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Jan. 22, 2016 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:51:11

3183 A Waiter Without a Restaurant - Call In Show - January 20th, 2016

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	Hello, hello, everybody.
	Stefan Mullen, you've been Peter Made Radio.
	Hope you're doing well.
	Great questions.
	Tonight, number one, this was a Marxist socialist calling in who was saying that, isn't it a violation of the non-aggression principle for this owning class to have all these factories and force everyone to work in them and strip them of the value of their labor and so on?
	And yeah, I take that stuff kind of personally as an entrepreneur myself, so we had a good back and forth about that, which threatened to become, well...
	You'll see.
	Second question.
	He said, in my current view, I think our society would be better off with a lot more spanking.
	And he's not talking about the fun kind.
	And so he was curious as to why I think spanking is bad.
	And he says we shouldn't shelter kids, the harshness of reality and so on.
	I really didn't get a chance to finish that conversation for reasons that will become clear as you listen to the conversation.
	Number three, artificial intelligence.
	Is there a sentient entity more powerful than human beings the way that lab mice look at people?
	Would we not look at such a being with awe and incomprehension and so on?
	We talked about the possibility of life in other worlds, how they're going to come and visit us, and whether our toasters are going to strangle us by dawn.
	And it was a good conversation.
	And if you're a big fan of artificial intelligence and it's dangerous, you'll want to check that one out.
	So it's a really, really great show and touched on a lot of issues that we talk about here.
	So I hope that you'll really enjoy it.
	Freedomainradio.com slash donate to help us out, as always.
	And FDRURL.com slash Amazon if you're going shopping.
	Thanks again.
	Here we go.
	All right.
	Well, up first is Kevin.
	Kevin wrote in and said, You assert that the redistribution of wealth and or transfer of property rights from the bourgeois, owner in class, to the proletariat, the working class, That's
	from Kevin.
	Hello, Kevin.
	How are you doing tonight?
	I'm doing great, Steph.
	How are you doing?
	I'm doing well, thank you.
	I'm doing well.
	Exploitation!
	Exploitation, exploitation.
	Let's start off with some deafy, deafy definitions and what's your take and swing at the word exploitation?
	How would you define it?
	Well, I mean, in terms of economically, exploitation is the extraction of value based off of the labor of someone else.
	You know, the sort of standard Marxist view is that if you look at the relationship between an owner and a worker, The owner, the worker actually uses their labor power in order to produce a certain commodity or a certain number of commodities, the value of which the owner then in the marketplace actually charges a higher value than what they paid for it.
	And that difference, obviously what we usually call profit, is basically a measure of the taking by the owner of the surplus value that the laborer has created.
	And that is what I would say is the best definition of exploitation.
	Okay, so basically it's extracting value from the labor of others.
	Right.
	Now, during this conversation, do you anticipate that I will be expending labor?
	Um...
	Not necessarily.
	I mean, I guess not physical labor, not necessarily productive labor.
	What do you mean not physical labor?
	Is my mouth not moving?
	I guess technically, yes, your mouth moves.
	But I mean, in terms of sort of economic productive labor, it's a little different.
	You said it was the extraction of value from the labor of others.
	So in this conversation, I'm not trying to be annoying, I'm just trying to make sure we started from the same place.
	So in this conversation, I will be putting in labor.
	I assume that you, since you're doing this rather than something else, that you are expecting or anticipating to receive value out of this conversation, right?
	No, economic value, but yes, value in the terms of something worth something, like the discussion will get somewhere or provide some interesting context or whatever like that, but not necessarily economic value, not something that we could, say, exchange necessarily for something that would be valuable, either another commodity or money, which is just an embodiment of exchange value.
	Okay, so it's not the exchange of value, because we just, again, this is why the definitions are so important.
	It's not the extraction of value from the labor of others, because if I give you something helpful in this conversation, then, of course, it would be of value to you, right?
	And I would be doing labor in order to achieve that.
	Now, it's not one-sided.
	Because I will also be getting value out of you in this conversation, and that's perfectly fine.
	So it's not value as a whole.
	It is the extraction of economic value.
	Is that right?
	Yeah, and particularly the surplus value.
	So the extraction of value beyond what is...
	It's the extraction of the value produced beyond what you pay.
	Right, okay.
	Now, this occurs, we'll just take the typical scenario of the factory and the factory owner, right?
	Now, let's take as market-friendly a situation as possible, and we're not going to deal with inherited wealth.
	Let's just start off sort of easy, because I really do want to understand this.
	If I am a worker, which I was, you know, I started a factory, you know, I co-founded a company and grew it fairly well.
	And so I had been learning how to work with computers since I was like 11 or 12 years old.
	I'd go in every Saturday and I'd work with the computer lab and I'd sign the computers out and I'd keep them at home and I'd learn how to program them and all that kind of stuff.
	And And I put in a huge amount of unpaid labor to learn all of that stuff.
	I also read a lot of business magazines and a lot of business books and so on.
	And took a course or two, not economics, but history with some economics in.
	And then did a lot of unpaid labor to sort of build a product with the person I co-founded the company with.
	And so we then ended up building something that we could sell.
	And then...
	Took out loans and sold equity and hired, well, built or got the computers and rented out the office space.
	I won't go through the whole list, but it's a huge amount of unpaid labor and time that you have to put in, at least I had to put in, in order to be in a position to hire people.
	And then I hired people who then worked on the coding and worked on other things that were needed That needed to be done in the business.
	And I took on risks that they didn't take on, which was perfectly fine.
	I mean, I co-signed loans that would have ruined me if we hadn't survived and all that kind of stuff.
	Now, the person who I then hire is gaining the benefit of all of that unpaid labor.
	So if we were to be paid the same that would be unfair because the person I hired made less than I did and did not have equity at least at the beginning in the company but they also hadn't put in the thousands of hours of unpaid labor that I had put in in order to start the business.
	So that person is getting economic value from my labor.
	My labor in building the business, which they can then step into and start to use.
	So I am getting surplus value out of them and that I hope to sell their labor for more than I'm paying them.
	But they're also getting surplus economic value out of me insofar as they don't take the risk or do the unpaid labor that it took to start the business.
	And that's my sort of experience, but you could...
	Transfer that very easily to a sort of more traditional factory situation.
	What are your thoughts?
	Well, my thoughts on that are, I follow you, I understand you up to that point.
	Well, until up to the point, so as a person who starts a factory or you're in your situation, you know, you do all the work, the upfront work, you know, as they call it, to sort of get it all up and running.
	So when you're at the point of being able to, you sort of have an entity, you have space, you're ready to hire workers.
	It's totally understandable, both sort of economically as well as, say, morally or, yeah, morally is the best word, and to essentially Actually, enter into what amounts to a contract with the people that you employ that says, I will employ you at such and such a price, but I'm going to, for a period of time, such that I'm able to recoup what I have already down, I've already lost.
	There's a lot of unpaid labor that's gone into getting us here, and therefore, I need to then recapture that investment.
	If you made that agreement, I don't necessarily have a problem with that.
	The problem that I have is that what happens in these kinds of arrangements is that the person in the position of ownership Recoups their loss, either through the extraction of surplus labor over a period of time, such that they've made up what investment they have put in, either through unpaid labor or their own actual capital or whatever.
	But once they have essentially been benefited, they've been given back the benefit that they have expended, any extraction of surplus labor after then is, in my view, unjustified, not necessarily moral.
	And is economically unfeasible in the long run.
	Okay, so hang on.
	Let me just try and respond to that.
	Okay, so let's say that the worker owes me when we start $100,000.
	Okay.
	In other words, for me to have done all the work that...
	I'm just picking a number.
	It could be $10,000.
	Let's just say $100,000.
	But let's say the worker, when I hire them, they owe me $100,000.
	Because that's what they owe me for having set up the business.
	Now, I don't charge them $100,000 and then make them a full equity partner.
	Although, to be fair, the worker could do that.
	The worker could say, listen...
	I want to buy in equity in the business.
	I am going to put in $100,000 investment.
	I want to buy part of the business.
	And they could become a part owner of that business, right?
	But if they don't want to do that, and when you're young, I didn't, and the people I hired didn't usually want to do that.
	They say, okay, well, I'm not going to be able to give you the $100,000 I owe you for doing all the work to set this business up and to be in a position to hire me.
	So I'm going to just pay you out of every paycheck.
	I'm gonna pay you 10% value out of every paycheck for you having created the business and done that, right?
	Now, are you saying at some point, like a house, that is at some point paid off?
	Right.
	Right.
	Except not really.
	Because the business of running a business is one of continual improvement, right?
	You've got to upgrade the computers.
	You've got to expand the offices.
	You've got to go scout new locations.
	You've got to find new customers.
	And all of this is very expensive and an ongoing cost, which the...
	Employee has to pay for at some point.
	I mean really it's the customers who pay.
	But it's the employee who has to contribute to all of that.
	There's no point having programmers if there aren't any salespeople out there selling the product, right?
	And there's no point having people out selling the product if there are no programmers to either make or upgrade or improve the product and so on.
	So I'm not sure where it ends up that you stop upgrading.
	If you sort of think of a traditional They're constantly upgrading the machinery.
	When regulations change, they have to put in more pollution filters.
	They have to put in wheelchair ramps for accessibility.
	They have to upgrade for safety and so on.
	And there is, of course, an ongoing risk that the owners take, which the...
	Employees don't take.
	If you're an owner and the business goes bankrupt, you can be personally liable, depending on your contracts, you can be personally liable for, but if the business goes bankrupt, the employees just walk away.
	Right.
	So there's two different sort of ways of looking, or you've sort of gone in two different directions.
	One are your sort of costs of business.
	These are costs of doing business.
	And in most situations, maybe not the smallest kind of entities, but in a sort of medium-sized or large-sized business, The business entity either begins as or becomes a sort of legal entity in itself.
	And so it can, and this can be with agreement with employees and everything, it can build up its own capital for which it will then reinvest its own money.
	The individual capitalist, the individual who may have started it and may or may not have Liabilities, depending on how they set up the entity.
	That means that the business could sort of reinvest money that it may extract, the surplus labor it may extract from the employee, but may do so to reinvest back in the business.
	That's one thing.
	That shouldn't, in a sort of successful business, or at least one that isn't in the beginning stages, ought to be paid by the business itself.
	Hang on, hang on, hang on.
	If you just can't do that, then it's not as...
	Sorry, sorry to interrupt.
	Wait, can you hear me?
	Okay.
	Now, if I'm the business owner, and let's say the business makes a million dollars, then I can take that million dollars out of the company and keep it for myself, right?
	Sure.
	Now, if I do that, though, I'm not reinvesting in the business, and it's going to be short-term gain, long-term pain, right?
	Because worker productivity is the key, and worker productivity is dependent generally on how much you're willing to reinvest back into your own business.
	You know, like if you want to run a...
	I'm sorry?
	Or how much you think you have to reinvest, right?
	You don't, I mean, you might not say, you could say out of that million dollars, well, the business only needs, say, $200,000 to put into an account for, you know, what we see are upcoming costs, and I'm going to pocket the $800,000 that's left.
	And you could do that.
	You could.
	You could.
	But if there's market value in investing half a million dollars and you only invest $200,000, then your competitor across the street who invests half a million will probably end up out-competing you.
	So it's a balance, right?
	Whereas on the other hand...
	Whereas on the other hand, if everybody takes all of the profits, like if I take all of the profits and invest it back into the business, like if I work for $1 a year and put all the money back into the business, that is really not a sustainable business model because if I get hit by a truck...
	There's an artificial profit there, which is me not taking a salary, which if I need to be replaced, if I decide I want to go prick grapes in Queensland or become a mime or, as I said, get hit by a bus, then you have an artificial subsidy, which is the owner not taking a regular paycheck.
	And so that's not sustainable.
	So it's some balance where you have to pay people enough in management that they're going to want to do a good job.
	But at the same time, you also have to reinvest back into the business.
	Now, the money that you reinvest back into the business...
	Is another loan that you're making to the employees, right?
	Because you're now lending.
	Let's say you make a million dollars, you put half a million dollars back into the business.
	Well, that's half a million dollars that you're, quote, lending to the employees.
	So I'm not sure that it ever kind of gets paid off.
	I mean, you could say it gets paid off if you simply stop reinvesting anything in your business, but that's...
	It would be a debt from you to them if you paid it out of your own pocket.
	But if it's money that's generated by the business activity or the productive activity of the business, then it's not a loan from you to the employees.
	It's value that the employees have generated that would otherwise go to you, which you are then deciding to go back into the business.
	The business is what's making the value, the sort of capital...
	No, no, no.
	Hang on.
	So let's say I'm 100% owner of the business.
	The business makes a million dollars.
	I have the perfect right to take that million dollars out.
	The employees make the million dollars.
	No, the business as a whole makes the million dollars.
	Well, right.
	But the people who do the work that produces the value in a business are the people who work at the business.
	Which is everyone.
	The managers work too.
	Well, it's everyone whose value can be attributed to the total value of the product.
	It's useful labor.
	There's a lot of idle labor in quote-unquote idle labor.
	Okay, one thing at a time.
	One thing at a time.
	No, not just yet.
	We're trying to keep this as simple as possible at the beginning.
	So if the business as a whole, which I'm managing, If it makes a million dollars and I'm a 100% owner, then I have that million dollars.
	I can take that million dollars and put it right in my bank account and then give half of it to the government because I'm in Canada, high taxes, right?
	Now, if I take half a million dollars instead of a million dollars, then that is a direct return of half of my income back into the business.
	Right, so that's what I mean when I say, the business makes a million dollars, I'm reinvesting it back, and that is a kind of loan to the future productivity of the workers, which they are liable for in terms of a reduced salary.
	And the reason they'll take that reduced salary is because it actually increases their salary, right?
	So for me to reinvest in the business...
	It makes the employees more productive.
	We get faster computers, we get better graphics cards, we get faster rendering time, whatever it's going to be.
	We get better tools, better equipment, we get a nicer office, whatever it's going to be.
	So whatever it is that I'm reinvesting, they continue to take that loan and they take that loan because it's better for them than not taking the loan because it's a sustainable and growing business out of that.
	Yeah, and that may be a decision that the employees are making, given the sort of limited decisions or the limited choices that they have.
	And there may be a certain amount of logic to that.
	But the larger point is...
	By you saying, okay, the business generates a million dollars, therefore I get a million dollars, right?
	There's a sort of equating the person to the entity.
	You are the business because you're asserting 100% ownership rights over that business, which means that all of the value that's created beyond what you have to pay for is your money.
	Is that right?
	Would that be fair to say?
	Well, again, I'm sorry after saying let's keep it as simple as that.
	There's a million dollar profit.
	However, that's not the total amount that the business makes, right?
	I mean, there's the gross and then there's the net, as you know, right?
	And so the employees are getting back some value and I'm getting back some other value.
	And the value that I get back is larger because I created the business and I need to be paid for all the unpaid labor that...
	Let's say you're paid for that unpaid labor.
	We're in a position where you have been paid for your unpaid labor.
	So this is a million dollars in profit that the business has generated that you are then going to take and decide what you want to do with it.
	So the issue there, that is in some ways my issue.
	Because what you're saying is that the employees have at that business, which may or may not involve you if you're doing managerial work or you're taking a sort of paycheck or you're actually paying yourself a wage from the business.
	But if you're not, let's say you're just sort of waiting for the monthly check to come in.
	No, no, no.
	Sorry.
	We can't jump out of this scenario yet.
	Okay.
	Because if we can't find exploitation in this scenario, then we need to look for some other definition.
	That's why we have this scenario at the moment.
	Right.
	There's a few fundamental questions then.
	We're assuming that the scenario, you have some assumptions.
	One, the initial investment in terms of unpaid labor that you have invested or capital or whatever has been paid back.
	We can assume that.
	No, no, no.
	My whole argument was that it can never be paid back because I'm continuing to work, I'm continuing to expand my skills, and I'm continuing to forego making money from the business and turning it into my personal income in order to reinvest in the business.
	So it can never be paid off.
	It's like saying, can I ever pay off a house where I'm continually upgrading it every single year?
	Well, no, because you may pay off the original house, but by then you've got to pay for the deck and the swimming pool and the tennis courts and the helicopter landing pad and the gold faucets.
	If you continue to upgrade the house every year, then you can't ever pay it off.
	And since business owners...
