you've got to turn the soil, you've got to get some fertilizer in there, and only then can you plant the seeds.
	Right now, if we try to plant libertarian seeds of art, I think we're just basically throwing our seeds out of a plane into an ocean.
	There's just not soil there ready.
	And that's why I turned to philosophy now.
	From art, because I recognize that you can't put the cart before the horse.
	Art follows philosophy, and the progressive movement followed the collapse of traditional religion, the rise of socialism, the rise of Marxism, and the bottomless art selection that's been going on since the 19th century, where the R's say, it's not my fault, it's the rich guy's fault, let's get him, right?
	And you just can't reverse that with art.
	It has to be reversed philosophically, and then the art can pick it up after a while.
	It's interesting you say that.
	I'm about to leave, don't worry.
	I'm not trying to drag it on any longer.
	But it is interesting you say that, because if you ever listen to Leonard Peikoff's introduction to objectivism, he maps out epistemology and metaphysics will lead to ethics.
	Figuring those out leads to ethics, and ethics leads to art and politics.
	It's not the other way around.
	Yeah, you can.
	You know, as far as...
	Just one last thing.
	Don't get me wrong.
	I love me some libertarians.
	No, a lot of libertarians spoke in a lot of libertarian places.
	Love me some libertarians.
	But the idea that libertarians, they're just too rational and analytic, I'm afraid I cannot follow you there.
	As you know, for many, many years, I've been pointing out that spanking is a violation of the non-aggression principle.
	Want to expand the non-aggression principle?
	Hey, why don't we start with what's most prevalent?
	Spanking is the most prevalent violation of the non-aggression principle in the world.
	Hey!
	Want to spread the non-aggression principle?
	How about we start not just with that which is the most prevalent, but that which you have the most control and power and effect over.
	You can choose not to spank your own kids.
	You can intervene in your family if you see people spanking at or yelling at or threatening or punishing or confining or time outing or sending to bed without supper or you name it, right?
	You can intervene in your family.
	You can't intervene with your family, get them to change their minds about the Fed, and the Fed vanishes.
	But you can intervene with your family, get them to stop spanking their children.
	And look at that!
	Bingo, bango, bongo!
	You have planted a magnificent tree of knowledge Of the corpse, of the end, of the aggression principle, and you have spread the non-aggression principle in your family, which is going to change the entire course of your gene pool.
	You can do it now.
	You can do it tonight.
	It's going to have a tangible, positive effect on the world.
	It's going to show people how great libertarian kids are because they're raised without being spanked.
	So you want to...
	Expand the non-aggression principle?
	What the hell are you screaming at the Fed for?
	They don't give a shit.
	They're never going to listen.
	Nothing's ever going to change through that.
	But if you really want to spread the non-aggression principle, two things to do.
	Find the most prevalent thing that you can actually affect and change, right?
	I've been saying that very, very clearly for a long, long, long, long time.
	Have these rational and consistent and energetic and committed to the spread of the non-aggression principle libertarians been listening?
	Well, I know a lot of them still quote Murray Rothbard when he said that children could be left to die, so I guess not.
	Yeah, I mean, there's no movement, right?
	There's no movement.
	This could easily have been the very most exciting thing that could have happened to libertarianism since, like, 1850.
	And these, you know, oh, well, they're just too, what do you say, left, right?
	I can't remember.
	Oh, they're too analytical, too consistent, too rational.
	Nope, no, they're not.
	No, they're not.
	No, no, it's emotionally driven reactionary nonsense because when you give them a principle that they can actually put into practice, they don't want to do it.
	Want to spread the non-aggression principle?
	Here's how to do it.
	Here's exactly how to do it.
	And I've given all the science and had all the experts on that shows this is how we achieve a free world.
	Stop hitting children.
	Stop aggressing against children.
	And you get a free world.
	I've put the science in.
	We've got the origins of war and child abuse.
	I've had Alison Gopnik on.
	I've had Elizabeth Gershoff on.
	I've made this case in animation.
	It's called The Story of Your Unenslavement.
	I've made this case six million different ways from Sunday.
	I've had Murray Strauss on to talk about it.
	We just talked to the biohistory.org guy.
	I mean, we've had so many experts on.
	I've written articles.
	You know, Jim Penman, you should check out.
	This guy's just sheer brain in a jar, lightning bug genius guy.
	But I've made this case analytically.
	I've made it emotionally.
	I've made it artistically.
	I have put out the syllogisms.
	I've got an entire...
	Is spanking a violation of the non-aggression principle?
	Entirely reasoned out.
	First principles and everything, right?
	And libertarians, you know, do they rebut?
	No.
	Do they argue?
	Do they help me refine our arguments?
	They say, it's a good point.
	I never thought of that.
	Let's see what we can do.
	No.
	My imitation of a libertarian hearing the argument that spanking is a violation of the non-aggression principle.
	He has become an un-person.
	Stefan Molyneux has become an un-person.
	I don't want to counter the arguments.
	I'm just going to pretend that he and these arguments do not exist.
	And then I'm going to go and complain that other people don't listen to reason.
	Sorry, had to be said.
	Anyway, I mean, some libertarians have listened and some libertarians have changed, and I certainly appreciate that, Jeff and Steph, but there's a lot of people out there.
	It has not even evolved to the realm of debate in the libertarian community.
	It has not even evolved...
	To the level of disagreement.
	Everybody just pretends that no case had been made.
	Nothing has been raised.
	There's no expert testimony.
	It doesn't matter what the facts are.
	It doesn't matter what the biology is.
	It doesn't matter what the ethics are.
	It doesn't matter what the achievability is.
	It doesn't matter what effect you can have on it.
	It doesn't matter how easy it is to bring into being in your own life in the lives of those around you.
	It doesn't matter.
	So when you say, well, they're just too rational and too empirical, it's like, nope!
	I'm sorry.
	Libertarianism remains in the status of sophistry and religion because when you have something that you can do that is fully in accordance with the most important values you claim to adhere to and to wish to spread in the world, and you have something very powerful and actionable that you can do, and you simply refuse to even entertain the question or pretend that the question has never been asked, it's just another religion.
	The only thing I have to do to save my soul is go to church!
	Gotta go to church!
	You know, there's a church, right?
	No!
	I gotta go to church!
	All I want to do is go to church!
	You know, there's a church, right?
	It's not even down the street.
	No!
	I can't listen to you.
	I gotta go to...
	Listen, man, I'm telling you, there's a church.
	He's right here.
	I don't care!
	I don't care what you're saying about whatever blah blah.
	All I hear is blah blah blah.
	I got to get to church.
	Church is the only thing that's going to save my soul.
	I got a bit of a cough coming on.
	I got to get to church.
	It's right here, man.
	It's open.
	You can go walk right in.
	It's three fucking steps.
	Plus, it's raining out and it's hailing frogs.
	Go into the church.
	I can't listen to you, son.
	I got to find a church.
	I got to get to a church.
	Right here.
	No, I don't know what you're saying.
	La, la, la, la.
	Off I run.
	Well, your dedication to getting into church may be a little open to question at that point.
	Well, thank you very much, Steph.
	Thanks for having me and talking with me on this.
	Thanks, Nate.
	I charge you with destroying my voice tonight.
	No, I'm kidding.
	Thank you very much for calling in.
	Very enjoyable.
	I'm sure there's a t-shirt that says, I destroyed Stefan Molyneux's voice.
	Got it.
	I'm the only one who ends up getting to wear it, though, because of all that free will stuff.
	Yeah, thanks, Nate.
	I appreciate that.
	Thank you.
	Thanks, Nate.
	Steph, how many coffees did you have before the show tonight?
	Just one.
	Just one?
	Wow.
	Just one.
	Wow.
	Okay.
	Why should I have it?
	I don't think you need it.
	I think we're good to go.
	Up next is Curtis.
	Curtis wrote in and said, What is the connection between boundaries, or lack of, and fear?
	More specifically, how do boundaries pertain to fear that originates from childhood abandonment and or poor attachment?
	That's from Curtis.
	That's a great question.
	I was thinking about it all day.
	Good one.
	Hello, Steph.
	Can you hear me alright?
	Hello?
	Yes.
	Yeah, I just wanted to...
	Actually, Mike, do you find that the listeners' audio is a bit too clear?
	Can we maybe get them to put some...
	I know everyone's audio is good today.
	I'm like, yay, less editing.
	Fantastic.
	Could you possibly heard us call from the bottom of some type of dumpster?
	Curtis, could you put your...
	I hate to ask you, but it really is just for Mike's job security.
	Could you maybe put your head in a toilet or could you maybe speak underwater or something like that?
	Could you maybe...
	Lots of random clicks and pops fuddle around at the desk during the show.
	Something like that.
	Do you have a squeaky trampoline you could be jumping on?
	Could you maybe go to an airport?
	Subway!
	Subways are great.
	I'm actually calling from a parked car, so I could start driving on a pretend commute somewhere.
	Could you just randomly press the horn?
	Would that be okay?
	Would that be fine?
	Because Mike hates sleep, and his wife apparently, so he just wants to work on fixing caller audio for you to return.
	Listen, I got the last offer.
	Can you get like a true bat load of a combination of Mexican and Indian food?
	And just, like, fart until you're about to split in two.
	Basically, I want you to open up a blow, like a sperm whale-sized blowhole between your legs.
	Is that possible?
	Maybe not.
	Might be a bit late for that, but...
	This is now how Curtis thought the call was going to start.
	I don't know if he's been listening for more than three minutes.
	I'm sure he expected that, too.
	Yeah, I know.
	Boundaries?
	Boundaries?
	Right.
	I'm not talking about foreign noises of people you've just met.
	Go ahead.
	Yeah, I just wanted to take a moment off the top here just to say how sorry I am for all the terrible things you suffered in your childhood and how much gratitude I have to you for your courage and vulnerability and openness.
	You've had a huge impact in my life, so I just wanted to thank you for that.
	Thank you very much.
	That's very kind of you.
	So, boundaries and a lack or lack thereof and fear.
	That is a That's a great question, Curtis.
	I just wanted to tell you that, like, got my brain turning in hopefully very useful directions, but just great question.
	Is there a particular reason you wanted to talk about this topic?
	Is this something imminent or something you're working on?
	Yeah, it's, well, a couple things, I guess.
	The abandonment is kind of Through the therapy I've been doing kind of been peeling back the layers and getting to the core stuff at the at the root of it all and I think that that's my my last or I don't know I can't say last but the the big thing is my next objective to work on is the abandonment for detachment but the boundaries since thinking about this have really made some progress in the boundaries
	and so Yeah, but in my head they kind of blend together and I'm hoping that we can at least do some work on that or figure out.
	Yeah, I don't know.
	I could just add a little bit and then maybe you could ask questions.
	Let me give you a minute or two on the thoughts that I've accumulated today on this issue and then you can let me know if they Mean anything of value to you.