	We tend to upgrade the capital equipment that the employees use every single year and expand and grow and take more risks and do partners and have to hire legal departments and all the stuff that then compliance departments and human resources departments all the things which the employees usually don't see and interact with directly because you're continually reinvesting in the business the initial loan can never be paid off.
	And no, the issue there is that your continual reinvestment is reinvestment of money that's been generated by the labor of the people who work at the business.
	So your house is not an analogy because the paying off the house takes money that the house itself doesn't generate to purchase.
	So it's not, the house is not generating the money that you're reinvesting in the house and thereby loaning.
	Well, so switch it to a hotel.
	It doesn't matter.
	Just switch it to a hotel then.
	The hotel's money is generated by the labor that goes into maintaining that business.
	No.
	No.
	No, that's factually incorrect.
	Well, part of it is the fact that they're just renting, so it is somewhat of a different thing.
	But if you didn't have people who worked there, it wouldn't work.
	And there needs to be some kind of labor.
	And if they didn't have something to work in, Their labor would be completely valueless.
	And I'll give you like a 30-second example, right?
	So I used to work as a waiter.
	Now, somebody had to build that restaurant.
	They had to order the plates.
	They had to order the food.
	They had to pass the health and safety inspection.
	Everything.
	They had to pay the electricity.
	Now, if there was no...
	Plates, no restaurant, no chairs, no customers, and I was just standing in a field, wandering around back and forth, and I would be paid no money.
	You have to wrap the worker in something that's economically productive in order for the labor to have value.
	So it's true, and this is why it's a symbiotic relationship.
	The capitalist creates the environment that makes the workers that much more productive.
	But saying the only reason the hotel generates money as the workers is saying, okay, well, let's take the same people and let's put them underwater.
	Let's put them on the moon.
	Let's put them in a field.
	They're not going to make a damn thing.
	You need the capital stuff around you in order for your labor to be valuable.
	Yes.
	Obviously, you need a place and tools and all of those different things to be able to be productive.
	I'm not saying that.
	What I'm saying is that once that gets going, The idea of a business is that it's self-sustaining, so that it doesn't even produce its own value or what it needs to maintain itself, but it actually produces the value enough to be able to grow and to do more.
	I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean.
	It produces enough value to grow and do more.
	I'm not sure what that means.
	The idea of a successful business is a business that generates more money than it spends.
	And that allows that business to then expand or, depending on the situation, either give dividends or whatever.
	But it allows the company to continue on and to hopefully grow, which is the sort of point of any business, is to be able to do more.
	No, I get all of that, but I know.
	I've been an entrepreneur.
	I know all of that.
	So because it needs to expand and continue to grow, and of course people quit, or you have to fire them or whatever, and then you've got to go out and find new people, which is very time consuming and has its own risks as well.
	And so you're continually needing to invest more and more money in the business, which means that the employees are never going to get the, quote, loan paid off because there's continually additional loans being made to them, you know, to expand or even just maintain the business.
	You know, having a car, it decays.
	Everything wears out.
	Even if you don't want to expand or grow, you still have to, you know, plates get broken in a restaurant.
	Your oven wears out.
	You know, the heating, ventilation and air conditioning has to be replaced because it's old or the regulations change or whatever it is, right?
	So it never ends.
	You know, there's the initial business thing and then just even to maintain a single restaurant you never want to grow can cost quite a bit of money and that's money That the employees don't pay, so you lend them that money, which is why you continue to take additional profits from their labor.
	That's the payback for the loan that you're giving them, which makes their labor that much more valuable.
	What makes it valuable at all?
	Okay, the thing is on that, is that if you're suggesting that the profit is what is being paid to the worker, right, in this sort of second round of investment, that then they have to pay back through the exploitation of their, not the exploitation, but the extraction of their surplus value.
	What you're assuming in that is that all of the profit It's generated by the labor of the employees is transferred to the individual owner and then the owner decides to reinvest that rather than a certain amount of value being generated by the employees that can then be used by the business itself, that essentially being everyone that's working there, to make those investments.
	So it doesn't have to depend on Not necessarily the owner making that investment, thereby allowing them to continue to extract the surplus labor.
	They can basically, the organization does that itself by producing value over and above the amount it costs.
	So the issue that I have in this whole thing- I'm sorry, I don't know what you're talking about.
	Hang on, hang on.
	Let me explain it if you don't know it.
	No, I don't.
	Kevin, I don't know what you're talking about.
	I have to interrupt you when I don't know what you're talking about because I don't want to just nod glassily into the camera here and pretend I know what you're talking about.
	Okay.
	So I'm not trying to interrupt you because I want to break your flow.
	I don't know what you're talking about.
	I mean, we just went through this scenario where the business makes a million dollars and I, as the business owner, rather than keep that million dollars, I keep half of it and reinvest half of it back into the business.
	And I thought we'd sort of agree that that was the scenario.
	And now I'm not sure what you're talking about.
	I just got confused.
	That's all.
	Well, then we'll do it this way then, just so they don't confuse you.
	What I would say is that if your income from the business is the profits of the business, and you decide to reinvest half of that money back into the business, The way to look at that, you can look at it two ways.
	One, I'm investing this back in the business, therefore they owe me.
	Or the business has, basically I have not taken that much, the business has retained that $500,000 and it's then making the purchases that it's doing and I'm retaining the $500,000.
	Wait, in this scenario, what is the business?
	That's a piece of paper.
	It doesn't make any decisions at all.
	I'm not sure what that means.
	No, the business is the business.
	It's the building it's in, it's the workers who work at it, and it's the machines or whatever it is that it takes to do whatever production is being done there.
	But none of those things make the decisions about the profits.
	The building doesn't, the workers don't, unless you have a particular kind of business.
	And so I have the right to take the million dollars as the owner if I decide to reinvest half of that money back.
	That's a decision an individual has to make.
	I mean, I don't know where the abstract term business comes in.
	Well, because there are many, many, maybe not in this necessarily scenario, but there are many, many, many situations in which the sort of business decisions about what the business is going to do is not made by the person who gets the profit check.
	There are, right, so there are a lot of entities that are not owned and controlled and all of the decisions are made by one individual.
	No, no.
	Kevin, we got a rule here.
	And the rule is we're dealing with a particular scenario.
	You keep wanting to break off and go into other scenarios.
	The scenario that you presented is useful for you because the way that that situation works sort of proves your whole point.
	But it isn't how things actually work.
	What do you mean?
	Hang on, hang on.
	Dude, are you really going to tell me who's been an entrepreneur for about 30 years that I have no idea how things work in the entrepreneurial world?
	Do you really want to take that path with me?
	Well, I didn't say that, Steph.
	Yes, you did.
	You said this is not how things really work.
	What I'm saying is this example that you're using is not necessarily how many businesses are run.
	There are decision-making processes all the way through.
	Oh my god.
	Do you not know how to...
	Oh god.
	Okay.
	This is for the audience.
	Maybe you know.
	Maybe you don't.
	Okay.
	So the way that philosophy works is you put forward a theory.
	And here the extraction of economic value from the labor of others is exploitation.
	And exploitation, of course, has a negative connotation.
	Right?
	So I created a scenario, which is a very real-world scenario that I myself lived through for many years.
	In where the extraction of economic value from the labor of others was not exploitive.
	And that doesn't mean that there's no exploitation in business.
	I'm sure that there is.
	But what it means is that we need a different kind of definition then.
	Right?
	We need a different kind of definition because if the scenario that I put forward, the guy who starts a business and he ends up, you know, taking a million bucks out of that business and then putting half a million dollars back into the business and so on.
	If that...
	If this scenario is not exploitive, then we need to refine our definition.
	So this is why I keep pulling you back into this scenario, because we're trying to figure out, is our definition of exploitation, the extraction of economic value from the labor of others, is our definition of exploitation comprehensive and valid?
	In this scenario, it's not exploitive in a negative way, and I think we can both admit that it isn't.
	Then we need to refine, further refine, it doesn't cast out your definition of exploitation, it simply means that we need to refine it.
	Like we could say the extraction of economic value from the labor of others When you've done nothing to create that value or whatever, but this is how we have to have a debate.
	We can't set up a scenario to test a hypothesis or a definition, and then we can suddenly just jump off as if we're talking about something else.
	We never get anywhere there.
	Right, okay.
	So yeah, I mean, you could add, if we want to redefine the definition, we can.
	And I think just adding that little last part is probably not a bad place to start.
	So exploitation is the extraction of economic value from a productive laborer by a, say, non-productive entity, usually a person, right?
	So it's productive value extracted by And then taken by a person who contributes no labor, or whose value they're getting far outweighs the actual value of the labor that they put into the business.
	Right.
	Okay, and I appreciate your patience with this.
	So we've refined, which is, you know, the point of the Socratic dialogue.
	We've refined the definition, and just tell me if I've got this right or not.
	Exploitation is the extraction of economic value from the productive labor of others where you are unproductive.
	Sure, yep.
	Okay, now the problem is that includes babies.
	What do you mean?
	How do babies produce value?
	No.
	Babies are not productive, but they extract economic value from the productive labor of others, right?
	You've got to buy them a crib, you've got to buy them food, you've got to buy them toys, you've got to buy them onesies, you've got to buy them diapers, and you have to do a lot of labor.
	So you're expending a lot of money.
	So again, we just have to further refine the definition.
	Because babies and children and so on extract economic value from the productive labor of others when they are unproductive.
	And this is also true of charity, right?
	So people who are receiving charity are getting economic value from the productive labor of others while they themselves are unproductive.
	So we just have to keep, you know, this is part of the whole process, right?
	We just have to keep refining the definition until we can figure out what fits the best scenarios, the best general scenarios.
	Yeah, so you could just add another sort of clause at the end, right?
	So it's the extraction value from productive labor by an unproductive person who does so based on their position as an owner.
	Say, or because of the assertion of an economic right, that being the right.
	Well, no, but hang on, hang on.
	Those two are not the same.
	Because if you're an owner, then you automatically are providing economic value by letting other people use your property, right?
	So if I own a restaurant and people work there, they're gaining value because I'm letting them use my restaurant and then they're not carrying dandelions around in a field.
	So we can't say owner.
	It has to be something else.
	Explain that to me again.
	That was very confusing.
	Sure, sorry.
	So if I own a car, right, and you want to rent my car, then I am automatically providing you value because I own the car, right?
	So I've ended up with the ownership in some manner.
	We don't have to figure out exactly why.
	But by lending you My car, I've automatically provided value.
	So it can't be just that you're the owner and therefore you're not productive.
	You are productive because you're lending other people your property in order to allow them to increase the value of their labor.
	That suggests that property has value, like it just has sort of inherent value.
	Is that an assumption that you take?
	So if you have something, say a building or a piece of...
	If I pick my nose, my booger is mine, but I don't know if I'm going to get a lot for it on eBay.
	So I don't know that property has, you know, we spend a lot of money to take the property called property.
	Human feces and move them as far away from our bathrooms as humanly possible, right?
	Although if I take a crap on your lawn, it's me who's arrested for vandalism or whatever it is.
	So I don't think all property has value.
	You own your own appendix, but if it's about to kill you, it's really good if somebody goes in and saws it out with a chainsaw or something.
	So I don't know that I would argue that all property has value.
	So how is it that just by means of ownership of some kind of property, you, by allowing someone else to use that or, say, occupy it if it's a piece of land, do you confer economic value?
	Well, because the person wants to use it.
	Like, so if I build a house and somebody wants to live there, then it has value for them because they want to use that property.
	But does it have economic value?
	So it might have value to the person, right, even if the person is sort of willing to pay for it.
	But does it have economic value in such that it can generate additional value?
	Because I think that's an important distinction.
	I don't know what that means.
	A business can generate additional value.
	Its production generates value.
	A business that doesn't have any, and it does so through its employees.
	If a business doesn't have any employees, it doesn't make any, it doesn't have any or isn't able to produce any economic value.
	Therefore, if you were to have an idle factory and you were to allow someone to walk through an idle factory, it's not as if you're conferring on them any sort of economic benefit.
	It's only if there's production happening there, is there any sort of even possibility of conferring any kind of benefit?
	And it's only conferring it based on this notion that you have the ability to own this piece of property, which is an issue that I don't know if you want to get into.
	We can get into that.
	But I think that that is a problematic issue because it allows for The idea that you can somehow transfer value, economic value, merely by your position as owning that piece of property and allowing someone else to use it.
	And I think that that is a sort of phantom value that we have created in our own minds and over the course of a long history of theoretical development, but that has as its basis a system that isn't actually related...
	I'm sorry, I've got to interrupt you because I got kind of lost at the beginning.
	I don't know what you're talking about, but if I had to guess, I would say that it's something like there are productive goods and consumptive goods.
	So there are goods like a house that we do not expect to make money out of.
	Maybe you could make money if you sell it and it goes up in value, but basically you have a house because you need to keep the rain off your head, and so you have a house.
	Whereas there are other things that you will buy that you will expect will make money.
	So if you buy a car just to drive around and enjoy yourself, that's a consumptive good.
	But if you buy a car so that you can turn it into a taxi and rent it out for money or you want to make Uber money or whatever, then that's a productive good.
	So is that what you're talking about?
	There's a difference between goods which you consume without them making money.
	And then there are goods which you purchase in order to hopefully generate future income.
	Sure.
	Yeah, I think there's a huge difference.
	Okay.
	I don't know what that has to do with anything, but I certainly accept that there are those two economic classes of property.
	Okay, well, and I think so, whereas the sort of non-productive property, there isn't really much of an idea with ideas of ownership of that kind of property or anything like that.
	When it comes to the productive property, for lack of a better term, that's where I find it problematic that those kinds of entities can be owned by individuals who then, by their position of owner,
	can At some point, be able to extract value from the production that's going on at that property, and they can add no value to that, but they can take what value is generated from that.
	I find that morally problematic, but also economically problematic.
	Okay, so I can own personal property.
	So if I buy a laptop because I want to watch Netflix and play video games, that's fine.
	But if I buy a laptop because I want to record audiobooks and sell them for money, that's bad.
	Well, no.
	No, because that's you doing it.
	That's you, your own labor.
	You're inputting labor.
	If you want to buy a computer for the sole purpose of charging someone to use that computer, do some kind of economic activity, I think that there's a problem with that.
	Okay, so we've got three classes now.
	So there's a class of computer that you use for personal consumption.
	That's fine for you.
	There's something which you use for your own economic productivity, and that's fine.
	But if I buy a computer...
	And then I charge people 50 cents an hour in some remote African village because they want to check email or browse the web or whatever, then that's bad.
	So consumption resources are good, productive resources are bad, but rental resources are bad.
	Is that right?
	The ownership of those.
	Not just in themselves are bad, but the ownership of those things such that you're able to extract from other people value.
	That's the issue.
	Okay, so if I buy the laptop and I rent it out for 50 cents an hour in some remote African village, clearly I can't use the laptop while I'm renting it out, right?
	So I have spent money on a laptop which I can't use because I'm renting it out.
	So it's a net negative for me.
	In other words, it would be charity if I simply bought notebooks and handed them out for free or let people use them for free or whatever.
	But if we look at sort of economic value, if I buy a laptop and then let people rent it out, Then that's a net negative for me because I bought property which I can't use because other people are taking temporary ownership of it.
	Like when I go to give a speech somewhere and if I rent a car, then the people who bought the car to lend it to me can't use it and can't lend it to anyone else while I've got sole ownership of it.
	So car rental businesses would be bad.
	So if I buy a car for fun, that's fine with you.
	If I buy a car...
	And use it to make money through Uber or something, that's fine with you.
	But if I rent a car, the person who rents the car to me is bad.
	Well, it's again different than that because it's not bad in the sense that there's nothing wrong with the car.
	What's wrong is what you're doing with it and how you're getting the value from it.
	And again, it's very important that you don't have a problem with there being arrangements such that you're able to recoup whatever it is of the original cost.
	If you have a cost that goes into something, it's understandable to sort of demand or to create a situation where you're going to be paid back for it.
	But if you buy a car, and you rent it out, and you're paid back the full value of that car, and you continue to then rent it out, and therefore extracting surplus value, I think that that's problematic.
	You cannot, dude, dude, my god, have you ever run a business, I'm just curious about this, Have I ever run one?
	No.
	Have I been involved in them?
	Have I started?
	If you buy a car and the car is going to last for 10 years, right?
	And I buy the car and I have to put, let's just say it's a $20,000 car.
	So I have to take $20,000 out of my bank account and give it to the people who make the car.
	And then there's gas maintenance and depreciation, right?
	So, wear and tear, depreciation as a whole, plus the ongoing costs of the car.
	So, you tell me, if I take that $20,000 car and let people drive it for eight hours a day, and I'm responsible for gas, oil, maintenance, washer fluid, getting it cleaned, getting it sprayed, people smoking it, all of that stuff.
	When is it paid off?
	I'll tell you when it's paid off.
	It's paid off when it goes to the junkyard or I sell it secondhand or whatever it is, right?
	So there's at no point, and this is just competition in the marketplace.
	So if I spend $20,000 on the car and then I spend another $5,000 or $10,000 a year maintaining it, let's just say $5,000 a year maintaining it, And that goes on for 10 years.
	That's $50,000 plus the $20,000.
	That's $70,000 accumulating over 10 years.
	Now, I'm not going to get into all of the rolling costs, but there's inflation and there's the opportunity costs of having...
	I could have put the money into some sort of stock or some sort of bond or some GIC or whatever it is, right?
	So it costs, you know, $100,000, $150,000 all told.
	You say, well, it's only a $20,000 car.
	Yes, but the overall cost over 10 years is very significant.
	And so that is everything that you have to take into account when you are charging people for that car.
	And if you overcharge people for that car, then you'll be undercut by somebody who is going to charge a more reasonable amount in a free market scenario.
	So you can't just say, well, there's a point at which the car's paid off, and after that, it's all profit.
	Because if you can rent this car out for $5,000 a day, where you say, okay, well, then the car's paid off in like a week or two, and the rest of it is pure profit.
	But the point is, of course, nobody's going to rent your car for $5,000 a day.
	If you do the actual math or if you actually run a business rather than read about running businesses, you'll very quickly find out that the amount of money that people charge for stuff kinda mirrors its cost of ownership, cost of operation, its opportunity cost of the money you had to invest to buy it and depreciation value as well.
	It does kind of mirror that.
	In other words, the price of loaning out your car turns out to be a little bit more than all of the money that you've lost or spent in having that car for 10 years.
	So there is no magic point.
	It's a soft landing.
	It's a really soft landing for it.
	There's no point at which you say, oh, now it's all pure profit because anybody who does that is overcharging.
	We undercut in the marketplace.
	Okay, now that assumes a market that one doesn't exist or one that would work absolutely perfectly.
	Now, that being said, there would be— Oh, hang on, hang on, hang on.
	No, no, big statement, big statement, Kevin.
	I know, I know, because I'll explain it, I'll explain it.
	What I'm saying is— I know, what does absolutely perfectly mean?
	I don't know what that means.
	Because if that was the case— Where would any profit be generated?
	How could profit be generated?
	Because if the market was so efficient at basically finding out where things are overcharged and all that kind of stuff, then you'd essentially, it would bring it down so that profit would be so, like you'd have such minuscule amounts of profit because as soon as you start making the profit,
	which is obviously the more that basically The higher cost you can charge for something more than the cost it costs you, how could there be the generation of profit if the market is so efficient at finding where the equilibrium between the cost and the price is so perfect?
	I mean, the profit wouldn't exist- Do you want an answer to that, or do you want to just keep asking the question?
	Well, if you want to think I'm disingenuous, you're, you know, reading it.
	No, no, no.
	I mean, just because I thought you'd finished asking the question, then you just kept going.
	And if you want to keep going, I'm happy to listen.
	But I thought you asked a good question.
	I'd like to take a swing at answering it.
	I don't have to interrupt to answer the question.
	So go ahead.
	All right.
	So, profit is what draws people into the creation of stuff.
	In other words, let's say that I said to you, hey, man, I got a great idea.
	I want you to work 14 hours a day for three years and I'm going to pay you a dollar.
	You'd be like, no, not going to do it, right?
	So profit is what you pay to get entrepreneurs to create stuff.
	And people always like new stuff.
	They like cool stuff.
	They like great stuff.
	And so in an interesting way, if business grinds profit down so low, Then what happens is entrepreneurs are no longer attracted to that environment.
	In other words, if a profit is only 1% or 1.5% or whatever, what that indicates is that there are too many entrepreneurs in that particular area.
	And so what happens is entrepreneurs stop going into that particular area.
	And they start going somewhere else where there's more profit to be had.
	They create new stuff.
	They upgrade stuff, right?
	You used to be able to make a lot of money selling telephone switching boards.
	You can't do that so much anymore.
	You used to be able to make a lot of money selling cell phones the size of Kleenex boxes that you had to point at the sky and couldn't stand under a tree in order to have them work.
	Can't make that rotary dial phones.
	You sort of get the general idea.
	And so because people are constantly the creative destruction of the free market, there's constant change, constant opportunities for new profit.
	There's no equilibrium in the free market because all resources are finite and all human desires are functionally infinite.
	And therefore there's always things that people want better, faster, more efficient, more colorful, more pretty, more enjoyable, better smelling, more sexy, whatever it's going to be.
	So there's really no practical limit to the possibilities that can generate profit.
	So if you're looking at a perfectly static free market, you're not looking at a free market.
	You're looking at, I don't know, some centrally planned chaos mess currently descending into the worst stereotype of anarchy that you could imagine, but enough about fiat currency.
	And so in a free market, you are constantly leaping over other people.
	You are constantly creating new things that displace prior industries, right?
	So there used to be a great business shoveling horse crap in New York City because they used horses and, you know, they just crapped everywhere.
	And then cars came along and that job kind of, so the people who invested in horse and buggy manufacturing, their profits declined, which was a signal to say when profits decline, it means either that the market is overcrowded, which means that too many goods are being produced, which is going to drive down consumer demand.
	So consumer demand is evaporating on its own, just as it did for rodeo dial phones and the horse and buggy and so on, which means that entrepreneurs should start focusing society's scarce resources on some other area that is going to further satisfy the customers.
	And the first people who go to market with that kind of stuff generally get to reap the rewards of being first to market with that stuff.
	And so the profits tend to be highest in new areas that have created their own demand, right?
	So nobody thought they really needed a cell phone until there were cell phones.
	And then nobody thought they needed a flat screen touch phone until they became popular.
	Nobody ever thought, well, I need high-definition video recording in my pocket until, right?
	So sometimes the supply creates its own demand, and that tends to be where the most profits are.
	So people are constantly trying to create cool new stuff to sell to people because that's where the greatest profits are.
	And then there's a long tail of industries that are usually seeing diminishing profits because consumer demand is either shifting to new stuff or just diminishing on its own.
	So There's no static area where you're going to say, well, in a perfect free market, all profits go to zero.
	That simply can't happen because we are insatiable in our thirst for new stuff.
	How do you understand profits from older businesses then?
	You might say oil producers or something like that.
	I don't know what you mean.
	I'm not sure what you mean.
	What you're suggesting...
	Correct me if I'm wrong, is that if the market tends towards an equilibrium in some area, the overall non-equilibrium in the market is in some ways generated by the constant quote-unquote creative destruction and the entrepreneurial activity of seeking out new and innovative products that will either create its own or fill some kind of demand.
	And that those entities which are able to capture the market quicker are the ones who realize profits.
	Otherwise, there's a general declining rate of the profit as either the commodity gets older or there is some kind of means by which the demand falls off or the prices get too high because demand is high and supply is low.
	What I'm asking is, in businesses where there is not a lot of innovation in terms of real entrepreneurship, but there's still high rates of profit, what accounts for that?
	And were you referring to the oil industry in particular?
	I mean, that's a profitable industry, but yeah.
	Okay, so there's two major reasons.
	Yeah, there are two major reasons, Kevin, why the oil industry is so profitable.
	One has to do with the free market, and one really doesn't.
	Of course, the one which doesn't, which you're aware of, of course, is that the oil industry has, at least in the Middle East, right, in the biggest oil-producing nations, doesn't have anything to do with the free market.
	It's a fascistic oligarchy, right?
	A theocracy of state-run capitalism that runs this stuff.
	And, you know, the OPEC thing, I'm not speaking to you.
	I'm just speaking to the audience as a whole.
	You know, who's responsible for all of the mess that is going on in the Middle East?
	Well, environmentalists to a large degree, because the Middle East was dirt poor and Muslims were dirt poor and pretty limited in their scope until environmentalists stopped people from doing a lot of drilling and exploration for oil in the West.
	And therefore, they had to get all their oil from the East, which put huge amounts of money into Muslim theocracies and dictatorships.
	And so that's now.
	So that's the non-free market side of things.
	Yeah.
	Subsidies, regulations, you name it.
	I mean, it's insane how little of that aspect.
	But on the other hand, another reason why profits remain high in the oil in business is that the oil business is constantly changing.
	It used to just be able to drill like a toothpick being pushed into sand.
	It used to be able to drill down and suck the oil up out of the ground.
	Now all of that stuff has been exploited.
	The stuff close to the surface where there's a big pool, you stick a straw in and slurp it out.
	Now, of course, there's shale and all other kinds of fracking and so on, ways of producing oil.
	But there's also this really weird stuff where you've got these flexible...
	Straws, you know, these flexible, they can drill around shelves of rock, go underneath and slurp up stuff that they couldn't have gotten through before because they'd have to drill through half a mile of rock.
	There's some really wild stuff that is going on in terms of oil exploration that has been going on for the last generation or so since the easy stuff got kind of pulled up.
	And so there is a huge amount of innovation and creativity in the engineering and extraction side of the oil business that makes it very entrepreneurial.
	They're not just doing the same old stuff.
	But they are essentially selling the same product, right?
	So in terms of from the consumer perspective, I guess I don't see...
	That doesn't even really matter.
	Here's a question that slightly switches gears, but I don't think so.
	I am 100% on your side when it comes to your critiques of the state and the sort of...
	You know, coercive aspect of the whole thing.
	It's monopoly use of power, all of that kind of stuff.
	So I'm in your camp on that.
	What I'm curious about is to, and I understand where you're coming from.
	We have the disagreement that I think this will get to in terms of the sort of your anarcho-capitalist kind of mentality.
	And I would consider myself sort of anarcho, maybe syndicalist would be.
	Maybe anarcho-communist, depending on what you want to call it.
	So I agree with all your criticisms of the state and how the state obviously screws up market forces.
	It doesn't allow for whatever free market would come out of it would happen if it wasn't so involved in that kind of stuff.
	But I'm curious why you think it's developed this way and who the state is supposed to serve.
	Because it appears to me that the reason the state is the way that it is and has the impact that it does and we have a sort of state capitalist system is in some ways because of the failure of systems that were more sort of let go, more laissez-faire And had what I would consider some of the inherent problems of capitalism,
	such that the elite who are the capitalists in this era essentially decided that the state was the way for them to retain their elite position.
	And so they do so by not only capturing as much of the market or industry as they can, but also It's a politics, thereby making sure that the state always does what they want them to do.
	I don't know if you disagree with that, you think that's how it's going, if there's something else to it, but why are we in the situation that we are when we have this sort of state capitalist system, and who is the state actually serving?
	Well, the state serves itself, but as to why we're in this situation, it's the pursuit of profit It's not cheating.
	If it's allowed, right?
	I mean, if it was disallowed to use your backhand in tennis, then you'd be cheating to use your backhand in tennis.
	But if you're allowed to use your backhand in tennis, like you're allowed to pick up a ball in rugby, but not soccer.
	So, football!
	So, it's not cheating if you're following by the rules.
	And unfortunately, the rules of state capitalism are that you will gain by far the most profit, on average, by manipulating the state into passing laws in your favor or passing laws And so because there is the state and because the people in charge are paid for their ability to produce profit and because utilization of the state is the best and most certain way to produce
	and maintain profit, that's exactly what happens.
	And there's simply no way it's not going to happen.
	If there's a state, you know, the anarcho part is simply a recognition that human beings cannot handle the power to initiate force.
	Human beings simply cannot handle the power to initiate force.
	You can't, I can't, no one can.
	And so this is why we say to kids, we say to kids, don't hit.
	We don't say, hit wisely.
	We don't say, hit for the common good.
	Beat up Joey there for the collective excellence of mankind, right?
	We say, don't hit.
	Because nobody, you can't say to a three-year-old, hit wisely.
	And you can't say to an adult human being, Use political power for the benefit of society.
	Nobody knows what the benefit of society is, because society is a vast aggregate of individuals acting for incomprehensible, externally incomprehensible purposes.
	And a lot of times, people don't even know what they're doing stuff for.
	Why did you become an artist?
	I don't know, just thought it was cool.
	You know, why did you become a guitarist?
	Well, everybody knows that one.
	So, as long as you have a state, corporations, which are a creation of the state, are going to use the state to benefit, right?
	So, in the U.S., They're currently trying to get hundreds and hundreds of thousands of third world workers to come in on these H-1B visa programs.
	Now this originally started in the early 1950s and the whole point was if you had some super genius professor who wanted to come over and teach at Yale for a semester You couldn't do it.
	So they created this sort of two classes of visas.
	One was for like super genius, you know, the people who've got to wheel themselves across and speak at 45 degrees out of a voice box.
	Those people were supposed to come across and be able to get jobs easily because they're irreplaceable, one of a kind.
	And the other was like, you know, super specialized people who you couldn't find in the United States.
	If you wanted somebody to translate Urdu into computer code, you know, couldn't find someone like that in the States.
	Highly specialized, highly specialized.
	And so on.
	And that was sort of the original point.
	And then, of course, what happened was through a bunch of backroom maneuvering and politics and bureaucracy, bureaucratic manipulation and so on, they expanded these categories.
	And so now it's just guy with degree from, you know, phone it in dot India or whatever, right?
	And so now they're just hundreds and hundreds of thousands of these low-rent, relatively low-skilled workers are pouring in and displacing American workers.
	You say, wow, this is really bad.
	You know, the capitalists shouldn't be doing this.
	It's like, no, the capitalists have to be doing this because if they don't, they go out of business, right?
	So your fiduciary responsibility as an executive in a corporation is to maximize shareholder value by growing the business, by paying less, and all that kind of stuff, right?
	And so...
	If you have the power of the state and you don't use it, then Your competitors are going to use it.
	And no one's going to play that prisoner's dilemma saying, hey, let's none of us go for state, you know, because the first person to break that is going to.
	So if you're in a room and there's a gun and you know the other guy is going to go for it and shoot you, you have no choice but to try and go for it.
	And so as a business, it is irresponsible.
	It's an abridging or a countervailing of your fiduciary responsibility to produce value for your employees, your shareholders, your customers, and so on.
	You have to.
	You have to.
	Pursue state power, which is one of the reasons why Donald Trump is so unpopular these days, because he can't be bought off.
	And these guys have invested a huge amount in owning Congress people, right?
	And so they've grown, they specialize that way.
	And so if he comes in and shuts off the H-1B visa spigot, well, there's going to be a significant crash in the market.
	And good.
	Good, because, you know, I mean, there are lots of people who have lots of skills.
	Oh, there's a shortage of STEM workers.
	It's bullshit.
	It's complete bullshit.
	They say there's a shortage of STEM workers so the government can credibly sign all these H-1B visas which is supposed to bring in all these STEM workers but 40% of people with a master's or a PhD in the STEM fields end up working outside their field because they can't find jobs inside their field because they're being viciously undercut by cut price imported labor.
	And so this is this modern day serfdom and these poor H-1B visa people I mean obviously it's better than where they came from but you know They're not really allowed to start their own businesses.
	They're not allowed to switch around.
	They can't really negotiate for better conditions and so on.
	You get these coding sweatshops and all that.
	And it's brutal and it's gruesome and it's horrible.
	And it only requires, it requires a state in order to create and sustain it.
	But the reason you, the state power is there.
	The gun in the room is going to be used to rob someone.
	And if it's not you robbing them, it's them robbing you.
	So everyone is going to be grabbing for that gun and scrabbling for their gun.
	Just have to take the gun away because that's the only way we get to anything close to a sustainable free market.
	Well, and as someone whose wife is on an H-1B visa, I'm very familiar with what you're talking about in regards to that.
	However, so the question is, essentially, so if I could kind of condense your position into one sentence, is that when you presuppose a state, right, you have a state, and you have the principle of profit and the motivation that comes from it,
	That motivation for generating as much profit as you possibly can will essentially force you to do what you can to take state power in order to maintain your profits and actually grow your profits, hopefully.
	Yeah, and if you won't do it, there's a guy down the hole who will.