	Is that okay?
	That's great, yeah.
	Now, I'm just using my own, as usual, colloquial layperson definition of boundaries.
	But boundaries, you know, like, so the traditional example is...
	You know, your mother-in-law just comes over.
	She doesn't call first.
	She just like shows up.
	You never know when she's coming.
	She has a key and she just opens the door and walks in no matter what, right?
	And, you know, people, I think reasonably so, say, listen, you know, love having you over.
	You got a call.
	You set something up, man.
	Just walk into our house.
	You know, I know you're family, but we'd like to have some warning.
	You know, if I'm doing my hot yoga naked tai chi thing, I'd like to have a little bit of preparation so I can slap on a fig leaf or two.
	And so would that be for you a reasonable approximation of a way of looking at boundaries?
	It would be.
	I was also wondering about, for early childhood, if boundaries could include the inclusive bond between a child and a parent.
	So whether boundaries always have to be something that keeps your individual space, whether that's different in the early childhood.
	Well, I mean, babies don't really want a lot of space, right?
	They want to nestle up close to their mom and, you know, play with the boobies the size of Mount Vesuvius.
	And so I don't think that kids really want a sense, or babies in particular, want a sense of boundaries and so on.
	But the degree to which enforcing boundaries comes with fear, I think, is a really powerful question because I think that it does.
	And people are often quite hostile when you try to establish boundaries, right?
	So you say to your mother-in-law, listen, you got a call, you know, I love you, but...
	You can't just keep walking into our house.
	Call first.
	Let's set up a time so we know you're coming and all that kind of stuff, right?
	And a lot of times people react with hostility to an attempt to impose boundaries on them.
	You know, with my own mother, one of the last big fights that we ever had was she had a particular topic.
	It doesn't really matter what it was, but it was just...
	Every single time, every time we got together, it was like it would just go on and on and on.
	And, you know, I said, you know, I mean, I don't mind hearing about this topic, but I feel that's all we're talking about.
	And I kind of miss being able to talk about other things, you know, like other than this just one topic, right?
	And it's not that I don't sympathize.
	It's not, you know, but I just...
	I feel like it's just become one thing, and I'm not looking forward to our conversations because it's just this one thing.
	I basically just listen, and you don't really ask me much about what's going on in my life.
	In fact, it almost never seems to happen.
	It's just all about this one topic that is your focus, and it's not satisfying to me.
	We can still talk about it, but I'd like to expand the repertoire a little bit, right?
	Now that is a form of establishing boundaries, which is to say, I want to have some preferences in this relationship as well, right?
	So with the mother-in-law, she keeps coming over, you're saying, hey, I got a preference.
	It's my house.
	You call before you come over.
	You know, show some sense of boundaries, some sense of my time being important and so on.
	And so boundaries is a way of reminding someone else that there are two people in the relationship and you're not just there to serve the other person's need.
	That can cause a lot of conflict and a lot of hostility in relationships where those boundaries have not been established from early on.
	Boundaries, of course, can include sexuality as well, right?
	If you have sex with someone you don't particularly want to at a time, it's because you're afraid to say no.
	Maybe you feel the person won't like you or maybe you feel that they get angry or maybe you've just been raised since you were very young to accede to other people's preferences and not your own, but that's not right.
	It's not a good idea.
	So I think that the reason why people are afraid of the establishment of boundaries is because they have not experienced both love and rejection at the same time.
	In other words, they've been with polarized people who love them, love them, love them, and never say no to anything, And then, you know, like you pull an elastic band too long, it just recoils, then suddenly the people are really angry at them and there's no love in that interaction and there's a threatening, explicitly or implicitly, there's a threatening of a break of a bond, right?
	And so I think what happens is People become afraid to assert boundaries because they don't know how to do it.
	In other words, it's never been modeled for them how to assert boundaries without explosive and destructive rage.
	And that often happens when people just say yes, yes, yes, and then they kind of blow up.
	They get frustrated and something sets them off and all that bottled up resentment of exceeding to everything boils over and pushes back like this big firewall tsunami.
	And so people become afraid of boundaries because they've only ever seen pushback in a very violent or aggressive relationship-threatening kind of way.
	And I think that's important.
	And this comes, you know, like another example is, you know, the mom who keeps cleaning up her teenage son's bedroom.
	Let's take a cliched example, right?
	And she does it and she does it and she does it.
	And then, like, one day she just loses it.
	And she just screams at him, like, you never do this.
	You take me for granted.
	You're completely irresponsible.
	You don't ever think about what I feel.
	You don't care about the fact that I've had to do this day after day.
	You know, it goes on and on, right?
	And the teenage guy is like, oh my god, like, she hates me.
	Because the things that she's ascribing to me as a motive, oh my, she hates me.
	In other words, the mom is sort of pushing back and saying, I don't want to do this, you're old.
	But she's not doing it in a way where she's sitting down and expressing her feelings early on before it builds up.
	And so the boundaries then become destructive.
	And when somebody starts asserting boundaries, it's perceived as an act of aggression, which is why when you say to your mother-in-law, you got a call before you come over, she's like, what, am I not family?
	Right?
	In other words, the assertion of boundaries is somehow threatening the entire relationship because probably that's the way she was raised and that what she experienced is that anytime you assert a preference in the face that may be opposed to somebody else's preference, the only way you do it is way too late and way too aggressively in a way that threatens the foundation of the relationship.
	Does that make any sense from where you're coming from?
	That makes a lot of sense.
	It's an extension of not only did...
	My parents don't have boundaries.
	I didn't even understand really what they were until I started therapy.
	And then it's an extension of the lack of proper modeling of boundaries in that it was a modeling of that extreme that you're talking about that actually resonates quite well.
	And the idea of having boundaries to protect a relationship rather than having an exercise of boundaries that threatens a relationship is incomprehensible to A lot of people, right?
	I mean, so...
	When...
	I'm trying to think if I should talk about something in my family or something with a caller, a recent caller.
	I think I won't do the recent caller because some people won't have heard that show and requires other knowledge.
	So with my daughter, if like...
	Occasionally, I'll just say, well, no, you can't do this, right?
	This is not, like...
	But the reason I do that is not because I'm just, like, angry and offended and, oh, that's just lazy crap, right?
	But it's because I really want to protect my pleasure in her company.
	Right?
	I really want to protect my pleasure in her company.
	Like, if you've ever gone to a movie with somebody...
	It's been years and years, but I remember going to a movie once with a woman, and she bought a big bag of popcorn.
	And she bought some Twizzlers.
	I don't know if she was, like, camping or seeing a movie.
	And she bought, like, one of these giant bat-like cokes that, you know, only Mike can manage to carry into a movie theater.
	I knew that was coming.
	Not alone, obviously.
	I mean, Mike, we're going to see the movie Titanic, not experience it.
	But...
	Mike apparently is made almost entirely of dust, and the rehydration requirements are similar to hosing down a battle destroyer.
	Anyway, Mike, sorry, is there anything you wanted to mention?
	No, no, no.
	He's a thirsty young man, is what I'm trying to say.
	But...
	But I've actually never seen anybody burp for the last half of a movie.
	It's actually quite...
	It's very THX enabled.
	You can only go see short movies because, you know, planner.
	That's right.
	Is it done yet?
	Mike, that's the first commercial.
	Just pee back in the cup.
	It's already empty.
	How can there be more?
	Anyway.
	And I'm watching the movie and she's like, hey, Steph, do you want some popcorn?
	I'm like, no, I'm good, thanks.
	Do you want some Twizzlers?
	No, I'm fine.
	I'm just trying to watch the movie.
	Are you thirsty?
	No, I'm good.
	Thanks.
	Listen, this popcorn's really great.
	You should try it.
	No, I'm good.
	I'm just watching the movie.
	Because I... I'm sorry.
	I put some powder.
	Like, they got this, like, powder.
	This, like, cheddar powder.
	You really should...
	Okay, just give me some popcorn.
	I found that cheddar powder really made me feel thirsty.
	Do you want something?
	You sure you don't want something?
	No, I'm good.
	I'm good.
	Thanks.
	Because I don't think I can finish all this.
	I think I got one that was too big.
	Okay, I'll have a drink.
	Thanks very much.
	I've never tried this flavor of Twizzlers before.
	I think there's lemon in it.
	Can you taste some and let me know?
	I'm not going to get to watch this movie, am I? I mean, basically, I've just got introductory subtitles coming in through the side of my head.
	That was painful and I wasn't even on the date.
	Oh, God!
	You know, have you ever just been tempted to neck with someone so they'll stop talking?
	I find you extremely annoying, but I'm willing to kiss you because then I can hear the movie at least.
	It becomes like a radio play for me, but you can't interrupt.
	You're tongue-tied.
	That was my basic theory.
	Are you telling me to stop talking during movies?
	I won't tell you, Mike.
	You'll just know.
	Okay.
	Final form of the HR department.
	Oh wait, we don't have one.
	Shit.
	Hi, I'm the HR department.
	Do you like to make a complaint?
	You can't.
	You have your clothes on.
	You and Stoya are totally going to unionize.
	I'm going to go picket.
	That's right.
	Picket where exactly?
	I'm still working on that.
	Yeah, yeah.
	It's a challenge.
	Wait, sorry, we were talking about boundaries.
	We weren't talking about concentration or focus with the listener, were we?
	No, no.
	We weren't talking about tangents either.
	So, boundaries, that's just, it's just kind of, it's invasive behavior.
	Now, for me to say to this woman, listen, can you not talk to me for like, you know, give me half an hour.
	I don't know what's going on in the movie.
	Brad Pitt's got his shirt off.
	I know that because it's a Brad Pitt movie.
	That's why I came.
	But I don't know what the hell he's doing.
	But if you assert that, people are like, fine.
	You know, like, okay, fine.
	I'll stop interrupting your movie.
	But you didn't have to say it in that tone.
	And I did.
	I said to the woman, listen, can you just...
	She's like, was that a tone?
	And then it's like, you know what?
	Let's just walk out.
	It's still half an hour in.
	We'll get our money back.
	And maybe I'll just drop you home.
	Because...
	If the relationship is complicated when we're not even supposed to be talking to each other, when we're actually supposed to be talking to each other, I bet it's not going to get any simpler.
	That sounds like it would be fun for 40 years.
	I don't know.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Are you awake?
	I can't speak when you're choking me.
	I'm awake now!
	I think the pillow's accidentally on my head.
	When that happens.
	No, no, because all you have to do is take four minutes of that, play it to a jury, and they'll let you off with a reward.
	Did you hear a noise?
	Can you hear that?
	Do you hear a noise?
	Can you hear that?
	Do you hear a noise?
	What if you'd stop talking?
	Anyway.
	Boundaries.
	Yeah, sorry.
	So boundaries...