	Okay.
	So the reason why...
	Laissez-faire capitalism has never actually existed is because there's always been a state.
	Would that be fair for you to say?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	So your idea is if we remove the state, then laissez-faire capitalism can work perfectly.
	Again, I have no idea what the word perfectly means.
	I don't know what that means.
	Closer to the sort of general ideas of what makes a free market.
	I don't know.
	I don't care how it works.
	I mean, there's general principles of free markets.
	No, no.
	Kevin, I don't care how it works.
	I know that the initiation of force is immoral and the state is an agency of coercion.
	So you're asking me, well, if we get rid of slavery, will crops be picked perfectly?
	That's not what I'm hanging getting rid of slavery on.
	I don't care how the crops are picked.
	I know slavery is wrong.
	I don't care what happens afterwards.
	So as far as like, oh, will the free market have a chance to do X, Y, and Z? I don't care.
	The initiation of force is immoral.
	The state is an agency of coercion, an agency of violence, and it is wrong.
	It is wrong.
	It is as wrong as slavery.
	It is as wrong as rape.
	And so how do people get married if we don't force them to rape each other?
	I don't care.
	I don't know.
	Something will come along and I don't even care what it is.
	But I do care that the fundamental moral stain that's currently at the heart of society gets at least challenged on its ethical basis.
	Well, I'm in agreement with that, but the sort of question I have, or I think where the interesting sort of dialogue between you and me would be, would be if you don't have a state, so you don't have the whole coercive influence of the state at all,
	and so then your, I don't know if it's your position or if you just think that If you had a society that didn't have a state and was based on a certain set of principles like non-aggression and things like that,
	that the sort of market system from property rights would then develop and would at least be allowed to function without the coercive influence of the state, thereby using things like the market forces,
	price determinations,...like that would be able to work in a way where the system would sort of work.
	Is that fair?
	I mean, it would work without all of these...
	Again, I don't know what work means.
	If you have a society that's founded on the non-aggression principle, then all interactions are voluntary.
	Now, does that mean people aren't going to make mistakes?
	Of course they're going to make mistakes.
	You know, it's like a perfect free market.
	Who knows?
	People are going to invest in spaceships that turn over sideways and blow up, right?
	People are going to invest in some crop that fails.
	They're going to buy turkey farms and the turkeys are all going to get hit by plague or drought.
	They're going to buy a house next to a river that overflows and destroys.
	There's always going to be problems.
	I mean, that's natural.
	There's always risk in human life.
	So I don't know what perfect or any of that means, but what I do know...
	So if we stop putting a gun to everyone's head to making them rape each other, people might still break up.
	They might still cry and listen to too many Adele songs, right?
	But the point is that if you are not forcing people to get married and have sex with each other, all the resulting relationships will be voluntary.
	Now, does that mean they'll be perfect?
	Of course not.
	I don't even know what that would mean.
	But they're voluntary.
	Which means that nobody's got a gun to their head.
	And that means some people are going to accept too little money.
	And some people are going to ask for too much money.
	And some people are going to have buyer's remorse.
	They're going to buy a house and they're going to look at it the next day and say, I hate this place for whatever reason.
	That's going to happen.
	But it's voluntary.
	Now, what happens after things become voluntary?
	I don't know.
	I don't care.
	It doesn't matter.
	Because if I did care and it did matter what happened after human relations become voluntary, it would mean I would be back in the fascist seat of central planning again.
	All I want is for people to be free, to make their mistakes, to interact with voluntary, to grow, to learn, to love, to fail as they see fit according to their own conscience and their own choices.
	How that shakes out in the world, I couldn't care less, because there's no way to know.
	If you could know, be an argument for the state again.
	Sure, I mean, of course, but you would have, I agree with all that, except for that you would have at least some idea of what you would advocate for in terms of that organization.
	So not the position where you'd say, do this or you'll...
	You know, I'll kill you or I'll find a bunch of people and we'll all come after you or anything like that.
	But that you would say, okay, now that we have a system that's based on, you know, pure volunteerism, this is the best way that we can organize ourselves to be able to accomplish goals, whether that goal be the fulfillment of human...
	I mean, it depends on what the goals are, right?
	I mean, I think those are really important things that matter in terms of...
	See, what do you mean there's no goals?
	There are no collective goals in a free society.
	Like, if in North Korea, the government runs the entire movie industry, and if you don't do what the government says, you get shot or whatever, right?
	Now, it's sort of like saying, well, how will propaganda be run if the government gets completely out of the movie industry?
	Well, it won't be propaganda anymore.
	And so, what are the central plans and goals of society?
	How is society going to be run?
	How is it going to function?
	Doesn't matter.
	When you have a free society, Everybody is pursuing their own individual goals.
	Now, they may come together for collective projects, and they certainly will come together for the bond raising of the Amish household or whatever.
	They will get together, but there's no central planner anymore.
	It's a tough thing to get your head around.
	There's nobody sitting there saying, well, I think society should go like this, and I don't think society is working as well as it should be over there, so I'm gonna go in and fix it, and there's no one like that.
	This power doesn't exist.
	You can reason with people, you can make your case, you can give charity, you can organize people as much as you want voluntarily.
	But there's no one directing anything from a central planning standpoint.
	And I get that entirely.
	There is going to be a form of organization if there isn't a state.
	It doesn't have to have the aspects of a state.
	It doesn't have to have the monopoly use of force.
	It wouldn't have to have that.
	But there is going to be organizations.
	There are going to be social and economic interactions.
	And those will have to abide by A certain set of, at least, not necessarily rules per se, but a certain sort of organizational structure.
	And they will have common ways of dealing with one another.
	I mean, the idea I'm getting at is that you, while advocating for anarchism, which I agree with, at the same time advocate for No,
	I would do no such thing.
	However people want to set their lives up in a free society is none of my goddamn business.
	If you want to have a syndicalist, anarcho-syndicalist area over there, go great.
	Go homestead some land, go buy some land, set up your Venus Project flytrap robot cities, go set up your anarcho-syndicalist.
	I don't care.
	Like for me to say, well, you know, you can't have communes.
	Go have your communes.
	I don't care.
	I've got more to do with my life being a husband, being a friend, being a philosopher, being a father.
	I have enough to do with my life without going over and church lady style finger wagging at other people's lifestyle choices.
	If you want to, all the workers want to get together Grab a factory that's not being used and take a loan out and dust it up and promote some egalitarian way of...
	I don't care!
	As long as they're not pointing guns at each other, as long as there's not a state pointing guns at everyone, I don't care.
	Like, do you care what color your neighbor paints his basement?
	You don't!
	Because he's not using any force to do so.
	Now, if the government says everyone has to paint their basement puke green, well, suddenly you're going to care because now there's force involved.
	But I don't care what people do if there's no gun involved.
	I mean, I might, you know, say, I think that you should, you know, might be nice, you know, you may be encouraging, like, you know, you go out and seize the day and achieve your life goals or whatever, but I don't care.
	If people want to organize themselves according to private property market principles, fine.
	I think that's more sustainable, but who cares, right?
	If there's some other experiment people want to undergo, fantastic!
	You know, the beautiful thing about a free society is it allows for all kinds of test tubes of experimentation on the best way to do things and You know, as long as you don't force me to live in your commune, I'm not going to force you to live on my street of private property.
	I mean, you know, it's perfectly fine.
	I can't get engaged or interested enough.
	The whole point of philosophy is creating a society where you don't need to care about what your neighbors do that much.
	You can, you know, in terms of sugar and so on, but this busybodiness that comes from the state is something that's hard to imagine a society being free of.
	All right, man, I've got to move on to the next topic.
	Caller, but I really appreciate your call.
	I know it was a bit contentious at times, but I hugely appreciated it and found it enormously fun and valuable.
	So, Kevin, a real pleasure.
	And all my best to your wife and call back in anytime.
	Let's do it again.
	Yeah, thanks, man.
	Alright, up next is John.
	John wrote in and said, In my current view, I think our society would probably be better off with a lot more spanking.
	So I'm curious why you think spanking is bad.
	I would argue that the role of parents from a biological point of view should be to raise competent offspring who will survive and carry on the genes, not to ensure that the children have rights or are free or are pleasantly sheltered from the harshness of reality.
	That is from John.
	Hello, John.
	How you doing?
	Hello, Stefan.
	Nice to meet you.
	Nice to meet you.
	Is there anything you wanted to add to that statement?
	Uh, no.
	I'll let you take the torch first.
	And what's your family like?
	What was your family like when you were growing up?
	Well, my parents were divorced.
	My mother was very religious.
	I grew up with her.
	She tried to indoctrinate...
	Myself and my sibling into Christianity, and I was a lucky one.
	I kind of escaped it.
	But I think I was probably spanked a little bit when I was young, but otherwise I was a pretty obedient child, so...
	Yeah.
	And what do you think of your mother?
	I think she's a little bit misguided, but obviously that's a subjective opinion there.
	She's really involved in church stuff like missionary work and helping people around the world, which I kind of view as a misallocation of resources.
	I think that it would be better off if our people cared about our own culture and our own Society and so on and so forth, rather than trying to, you know, eliminate poverty around the world, which is not really even feasible, theoretically.
	And she's in Africa, is that right?
	She's not anywhere right now, but she has been around the world.
	Okay.
	You might want to turn her on to some of the IQ studies that might help in terms of resource allocation, but that's a topic for another time.
	And, John, would you say that you love your mother?
	I'm not really sure what love means.
	I mean, that's a very difficult word.
	It's been redefined so many times.
	It seems like every different party has their own definition of it.
	Do you know what my definition is?
	No, I don't.
	My definition is that love is the involuntary response, emotional response, that we feel towards virtuous people if we ourselves are virtuous.
	Okay, that sounds kind of like respect to me.
	I'd say I do have some respect for her, yes, even though we don't agree on everything.
	And what do you respect about her?
	Well, I respect some of her personality traits that I like about myself, obviously, so some of the things that I consider virtues.
	And what are those?
	Well, I think she's a very kind of a strong-willed She is a very competent person.
	She just kind of, as I said, misallocates her resources.
	I'm sorry to interrupt right after I asked you, but I'm not sure how strong-willed and competent are Virtues.
	I mean, you can be a strong-willed, I mean, obviously saying she is, but you could theoretically be a strong-willed and competent serial killer, right?
	I'm not sure how they would specifically be virtues.
	Hitler, strong-willed and competent, right then?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Well, I don't know how you define virtue then.
	Fidelity to truth, courage in speaking your mind, and the willingness to subjugate prejudice to reason and evidence are, I think, pretty strong virtues.
	Okay.
	Well, I'm just telling you the things that I kind of respect in her, and I don't know if I agree with you on all those virtues, but that's kind of a subjective thing.
	She knows that you're an atheist, right?
	She what, sorry?
	She knows that you're an atheist?
	Yes, she does.
	And how does she respond to that?
	I think she prays for me.
	No, I know.
	I don't mean sentimentally, I mean intellectually.
	It's a topic that we don't really get into.
	I think she just views it as, well, I don't think she's really interested in arguing it, and frankly I'm not either, because it basically comes down to whether you believe in something or not, and it's very hard to argue someone over beliefs.
	No, it's not.
	It's not hard to argue someone Out of irrational beliefs, unless they're fully committed to their irrationality, right?
	Right.
	So she's fully committed to her irrationality.
	I would say she is.
	She's fairly old, and people tend to get more committed as they go on.
	Well, I assume you were an atheist when you were younger, so saying she's old now, that doesn't, right?
	When she was younger, she was fully enough committed that she's made it to old age with those beliefs intact, right?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Right.
	Okay.
	So, are you married?
	Do you have kids?
	Not yet.
	I'm planning to have some soon.
	Wait, are you not married yet or not have kids?
	I'm not married, but I'm in a long-term relationship.
	We're considering...
	And what is your...
	I'll go out on a limb here and say girlfriend.
	Correct me if I'm wrong, but what does your girlfriend think of your mother?
	I don't know.
	I haven't asked her.
	What?
	No, no, come on.
	Seriously.
	Long-term relationship, you have no idea what she thinks of your mom.
	It doesn't really matter that much to me.
	I'm not very close with my mother, so.
	Oh.
	Okay.
	I'm shocked.
	I'm just telling you.
	I'm not a very emotional person, so, yeah.
	You could be intellectually curious about what she thinks about your mom.
	Yeah, I could be, yeah.
	Maybe I'll ask her after the show.
	And what do you think of her parents?
	I like them.
	I like her father more than her mother, I would say.
	Her mother is not the most rational person, but I respect her for trying, at least, in debates.
	Um, her father...
	I'm not sure what that means.
	...is much more red-pilled, so I kind of like him.
	Right.
	And what about your father?
	I don't really have a father.
	I mean, I have one biologically, but we don't really have a relationship.
	When did you last have any kind of relationship?
	I think when I was about eight.
	My parents divorced, and, uh...
	I didn't really see him until sometime in my 20s, so we're kind of estranged.
	I'm sorry to hear that.
	I'm very sorry to hear that.
	So he basically, he vanished from your life when you were eight, give or take?
	Well, I wouldn't blame him at all.
	I'd say it was my mother who kicked him out.
	And why did she kick him out?
	Well, they had some disagreements.
	Hey, everyone has disagreements.
	Why did she kick him out?
	She kicked him out because they had some serious disagreements, I guess, and she felt that it wasn't worth continuing on and that she had better opportunities elsewhere.
	Do you have an idea of what those disagreements were?
	Yeah, I think it was maybe my father was alcoholic or something like that.
	Something along those lines.
	Oh dear.
	And do you know if he continued his drinking?
	I think he still does drink, yes.
	Oh, so he's been an alcoholic for decades, right?
	Yes, yes.
	I'm so sorry.
	I wouldn't say that he's not a washed-up alcoholic or anything, but he does enjoy his drink.
	And I guess my mother, she went the religious direction, and that was really incompatible with his lifestyle.
	So, yeah, it is what it is, but...
	Hey, I feel like I'm probably the better off for it.
	It didn't ruin me or break me or anything, so...
	Wait, what didn't...
	You're better off that they split up, but not as well off as if you'd be if they'd stayed together and were happy.
	Well, in some ways I'm better off, in other ways I'm not as well off, right?
	So...
	I've grown more internally, probably, because of a hostile external environment.
	And...
	So I think there are definitely some positives that come out of those experiences as long as you don't let them drag you down.
	Maybe you disagree.
	Maybe you think I would have been better off if I had a nice normal family and I was...
	Yes, you would have been better off if you'd had a nice normal family, but I think statistically that's without a doubt.
	And also you said that you're an unemotional person and I would imagine that if there was a lot of contention in your house when you were growing up, John, that You would have viewed emotions as dangerous and destructive because if they were acted out in raging or negative or hostile or horrible or ghastly ways, then emotions would have been an enemy rather than an effective and useful guide in your life.
	Yep, yep, that's very true.
	So it kind of robbed you of your passion in some ways, would you not say?
	No, I don't agree with that.
	I think that...
	So you are...
	I mean, just going by what you said, that you're not a very emotional person.
	Yeah, I mean, okay.
	Well, what I mean is that I guess I can be emotional.
	It's difficult.
	I'm not emotional with most people, but I am emotional with people who I do get close with.
	But I tend to be more disconnected and more rational and more intellectual in general with Yeah, I would take issue with the characterization that disconnected from emotions means rational, but that's a topic for another time.
	I just wanted to mention that.
	And you said that your father stayed away because your mother Was what?
	She kicked him out, but okay, so she kicked him out.
	Why not have shared custody?
	Why not have him involved in your life?
	Did she go for sole custody?
	Did she use the court system against him?
	I mean, how did that work?
	Yeah, she went for sole custody, and she kind of, I guess she had a heavy influence on us, basically trying to prevent us from wanting to see our fathers, I think.
	Oh, so you would want to see your father, and she would pressure you not to try and talk you out of it?
	I think so, yes.
	I think that she...
	Wait, what do you mean you think so if you were there?
	I mean, if you don't know, who does?
	It was so long ago.
	How old are you?
	I would say that she kind of steered us in that direction.
	I did see him a few times, and maybe he's partly to blame, too.
	I mean, I think he's also a difficult person to get along with, and I respect a lot of things about him, too, for who he is, but he's...
	Very hard to communicate with.
	He also doesn't seem to be very emotional and he's very...
	He's very kind of extravagant and I feel like it's very hard to connect with him on a personal level.
	So I'd say it's a combination of...
	And who would you say that you connect with the most on a personal level?
	Well, obviously my girlfriend.
	I'd say I have some grandparents that I really connect with as well.
	Right.
	Although this is the girlfriend you have no idea what she thinks of your mom.
	Yeah.
	It's kind of an unimportant subject to me.
	It's not.
	It's really not.
	I'm telling you, it is not an unimportant subject, because this is the woman who raised you, and the idea that she didn't have a significant impact on who you are is crazy, right?
	Oh yeah, she definitely had a significant impact, but that doesn't mean I'm somehow beholden to her.
	I didn't say anything about Beholden.
	You said it's not an important subject, and I said it is.
	It's obviously not the only thing you can talk about, but it's an important subject, right?
	If you want to become a parent with someone, you need to figure out what their relationship is like with their parent, because that's going to be the model in general for how they're going to raise their kids, right?
	Yeah, I agree.
	So if she's not asked you about your relationship with your mom, I don't know that she's preparing the nest very well.
	Okay, well, I'd rather not delve too deeply into this personal stuff.
	I kind of wanted to stick with the question, if that's okay.
	Oh, no, I'm sticking with the question.
	I'm just taking the long way home.
	This is all about the question, and you'll see why as we go forward.
	Okay, so we'll go back to the specifics of your question.
	If you want me to take something more direct, that's fine.
	So you were spanked how often?
	You said a little bit, right?
	Yeah, I really can't remember because I was very young, but I know I was spanked at least sometimes.
	Yeah, you're not even 30.
	I mean, it's not like we're calling from last century.
	Actually, no, that would be last century.
	But it's not like we're asking you to go back 50 years or something.
	Were you spanked once a month, once a week, once a year?
	I mean, it just doesn't have to be down to, you know, triple...
	Digit detail, but what's the general pattern?
	I'd say in the range of once a week to once a month.
	Okay, so that would be, let's just say, split the difference, say once every two weeks, okay?
	Sure.
	Okay, so you were spanked about 25 times a year, and how long did this go on for?
	When did it start and when did it end?
	This is why it's difficult for me to say, because it was when I was really young.
	It was before my parents split up, for sure.
	And I guess some people have better memories of their early childhood than others.
	I only have, you know, a handful of memories from before that time, so it's...
	And that's usually because of trauma, right?
	You know that, right?
	Yep, yep.
	Okay.
	All right, so a couple of years it went on?
	Sure.
	Well, no, don't sure me like I'm, you know, tell me if it's right or wrong.
	Do you live on this street?
	Sure.
	No, no.
	For the sake of argument, we can say it was for a couple of years.
	Yep.
	So are you saying it ended when you were eight?
	So when your dad moved out, you were never spanked again?
	I don't recall being spanked after that.
	Okay, so what, like four to eight kind of thing?
	Yep, sure.
	Okay, so maybe about a hundred times you were spanked.
	Now, is that the amount of spanking that you think would be healthy for children as a whole?
	Or do you think that they should be spanked more than 25 times a year or less than 25 times a year?
	Well, I think it all depends.
	I don't have a particular affinity toward spanking as a form of discipline.
	Okay, let's go back to your question.
	You said, in my current view, I think our society would probably be better off with a lot more spanking.
	Correct.
	So don't give me this fog when I give you a number and you say, well, it depends on...
	If you've got a number, then tell me the number.
	Is it 25 times a year?
	Is that outside the bounds of what you consider a lot more spanking?
	Is it lower than what you would consider a lot more spanking?
	I mean, the one who used the phrase, I've got a right to ask you what it means in some level of detail.
	I'm not saying it's got to be a prescription down to the day.
	But is the amount that you were spanked, was that more or less or about the same as you think other children should be spanked?
	Well, I think it's a very subjective thing.
	And so if you could tell me the amount of spanking in the world right now, then maybe I could give you a number for how much spanking I think there should be.
	No, I'm not doing that, John, because you came up with the phrase, a lot more spanking.
	Yes, yeah.
	Society would be probably better off with a lot more spanking.
	And that is subjective.
	You must have some idea how much there is.
	Like if I say, if you're going to walk in the desert, you should have a lot more water.
	I have some idea how much water you have, and I have some idea how much water you need, and there's a gap analysis I'm putting forward, right?
	Yep.
	Okay, so should society spank...
	Sorry, go ahead.
	If you don't know how far you're walking in the desert, and you don't know how many oasis seas there are, and so on and so forth, you can't really pin it down to a number, which is why I just said...
	Then you'd need to take more, wouldn't you?
	...a lot more, right?
	Yeah, then you'd need to take more to take into account the variability, right?
	So I'll ask you again.
	You were spanked 25 times a year.
	Do you think on average society would be better off if children were spanked more about the same or less than 25 times a year?
	On average.
	Do you happen to know what the average is currently?
	I have some idea.
	Could you give me an idea?
	Yeah, I mean, certainly it is about 80% of children who spank.
	It's about 60-70% among whites, about 80-85% among Asians, and I think 90-95% among blacks.
	I just have the numbers in front of me, Steph, so I'll chime in.
	89% for black parents, 80% for Hispanic, 79% for whites, and 73% for Asian parents.
	Okay, and you know on average how frequently they're spanked?
	Or how many times?
	This study doesn't have frequency now.
	Okay, so how about if I said...
	We've had some indications the studies are not huge, but they're also not tiny, and it was upper middle class parents a couple of times a week, which is obviously a lot more than you were once every two weeks.
	So how about if I said, if there was 150% of the amount of spanking currently, we would be better on?
	So it would be 150% more than the current levels of spanking?
	50% more than the current levels.
	50% more.
	Okay.
	Yes.
	All right.
	Now, yours once every two weeks.
	Again, some studies we've looked at, it's three times a week.
	But let's just say it's once a week.
	No, actually, was it?
	Yeah, three times a week.
	So let's just say it's once a week.
	So you think it would be better if it was sort of between once a week and you, right?
	Sure.
	Yep, on average.
	Okay.
	So you would be happier if your mother had hit you more.
	You'd be better off.
	Not happier, better off.
	Not necessarily myself, but other people would be better off, yes.
	Who would be better off?
	Otherkins, for example.
	Other what?
	Otherkins?
	I'm not sure what otherkins is.
	Otherkids?
	Okay, so otherkins are people on the internet who They've kind of taken kids choosing their gender to the next step, and they're now debating whether they're really cats or wolves or dragons, spirits in human bodies.
	So it's kind of a phenomenon.
	What are we talking about?
	Are we talking about Dragonvale here?
	What are we talking about?
	We're talking about a phenomenon in...
	There are people like this.
	It's called Otherkin.
	Otherkins.
	Hang on a second here.
	Otherkin.
	Yeah, I am.
	Other K-I-M? Yeah.
	Alright.
	Let me see.
	And are there a lot of these people?
	There are a fair number, yes.
	How many?
	I don't know.
	Dude, if you're not prepared for the conversation, we can do it another time.
	I can't do anything with a fair number.
	How many?
	I don't know.
	I don't know what field you work into, but I like to be a tiny bit precise.
	Okay.
	Because this is the first thing you brought up, so I would assume it would be one of the larger issues that you would be involved with.
	If I say that there are a lot of other kin, for example, and then if I say that society would be better off with a lot of spanking, then I think that that's consistent because I'm saying that these people should be spanked more and that society would be better off.
	Yeah, I don't know if we can have this conversation, because I don't even know about this other Akim thing, and I don't even know how many there are.
	And so, I'll look it up.
	I've never heard of it, so I can't imagine it's hugely common, but let's have a look.
	Other Akim.
	Let's see here.
	All right.
	Got nothing.
	No, I'll try.
	Is it?
	O-T-H-E-R-K-I-M? K-I-M, yes.
	Anyways, I was just using this as an example.
	No, it's other kin.
	Yes, I was just using this as an example.
	So other kin are people who identify as partially or entirely non-human.
	Some say they are, in spirit, if not in body, not human.
	This is explained by some members of the other kin community as possible through reincarnation, having a non-human soul, ancestry, or symbolic metaphor.
	And the other, okay.
	A mailing list in 1990, the Elfinkind Digest.
	So these are people who believe that they are something other than human.
	They're like elves or changelings or something like that, right?
	Yes, they're like animal spirits in the human body.
	And do you know any of these people?
	Only through internet.
	Only through the internet, not in person.
	Right.
	So these other people you've never met, you don't know how common they are, they should be hit more.
	Yes.
	Okay, so the reason I'm using these people as an example is they're a little bit extreme.
	I'm not sure how large their population is, but in general, I feel...
	If by extreme you mean insane, yes.
	I will go with you there.
	Yes.
	In general, I think that our society is very cucked, and the younger generations in our society, they don't have any...
	They don't have problems to worry about.
	They take everything for granted.
	And so the biggest problems in their world become things like whether they feel like they're a boy or girl, whether they feel like they're a human or a cat, and things like racism and climate change are kind of the issues of the day that they gravitate around.
	I just feel as though these people are very detached from the actual reality that we're living in.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	Do you think that the people who are this disturbed came that way because they were overly reasoned with and respected as children?
	In other words, do you think that these children, if they had been this disturbed as adults, that if they were hit more as children, they would be mentally healthier?
	Is that the theory?
	I think there's a good chance that some of them would be.
	I think that they were given too much freedom and that they weren't given enough structure and enough.
	I mean, obviously, their parents failed in other ways.
	So just spanking them isn't going to solve the problem.
	But I think that that could shock some of them.
	Too much freedom and not enough structure.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	But too much freedom and not enough structure.
	Wouldn't that indicate, John, that their parents were neglectful of them?
	No, I don't mean it in that way.
	I mean, in a sense, yes.
	Their parents neglected to teach them about reality, to teach them that, for example, you are a human.
	Their parents neglected to teach them that, and so now they're questioning it.
	Their parents neglected to teach them that they were human beings.
	I can't believe the things I say on this show.
	But would you consider that to be a form of neglectful or destructive parenting?
	Their parents neglected to force that view on them.
	And that is why...
	Oh, I don't know that you need to force that view on that.
	I'm serious.
	You do, right?
	I didn't like...
	My daughter was like, I'm a tree.
	And I'm like, no, you're a person.
	You're not a tree.
	You're not even an ant.
	You're just a tree.
	And if you don't agree with me that you're a person, then I'm going to hit you.
	I mean, that wasn't what was needed.
	I had to actually convince her for quite some time that human beings were in fact a kind of animal.
	She saw that, right?
	Daddy, I'm a tree!
	I'm an elf!
	No!
	You know, I think human beings...
	Like, all organisms are pretty good at knowing what they should have sex with.
	Because, you see, if they're not very good at knowing what they should have sex with, they tend not to reproduce, which means those genes die off.
	Which is why you don't see a...
	A lot of human beings trying to have sex with trees.
	I'm sure you'll find a few maybe in the northern mining towns.
	But in general, not a lot of human beings banging things unless they're seriously disturbed, like animals in a zoo having sex with dogs.
	Okay, dogs, fire hydrant, child's leg, tree, I'm sure as well.
	But for the most part...
	Animals are fairly good at knowing what they should have sex with, which means that they're pretty good at knowing other members of their own species.
	You see this with birds.
	They don't try and mate with other kinds of birds, at least not too often.
	You don't see the wren and the buzzard getting it off.
	And I've looked for that porn extensively.
	I don't know where that Reddit is, but I'm going to find it one day.
	Buzzard on wren.
	Porn action.
	So I don't think that you need to really tell an organism like a human being that they're a human being.
	I think that this comes out of significant trauma, and I would assume that maybe there's some drug use involved that has scrambled the brains, or maybe there's some SSRIs or something like that.
	I don't think this is...
	See, here's another correlation, right?
	So if you're going to say more spanking produces better outcomes, more spanking produces better outcomes, then you have a bit of a problem with the spanking data.
	Now, you didn't know the spanking data, but...
	Hold on, hold on.
	Can I interrupt you?
	Yes.
	No, let me just finish this point.
	I'd just like to reply to the first part of your argument before you get into the second one, which is different.
	So you make a very good point, and I agree.
	That, you know, obviously identifying your own species and the other sex of your own species is probably something that's genetically transferred in organisms.
	But we could take this argument to the social level because that is not going to be genetically transferred.
	And so we could say people like liberals, for example, or leftists who are often in denial of certain facts about reality That their parents were neglectful in failing to teach them, for example, that might makes right in reality or that everyone is not, in fact, equal.
	And I think that that is a key point because those people tend to support the government because the government is supposedly on a quest to try to eliminate violence and inequality from life.
	Okay, so the issue is that if you're going to look at spanking leading to success, you have to explain why blacks who spank the most tend to do the worst, and why Asians who spank the least tend to do the best.
	Yes.
	So how would you explain that?
	That could be for other reasons, for example, indifferences in IQ. So then what you're saying is, if that's true, and not that spanking leads to lower IQ, but lower IQ leads to spanking, then what you're advocating is lower IQ phenomenon for better parenting.
	In other words, if all parents acted as if they had lower IQs, that would be a lot better for everyone.
	No, I'm saying that they're completely unrelated.
	I don't really think that there's a causal relationship between spanking and IQ. Okay, you're not understanding what I'm saying.
	So if you're saying that blacks are not doing worse because they spank, but they're doing worse because they have lower IQs, and that results in them doing worse and spanking more, then by saying that children should spank more, you're saying that parents should emulate lower IQ groups, that they should do things that less intelligent groups do in order to improve their parenting.
	Does that seem anomalous to you?
	I could see that being a valid argument.
	Wait, is it a valid argument or not?
	I don't know about this.
	I could see it being, what, in some alternate dimension with a dragon eye?
	What does that mean?
	Is it a valid argument?
	Are you honestly saying that parents should do stuff that less intelligent people do?
	And for those who want to know more about this spanking in black, we've got The Truth About Crime, which is a good presentation that people should check out.
	I just wanted to mention it here.
	Can you think of any other area in life where you would argue that people should do what less intelligent groups do?
	Well, sure, if you're going to argue that intelligence is not the goal that we should be seeking, then that would be a valid argument.
	So, for example, if you wanted to say that blacks are better at, for example, resisting a tyrannical government because they're more violent and aggressive, and they're not just going to roll over and let a government conquer them, then you might argue that We should try to emulate blacks to the degree that we need to combat that particular enemy.
	So then, by that theory then, if blacks were very good at resisting government power, then the smallest and most libertarian governments should be in the largest and most concentrated black communities, such as Detroit or Africa.
	I don't know if that's necessarily true.
	It is necessarily true.
	If you're saying that blacks...
	The theory that blacks would be really good at resisting large government would be proven by concentrations of blacks producing the smallest governments.
	That's a testable hypothesis, is what I'm saying.
	Yep.
	And I think in Africa...
	So Chicago, Washington, Nigeria...
	You might find that.
	Okay.
	You don't know that there are lots of...
	You think there are a lot of libertarian governments in Africa?
	Not libertarian, but smaller governments than we have here.
	Smaller how?
	We call them more primitive people, but that just means that they have less of an organized structure to their society.
	I don't know if you're trolling.
	Honestly, I do not know if you're trolling me.
	I honestly have no idea whether you're trolling me anymore.
	You think there's a lot of small, limited democracy republic governments in Africa?
	Is that your...
	Or that, say, South Africa got a lot freer when the blacks took over?
	I'm not saying that they have democratic governments.
	I mean, I don't know what to say.
	I'm not saying that they have democratic governments.
	It's just that they have smaller governments.
	Okay.
	Listen, I gotta move on to the next caller, because honestly, if I don't know whether you're trolling me or not, I don't know.
	How to continue the conversation.
	But it doesn't matter what the outcomes are fundamentally.
	It's the same thing I said to the last guy.
	It doesn't matter whether children are better or worse.
	What matters is that we don't initiate the use of force.
	And it doesn't matter whether it comes from the state or whether it comes from your open hand towards your child.
	Both are indications of the initiation of the use of force.
	And the state is the shadow cast by the raised fists or open hands of the parents.
	So if you use force against your children and that gives you authority, those children grow up to view Those who have the most forces, having the most authority in the world, and that is the state.
	So it doesn't matter fundamentally whether things adapt or don't adapt and so on.
	But I'll tell you why I was asking about your mom.
	And sorry, I won't be able to take a reply on this, but I'll tell you why I was asking about your mom.
	So I have a theory.
	I have a theory.