	I want to protect the pleasure.
	The reason I asked the woman to stop interrupting me in the movie theater was so that we might actually ever get to see a movie again.
	She didn't understand that, or maybe she did, but she was offended that I would not want the 75th snack that she somehow had stitched into the inside of her corset or something.
	So, I was actually telling her, stop doing this thing that's annoying to me, not because I wanted to bully or dominate her, but because she was pretty and I wanted to have the opportunity of having a second date without feeling like a complete horny hypocrite, otherwise known as a man.
	And so, I actually wanted to protect that.
	And the reason I said these things to my mom was that I wanted to actually protect Begin to enjoy having conversations with her again, and I was just like, oh no, you know, oh no, the phone's ringing, oh no, like because I was beginning to get that dread of like, this monorail just goes around in circles, there's nothing to eat and it's really cold, that kind of conversation.
	And so, to establish boundaries because you wish to protect, it's out of love, because you wish to protect the positive things in a relationship, Is really, really important, right?
	It's like, why do you send food back in a restaurant?
	Well, obviously, because you want better food, but it's also important because you're giving feedback to the restaurateur that this food is not up to scratch, that it was cold, or there was a problem with it, human hair in it, or something like that.
	Too much rat in the ratatouille, I don't know, but you're attempting to protect the relationship by providing feedback, by wanting something that's different, right?
	Like in sex, you know, if someone's doing something that you don't enjoy, like if the ferret has escaped and you don't know where it is, then you might want to say that, right?
	Hello?
	Come on, we've all been there!
	Okay, first of all, we put on the jockstrap, then we hunt for the ferret.
	Trust me, that's an important, important step.
	Otherwise you'll end up doing that first voice forever.
	So I think that people have not experienced boundary setting in the context of love, affection, and a desire to protect the relationship.
	And so they view boundaries, either establishing boundaries or being on the receiving end of boundary establishment, as an act of aggression.
	Because that's the way it was always modeled.
	The idea that you can be rejected out of love...
	That a particular behavior of yours is being rejected because somebody wishes to preserve the love in the relationship.
	That is almost impossible for people to understand.
	And they usually react.
	And the more positive and reasonable you are, oftentimes, the more aggressive people get in their response.
	This is this weird catch-22.
	Because when you're reasonable, like, this was an unbelievably terrible fight that I had with my mom when I brought up this, you know, it may sound like I'm saying, oh, I was also kind of reasonable.
	I really, really was.
	I was that reasonable about it.
	I mean, I was in therapy.
	I knew what I was doing.
	And people react, like the more calm you are and reasonable you are and the more affection you bring to the boundary conversation, oftentimes the more incredibly aggressive people can get.
	Because if you come at people with aggression, they respond with aggression, they can blame you, right?
	You made me do it, right?
	Like there's this conversation that Ben Shapiro recently had with a transgendered woman.
	He used to be a man, I think was in the armed forces.
	And he said, you know, what's your gender, sir?
	Ben Shapiro said, what's your gender, sir, to this transgendered woman who then leaned over, kind of gripped Ben Shapiro's neck and said, you know, keep going and you're heading home in an ambulance.
	And the people on the left are like, well, Ben Shapiro knew that he was being provocative and he should have known better.
	And you knew that was going to be insulting.
	Yeah.
	Because people on the left often say that about women who get assaulted.
	Well, she was wearing a dress that was very revealing.
	She was being very provocative.
	Or when a woman gets beaten up.
	Oh, well, she was making fun of her husband's penis size.
	She knew that was going to be provocative.
	Of course, they never do that, right?
	Because there's just a guy on the right.
	So the more reasonable you are, and his response to this was he said, well, that seems mildly inappropriate for a political discussion, like a threat of putting somebody in an ambulance.
	That's close to a death threat.
	Anyway, so the more reasonable you are when you try to establish boundary violations, the more volatile it can be for the other person because they feel the surge of anger and fear and they can't pin it on you.
	So in a weird way, there's nothing more threatening to a previously volatile relationship than approaching conflict reasonably.
	Because the same volatility gets kicked up in people's hearts, the same aggression, this amygdala fight-or-flight stuff comes roaring up, but they can't pin it on you.
	Because you're not saying something like, Mom, this is such boring shit!
	I can't believe we're talking about this again!
	Do you not have any other thing rattling around in that pea brain of yours other than this one topic that we've talked about for years and I'm sick of it!
	Right?
	Because then she could...
	And then it's all like mongoose and snake all over the place, right?
	But if you bring things up reasonably and calmly, people really go even crazier because they get this visceral aggression and they can't blame you for it.
	So what they'll generally do if they can control themselves even a little bit is they'll try and provoke you as much as possible so that they're holding themselves back so that when you say something mean or aggressive they can let it all go.
	Let all of their hounds attack you and Then they can say well, but you said this, right?
	So they're just holding themselves back needling and needling and needling until you get angry and then they can and say it was your fault But if you retain your calm you can literally watch people orbit the earth with their anger and rage and it's really terrifyingly clear and it's incredibly liberating It's incredibly liberating Curtis because as I'm sure you know when you bring reasonableness and calm to Then possibly even affection if you if it's there within you if you bring that
	to an interaction and the other person goes completely insane It's incredibly liberating because You will never again take the blame for that person's temper No, that makes a lot of sense.
	I'm just thinking that's you know exactly when I started applying boundaries to my parents and uh I kept having to ratchet them up and to eventually fold the food because they weren't respecting them at all.
	And I really paid a lot of attention to do it in a very...
	to keep anger out of it and to do it like you were saying.
	And yeah, they went mental.
	And then when I have been applying boundaries to my close friends or Other people in my life, and they respond in a positive way to those boundaries, and it strengthens the relations.
	So I am experiencing both sides of the spectrum there, so it makes a lot of sense.
	And I'm sorry to hear about all of that.
	There is almost no more destructive thing that anyone can say in a relationship than, you are responsible for my emotions.
	Because then you can't have a relationship where you're basically pretending to be a mirror.
	They have no free will.
	They have nothing to bring to the table other than reaction to you, which would imply that you'd be a narcissist for wanting to have a relationship with them.
	Because the only thing that they are is what you provoke or provide, in which case you're basically having sex with a mirror thinking you're going to have a baby.
	So I am sorry to hear about that.
	That is very, very tough.
	Very tough stuff.
	But I'm very happy to hear that your friends are accepting some boundaries.
	Yeah, well, it's a short list, but they're a good one, so yeah.
	It's always a short list.
	Anyone who says, I got a lot of friends, is basically saying, I have very low standards.
	I'll eat anything!
	Really?
	Road kills?
	But anyway.
	Is there anything else?
	I mean, we did race through it a little bit.
	Is there anything else that's helpful or anything that you think I might have missed or anything you wanted to add?
	Yeah, no, I think that makes a lot of sense to me.
	In my experience with the issues with boundaries and the fear that came out of that, it seemed the same as the fear I remember from childhood, from abandonment and that.
	But I wonder if that's just more the commonality of fear.
	But abandonment, right?
	See, the abandonment is back to the rejection without Without love.
	Reject the behavior, love the person.
	And reject the behavior because you wish to maintain the love for the person.
	Like...
	I can completely understand this sentence.
	I like you so much, I don't want to have sex with you.
	Right now.
	Right?
	That sentence makes sense to you, right?
	What does that mean?
	That...
	You respect their boundaries and you're not gonna proceed until that relationship is strengthened and at that point.
	Right, that is a great compliment.
	Somebody not wanting to have sex with you is a great compliment.
	I'm not talking about the kind of compliments I steadfastly received in my teenage years, but what I'm saying is that If somebody wants to keep dating you but doesn't want to have sex with you, that's an amazing compliment.
	But a lot of people, of course, will only hear, I don't want to have sex with you, feel rejected, get hurt, get huffy, get angry, or withdraw, or whatever, right?
	And then it's like, well, now I'm glad I didn't have sex with you because you're not very mature.
	But the idea of, I really, really like you, so I don't want to sleep with you on the third date, or like, you know, because I really like you.
	Which means I really want to get to know you.
	I want to be able to trust my feelings.
	I want to be able to open my heart.
	And I'm not a battlefield of warring STDs.
	That's also a plus in general.
	But it's hard for people to hear that.
	Because that's a boundary.
	And that's a boundary that is saying, I don't want to have sex with you because I like you so much.
	Not ever, right?
	But...
	That is an important statement to hear.
	I'm not sure many young people hear it these days, but that is a very, very important statement to hear.
	Well, yeah, that makes sense.
	It's about the rejection.
	It's that extreme reaction to the boundary setting without love, like you were saying.
	Yeah, because people would often hear, I don't want to have sex with you, and say, because you're physically unappealing, or because I don't like you, or I never will like you, but the idea that someone can want to withhold sex because they like you so much, it's hard for people to get that if they've not been raised with those kinds of boundaries.
	Mm-hmm.
	Yeah, well, that sounds good then.
	I will go here.
	I guess unless there was any...
	With help from my therapist, I had a couple books basically about learning more about boundaries.
	They're modeled to you as a child, but then you can learn them from models in your adult life also.
	I've been working with that.
	I don't know if you had any other tips about No.
	Do you want to mention the books?
	If you found them helpful, it might be useful for other people to peruse them?
	Yeah, I don't, unfortunately, have the title on top of my head here.
	There's a psychologist.
	She wrote two books.
	One's called Boundaries, and then I read the second one that was recommended to me.
	All right.
	I will just mention one other thing, which is that statism is obviously a violation of boundaries in a very fundamental way, in that Statism will just, you know, you think your mother-in-law coming over without asking is a problem.
	How about the state taking money from your bank account without your permission?
	Right?
	Statism is foundationally a boundary violation because the state just does things to you that you may or may not want.
	You have no say in the matter and you can't tell them to stop without moving to some other abusive hellhole where the government does exactly the same thing but with a different accent.
	And so the reason why I put so much thought into this today is that like all good things that we want to manifest in society as a whole, it starts in how you raise children.
	And if you raise children with clear and respectful boundaries and they're used to negotiating and so on, Then when they grow up, the boundary violations of the state, which is basically all the government is, will be very clear and foreign and openly unpleasant to them, and they'll really find that to be a very different and opposing paradigm to how they were raised.
	So, you know, passing laws, you can't do this, you can't do this.
	Without your negotiation, without your permission, they can just raise your taxes or go into debt on your behalf or order you to go to wars and stuff.
	These are all very, very foundational and gruesome boundary violations.
	So that's one of the reasons why I thought the topic was very important to talk about.
	And I really thank you for bringing it up.
	Do you mind if we move on to the next call?
	Yeah, no problem.
	And I just dug up the name of the book here, so I'll just throw it out there.
	It's called...
	Where to draw the line by Anne Catherine.