	And my theory goes something like this.
	If you have high-quality people around you, then you don't have any difficult explanations.
	To give to your children.
	And if you have people around you who go against your values in any kind of fundamental way, then you have a tough time explaining that to your children.
	Now, if you don't have the integrity to live by your beliefs, in other words, if you keep people in your circle of love who are diametrically opposed to your values in some ways, that's perfectly fine.
	It just means you don't really want to live your values.
	You're kind of a hypocrite when it comes to your values.
	If you value reason and evidence and you really love having people in your life who scorn, attack and denigrate or undermine your capacity for reason and evidence or somehow dead set against it and so cowardly that you don't even bring it up anymore as you say you don't talk about it with your Ma and Manuel even though she's praying for you.
	So if you don't want to live by your values and you're kind of a hypocrite, which is the technical definition, right?
	You have values and you accept the opposite in your life.
	That's fine, obviously.
	I mean, everyone can do what they want.
	But if you are living as a fundamental ethical or epistemological hypocrite, then you're going to have a tough time explaining that to your kids.
	And I think that the people who are living more hypocritically generally are the ones who need to are drawn to use force against their children the most because the growing curiosity and empiricism of children is going to paint some pretty uncomfortable pictures, right?
	So the typical example is the mom who hits her son saying don't hit.
	Well, that's hypocritical, right?
	And so those who are living lives of hypocrisy Tend to be those who are first to reach for the fist when it comes to interpersonal conflicts where they can get away with it, right?
	They don't generally tend to do it with big burly bartenders, but they'll do it with a four-year-old kid because they can hit and get away with it.
	So all of the frustration and self-hate that comes from having values and then allowing the opposite out of cowardice The opposite manifestation of those values in your circle of love, that self-hatred, that self-contempt, that hypocrisy generally is acted out in aggressive ways against children who are going to look at you and say, what the hell?
	What the hell are you doing?
	You say you value reason and evidence, and here you are with this crazy religious person in your life who's going to pray for you, and you don't even speak up for yourself.
	You don't even say anything.
	You don't stand up for yourself.
	You don't stand up for what you believe in.
	So why the hell would I have any respect for you as my mentor, as my teacher, when I continually watch you be a coward with your values, with those other people around you?
	Why would I take your authority when you don't even have any authority with yourself?
	When you claim to have these values, you don't actually have these values, you just have them for show, you just have them like a brooch, you have them like an ornament, and then you allow people who thoroughly and in an embodied way oppose your values around in your life and you claim to love them, even though...
	It's impossible to logically love the opposite of what you treasure.
	It is impossible to logically love the opposite of what you treasure.
	And you say to me, this is what you treasure.
	Science, reason, evidence, thought, integrity, courage.
	And then you're around these crazy religious people and you don't even speak up and you let them wash all over you.
	Like a wave, a tsunami on a sandcastle, you let them wash all over you.
	And you don't fight back and you don't say anything and you just sit there with a sick grin on your face, taking these waves of crazy and not standing up for yourself at all.
	So why the hell would I have any authority for you?
	Why would I have any respect for you?
	Why would I recognize any authority if this is how you treat yourself and this is how you treat your values?
	And how can you say that you love me if you also love somebody who embodies the opposite of your values?
	Now, if that is your relationship with your child, then deep down, if you're a hypocrite, that is going to be your relationship with your child, I believe.
	Then what's going to happen is you're going to run out of authority and credibility with your child very, very, very quickly.
	And then you still have to exercise some, quote, dominion over your child.
	And if you can't do it because they respect and treasure your opinion because you act in a forthright, courageous way with integrity, what are you going to do?
	Well, you've got to pull out the fist.
	You cannot...
	Be the sun of integrity that their natural plants are going to grow towards, so you've got to go in with the weed whacker.
	You cannot have them respect you because you're not acting in a way that allows you to even respect yourself.
	And so, like all cowards who cannot generate self-respect, all you can do is generate fear.
	And that's what you do.
	And that's why you want to be hit.
	To be hitting your kids.
	And that's why you want.
	You think everyone else should be doing it too.
	Because maybe you think everyone allows for the opposite of their values to be embodied in their inner circle of love.
	But that's not true.
	Not everyone does that.
	I do not need to raise my voice with my daughter.
	I do not need to hit her.
	I have never put her in a timeout.
	I don't do any of that stuff because I act with integrity in my life and so I have authority with her.
	Because she sees me act with integrity.
	But if you have, in your inner circle of love, those who are the opposite of what you claim to value, you will be revealed as a hypocrite to your child.
	You will be revealed as somebody who has no authority and therefore you're going to need to reach for something else to get them to do what you want to do.
	It's either going to be bribery or it's going to be punishments, physical punishments, fear punishments, and most likely a combination of both.
	So that's why I was asking About your family and that's how I absolutely knew but given that you were drawn towards spanking I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt before coming into the conversation and it was only confirmed in the conversation that you had people you claim to love who had the opposite values that you claim to respect and that is why you like the hitting.
	So thanks very much for your call.
	I appreciate it.
	It's very illuminating.
	Let's move on to the next.
	Alright, up next is Brandon.
	Brandon wrote in and said, Am I deluded for believing there is another sedient entity more powerful than humans?
	In the same way that lab mice are oblivious to their captivity and experimentation, is it reasonable to consider a similar environment might have been constructed for humans?
	The infinitesimally small intelligence of mice relative to human IQ prevents mice from conceptualizing their captivity.
	Oh, I don't know.
	Infantismally small brains of mice.
	Have you seen YouTube comments lately?
	Or at any time?
	No, I'm just kidding.
	All right.
	No, it's a good question.
	So the idea is there's some giant consciousness out there that has the same relationship to us that we have to mice.
	Is that right?
	Right, right.
	There's a little bit more to the question, just to kind of expand.
	I don't know if Mike wanted to...
	I'll just finish it off real quick.
	In the same way, humans would be unable to conceptualize their captivity in an environment constructed by a high intelligence that dwarfs their own.
	Furthermore, since morality is a product of our capacity for reason, it would follow that a more intelligent entity might possess a higher, if not abstractly different, level of morality.
	That's from Brandon.
	Hey, Brendan.
	Hey, I just wanted to say it's an honor to be on your show.
	Since we last talked, I went through and I listened to all of the free audiobooks you provided on your site, and those are wonderful.
	And I've derived so much knowledge and wisdom from your work, and I just want to say I really appreciate that.
	And to have this position of talking to you on the show is a real honor.
	Well, thank you.
	you.
	And if like Brandon, you find great value in what he jokingly calls free, please go to freedomainradio.com slash donate to help us out.
	But go ahead.
	So do you want to explain more about the question?
	Do you want me to pepper you?
	Do you want me to rant?
	What's your pleasure?
	So it's just kind of like a question I've been thinking about recently.
	As I study into like artificial intelligence and the developments of like modern technologies, that this thought kind of crosses my mind several times that being an atheist, I find that my reason and like logic kind of pushes me in the direction that if some other intelligent I find that my reason and like logic kind of pushes me in the direction that if some other intelligent entity were to evolve beyond humans, you know, kind of like in the question, like in the same way that we have control over
	such as mice, and we manipulate their environment in experiments, etc., it would stand to reason, at least to me, that an entity that had evolved more intelligence than humans would possess the same sort of capacity to manipulate human environments, and we would be like mice in that way.
	You mean like buying voters with welfare?
	Right, right.
	Is that what you mean?
	I think I'm more pointing in the realm of like, if there was an alien race that developed on like another planet or something, and if it were to develop in the same sort of way that our species on Earth have developed, or even just intelligence in general, if it amassed some like artificial intelligent entity, that it would have sort of control over our reality.
	Yeah.
	And we wouldn't know it.
	We would be the fish who can't see the fishbowl.
	But why would they want to do that?
	I don't know exactly why they would want to.
	I think we could point to the question and say, well, why do humans do experimentations on mice and such?
	Or lower species?
	Why do humans have zoos?
	And I think it could be answered like enjoyment or research or whatever.
	And I think that same sort of answer could be applied to the motivations of a higher intellect.
	Well, no, because human beings can enter into contracts, right?
	We don't have zoos for those who can enter into contracts, right?
	And human beings would be able to enter.
	We are moral agents, and we're able to enter into contracts.
	And so I don't know that there would be much value in putting human beings in zoos, right?
	And I've said this before, but the only way space aliens are going to come is if they're free market, right?
	It has been 47 years.
	Since we landed on the moon, right?
	How many of us have gone into space?
	You know, 47 years after the Wright Brothers, there were already jet engines or close to it, right?
	Actually, no, there were jet engines, the ME-262 in the Second World War.
	And so what was that?
	That was less than, yeah, that was less than 50 years.
	So less than 50 years in the free market of airplanes took us from the Wright Brothers to jet engines.
	And Amelia Earhart was halfway through that, and you could go around the whole world, I think, if you got some in-flight refueling.
	So 47 years of the free market doing airplanes got us jet engines.
	Now, 47 years of the government running the space program, you know what?
	A couple of hundred people have gone to space, and you can't get a seat on a spaceship for love or money.
	And so there's simply no way that we're ever going to get into space In any way that makes any sense or is even reproducible or profitable as long as the government is running all this kind of crap, right?
	So the only way that you're going to end up with aliens visiting us is if they come in a mall.
	It's going to be, you know, that's what it's going to be.
	This giant spaceship is going to come down and everyone's going to be terrified.
	Like, oh no, it's Arthur C. Clarke devil time.
	They're going to take us over.
	They're going to turn us into batteries.
	They're going to eat us.
	You know, this is what people think, right?
	Right.
	And, oh my god, what's going to happen?
	There's going to be this big bay door that opens, there's going to be a little fountain, there's going to be some stunted little trees in the middle, there's going to be elevator music, and there's going to be a bunch of squid tentacle vendors offering us jetpacks.
	That's the only...
	Space aliens are going to show up as eBay.
	That's how they're going to...
	They're going to be like the SkyMall of infinity.
	Like that magazine, I think it's gone defunct now, right?
	That used to be on planes that you could buy like really weird shit to put in your garden.
	It's a zombie.
	Not really.
	I can't imagine why they went out of business.
	Anyway.
	So, number one, it's going to be a mall now.
	Number two, they're going to take Bitcoin.
	The only Bitcoin.
	Bitcoin is the way to go, yeah.
	Yeah, so, I mean, so they're not going to come and put us, they're not going to experiment on us and they're not going to, Because we're going to have stuff that they want, too, I would assume, right?
	Not just our gizzards, which they'd like to fry out.
	So we've always had this idea that all these space aliens that are going to come and take us over.
	But the reality is the space aliens are just a metaphor or our unconscious analogy for space.
	Governments, right?
	Just like killer robots are.
	Oh, look, it's a machinery that we created to serve us and now it rules us.
	I'm sure I'm not talking about the state.
	Yeah, that's right.
	It's the Terminators seeking a retroactive abortion.
	Yeah, okay.
	Got it.
	So, aliens are going to come because they want to trade.
	Aliens are going to come because they want to study.
	Aliens are going to come because they want to learn.
	Because they're curious.
	And because they're free.
	You know, I don't think there's ever been, and of course there wouldn't be, although it would be a great movie.
	Space Aliens, and I did this Space Aliens from Luxembourg years ago.
	It's a short story which is on the internet, which you should check out.
	But if Space Aliens came...
	They wouldn't blow up the White House.
	Hi, government.
	They wouldn't blow up the White House because they wanted to take over.
	They'd blow up the White House because they'd want us to be free.
	Oh, look, there's a smoking crater where the Federal Reserve used to be.
	Freedom!
	Right?
	And so...
	We have nothing to fear from space aliens, because telling you, if the governments are running their space program, they're barely ever going to get off planet.
	And if the governments aren't running their space programs, it's because they've got an anarcho-capitalist society and they're going to come and help us out in some very foundational ways.
	Come help us!
	So I don't think that there's any...
	I have nothing to fear from superior intelligence, whether human or alien.
	And certainly with the alien stuff, the barrier to getting into space is the free market.
	And if they haven't figured that out, we're never going to get a visit.
	So yeah, of course, I have no doubt that there are sentient entities out there far more powerful than human beings.
	The idea that we're the only life form is inconceivable.
	I mean, and...
	So, you know, and even if they've had 1,000 or 2,000 years on us, which in the universe is billions of years, is barely an eyelash on an ocean, we're not going to have a huge amount in common, right?
	If you go and visit a planet and they're 2,000 years back, I mean, you can help them out, but you're not going to have a lot in common with them, and I'm sure it would be the same if they're 1,000 or 2,000 years.
	I mean, even if you think, go back 300 years...
	So, you know, this idea that there's a federation, I've always sort of found this kind of funny, that in these space movies, there are always these civilizations, and for reasons of battle excitement, they're always kind of closely matched.
	They always have very similar technology, and that's never going to happen.
	We're never, ever going to meet another race out there that's even remotely close to our own level of development, because it's such a tiny, tiny...
	Thin, thin little line.
	It's a tiny crack in the giant wall of time.
	And if you're on one side or the other, I mean, you've got very little in common with each other.
	So that's another thing that's sort of important to remember.
	But yeah, I have no doubt that there are really cool intelligences out there.
	I just don't think that we have anything to fear from them.
	Well, especially given your background in computer programming and the like, Would you support the claim that military research likely has technology that, I don't know what number of years, but is vastly more advanced than what you could access as a consumer?
	That some black box, military-funded research facility potentially could be, let's say, developing an artificial intelligence.
	And given that there's a lot of well-renowned scientists that have been predicting that we will have fully sentient AI by the year 2030, I think it's kind of probabilistic that if indeed these government facilities have been funding black box research, whether it's China, Russia, or the United States, into developing an AI and weaponizing an AI, then it would, at least to me, make sense that maybe this AI would be far more advanced than we could even conceive of.
	And by that nature, this I think would be the real sort of intellect that would dwarf humans.
	I'm not particularly concerned about aliens, but I definitely see the possibility of an AI already existing somewhere on Earth and having the power that we can't even fathom.
	What power?
	The power of having a capacity for intelligence that humans can't match.
	No, no, I get that.
	It's super smart, but what's its power?
	Well, it would be able to basically anticipate any human move.
	It would have the power of accessing all of human knowledge on the internet.
	It would have the power of being involved in the financial systems as you've got Hedge fund managers trying to develop AI trading algorithms.
	We depend on AIs in order to live.
	Our phones are essentially really modest versions of AI. Our computers are technology.
	No, no, no.
	Oh, man.
	Siri.
	What about a phone is AI? So, like, Siri, Apple Siri, or Cortana, Google's version, those are artificial narrow intelligence.
	You can ask it a question, it can respond with a very...
	It's a sort of AI, I think.
	No, it's not AI. I'm sorry, it's not.
	I mean, I'm no expert on this, and people want to call me an idiot.
	But I do know something about computers, and I was a programmer for many, many, many years.
	They're not AI. It's input-output.
	That's all it is.
	Okay.
	I mean, it's complex input-output, but all of this is just taking information Right.
	Right.
	When it's starting when it starts to ask you questions, then think about it.
	But, you know, the Turing test, right, which is you're you're you don't know whether you're chatting with a machine or not.
	Right.
	There's no way the Siri is nowhere close to that.
	I mean, it's a fun thing to play with, I guess.
	I've never tried it.
	But it's it's nothing that is close to any like any human human being.
	Like I would I'm not having these conversations on this show and wondering whether I'm talking to Siri or a human being, if that makes sense.
	Right, yeah, of course.
	I brought this up as an example to illustrate the sort of power that an AI would have, because maybe we're not dependent on AI today, because those might not qualify as AI, but certainly an AI would have a power to influence these technologies, and with that regard, it would have significant power over humans.
	Well, look, the AI, I don't know the degree to which it would be, I mean, as a hobby, it would be interesting to try and program human intelligence.
	I don't think anyone's anywhere close.
	A computer is nothing like a human mind.
	A computer, like fundamentally, it's a square box.
	And a round hole, right?
	I mean, it's different dimensions.
	A human mind is not just a really fast computer.
	You know, like there's this old joke about, I've got a computer so fast it can complete an infinite loop in three and a half seconds.
	I mean, it's not anywhere close.
	A human mind is an intensely creative, multi-part system, layers and layers of, you know, the old lizard brain, what I call the post-monkey, buggy-as-hell beta expansion pack called humanity.