	Is it A-N-N-E or A-N-N? A-N-N-E and Catherine with a K. Ah!
	Sneaky E-hider.
	And Catherine K or C? K. Okay.
	Anne E, Catherine with a K. Okay.
	K selected.
	Anyway, thanks very much, Curtis.
	You're welcome back anytime and...
	I'm glad to hear you're in therapy.
	That's a great move.
	All right.
	Mike, who do we have on next?
	All right.
	Uplast.
	That's amazing, saying that again.
	Uplast is Thomas.
	And Thomas has a bunch of Liberty-esque questions.
	We'll see how many we have time to get to.
	But number one on the list is, is very limited government the same on a moral level as a very large government?
	This is similar to the question of, on a moral level...
	Is it the same to steal one penny from someone as it is to steal $100,000 from them?
	Alright.
	I'm sorry, the name again?
	Thomas.
	Thomas!
	Thomas, I am going to call you Thomas, not the tank engine, but the leading question.
	Thomas of the leading questions.
	Because, I mean, you know, one penny versus $100,000, was that the distinction?
	Yeah, like on a moral level...
	You're still stealing in both instances.
	No, no, I get it.
	I get it.
	I get it.
	Of course there are differences in degree.
	Of course there are.
	I mean, first of all, nobody's going to care if you steal a penny.
	You might as well not.
	Or you might as well.
	It doesn't matter.
	Because the costs of remediating a stolen penny are so infinitely higher almost than the stolen penny that it's just not worth it, right?
	So one could scarcely even be categorized as a theft, whereas the other one could be somebody's entire life savings, right?
	Okay, so yes, there is a difference between a 50% tax rate and a 5% tax rate.
	A 50% tax rate is worse than a 5% tax rate.
	But I don't think that necessarily is a valuable or helpful answer to the question.
	Because comparing private theft to government taxation is not...
	A valid comparison.
	Let me give you two seconds on why and then you can tell me if it makes any sense or it's just nonsense.
	So a private thief takes the risks upon himself to steal.
	Right, so let's say somebody wants to come and steal your car.
	Well, your car could have an alarm.
	You could have a gun, right?
	I mean, there could be any number of things that could...
	You might have a big dog, right?
	You might have a security system with, like, paralyzing blow darts attached to it, or you could have a drone, right?
	You could be a policeman, right?
	There's so many things that could go wrong with that theft, the car might not even start.
	There could be so many things that go wrong with the theft.
	So the guy who comes to steal your car is taking a lot of initiative and is taking on his own risks and is limited in that he, as a private individual, can really only steal one car at a time.
	So private thefts are limited by a near infinite number of factors.
	Plus, of course, private thefts are illegal, right?
	So you have the entire weight of social opinion and the existing...
	criminal system on your side, whether it's public or private, and that's important.
	You have the sympathy of your neighbors.
	You have insurance against theft.
	You know, still looking for the company that's willing to provide tax insurance.
	Are you afraid of being taxed?
	Might you lose some money to the government?
	Well, we're here for you.
	You can pay us a monthly stipend, and if you end up having to pay any tax, we will replace it to you free of charge.
	Because we have the business sense of cheese string, right?
	Because there's no such thing.
	But you can buy theft insurance.
	You can't buy tax insurance because that's like saying, I want insurance just in case I don't live forever.
	I could do death insurance, right?
	So you can't really compare those two aspects at all, right?
	There's no legal recourse to taxation.
	Yeah, the tax collector takes no personal risks in collecting the taxes because it's usually deducted at source or the politician who raises the taxes doesn't come to your house with a gun and you have blow darts and the police on your side or whatever.
	I mean, the money is token and if you resist, other guys will come and kill you and shoot you or whatever.
	And nobody's going to say, what a hero, right?
	I mean, I guess a few people would, but most people will say, you know, this jerk wants the free ride.
	He wants roads, but he doesn't want to pay his taxes.
	What is he, Greek?
	And so comparing, and there's six million other different reasons, but comparing private theft to government taxation is not a valid comparison in any way, shape, or form, even though both involve the forcible transfer of money.
	And tell me if that makes any sense to you.
	Yeah, yeah, that definitely makes sense.
	And it's like you were saying, it's true that One thief, for example, is not going to have as much firepower, I guess, as the state.
	As an example, the U.S. government, there's one policeman.
	If you stop that guy, there's going to be so many more that come.
	There's no way to fight against the state as you can one thief.
	And there's no legal argument of self-defense as there would be for an intruder.
	Yeah, that's true.
	You've got to pay your taxes.
	It's a social contract.
	There's no self-defense against paying taxes, but a guy comes through your window, you can shoot him in the head, right?
	Yeah.
	It's like you always say, they've got a blue costume on, and that rids them of all moral obligations, I guess.
	Yeah, so, you know, comparing government taxation to private theft, I think we have to abandon that.
	But I think what we can do is we can, say, compare more of the apples to apples, which is a 5% tax versus a 50% tax.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, and, well, that question that I'm asking, it has a lot to do with my dilemma between, I guess, libertarianism slash minarchy and anarchy.
	No, hang on, hang on.
	Before we get into those categories, let me make a very, very brief case.
	Honestly, this will be very brief.
	Let me make a very brief case.
	There is no such thing as 5% taxation.
	What does that mean?
	Well, I don't know.
	That's my whole argument.
	I've got nothing else.
	There's no such thing as 5% taxation.
	And what I mean by that is...
	If you have a very strong man who can carry a hundred pounds of gold, right?
	And you have a very weak man who can only carry off ten pounds of gold.
	He's got a bad back.
	He's got a carpal tunnel and shit like that, right?
	Now, you have a couple of hundred tons of gold.
	You know, let's say that you're...
	Fort Knox at some point in history when there was still gold there, apparently.
	But let's say you're Fort Knox and thieves break in.
	There's a strong guy and there's a weak guy.
	And they both carry off the maximum amount of gold that they can.
	And the strong guy carries off 100 pounds of gold.
	And the weak guy carries off 10 pounds of gold, right?
	Yeah.
	Is the weak guy a nicer thief?
	No, because he's still taking the maximum amount of money that he can.
	Exactly.
	And I will submit to you, my friend, that a government that is only taxing at 5% is a very new or very struggling government that is probably inheriting an even less taxed environment and is actually charging the very maximum tax that it can possibly charge.
	That just happens to be only 5%.
	You can sort of think of...
	Revolutionary America, right?
	There is no such thing as a 5% tax.
	Just the same way there's no such thing as a weak thief who just happens to be nicer.
	Both thieves are carrying off the maximum conceivable amount that they can.
	It's just that one of them is very weak and the other one is very strong.
	But they're both as dedicated a set of thieves as you could imagine and they're both carrying as much as they could possibly do.
	So that's when I say you say 5% taxation.
	Well, that's really low.
	But you tell me a powerful government that has only 5% taxation and I'll withdraw the argument.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I mean, that's a great, great point.
	And I can definitely use that to move on to my next question.
	It's very similar to this.
	Wait.
	Okay.
	Wait.
	Now, the other thing, too, is that, of course, there's no such thing as a 5% taxation because that would be that there's no debt.
	There's no counterfeiting, no money printing, and no debt.
	No bond sales, no deferred revenue where you have to pay people down the road for services you're providing to people for quote free now.
	So if the government is only taxing at 5%, I can guarantee you that it's probably borrowing at least 5%.
	More, right?
	Because it's using that as collateral.
	Because if the government is taxing at 5% and it's only providing 2% worth of value, because you've got to have all the expense and overhead of the tax collection, you've got bureaucratic inertia, you've got mismanagement of finances, you've got corruption, you've got misallocation of resources, the bridges to nowhere and crap, right?
	So if the government is taxing 5% and it's only providing 2% worth of value that people actually want, and that's a very generous estimate from an anarchist, Then how on earth are people not saying this is bullshit, let's stop this taxation?
	Well, the reason is that they tax at 5% and they use 2% of that money as collateral to borrow another 10%, right?
	So it gives them like 13%.
	So they're taxing at 5%, but they're providing...
	13% of overall value, right?
	And let's say that they can only provide like half of that, right?
	So they're taxing at 5% and they're providing 6.5% worth of value.
	So everyone's like, yay!
	Right?
	But a government that is only taxing at 5% and is not leveraging that money To create the illusion of providing more value than that which is taking it in taxes minus its own ridiculously inefficient overhead, that is a government that can't last.
	Government, like, oh, government debt.
	Government is debt because government cannot survive unless it's providing people the illusion of free things.
	And so it has to spend more than it taxes, and considerably more than it taxes.
	Because otherwise, the whole lie of taxation being an even remotely efficient way to run anything in society would be completely revealed.
	So there's no such thing as 5% taxation.
	It's always the maximum goal that the bully can carry.
	And number two, that 5% taxation is simply used as collateral to give people the illusion that they're getting more than 5% back, which is a much higher taxation in the future.
	So government, even if it starts off small, and I've made this argument six million different ways of Sunday, this is just a different one.
	It must grow.
	Governments must, must grow always.
	Because the only way they can exist is by pretending that they're providing more value than they're consuming.
	The only way they can do that is through debt.
	And debt has to be served by increased tax revenue.
	As they increase tax revenue, they have to borrow even more to pretend that the illusion of free stuff is continuing.
	And if at times, like in the 90s in Canada, where they're starting to play like a third of A dollar on debt servicing.
	Well, they just cut their services and call it austerity and so on.
	So there are times when it kind of reverses a little bit in emergencies.
	But the moment that problem is dealt with, this upward march continues again.
	So that's why I sort of wanted to say it's not great to compare public and private theft and it's not great to compare high and low taxation because there are usually smokescreens and they're usually the maximum the government can get away with.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I mean, that's a great, great argument.
	I'm glad to have heard that.
	And well, I've also heard people tell me that you have to use debt to finance anything.
	And I actually have a friend who's a philosopher and he says that basically government never really has to pay off its debt almost.
	Like what would happen if they don't pay their debt?
	Does he read the newspapers?
	Has he not seen what's going on in Greece?
	I don't understand why that's even a question.
	Does he know nothing about history?
	Has he never heard of the French massive currency crisis during and after the revolution?
	Has he never heard of Weimar Republic?
	Has he never heard of the debasement of Roman coins towards the end of the empire?
	Has he never heard of any...
	I don't understand what that means.
	What if government just keeps borrowing forever?
	Well, you run out of money.
	I mean...
	He's not a mathematician, but he should know some basics, right?
	Please get him to call in.
	I think that would be a fun conversation.
	That would be, yeah.
	I'll tell him about you.
	The idea that government doesn't have to pay off its debt I mean, the problem is that that's laden with so many abstractions that it's sort of a useless thing.
	It's like saying the uniform doesn't do a flubel dance.
	It's like, I don't even know what that means.
	What is the government?
	Is it the people?
	What does it mean?
	Does it mean individual politicians don't have to pay off their debt?
	Yeah, I get that.
	Okay.
	It's not like Barack Obama is personally liable for Obamacare.
	Ah, we can always dream, but it's never going to happen, right?
	But I don't even know what...
	The government has to have to pay off its debt.
	The government doesn't have any debt.
	The government doesn't exist.
	It's just a collective fantasy.
	I mean, you know what I mean?
	I just don't understand.
	Like, my Dungeons and Dragons club never has to buy a unicorn with imaginary money.
	It's like, I'm sorry, I don't know what any of this means.
	Like, break it down for me a little bit more.
	Governments can roll over debt for a long period of time.
	Absolutely they can.
	But, in particular, when unfunded liabilities run close to 100 trillion or more in the US, when you have a lot of people hitting retirement age in Japan and in the US and in Europe, when you have a seriously underemployed or work absent and very small number of young people, I mean, it's just math, right?
	And he's like, well, they can print money.
	It's like, well, that doesn't mean anything.
	I mean, printing money doesn't mean anything.
	It's like pretending that you've had a meal by pumping your stomach full of air.
	I mean, you might fart, but you're not going to get full.
	And so, I don't know what...
	Does he just think that they can just make up whatever they want?
	I mean, is it that disconnected from reality?
	Well, then I would say not the government, but this friend of yours is disconnected from reality, because at some point...
	I mean, you can sustain a debt that doesn't increase.
	Yeah, okay.
	You can get into debt for $10,000 and you can pay the minimum monthly payments for the rest of your life.
	I mean, probably when you get older, they'll be a bit bothered because they'll see that they won't get their principal back, but they probably made enough in interest that they may not care as much.
	So yeah, you never have to pay debt back.
	You can declare bankruptcy.
	You can die with your debts.
	And you can just pay the minimum, which is what governments do.
	But I don't know what that means to say government debt can continue forever.
	I mean, he knows it keeps increasing, right?
	I mean, this is not a subtle chart.
	Yeah, I mean, that's some of the arguments you just made.
	I told him about and yeah, it's kind of a fantasy land kind of.
	Government argument that you can do this kind of stuff, and yeah, just never pay off your debt.
	He's our selected, which means that he doesn't experience any anxiety when disaster is actually approaching.
	He's our selected.
	I'm sorry, I hate to put it this bluntly, but He's an R-selected guy, and he thinks that you're crazy for worrying about government debt.
	He doesn't experience the same amygdala stimulation from threat that you do.
	And so you're a K trying to talk dinner with an R, and the R knows he's dinner.
	There we go.
	Can we go to the next question?
	It still has to do with taxes.
	Another argument that I always hear, I talk about this with a lot of people, you know, the liberty, libertarianism, etc.
	And people always say that taxes are, they're the price of civilization, or they're the price of order in a society.
	I mean, so, yeah, I mean, basically, without taxes, we would still have civilization, we would still have a peaceful society, I believe.
	We would still have a peaceful society.
	No government would be just like government.
	But, no, we don't have a peaceful society when you have a government.
	You have a civil war whose bloodiness is only erased by endless compliance and subjugation and manipulation and debt and propaganda.
	You have a society that founds itself on lies and the intimidation of threatened ostracism for anyone who dares speak the truth.
	This is not a peaceful society at all.
	Just try disagreeing with the people who enforce your conscience against things That you find morally abhorrent.
	I mean, just try saying, I think the welfare state is absolutely disgusting and horrifying to the poor.
	I refuse to participate.
	Well, you get to participate in going to jail.
	This is not a peaceful society at all.
	I mean, it only looks peaceful because there's a lot of propaganda and people are really, really scared.
	Yeah.
	And, well, something I would hear against that would be, but the government is the people.
	The people have influence over the government.
	And, of course, I... I've come to believe that that's a pretty fantastical thing to say that isn't completely realistic.
	Yeah, I mean, there's a lot to say.
	I've got a whole truth about voting, which I think was my first hit back from 2006 or something like that.
	I mean, okay, so people have influence over the government, but the first thing we would require is that people who have a conflict of interest should not be allowed to vote.
	Right?
	I mean, if you are voting for who gets an Oscar and you're the director of a film nominated for the Oscar, we understand that you can't vote, right?
	Right.
	Yeah, that makes sense, of course.
	Because you're going to vote for your own film because you want to win.
	So where there's a conflict of interest, you can't vote.
	This is so well understood that it's ridiculous, right?
	Which is why you don't get a jury of your relatives.
	Mom says I'm innocent when she's got a conflict of interest, right?
	I hope, anyway.
	But, you know, people who are on...
	This is well established.
	This is not even theoretical, right?
	People...
	People who are on government benefits do not vote for those government benefits to be diminished.
	Immigrants are heavily on welfare and immigrants vote heavily Democrat.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	I mean, people who are in charge, who are making lots of money from the military industrial complex, don't often vote for heavy reductions in military spending.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	So, the first thing we would have to do, if we wish to have any kind of honest voting, is we would have to remove any conflict of interest from the voting.
	If you're on welfare, you don't get to vote for welfare programs.
	If you are being taxed, then you don't get to vote for anything to do with taxation.
	If you're receiving tax money, you don't get to, because your interest would be to lower taxes, regardless of whether that's, quote, good or bad for the economy.
	I'm just talking about the muggle view, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	And if you are unwell or if you have a family history of being unwell, then you can't vote for healthcare policies because you have a conflict of interest.
	If you're really healthy, you can't vote for healthcare because you have a conflict of interest in that an expansion of healthcare will be to your detriment because you'll be paying more than you'll be receiving, right?
	If you're old, you can't vote for government policies because they're going to be funded by floating bonds that will only mature after you're dead.
	So you get free stuff without having to pay for it.
	So you can't vote for that either.
	And we could go on literally for about three days in a row, eliminating everyone who would vote who might have a conflict of interest.
	And do you know how many legitimate voters we would end up with?
	Zero?
	Absolutely zero.
	Absolutely zero.
	And if this person or these people think that, well, fine, okay, then we have a principle which says there's no such thing as conflict of interest.
	No such thing as conflict of interest.
	So we have to get rid of all conflict of interest legislation because conflict of interest is not a problem.
	Plus, children have to be able to mark their own exams.
	Or if you don't like the fact that kids can do it, adults get to mark their own exams.
	People who want to be doctors, they get to mark their own exams and they get to figure out whether they should be doctors or not.
	Because there's no conflict.
	The conflict of interest is never ever a problem.
	People don't have to disclose conflict of interest.
	You can have insider trading.
	You can have anything that you want that can go on that isn't remotely covered by conflict of interest issues at the moment.
	Politicians can buy and sell stocks of companies that have interest and favor over them, right?
	Conflict of interest is never any kind of problem.
	Plus, we also have to get rid of all laws to do with banning bribery.
	Because if we're going to say anyone can vote for stuff then obviously politicians can bribe people on welfare with either maintenance or the expansion of welfare programs.
	In which case buying votes for money is perfectly legal.
	Now if buying votes for money is perfectly legal then it means that there's no such thing as corruption.
	You should be able to pay off officers and that's perfectly legal.
	You should be able to bribe congressmen and congresswomen and politicians.
	It's perfectly legal.
	You can bribe your doctor for preferential treatment.
	You can bribe whoever.
	You can bribe the post office to deliver your, I don't know, whatever, right?
	You can bribe anyone.
	And there can be no bans on bribing.
	There can be no bans of conflict of interest.
	But people are like, whoa, whoa.
	We can't have that.
	It's like, exactly.
	Yeah, I mean, that definitely makes a lot of sense, yeah.
	Anymore?
	Oh, yes, sir.
	Sorry.
	I know.
	Relatively short answer, we're all shocked.
	My next question is about entitlement programs and the free market.
	And a lot of arguments that I hear against it is, well, people always like to use the term social safety net.
	They think that, you know, how will people survive without a quote-unquote social safety net?
	You know, how will very poor people who can't afford health care, how will they get treated?
	You know, should they just die without the government health care?
	What would you say to that kind of stuff?
	Well, why don't we do a role play?
	You be that person.
	Okay.
	So let's say you ask that question, right?
	Yeah.
	And I would say, so you really care about the poor, right?
	Yeah, I care a lot about the poor.
	I think they should have free money, free healthcare from the government.
	Fantastic.
	So the problem is solved, because you'll help them.
	Yeah.
	Yes, but would that really solve the problem?
	Wait, hang on a sec.
	You're saying that money should be transferred to poor people to help them.
	Yeah.
	Now, you care about the poor.
	I care about the poor.
	Everyone I've ever talked to cares about the poor, and nobody's ever said, I want them to die in the streets, and I want to have their earlobes for supper, and I want to steal their rotten clothing off their backs and use it to make a bonfire of the vanities, right?
	Everyone I've ever talked to cares about the poor and so of course they'll be taken care of.
	I mean clearly you think that the government reflects the will of the people and the will of the people is that there are welfare programs.
	Which means that we don't need the government because the vast majority of people want the poor to get help and so the government is a ridiculous overhead and the government reduces the amount of help that gets the poor.
	Like, would you donate to a charity that gave 20 cents on the dollar to the poor and kept the rest for itself?
	Of course not.
	Of course not!
	But that's the welfare state.
	You pay taxes, 20% of that money in general gets to the poor.
	Having a welfare state Keeps money and resources from getting to the poor because it creates this giant bureaucracy that doesn't want the poor to get out of poverty otherwise they're out of a justification for a job that soaks up a huge amount of money that's otherwise through private charity would get to the poor And so when you want the government to have this social safety news,
	it's not a net, it's a damn news, what you're saying is, I want less money to get to the poor, and I want to have people who are heavily invested in the poor staying poor and never getting out of poverty.
	So the idea that the poor will do worse when much more money gets to them and when people are heavily invested in applying creative solutions to people getting out of poverty.
	Let's say you've got two charities.
	Charity A says, we never want them to not be poor.
	We'll give them just enough to get by.
	They'll be completely dependent on us.
	We get all this power.
	They'll do exactly what we tell them to do, but we never want them to break out of poverty.
	Because if they do, we got no reason for being, right?
	Like, we understand that Coca-Cola is not in the business of getting you off Coca-Cola, right?
	Yeah.
	The heroin dealer is not running a rehab clinic.
	He may invest in one or whatever.
	But we understand that the people who make bread are not going to run a lot of commercials telling you that bread is really bad for you.
	That's not their job.
	So we understand that government welfare programs are not in the business Of ending poverty, which is why poverty has not ended, even though trillions and trillions of dollars have been handed to these government programs.
	They're not these weird, transparent, they're just, we don't take any money, we just pass it through, right?
	It's not a catcher in the rye, right?
	So you've got one charity that says, we want to keep the poor the poor, otherwise, how are we going to make any money?