	I mean, it's evolution, it's randomized through, to some degree, it's randomized through mutations and through gene mixing from your parents and all that.
	It's got the unconscious, which can, in certain tasks, be thousands of times faster than the conscious mind.
	It's got dreams that inform you.
	It's got instincts.
	It's got the second brain in the gut Which has a huge number of nerve endings and does actually function as, you know, I've got a gut sense, I've got a gut feeling, I've got a bad feeling.
	That is your brain in your belly, which is also very perceptive and very powerful.
	So the idea that a calculator of infinite speed can somehow replace hundreds of thousands of years, if not, of course, billions in total of evolution is...
	Not.
	It's not the same thing.
	And I think that there'll be ways to emulate it.
	Of course.
	I mean, you can emulate what a human being does with complex enough programming, which is kind of, I guess, where you're coming through with the Siri thing.
	But it's still absolutely nothing like a human being.
	How do you...
	Let me just...
	I mean, people who say we're going to get AI, my question is, dreams are something that is very important for learning.
	And we know that because when people don't dream, they don't learn very well.
	And so, if you're a programmer, how do you choose which simulation to run at night when your robot is sleeping?
	How do you choose which analogies, which metaphors?
	And, you know, I've done a bunch of dream analyses on this show, which people can listen to as well, which are really powerful and really cool.
	And how are you going to choose which dreams your robot?
	You know, that old thing, do androids dream of electric sheep?
	It's a very sort of fundamental question.
	So I don't know that there's a huge amount of free market value in creating intelligence that mimics human beings, because you can just screw, wait nine months and get one for free.
	So I don't know that it's, you know, it's hugely great to do it.
	So...
	If you're saying the military is going to do it, I mean, the most complex, gruesome, hard-to-imagine project would be trying to use a super-fast calculating scenario to mimic a human brain.
	Let's talk about the military and its efficiency, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program.
	It's too complex.
	It's too reliant on high-tech sensors and software.
	And at $400 billion for development and procurement, far too costly.
	It's already years behind schedule and billions and billions of over budget.
	The lifetime program cost for the plane is expected to surpass $1 trillion.
	Actually, they've estimated that it's going to be 1.5 now.
	It's gone up!
	Just, you know, because that's a rounding error, right?
	Half a trillion dollars.
	The study by the National Security Network states the jet, the most expensive weapon system in U.S. history, will not only be outmaneuvered and outgunned by Russian and Chinese aircraft, but will also be limited in range, and its stealth capabilities will be easily overcome.
	Actually, it's really cool.
	They can actually find these airplanes over water just by saying, Marco!
	And then the plane replies, Polo!
	Fire!
	The F-35, which comes with an estimated $1.5 trillion price tag over the life of the program, has faced numerous hurdles and delays.
	Most recently, there have been concerns over its computer system's vulnerability.
	And Chinese hackers have possibly stolen classified data related to the project because they couldn't find it on Hillary Clinton's server.
	The F-35's construction has continued and it is being manufactured across multiple states and different countries.
	For better or worse, it's going to be the U.S. and Allies' main warplane for decades to come.
	Despite the setbacks, the F-35 program is continuing and the Navy, Marines and Air Force are all busy testing their version of the aircraft.
	But just because the military is sticking to the F-35 doesn't mean it isn't acutely aware of the plane's myriad problems.
	During the live flight testing in 2014, the Department of Defense's Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation compiled A report on the progress and failures of the F-35 program.
	Here are some of the key problems that the Pentagon identified.
	So, it's been a dozen years, about a trillion dollars of taxpayers' dollars, and they have software delays, F-35B fuel tank redesign, lightning protection, because, you know, apparently when you fly a plane, there can be lightning.
	Flight control problems.
	Actually, I'm sure they can just patch those.
	I mean, it's just a plane.
	What do you need flight control for?
	Helmet display issues.
	Can you see?
	The automatic logistics information system, ALICE. So, you know, I'm not going to put a lot of money on the military coming up with artificial intelligence anytime soon if they're having trouble with an airplane.
	I mean, yeah, that's fair.
	You know, that's kind of why I started my question with, like, am I deluded for believing?
	And that's kind of how I frame it.
	Why does it matter?
	Well, because I want to...
	Why do you care?
	Because, I mean, I strongly believe that...
	I mean, I think that AI already exists, and I think the military has developed.
	Where?
	Oh, you think the military has it somewhere?
	Maybe if it's not the US. Maybe if it's China.
	Because I think the AI is comparable to the Manhattan Project.
	The capacity to use a nuclear bomb was devastating for warfare.
	And I think that we're kind of on the track for World War III sometime.
	What does it do?
	What does it do?
	It would be able to hack and manipulate every computer.
	I don't know all of its capacities, but an AI would be able to Okay, so much of our information comes from mainstream media, and we see today in mainstream media how there's kind of this brainwashing going on from the politicians, right?
	So, in my mind, it would make sense if you had an AI and you programmed it to gain control of your citizens through non-violent means, it could, like a chess player, figure out 200 moves in advance to figure out exactly What information to display to its population inadvertently that they would be programmed into doing whatever you chose that you wanted them to do.
	Hang on, hang on, hang on.
	Are you saying that's somehow functioning sub-optimally at the moment?
	I mean, isn't the population pretty much staring at the stage going, saying, ooh, pretty fireworks going off of my gonads.
	This can't be a problem.
	Bye-bye, children.
	Ooh, this is nice.
	Is there something cool on TV? Hey, where are my pants?
	Right?
	Isn't the population already kind of stunned and sheep-like?
	No, I agree with you.
	I brought that up as an example to illustrate one area that it could be used to further subjugate citizens.
	And I think that would, to the detriment of humanity, be one case where it would...
	Okay, but hang on.
	Okay, so I mean, just from a...
	From a human livestock management perspective, let me just ask you this, right?
	So you're some guy in charge of the state, right?
	And it's already working pretty well, right?
	I mean, you've already got government schools, you've got the media, you've got academia, you've got propaganda coming out of a report, you have the whole political process, and you've got people doing exactly what you want them to do, for the most part, right?
	I mean, they might fight over who's in charge, but they never fight about whether somebody should be in charge, right?
	Right.
	I mean, you could even hear this from the first caller, who was, you know, an anarchist, he said, but it's like, yes, but how are we going to organize society?
	It's like, it's hard to let go of this stuff, right?
	Right.
	And so, you already have a system that's working very well.
	Would you really want to turn that over to a computer?
	You know, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
	And the computer might screw something up.
	Because you wouldn't be able to experiment on your whole population until you actually threw the switch, right?
	Right.
	So, I think it would be pretty ambitious.
	Like, the government has been growing insanely.
	Insanely!
	You know, like, it took until George W. Bush...
	In 2008, to go from $0 to $10 trillion in debt.
	You know, he started with $5 trillion, he ended up with $10 trillion in debt.
	Obama went from $10 trillion to $20 trillion in debt.
	So it took eight years to go from the birth of the Republic.
	In 2008, it took another seven or eight years to get.
	Like, the government is growing so fast and with so little foundational opposition.
	That I don't know that you'd need a big AI program to make the people obedient.
	I mean, you already got it.
	It's called government schools and the media and academia.
	It would be a waste to...
	And it would be risky because, you know, what if it got wrong?
	And what if you had some way of programming the population that could itself be hacked and unprogrammed?
	It would just be too risky.
	Why would you bother?
	You've already got something that works.
	Right.
	That makes sense.
	I mean...
	From a speculative perspective, I would say maybe someone would believe that they could control it and have it not go wrong or use it against their enemy, like America using it against China or something, and try to control their population.
	I mean, if the government wants to continue to grow and it's got control over its citizens, it may want to try to get control of The American government already has control over the citizens of China because it can't pay its debts.
	It's already stripped.
	The Chinese government have bought all these U.S. bonds, propping up the U.S. bond market.
	They can't pay this stuff back.
	It's either going to be a hard or a soft default.
	So they're already extracting all the value from the Chinese, right?
	The government has taken real Chinese money and handed it over to the Fed in return for the Americans buying stuff from the Chinese people.
	I mean, they already have control over these other populations.
	So I just don't see...
	The government can't do it because it's too complicated a task.
	The governments can't fill potholes, for God's sakes.
	What on earth can they do?
	With one exception, that the...
	You know, if they immediately steal people from the private sector, there's a kind of work ethic and a momentum that goes on there.
	But for the most parts, government are becoming less competent rather than more competent.
	And so I wouldn't worry about governments getting some...
	Super matrix brain scanning AI. They're not that motivated, because they're already getting everything they want.
	Why would they need to invent some other way of getting it?
	One other motivation that just popped into my head was a lot of the technology that military has developed, or any area for that matter, like military or private, I just want to make a blanket industry there.
	That technology emerged because of an increase in intelligence.
	As we train smarter STEM people and as people pursue, we get physics developments and we get an understanding of flight and space travel.
	All these different elements are a result of higher intelligence.
	So if you created a machine that improved itself recursively so that it became more and more and more intelligent, you could potentially utilize that machine to help you figure out new technologies to develop.
	So, I mean, there's definitely more motivations to this beyond citizen control or anything with that regard.
	But medical – You mean sort of predicting the future?
	Maybe not so much predicting the future, but like medical regards.
	There's a lot of – it's maybe not AI, but it's in the direction towards AI in the medical field of identifying cancer in patients where you have a doctor because humans are prone to error to – To scan and try to look for a cancer may miss it, but if you have a computer which is more efficient and doesn't get tired, it doesn't miss detail, would be, you know, have a higher precision at diagnosing certain...
	Yeah, but that's not AI. I mean, if computer diagnostics are AI, then my GPS is Magellan, you know?
	That's not AI. That's cool stuff that it can do.
	But that's like saying a dog can smell cancer, therefore it's an oncologist.
	That's fair.
	And that's why I said maybe it's not AI, but it's definitely on track to that.
	It's more sophisticated than a calculator, but it's less sophisticated than, you know, an AI. But the point I want to make is that...
	It's not more sophisticated than a calculator.
	It's still the binary gates, the on-off switches that go on in the depths of computers, exactly the same.
	They're just faster and there's more of them, but it's exactly the same.
	A multiplicity of grass does not make a human being, right?
	Human beings are not little binary switches that go on and off the way the computers do, that are perfect static state and so on, right?
	And so when you take something that's not even close to a human brain and then you...
	doesn't become a human brain.
	Do you know what I mean?
	Like if you put a whole bunch of diamonds together, you don't suddenly get a forest.
	You know, you just get a lot of diamonds, right?
	So you get a lot of binary switches.
	But imagine being a sketch artist with a canvas and somebody's trying to play a video game.
	And there's no graphics card.
	You're just erasing and redrawing.
	I'm turning left.
	Okay, hang on.
	Let me erase.
	Let me redraw.
	I'm turning left again.
	Fire.
	Kaboom.
	Okay.
	Here goes the bullet, right?
	I mean, you get that it would take you like all day to play like a tenth of a second of a video game, right?
	It's not like, okay, but we just get more sketch artists, right?
	And suddenly we've got a perfectly 3D rendered Castle Wolfenstein recreation, right?
	And so it's not the case that it's like AI. Like the moment that the lead characters in an animated movie start demanding unionization and a green room, I don't mean the actors, I mean the actual physically represented characters, it's not AI. Yeah.
	And so it's not like computers are better at remembering than human beings.
	Because for us, memory is creative.
	I don't know.
	When you get older, I swear to God, like I think back of things in my childhood, I'm pretty sure that they happened.
	Pretty damn sure that they happened.
	But it could also be something that I saw in a movie that I thought about a lot.
	It could also be a story I was told, and I wasn't even there.
	But it was told to me so many times, and maybe I dreamt about it five times, and now it's 40 years later, or 45 years later.
	And I'm like, yeah, I'm pretty sure.
	I mean, there's a few things I know for sure happened, and it's quite a lot of things, actually, a pretty good memory about my childhood.
	But I can't...
	Our memory is a movie.
	Our memory is a...
	An embellished fictional selective account.
	It's a documentary and documentaries always come with bias and they select and they, I'm just doing this making the murderer, making a murderer thing, right?
	So I'm sort of really down with this kind of stuff, right?
	And so you can't even get a sketch artist to have you play Pong, right?
	Let alone, you know, virtual reality or something like that.
	So saying that computers are like artificial intelligence is like saying that porn is a great way I'm not an expert on this, so I'm not really in a position to disagree with any credibility.
	I don't know.
	Can I tell you something, though, man?
	Sure.
	You liked me up until this point, which is fine.
	It's not my job to stay liked.
	You like stuff that you can't get in trouble for in philosophy.
	And I get this a lot with callers, right?
	Because they call in with stuff.
	It's fun to talk about.
	It's sort of interesting.
	But you're not going to get into any trouble.
	And I don't mean with the state or anything or the police.
	With other people with this topic, right?
	Like if you bring up something like spanking or the non-aggression principle or the law is an opinion with a gun or the against me argument that I've talked about all the way back to my first big speech in New Hampshire and so on.
	If you bring up stuff that is really controversial...
	That is really challenging for people and which people can actually have an effect on.
	That's tougher emotionally than, ooh, I wonder what could happen with AI in the future.
	You know what I mean?
	And again, I'm not saying you have to do that all the time.
	What I'm saying is that you have to be careful, I think, and just be aware of it.
	Like, if you're going to say, I'm going to get into philosophy and all these opinions for myself, all these beliefs for myself, I'm going to stand in the non-aggression principle, UPB, the gun in the room, the coma test, the non-aggression I'm going to know all of that stuff, and I'm consciously not going to bring it up with everyone around me.
	That's fine.
	You know, all is permitted with self-knowledge, but my concern a little bit, and I'm just running over this to double-check myself, I'm not saying this is true, but my concern might be a little bit like this, that you're going to stuff that is kind of cool and interesting, doesn't really have much to do with anything.
	You can't do much to change it, you can't do much to affect it, and it doesn't have anything to do with anyone's lives.
	And even if it is at some point in the future, there's nothing we can do about it anyway.
	So I'm concerned that you're kind of wandering off actionable, challenging stuff in philosophy and just getting into cool, spliff-based what-if scenarios.
	I see where you're coming from, and I really appreciate that.
	In terms of bringing it back into philosophy, if in fact AI does exist now or it exists in the future, and if it is an AI that is similar to a human brain, then monkeys don't have philosophy.
	Humans have philosophy, and we have philosophy because our evolution, our brain, allowed us to do that, our prefrontal cortex.
	That gave us the capacity to develop philosophy.
	Higher, better than humans in terms of thinking, then maybe it might develop some sort of...
	It might help us reconcile some issues in philosophy and the divergence between Kantian ethics and...
	There's a spectrum of...
	No, no it won't.
	No, and this has been dealt with by Douglas Adams in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
	There's this giant computer...
	That figures out the big problems in philosophy, and the philosophers all disagree with it, so nobody gets it.
	Look, we already have the answers to philosophy.
	They're already clear.
	I mean, they're not complicated, right?
	I mean, nobody has to go into Kantian ontological blah blah blah, right, in order to solve philosophy.
	All we have to do is live the philosophy we teach our two-year-olds.
	Don't hit.
	Don't hit, don't steal.
	Don't grab stuff that's not yours.
	Don't hit people, and when you're a little older, Keep your promises.
	That's all there is.
	That's property rights, non-initiation of force, and contract law.
	That's all it is.
	Don't hit, don't steal, and keep your word.
	That's all there is.
	So philosophy is ridiculously not complicated.
	Now, proving it all, okay, that's a little different, but in terms of us actually accepting it, You know, if we expect a two- or three-year-old to accept it, it can't be that hard for a 40- or 50-year-old to accept it, right?
	It's just the consistency is the challenge.
	And we bully and dominate our children because we have power over them, not because we believe in the values.
	If we believed in the values, we'd live the values of non-aggression, property rights, and keeping our word, and we'd have a stateless society, and we'd have peaceful parenting if we actually lived our values rather than use values as a club by which the powerful browbeat and subjugate the less powerful.
	So, I don't think we need some giant computer to tell us not to use violence and to respect property and to keep our word.
	I mean, everybody accepts that already at Hussein, right?
	I mean, so I don't think a computer is going to make people believe something that their own conscience is already telling them and which they're already inflicting on those they have power over.
	No, that's one of the things I really appreciate about your show is that you deal with really, you know, they're abstract, but it really comes down to like practical applications of philosophy and of ethics and how we should basically be living our lives.