	And you've got another charity which says, we're going to work as hard as we can to eliminate poverty.
	Now, who are you going to give your money to?
	Second one, definitely.
	Exactly.
	So their business model only works if they work really hard to get rid of poverty.
	And you're going to have a hundred or a thousand charities, each with creative, intelligent, vital, different, researched, expert-laden ways of getting rid of poverty, of eliminating poverty, of liberating from people with poverty.
	And they're all going to be clamoring for your money to actually go and help the poor.
	Because they have to prove to you that what they do works.
	And works the best.
	That's how they get your donation dollar.
	And they have to prove to you that only a couple of points goes on overhead or research, maybe 10% or whatever.
	And they have to say to you, 80% of who we help are out of poverty within a year.
	What is this other guy's number?
	It's only 70%.
	That guy is only 60%.
	And you're like, no, I want the one with 10% who tells me openly and clearly they never want to get rid of poverty.
	I mean, come on.
	That's not how you help the poor.
	You don't just give the money to the government, cross your fingers, and hope that they'll end poverty.
	That's like signing over your children and all your money to the Defense Department, hoping that they'll use it to put an end to war.
	That's not their business.
	Yeah, and of course the morality of it.
	I mean, I always hear, you know, especially people who tend to be on the left believe that they have taken a moral high, like they're at a higher moral level than you because they are using taxes to force you to give money to the poor, when in fact that's not moral in any way.
	Leftists don't give a shit about the poor.
	I mean, I wouldn't say that in the middle of a debate with a leftist.
	But it's a fact.
	If they cared so much about the poor, why haven't they questioned the fact that the poor have not been helped for the past 50 years?
	That we still have the same number of poor people and if you count the national debt and deficits and unfunded liabilities, the poor are way worse off now than they were before.
	The welfare state went into practice really in the 1960s.
	If they really cared about the poor, why would they advocate government schools paid for by local taxes, where you can't fire the teachers?
	Do you think the poor like that?
	Look at how the poor line up with tears in their eyes, desperate to get their children into any remotely private or charter school in the neighborhood.
	Watch Waiting for Superman.
	Watch Hoop Dreams.
	Watch the degree to which the poor are desperate to escape the clutches of government schools.
	Desperate!
	And then, ask yourself how much the left really cares about the poor.
	Because anytime anyone talks about privatizing education, the left go insane.
	You don't care about education, right?
	Yeah.
	Anybody who's not questioning how the poor are being treated in America in particular, they don't give a shit about the poor.
	In the same way the left doesn't give a shit about immigrants, they care about boats.
	They care about keeping that steady drip-drip of debilitating heroin of enforced, quote, charity on the poor.
	Yeah, they care about getting votes.
	They care about power.
	But to the left, they don't care about the blacks.
	This was openly stated in the early 1920s.
	The communists said, well, we're never going to be able to overthrow America because they're doing so much better than we are.
	But what we can do is we can provoke the minority population in America with endless tales of injustice.
	We can create a black grievance industry and we can use that to destabilize capitalism.
	Do they care about the blacks?
	They don't.
	They don't care about the poor.
	They don't care about children.
	They don't care about education.
	Education, you couldn't set up a system that would be more harmful to the poor if you plan for a million years.
	Local taxes pay for the schools.
	We promote single parenthood, which makes children almost uneducatable.
	We can't fire teachers.
	Parents have no control over their government institutions of, quote, learning.
	I mean, not only that, but poor people have to work regular hours, so let's take their children at 8.45 in the morning and let them out of school at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, because that's convenient.
	Rich people got nannies to go pick them up.
	Rich people can have a car service, drop the kids home.
	Poor people have to be there.
	You care about poor people.
	How about not giving kids two months off in the summer?
	Because poor people can't take their time off from their jobs.
	I mean, you could go on and on, but the idea that the leftists care about the poor, oh my god.
	I mean, the government is all bizarro world, right?
	I mean, it's all the opposite of what people say in general.
	But the idea that...
	And it's lazy, you know.
	Mm-hmm.
	You know, it's lazy.
	It's like saying, well, I paid someone to rape you, so I'm really good in bed.
	No.
	You just like force, and you're claiming virtue, and so on.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I mean, definitely.
	I took out a contract on my tennis opponent.
	I guess that means I win Wimbledon by skill.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, all right.
	Are we good going on to the next question?
	You tell me.
	Yeah, definitely.
	Thank you very much, by the way.
	This is all very enlightening.
	This is a big question I've been thinking about in my head for a very long time.
	And it rose up from that, you know, the theoretical gay pizza wedding thing and also the...
	Gay pizza!
	Extra pepperoni!
	That and then also, you know, the Christian cake bakers who didn't want to bake the cake for the gay wedding and, you know, the extreme fines and there was actually a gag order by the government, I believe.
	They said they couldn't talk about their opinions in public or something like that.
	Gag order.
	That's very aggressive homosexual sex.
	No, and just to be fair, I mean, the pizza place, it was just a theoretical.
	They never denied service to anyone.
	And I think the bakery got fined like $140,000 or something like that.
	Oh my god.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	That's what it was.
	It was like $135,000, something right around there.
	I mean, that ruins their business, right?
	But yeah, I mean, basically the rest of my question is, should every business be able to deny service to anyone that they want?
	I tend to think that yes.
	I mean, just the right, I guess to use the word right, the right to associate with who you want to associate with, to me, everyone should have it.
	But usually when I say that, people go absolutely insane and say, you know, that I'm for discrimination, all this kind of stuff.
	Of course you're for discrimination.
	Of course you are.
	I mean, does a black bakery have the right to not bake a cake for a KKK party?
	Of course they do.
	Of course they do.
	You know, does a gay bakery have the right to not bake a cake for the Westboro Baptist Church of Infinite Homophobia?
	Of course they do.
	Does a synagogue have the right to keep out a Rastafarian?
	Of course they do.
	Does a Rastafarian have the right to not admit an outspoken atheist?
	Of course they do.
	Does a golf club allow you, like, do they let you play tennis on the golf course?
	Of course not.
	It's a golf club.
	You're supposed to play golf there, right?
	Do I get to go ice skating at my local swimming pool?
	No.
	It's a swimming pool.
	It's for swimming.
	I mean, discrimination is absolutely...
	Do I even get to make loud noise in a library?
	No.
	I mean, it's a library.
	They can kick me out for making loud noise.
	I mean, it's just so...
	What it is is, again, just people who are, I assume, extremely unlikable and paranoid about rejection.
	That might be it.
	I mean, I can't understand why...
	I mean, do women have the right to say no to someone who asks them out?
	Of course they do.
	They're discriminating!
	Do you have the right to have somebody not come into your house?
	Of course you do.
	Well, what is a business?
	It's private property.
	It's like someone's house.
	Of course they have the right to say, you can't come in here.
	You have the right to say to somebody, you can't come into my house.
	So your business is just another form of property?
	Of course you have the right to say to people, you can't come into my business.
	Now, you know, people may hate blacks, they may hate whites, but they all love the color green.
	They may be prejudiced against others, but they always love themselves.
	So businesses have a very strong incentive to throw their doors open as wide as possible.
	You know, the old argument that if I hate redheads, then I'm not going to hire any.
	I hate those redheads.
	So hot-tempered!
	And My neighbor is willing to hire redheads.
	He just opens himself up to a wider talent pool of individuals.
	And, you know, the redheads, he could hire them.
	And then they're going to turn on him in the middle of the night and burn his company down.
	Because, you know, the redheads are very volatile.
	But, of course, of course, like this example back in the day about the bus companies made the blacks sit in the back and that's discriminatory.
	They didn't want to do that.
	I mean, poor people tend to take the bus and the black people back in the day were poorer.
	It was the government that made them do that.
	I mean, they didn't want to discriminate against their customer base.
	It was the government that forced them to do that.
	And then everyone thinks that they're protesting against the bus company.
	They're not!
	They're protesting against, anyway, the government.
	So, absolutely, look, I mean, if we're gonna say there's no such thing as discrimination, fine.
	Then if you're prepping for surgery, like you're being prepped for surgery, and some hobo wanders in from the street with like a fucking plastic knife from Pizza Hut, then he should be allowed to operate on you.
	Don't you discriminate against the homeless, man!
	They need to cut things too!
	Living things!
	You don't know what they know!
	He might have in a past life been a really good surgeon.
	To King Tut.
	So who are you to say, man?
	You let him come in, man.
	And if he drops the knife, then he better be able to bite you.
	And if you don't want to be bitten by a hobo, you're a bigot.
	Next up, surgery hobo.
	There we go.
	With a GoPro cam.
	Let's see what we find today.
	Oh, look, it's another discriminating customer who doesn't want to be bitten by a hobo.
	The bigot.
	You should go do some stand-up anarchist comedy.
	I don't know what you think I'd be doing for the last little while.
	That's true.
	I guess that is what you've been doing in a way.
	Too much travel.
	I do it from home.
	And the other argument has to do with the government consequence of someone...
	You know, quote-unquote discriminating against somebody else with who they do business with.
	So I was talking to one of my friends, again, not the philosopher friend, a different guy, and I was asking him, okay, you think people shouldn't be allowed to refuse service to someone?
	What do you think should happen to them if they do?
	And we went through certain things, and he said that we would, like, block up their doors with, like, wood or plywood to...
	Really?
	Okay, so he wants to be able to discriminate against people, but he doesn't want them to be.
	So he doesn't want them to discriminate against people that they don't like simply by not allowing them into their private property, but he wants to discriminate against them by barring anyone from entering their entire property at all.
	Well, he saw it as like...
	Hey lady, if you say no to having sex with anyone, we're sewing up your vagina!
	No vagina for anyone!
	I mean, oh my god!
	Do people even...
	Do they even hear themselves?
	Oh my god!
	We're nailing up the door!
	Because refusing to cooperate with people is bad, so we gotta nail up his door!
	Oh my god.
	He made the argument that it was a higher level of immorality to refuse service to someone for their gender, their race, sexual orientation, whatever, than to force those business owners to serve them.
	They see it as more immoral.
	To not serve them.
	God, he must hate women's golf.
	I mean, because they discriminate against men all the time.
	Is he like nailing women to a tree?
	Is he like nailing the door of the women's PGA tournament?
	Oh, you know what else is really bad?
	Those women in tennis, they won't let a man play against them.
	It's the same thing in gymnastics, man.
	They segregate by gender.
	It's horrible.
	It's terrible.
	Do you know, I've never been allowed into any rap group I've ever auditioned for.
	Because apparently Don Mills is a long way from Compton.
	I mean, so those bastard bigots.
	Oh my god, I can't take it.
	I've got to nail someone's door shut.
	Otherwise, oh, it's the end of the world.
	Oh my god.
	I just think, I mean, here's the other thing too.
	It's like...
	Yeah...
	You know what I would really love?
	I'm not a great hockey player, but I'm bigger than those little measly five-year-olds.
	I want to be like the protector in a game of peewee hockey.
	Because I can skate the living shit out of those tiny bastards.
	It's like, what do you mean I can't?
	Don't discriminate against me, man!
	I'm nailing someone's door shut!
	It may be a small door, but I've got some small nails.
	Oh my god.
	How about I don't want to participate in the welfare state?
	You've got to go to jail!
	Isn't that discriminating against my right to have my own conscience?
	No!
	Different.
	I don't know how or why, but it just is.
	The other thing, too, is that I'm a big one for seeing your enemies.
	You know, here's the thing.
	If you ban discrimination, you ban your ability to see who's bigoted.
	Right?
	So, like, I don't care.
	People can do whatever they want in their own heads, right?
	And, you know, people faft me on YouTube.
	They've told me, open about it, fine, you know.
	Don't do it in my house.
	You got your keyboard, you got your thing, whatever you want to do, right?
	So stuff that goes on in their heads, out of sight, out of mind, who knows, who cares?
	Can't really see it, right?
	So what goes on?
	But when people act, if you ban the action, you can't tell who's doing it, right?
	So if you go down this, you know, I don't know, like a bunch of barbers, right?
	And one of them says, No Irish inside, right?
	I don't know.
	Redheads, drunken, good writers.
	I don't know, right?
	And so they say, no Irish.
	Okay, good.
	Now I know who the bigot is.
	Yeah.
	So I don't want to deal with that guy.
	He's got the right to discriminate.
	So do I. I'm not going to go into a storm.
	But if it's banned, you can't put any discrimination.
	You can't discriminate.
	I don't know who the bigot is.
	And there could be some guy who's like seething and is going to give me a really bad haircut.
	Okay, that's not the easiest thing in the world to do, but let's say I've got hair that could suffer from a bad haircut.
	So he's just seething and he's hating me, but I want to know if he hates me.
	I want, like if you ban, you can't see.
	You know, it's like being in Africa and putting on the, these glasses make tigers invisible or lions invisible glasses.
	I don't want those glasses.
	I want to see the lions.
	I don't want any surprises.
	I just, like if people just, I hate white people.
	You know, or just the media, right?
	I hate white people.
	Okay, put that right out there.
	Put that on the table.
	Put the big neon signs.
	No whiteys.
	If I see a freckle, you're out of here!
	Right?
	And so then I don't want to go to that place because they hate white people.
	Great!
	Now I know!
	But if you ban it, then they still hate white people.
	And they probably hate white people even more because white people probably banned it out of a misplaced sense of guilt and self-hatred, you know?
	Whites were the worst and worst nastiest slave owners.
	It's like, uh, very few.
	And white people ended slavery.
	Sorry.
	Facts are facts, right?
	So, you know, you can ban the discrimination.
	Do you think that that bans what people think?
	It just means you can't see it anymore.
	That's no good.
	We need to see who's bigoted, who's discriminatory, and so on, and make our decisions accordingly.
	Yeah, definitely.
	I've got two more questions, if we've got enough time for them.
	Let's see what one does.
	I want to get to the FDR question, if you don't mind.
	Okay.
	Yeah, definitely.
	That's what I was about to talk about.
	So what are your thoughts on the New Deal from FDR? I went through public school from when I was four till I was 18.
	And I was taught over and over.
	I was conditioned.
	And by the way, in my AP economics class, all we learned was Keynesian economics and about how more taxes was better and less taxes was worse.
	But that's for another time.
	But I was taught that the New Deal was what saved the U.S. from the Great Depression.
	But I've listened to some MISIS Institute stuff, Thomas Woods lectures that have begun to sway me in the other direction.
	What are your thoughts on that?
	I mean, I did a whole interview.
	Mike, what was the name of that...
	The Great Depression thing that we, I think about two, two and a half years ago.
	I'll pull it up.
	I'll let you know in a second.
	Yeah.
	So we've done a whole show on the sort of the real facts about the Great Depression.
	And first of all, if that's called saving society, I don't even want to know what they think a disaster would look like.
	Because, first of all, the government was in charge of the money supply and the interest rates.
	So they pumped up the money, they lowered the interest, you got the predictable boom in stocks, and then you got the bust when they had to raise them.
	And this is well acknowledged even by people in the government now that the Federal Reserve was largely responsible for the boom of the 20s and then the bust that followed, which trickled around worldwide and had massive effects throughout Western civilization and the rest of the world as well.
	And then you had a grinding 12 or 13 year depression.
	Like seriously, is that what is called saving things?
	13 years!
	Year after year after year.
	20-25% unemployment.
	Hollowing out of the middle class.
	Life savings evaporated.
	Now the government was intervening continually.
	It created Labor Relations Board.
	It expanded the powers of the unions.
	It created massive, massive tariffs against other countries.
	This is Great Myths of the Great Depression.
	Let's show 2089.
	And...
	Depression, slavery, war, and hope.
	This is Dr.
	Lawrence Reed on Freedom Aid Radio.
	We had him on.
	That's FDR 2090.
	48, Freedom and the Great Depression.
	FDR 48.
	Whoa, that's back in the day.
	1305, True News 25, Lessons from the Great Depression.
	So there was massive government intervention, massive government control, massive manipulation.
	of the currency supply and they printed money like crazy.
	They started setting up the beginnings of the welfare state.
	They empowered the unions, raised the tariffs.
	They created massive boards to print money and hire men to dig ditches and fill them in again.
	They tried every single socialist Keynesian trick that they could try and it just went on and on and on.
	And it ended In a giant war, the worst the world has ever seen, that killed 60 million people.
	That doesn't sound too great.
	Is that really what y'all are toting as a success story?
	I mean, that's just so mad to me that people could say, well, we put our plan into action.
	And we produced the longest depression and a giant world war afterwards.
	So...
	Good.
	We'll give that an A, right?
	I mean, that's just complete madness.
	And of course, there was an even worse crash in 1920, but I think it was Harding in power at the time.
	He did nothing.
	He did nothing.
	He's like, ah, you know, let him crash, let the businesses go out of business, let people learn their lesson, and within 12 to 18 months, everything was solved.
	Of course you've never heard about the great crash of 1920 worse than the crash of 1929 because you had a relatively free market president in power and the Fed was new and the war had just ended and so you've not heard about that one because it resolved itself very easily and and even that was the result of government crap and so on and so The 1929 crash we hear about and the Great Depression we hear about,
	even though the government didn't try and solve the earlier one and it resolved itself very quickly, even though the government caused it.
	In this one, the government poured unbelievable amounts of resources for the first time in American history.
	Government poured immense amount of resources into an attempt to solve and end the Great Depression.
	And it never ended.
	The Great Depression, you know, people say, oh, it was solved by the war.
	Oh, come on!
	I mean, that's just so insane.
	It's literally like saying, I'm broke, I'm unemployed, and I didn't end up making any money and getting out of being broke and unemployed until a fucking plane flew into my house, crashed and destroyed everything, and I have no insurance, right?
	Massive amounts of destruction do not solve economic problems.
	What happened was...
	A lot of the socialist policies in America were abandoned during and after the war.
	So they got a whole bunch of government control of the economy during the Second World War, and then after the Second World War, they relaxed that government control of the economy to way back further than it was in the 1930s.
	Same thing happened in Germany.
	And I've got Germany, there will be no economic recovery for more details about that.
	So it wasn't the war that solved the Great Depression.
	It was the fact that they undid the policies of the Great Depression after the war, during and after the war.
	And it literally is like when 60 million people are dead, people will say, okay, maybe we'll have a little less government.
	I hope, God, it's not going to take that again.
	But the idea that there was just this wild free market, and again, it doesn't take any brains, and I hate to say this about your friends, but I mean, when I was a kid, I had, you know, one of the first books I had was, you know, I guess, I don't know who gave it to me, it was like, Disasters of the 20th Century, right?
	It wasn't done back in the day, but, and I remember reading about the Great Depression, 25% unemployment, and I remember thinking even at the time, So people should have just been paid less.
	You got all these unemployed people.
	It's not like nothing needed to be done in America.
	We're all done!
	Every fence has been painted.
	Every yard has been cleared.
	Every crop has been planted.
	Every machine has been improved to a state of frictionless perfection.
	But enough about the flashlight.
	But the idea that there was nothing needed to be done.
	So if there's 25% unemployment, Then clearly there's an excess of people who want work, so the wages should go down to the point where everyone's employed again.
	How can 25% unemployment go on year after year in a country that needs a lot of stuff done?
	It makes no sense.
	It makes no sense at all.
	But there is a reason why the unemployment continued.
	That's because people weren't allowed to have jobs.
	Because minimum wage was hiked, because there was all this misallocation, high taxes, and people were just prevented from getting jobs.
	And so, this is just part of the religion of the state.
	You know, every religion needs its sort of foundation myths, right?
	And this foundation myth is, well, you know, there was all this free market stuff, there was this crash, there was this crash, the free market was unable to solve it, and then government interventions.
	It's like, it's just a complete reversal of the truth, which is exactly what you'd expect.
	But of course, when you hear a lie often enough, it...
	It feels true.
	And it feels true to people.
	It hits them right in the feels, right?
	Emotional intelligence, my ass.
	It's just a way to make people who feel more than they think feel smarter.
	But it's the same thing.
	You've heard the thing, ah, you see, deregulation caused the financial problems in the early part of the 20th century.
	Deregulation.
	Yeah, because with 300,000 new regulations every single year, there's nothing that says free market like America, right?
	Like the free market healthcare system and so on.
	And it's all nonsense.
	I mean, there were more regulators under Bush than there were under Clinton.
	And there were more regulations under Bush than there were under Clinton.
	But somehow...
	Magically, the word deregulation, right?
	And this goes back to, literally, it goes back to people's childhoods, you know?
	It's so true.
	It goes back to people's childhoods.
	And there's this belief that if children are not controlled and punished, that children will just run wild.
	And they'll, like, set fire to things.
	They'll torture frogs with bottle rockets.
	They'll, you know, put...
	Fireworks under grandma's ass.
	If you don't, you're not after them.
	You control them and yell at them.
	And if you don't, they'll just go nuts.
	Crazy.
	And so this is like the deregulation leading to instability and negative behavior.
	It just feels true because that's how people grew up and this is the messages they got.
	From their childhood, right?
	And of course, it's the control that breeds the instability.
	It's not the instability that breeds the control, right?
	I mean, you were in school, right?
	And you get a substitute teacher and nobody listens and nobody obeys.
	Say, ah, we need more discipline.
	It's like, no, it's because the children don't want to be there and they hate being there that they're going to rebel every chance they get.
	Like when I was in school, I don't know if this happened in your school.
	Wait, sorry, Mike.
	Wait, that's Bush.