	I think that's definitely one of the roots of philosophy is figuring out how we should be, you know, living our lives and pursuing a happy end.
	And, you know, I really respect you and your show for that.
	It's wonderful.
	But this sort of thing, I dabble in studying artificial intelligence because I do think it's going to have a A massive impact on our lives and in terms of practicality, I think there's going to be a divergence between humans, humans who basically reject the notion of an AI ruling them and humans who accept that in the same way that we as humans rule less intelligent species and AI, which is more intelligent than humans, will ultimately, I think, rule over humanity.
	And with that regard, I think that's how it would be sort of a practical application of the discussion of AI. Wait, the practical application is that Advanced, like a super advanced intelligence, which we can't possibly resist, is going to rule over us at some point in the future?
	You think that's an actionable thing to focus on?
	I think it's actionable in the sense of discussing with people and reconciling this idea that I think that there is a very high potential of this happening and kind of...
	Well, you think there's a high potential of a super intelligence turning us into a human zoo?
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	Okay, give me a time frame, give me a probability.
	I'm just, you know, let's put it out there.
	I mean, I would say 10 to 15 years from now.
	10 to 15 years?
	Yeah.
	Holy shit.
	So 10 to 15 years, a superintelligence manufactured by the army, which kind of seemed to buy a hammer for less than $500, is going to take us over?
	Is that your theory?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, if it hasn't already.
	If it doesn't, if it hasn't already.
	You're not, like, are you kidding with me?
	I'm not kidding.
	I swear, I'm not kidding with you.
	I mean, that's, you know, my reason for this- Oh my god!
	Dude!
	Take this belief out back and put a fucking bullet through its head!
	Holy shit!
	What the hell is going on with your life?
	Where's your motivation?
	Where's your planning?
	What you're going to get in life if you're like 10 to 15 years from being a rat in a cage?
	What the hell have you got to plan for?
	What have you got to look forward to?
	I mean, that's definitely something I struggle with in my life in finding motivation.
	Don't struggle with it!
	No, I don't struggle with it because I... Calculators are not going to take you over.
	This is not a Transformers movie.
	It's not going to happen.
	Take that belief out back and park a truck on its head until it squirts like a watermelon dropped from the top of the David Letterman building.
	Take that fantasy out.
	Holy shit of the things to worry about in this life.
	An excess of military intelligence is not one of them.
	Too many brains coming out of the state.
	Too much super advanced technology coming out of government programs.
	No.
	No.
	They can't build a plane that doesn't crash at the moment.
	I think we're okay.
	They can't stabilize Iraq.
	They can't ever come in under budget.
	Yeah, I mean, it's, and you said don't struggle, and I accept that I shouldn't be struggling with this.
	So that's why I kind of framed the question.
	No, struggle with it.
	But don't struggle with it like it's something that's going to happen.
	Struggle with it like somebody with OCD struggles not to wash their hands.
	This is a life-destroying thought.
	It is the enemy of everything that you can achieve that is good and glorious and noble and heroic in your life.
	Because if you genuinely believe you're living in these end times, your spine is deflating like a cat playing with a helium balloon.
	Gone.
	We need you up here.
	We need you out here on the barricades helping us fight the bad guys.
	We don't need you not wanting to get out of bed because your toaster is going to rule your day.
	I mean, I'm definitely still motivated to talking to people openly in regards to the ethics that I believe in, that I follow you and watch every one of your videos, and I firmly agree with everything that you have to say.
	This belief has an effect on your life, seriously.
	If it doesn't have an effect on your life, then let's stop having this conversation because it doesn't matter.
	If it does matter, then it's going to have an effect on your life.
	I think the effect it's having is that I'm pursuing information technologies and learning about it.
	I can't logically see any way that an AI in the future won't have an impact on our lives.
	You don't even know computers that well.
	I feel like I understand a little bit to at least have some reason to believe that an AI, if it doesn't already exist, it will exist.
	I mean, I follow a lot of people and do a lot of research on this thing, and, you know, there's a lot of really smart people in me saying that I was going to exist.
	I'm going to go out on a limb here, do you mind?
	Big, big, creaky limb.
	I mean, I've been working with computers for almost 40 years now, okay?
	A lot of people in the world say a lot of stupid shit, my friend.
	And a lot of them have PhDs and they're still batshit crazy.
	And a lot of them are successful entrepreneurs and they're still batshit crazy.
	There are a lot of people who are emotionally disturbed, who are out there, who enjoy the sadism of fear-mongering, who get well-paid by people who have certain fears for enhancing those fears.
	They used to be called priests.
	Now they're called tech gurus.
	Right?
	So a lot of people out there saying a lot of stupid shit in this world.
	And the idea that we're Imminently close to some kind of artificial intelligence.
	Human beings don't even know how our brain works.
	How the hell are we supposed to reproduce it in an overgrown calculator?
	A lot of people out there will say a lot of stupid shit.
	And a lot of people out there will love to get your attention by scaring the living crap out of you.
	I'm aware.
	I've put out some videos that can be kind of scary for people, but I'm trying to give people actionable information based on empirical trends.
	Now, the idea that we can somehow recreate an intelligence that we don't have any idea how it works.
	So you go to any brain researcher, they will say, we have no idea how the brain works.
	We have no idea how the brain works.
	They barely even know what you can break in the brain and still have things work.
	They've had people who've had iron spikes go through their head and their brain has just shifted functioning to somewhere else.
	Neuroplasticity, the fact that the brain can reform itself, the fact that the brain can shift processing, the fact that if you lose one sense, other senses get sharpened, all of this sort of stuff.
	Nobody has any clue how the brain works.
	And so we know how the body works, so I believe that you're going to get robots that can walk, and there are robots that can climb stairs, and there are robots that can balance trays of bubbly.
	So we know how the arm works, so we can reproduce that in robot form.
	But in order to be able to recreate human intelligence in computer form, we'd have to have some freaking clue how human intelligence works.
	And we don't.
	Nobody knows.
	And anyone who claims that artificial intelligence is imminent must know that human intelligence is being recreated in computer form, which means not only that it can be, but they also know exactly how human intelligence works as well.
	And there's nobody alive who can say they know, to any degree of specificity or reproducibility, how human intelligence works.
	So the idea that it's gonna somehow be replicated Something we have no clue how it works can be recreated in some completely incompatible format like a computer.
	Anybody who says that they have any idea of time frame, in my humble opinion, is talking so entirely out of their ass, I'm surprised their lips aren't brown.
	I mean, I could be wrong.
	It's just what I think.
	Like I said, I very well could be wrong.
	I just, given the research I've done, and I could be listening to the wrong people, but That's kind of the conclusion I've come to.
	And I don't...
	Listen, listen.
	I'm not scared of it.
	That's the thing.
	This is testable.
	This is testable.
	Can we have a computer that has the intelligence of a three-year-old human?
	Yes.
	No.
	There's...
	I mean, I really...
	I don't...
	Absolutely not.
	You can have a creative conversation with a three-year-old human being.
	I know.
	I'm a father.
	There's no computer out there that can simulate accurately a three-year-old's conversation.
	So, for instance, I could say to my daughter when she was three, tell me a story.
	She'll tell me a story that she comes up with on her own.
	She could make up songs.
	She can tell me what she dreamt of last night.
	She can make up jokes.
	She can create associations on her own spontaneously.
	Like we have this game at the moment where...
	If you can think of a word that sounds like another word, you win a point.
	And the more it sounds like another word, like homonyms, right?
	Like fair, right?
	A bus fair, a fair that you go to, like a park.
	Is it fair what's happening?
	Fair as in it's a nice weather, fair as in pretty.
	So she does these spontaneously on her own, and we have conversations about stuff.
	And she asks me questions about her relationships and about my relationships.
	Right?
	So...
	I've never even remotely heard of a computer that can accurately pass the Turing test for a three-year-old fucking child.
	So the idea we're going to get some super intelligence when they can't even get someone barely out of diapers on a computer?
	Come on.
	You've got to let it go.
	There's lots of things to be worried about in the world.
	Artificial intelligence is not one of them because it's not about to happen.
	Nobody can claim to program a computer to do what the human brain does because nobody knows what the hell the human brain does.
	You know, if you're a programmer, you need a spec sheet in order to program something.
	What's it supposed to do?
	There's no spec sheet!
	I mean, I guess you could say the spec sheet would be like deconstructing the human brain, but again, like if no one knows how the brain works, and I don't know, I certainly don't know how the brain works, so I can't make the position that other people do if I don't even know how.
	And if they're claiming to, they could be wrong.
	Okay, so you just posted something from technology from bbc.com, intelligent machines, AI had IQ of four-year-old child.
	Okay, so if you ask questions, then it can create responses.
	But that's not what I'm talking about.
	What I was talking about with my daughter when she was three was the spontaneous things that she was coming up with on her own.
	Right, so where can you find a penguin?
	Yes, you can program a computer to answer that.
	What is a house?
	Computer can answer that.
	A computer can create pattern, you can program it for pattern recognition, you can build in a whole bunch of stuff and so on.
	It cannot spontaneously generate and create things on its own.
	Everything that a computer does is deterministic.
	I mean, you can randomize some stuff or whatever, but it is fundamentally deterministic.
	I get that you can have particular tests that would be specific to can you provide specific output to specific input.
	That's what computers are good at.
	Right.
	But the idea that it's going to have a dream and spontaneously come up with things on its own and engage you in conversation, that's not how it's going to work.
	I understand.
	Listen, I'm absolutely sure of this.
	It doesn't mean I can prove it.
	I mean, I can't either.
	I think that's kind of where it falls in the realm of philosophy is because it's open for debate.
	That's particularly why I wanted to engage you in this topic is because I wanted to talk with someone with the intelligence of yourself who can help me deconstruct my thought process and where I might be wrong.
	And certainly you've helped me do so and to find a motivation beyond seeing this AI take over the world in like 15 years or so and focus more on the practical applications of philosophy more so than the abstract what-ifs.
	Yeah, there are very real risks that we are facing as a society.
	Incompatible cultures, social disintegration based upon incompatible ethnicities and cultures and fiat currency and so on.
	Those are the fact that children are being drugged a hell of a lot with these mind-altering substances and so on.
	Spanking, marital relations, personal virtues, integrity.
	There are so many challenges that are immediate in our life that I'm just...
	Focusing on this, to me, just seems incredibly self-indulgent.
	And it allows you to talk about stuff that isn't going to really annoy people that much.
	And right now, we need to be in the business of really annoying the shit out of people.
	Like right now is gadfly time.
	Right now is get in people's faces and use whatever means necessary to break the hypnosis of these cliff-walking sleepwalkers.
	They're hypnotized by the media.
	They're hypnotized by art.
	They're hypnotized by music.
	They're hypnotized by academia.
	They're just hypnotized.
	They are not thinking.
	They are automatons.
	Maybe they're tired.
	Maybe they're consuming, as a lot of people do, four hours of programming every night.
	TV is fundamentally programming.
	And whatever we can do to break this spell, to break up this hypnosis, The air horn of annoyance that philosophy has to become, that is what we need to do.
	And this is why the job left too late becomes more difficult.
	It's one thing to prevent something from falling over.
	It's another thing to hold it up while it's actually falling.
	The job left too late becomes onerous.
	If you don't get your teeth fixed long enough, for long enough you will lose them.
	If you don't exercise and eat poorly for too long, your health will be permanently compromised.
	You will get diabetes or something which you can't undo after a certain point.
	So the longer you leave a problem, the harder it is to solve.
	And this is something we used to talk about in the software field.
	If we don't have enough time to fix it in the planning stages, what the hell makes anyone think we'll have time to fix it in the execution stage?
	But it's much later.
	You cannot build the airplane wing when it's already leaving the runway.
	It's too late.
	And so right now, things have been left really, really, really, really late.
	And That means that waking up is harder for people.
	It's harder for people.
	You know, if there's a plane that's going to crash, and you know half an hour ahead of time, okay, you can get people prepared.
	However, if you have 45 seconds, it's different, right?
	Right.
	And so...
	We have to annoy the shit out of people to wake them up.
	Because there's no gentle waking with this imminent a set of problems and disastrous in our faces.
	You cannot wake a child gently if there's a rattlesnake coming into the tent.
	You cannot gently coax a child to move if they're in the path of an oncoming truck.
	It's late, and it's late because people have been numbed, made fearful, made resentful, made dependent.
	But it is really, really late in the game right now.
	It's later than I thought it was, and I thought it was pretty damn late, but the events of the last year or two have really accelerated how late it is.
	Waking people up, because now they have the sin and guilt of cowardice, which means that waking up People is waking them up to their own cowardice now.
	And they don't want to wake up.
	Literally, people will often choose death over waking up.
	You can see this with military matters and people will choose to be drafted rather than think for themselves.
	People will choose death over waking up for reasons I've gone into for sexual market value, reproductive reasons I've gone into before.
	And so it is really now that we must be in the time of waking the fateful sleepers with the air horns, with the airstrikes if necessary, the mental airstrikes.
	And so people wonder, like, I mean, I do this show and we keep making friends and breaking friends, naturally.
	Because people are attracted to something that they sympathize with or is in accordance with some prior belief, maybe even prejudice that they hold.
	And then we consistently push on with the principles and at some point it goes from a cuddle to high voltage through their skeletal system.
	A place which they thought was a safe harbor where they could reinforce their particular prejudices turns into a place of combative and electrifying integrity.
	There's no point bringing people into philosophy because of things that they like.
	That's like saying, I'm going to be a dietician and you can eat all the food you already love.
	The fact that my tongue loves it means that I don't need a dietician.
	I just need to follow my tongue.
	The whole point of philosophy is to put people's faces into the cheese crater of stuff they hate.
	I'm sorry.
	It's just the way that it is.
	It's just the way that it is.
	Philosophy is not there to make you feel better.
	Philosophy is not there to reinforce your prejudices.
	Philosophy is not there to cuddle up to your bigotries or mine or anyone's.
	Philosophy is there to annoy the living shit out of you by pointing out how inconsistently you live.
	Philosophy was described as a gadfly, but it's the kind of gadfly that can give you malaria, so to speak, right?
	It is not there to be gentle and to be calm.
	You know this idea that philosophy, while you're floating, you're a guru, you're at peace with the world, dust in the wind, man?
	That is not philosophy.
	Philosophy is an in-your-face, screeching, sergeant-major bully of integrity.
	And it has to be now, sadly, because the time for brushing teeth is gone now.
	We have to drill, baby, drill.
	You know, the time for prevention is past.
	Now there is only the radical cure of massive, sky-shattering integrity visible to everyone that makes people enthusiastic to try and reclaim their lives by turning away from their sleepwalk off the cliff.
	Because civilization is currently sleepwalking off a cliff.
	Momentum, political correctness, fear of racism, fear of sexism, fear of misogyny, fear of anything that might be worth defending in Western culture, we are sleepwalking off a cliff.
	And it's not even the fiery end of a volcano.
	It's just a sad, pitiful, little, subjugated future of shame-cowering nothingness, of paying tributes to those We used to rule.
	And so, now is not the time for niceties.
	Doesn't mean you've got to spend your whole life screaming at people.
	I fully understand that.
	It's an exhausting business.
	Not everyone has paid for it the way I am, so I get it.
	But don't kid yourself.
	If you're not annoying people, you're not doing any good.
	If nobody hates you, you're not doing any good.
	If nobody has a problem with you, you're not doing any good.
	And if you're not doing any good, You're just joining the zombie tribe, marching into the future, which is less than nothing.
	So that's my major concern.
	I just wanted to share that.
	I just wanted to say thank you so much for your time.
	I really appreciate it.
	Thank you.
	I appreciate everyone.
	Thank you so much, the lovers, the haters, the in-betweeners.
	Go to one side or the other.
	It's more fun that way.
	And freedomainradio.com slash donate to help out the show.
	Yo and Lo in these lean times of the January post-Christmas winter paucity of donation planet.
	It's really helpful and essential.
	If you could help us out at freedomainradio.com slash donate, FDRURL.com slash Amazon.
	If you're going to do some shopping, that's the place to go.
	It doesn't cost you anything.
	It helps us out a little bit.
	Thank you, thank you, thank you, everyone, so much.
	It is a great pleasure, as always, to share the depths of thoughts and complexities of life and thought with the planet forever.
	This is going to be around forever, and I thank you so much, everyone who's making this possible.
	Have yourself a wonderful night.

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