	What does that mean?
	Oh, you're talking about blowing up frogs.
	And it's like, no, that's actually former president of the United States, George W. Bush.
	Yeah, so did Hitler, but they were real French people.
	So when I was in school, every now and then, there would be a cough rebellion.
	Do you ever have those?
	Oh, yes.
	Oh, my gosh.
	Yeah, definitely.
	During tests, especially.
	Remember?
	Everybody just coughs.
	And everybody just pretends that they have a cough.
	And everybody just keeps coughing.
	Nobody can be singled out and punished.
	And it just, it goes, it peaks, and then it subsides after a while.
	And then there's some coughs and giggles at the end, right?
	And that's just, people hate being there, and they don't respect the environment, and it's just gross, right?
	And so you get these little petty rebellions, and people say, ah, you know, you've got to keep a tight eye on these kids, otherwise they cough.
	It's like, no, they're coughing for the same reason that people rebel in prison.
	They don't want to be there.
	Except that the only crime that these kids have is they're too young to vote, and They're just hostages for the teachers' unions.
	So, yeah, so people just feel like stuff is true because of their childhoods, and that conditioning is so strong that even the most obvious sit down and think about it for a moment.
	You know, capitalists want to make money.
	If there are all these unemployed people, why the hell didn't the capitalists just snap them up for a bargain?
	They love to make money.
	Why didn't they just, one guy says, oh man, you're unemployed, I'll give you 10 cents an hour.
	Some other capitalist says, oh, I'll give you 12 cents an hour.
	Hell, I can make money if I pay you 30 cents an hour, but I'll give you 12 cents an hour.
	Another guy says, ooh, 14 cents an hour.
	I'm still making 16 cents an hour off this guy.
	It's a steal.
	Another guy comes until it gets to 27, 28, 29 cents.
	I mean, that's not...
	I was watching The Grapes of Wrath.
	Yeah.
	I thought it was about Angry One.
	I'm wrong.
	The Grapes of Wrath.
	I don't think I've ever read the book.
	I may have read it in school, but I'm now old enough to not remember it.
	And, you know, the Grapes of Wrath is just this big, are selected, we're sheep and we're being herded around and that's terrible and someone died.
	Because, you know, this takes place in some Midwest place.
	It's a dust bowl.
	There was a terrible drought, probably because somebody smoked and carbon dioxide.
	Anyway, there was a terrible drought and you can't farm the land.
	Oh, and another thing, there are machines now.
	And another thing, you don't own the land.
	You're renting.
	You're tenant farmers, which means you never had to pay the capital to actually enclose the land and get it started to begin with.
	And there's this woe-is-me sob stories of like, well, they just came and they kicked us off our own land.
	Yeah, right.
	I don't pay my rent.
	I'm not being kicked out of my own house.
	It's not my house.
	That's why I'm paying rent.
	And so the guys come along and they say, well, you know, basically we can get a guy with a tractor to do the work of 20 of you.
	He's way cheaper, plus it's really hard to get anything to grow here because it's a dust ball and these people are all like, well, we're being kicked off our land.
	This is terrible.
	It's like, you know, you can't plant anything, right?
	You can't grow anything and anything that can be grown can be grown vastly more efficiently because of machinery.
	Wake up, grow up, move on, right?
	But Again, you know, you can't say that because they're the poor.
	They're a protective class.
	They're pure victims.
	It's all terrible.
	Change is bad.
	It's like, come on.
	Poor people like cell phones, too.
	They're happy.
	I don't see the poor people writing plays about the demise of the landline companies, you know?
	They want a lot of poor people saying, you know what's really terrible?
	Fewer horses and buggies around.
	Let's write a play about the sad horse and buggy manufacturer.
	They're like, no, I want a car.
	So when it screws other people, then progress screws other people to the poor people's benefit.
	They're not like, no, we are boycotting the internet because post office.
	Those people need jobs too.
	So we are like, oh wow, internet porn, I'm in.
	Pirated movies, done!
	They love change when it dislocates other people.
	Everyone does.
	But when change dislocates the poor, it's like, oh no, here comes two hours of a sad-faced Peter Fonda strolling through the desert pretending his eyeballs aren't being scoured to bits by the artificial sand being blown in his face.
	So, I don't know, I just, the poor, yeah, you can be assholes, yeah, you can resist change when it affects you negatively, but you love the change that affects everyone else negatively.
	I mean, that's just mad.
	You know, I mean, this kind of media has displaced a bunch of traditional media.
	You're not going to see me write a bunch of sad plays, death of a reporter, like about the reporters who can't get jobs because, you know, apparently lying for a living doesn't pay like it used to.
	I mean, it's like, well, so things have changed.
	People are consuming more of the media that I'm producing and they're producing less of the media that other people are producing.
	And that's the way stuff happens.
	You know, I mean, the first reporters, you didn't see them writing sad plays about the guy who used to ring the bell in the town square and shout out the news at the top of his voice.
	That poor bell ringer guy is very sad right about now because he can't hear anything.
	All he can hear is ding, ding, the British are coming.
	Right?
	Nobody wrote sad stories about that.
	It's like, yeah, we move on, good riddance, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	But, you know, when the poor are negatively affected, suddenly it's like Mother Courage and her children and everybody's supposed to weep copious buckets of monochromatic tears because the poor are now negatively affected.
	I don't know.
	It's just ridiculous.
	But that's the way things work when you have a sentimental socialist protected class where anything negative that happens to them is a pure tragedy, but everything they want that happens negatively to someone else's sensibilities, well, that's called progress.
	Anyway, I hope that's a super rant.
	Yeah.
	And like I said earlier in the question, it's the fact that in school, of course, I learned everybody has to take an economics class.
	I took AP economics.
	I'm majoring in finance.
	That's what I'll enjoy.
	And all we learned was Keynesianism.
	And then, of course, in our AP U.S. history class, we learned a lot of things, such as the fact that the New Deal was extremely helpful and "brought us out of the Great Depression." And when I first started listening to you, I was kind of going against the statement that somehow we were being propagandized in government schools.
	But as I kept thinking about it and thinking about it, it's true.
	I mean, the kind of things that I was learning, it was only pro-government.
	Yeah.
	clearly if we don't like conflict of interest, Then we can't have government teachers teaching us about government.
	I mean, clearly, right?
	I mean, that's like having McDonald's come in and teach you about nutrition.
	Big Macs are great for you, right?
	I mean, conflict of interest.
	Of course, government teachers are going to teach you that more government is good.
	That's how they get paid.
	And the bigger the government is, the more taxes the government raises, the more their unions can hold the kids hostage and demand more money from innocent people who are just trying to get ahead and make a living.
	And so clearly, they have a massive conflict of interest.
	Government teachers and people who get any kind of protection from government, which includes professors in higher education, those guys can't possibly, possibly tell you anything about government because that's just a massive conflict of interest.
	Yeah.
	Definitely.
	But they do, and they pretend they're being objective because our selected lying is the new oxygen we all have to...
	Pretend to breathe, apparently.
	I need to watch the rest of that RK selection video, making a lot of references to that.
	Yeah, and I'm not going to stop until it reaches 10 billion views.
	But it's okay, they'll all be rabbits confused by the moving pictures.
	More than Gangnam Style.
	That's right.
	Yeah.
	Well, was that useful, helpful?
	It was extremely helpful.
	Thank you very, very, very much for talking to me.
	I've been watching your videos for a long time and it's definitely changed my view on the world, on government, you know, on a peaceful society.
	Thank you very, very much for taking my call.
	Fantastic.
	Good luck being an anarchist in the world of finance.
	I look forward to hearing how that's going.
	And thanks everyone so much for tuning in tonight.
	As always, freedomainradio.com slash donate.
	I have a request, Steph.
	I have a brief request.
	To end the show, can we have a donation pitch from the pedantic Ayn Rand critic?
	Please?
	Pretty please?
	A pedantic donation pitch?
	I know it's a bit of a challenge, but I just...
	All right, okay, okay.
	Can I also have him be technologically illiterate?
	Oh, please do.
	Please.
	Okay, so there's this guy on the internet, and his name is Staff.
	And he comes to your house.
	Somehow.
	In a flat box, a screen, I don't know.
	He's different sizes.
	Because on a big screen, he's big.
	On a little screen, he's like my thumb.
	And he's smaller than my thumb.
	And so he's got to get to your house and he's got to change his size quite a bit.
	And he's got to repeat himself a lot.
	And each repetition has got to be flawless.
	Like I watched him yesterday do a show.
	I watched him today.
	It's the exact same show.
	It's a miracle.
	You can't explain that.
	Know what I'm saying?
	Am I right?
	So he's got to do stuff over and over again perfectly each time in different sizes, in different places.
	That's a lot of travel.
	And I think he doesn't sleep because sometimes he's talking at night.
	Sometimes he's talking during the day.
	And he's pretty much become the voice in my head.
	And he's telling me to do stuff.
	But then he's telling me he doesn't want to tell me to do stuff.
	The voice in my head is confusing.
	But the important thing is he needs travel and he needs shrink rays.
	And I think he needs some sun.
	So freedomainradio.com slash donate to help him travel and talk from his flatland of two-dimensional I-don't-get-it-ness.
	That would be excellent.
	And maybe, you know, what would be nice behind the guy, you know, I'm not saying it's got to be a stunning vista of Ansel Adams-style beauty, but it looks like he's broadcasting from the inside of a ping-pong ball.
	Maybe we can chip in to get him at a plant?
	A lemur?
	I don't know, like, maybe one of those screens behind him.
	Something.
	I mean, if Adam vs.
	the Man had one, maybe he can get one too.
	I don't know.
	I don't know, but it's very white.
	I mean, the show is very white as a whole, but that background just makes it even wider.
	And in winter, it's just two eyeballs and half a beard floating there against the background, and that confuses me too.
	I was without a face.
	Anyway, so that's my donation pitch as the pedantic, technologically illiterate guy.
	And freedomainradio.com slash donate to have me never donate.
	Just put that in the...
	You know, that voice is just...
	You're going to hear it the next time you have sex and it's going to be...
	Oh, no, no.
	That's all I can tell you.
	I don't think you should put it there.
	That's an eating hole.
	Mother would disapprove...
	I hope so!
	Oh dear.
	Have a wonderful evening.
	I'm telling you, you'll hear it.
	But if it's any consolation, so will I. So have yourselves a great night, everyone.
	Thanks for a wonderful show.
	Freedommanradio.com slash donate and share and like and subscribe and do all of that kind of cool stuff.
	You know, I can see when you're sharing because I'm in your house.
	I can see when you're sharing on Google and stuff.
	So it really does warm my heart when I see all of this sharing going on.
	And thank you so much to those who are sharing and to those who aren't.
	I will haunt your sex dreams with a whiny voice until you do.
	Thanks everyone.

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