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Feb. 23, 2016 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

03:12:25

3213 Sexual Market Value Olympics - Call In Show - February 19th, 2016

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	Yo, yo, yo, everybody.
	How you doing?
	Stefan Molyneux of Freedom Made Radio.
	Oh, yeah.
	We got a new sound system, baby.
	Thank you so much to your donations that make all of this possible at freedomainradio.com slash donate.
	Love it if you could help us out.
	So, great calls tonight.
	Number one, a good debate with a really good debater.
	I really appreciated this guy.
	It was great to have a good old ferocious tussle with him.
	He believed that I was violating the non-aggression principle by questioning the value of unrestricted immigration into the United States, which is a perfectly fair and reasonable question to ask.
	And we had a really good back and forth.
	This guy stood his ground.
	He had great points.
	And he has cornered me into writing an essay about this.
	But anyway, so I hope that you really, really enjoy that.
	I know I did.
	And another question that came about which was quite interesting was, what do Muslims know about female nature that the West might learn from?
	A kind of a startling question and not one that I would have really thought of myself, but the guy had some interesting points.
	We had a good old back and forth about that.
	The third question, ah, the Hydra penis head of polyamory has reared its head Once more, this is a guy who's kind of friend-zone-y, boyfriend-y, girlfriend-y with a 21-year-old young lady who kind of wants to play the field, to put it mildly.
	What should he do?
	Well, as you know, I don't really like telling people what to do.
	That doesn't mean that there aren't some considerations that he might want to take into account.
	So, freedomainradio.com slash donate to help us out.
	FDRURL.com slash Amazon.
	Burn that in your brain for your shopping.
	Helps us, doesn't cost you.
	Let's get it gone.
	Alright, well up for us today is Andrew number one.
	He wrote in and said, Steph, you've said before that using coercion to prevent immigrants from entering the United States is justified because they are likely to use welfare and vote to enlarge the welfare state.
	However, this, the statistical likelihood that someone will receive welfare or vote to support it, seems like an unacceptable justification for the use of force in general.
	For example, we wouldn't accept that coercing American citizens, say, by restricting their reproduction or movement, is justified in order to prevent them or their descendants from using welfare.
	I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on this.
	Thanks.
	That's from Andrew.
	Well, hello, Andrew.
	How you doing?
	I'm well, thanks.
	How are you?
	Well, thank you.
	So...
	I'm not sure I recognize this argument.
	I'm certainly happy to be corrected on this.
	What do you mean by the word justified here?
	Because justified is one of these words that it kind of floats around and can be used for a variety of both pragmatic and moral purposes.
	So what do you mean by if you say I've made the argument that it's justified?
	What does that mean?
	Morally justified.
	So you're an advocate of the state restricting immigration, correct?
	I don't even know where to start with how incorrect that is.
	I'm afraid.
	I mean, you've supported Donald Trump in the past, right?
	Or at least you said you're sympathetic to him.
	Alright, so you go from that to, I support the state using force against immigrants, so suddenly I'm a statist who's into the initiation of force.
	That would be quite a remarkable change for me, and I'm just kind of curious where you're getting that from.
	Alright, so I have a couple quotes.
	Sure.
	Here's one of them.
	So you said in one video on Open Border, you said, quote, The reality is that immigrants in general, on average, recently coming into America, are both going to see, going to use, be dependent on, and vote for increases in the welfare state.
	If you care about diminishing the welfare state, you need to diminish the number of people dependent on the welfare state.
	And presumably that's a justification for reducing immigration.
	Wait, wait, wait.
	Did you say the word presumably?
	Yeah, so to clarify, I just want to be clear about your opinion.
	Your opinion is not that it would be moral to restrict the number of immigrants entering the United States, only that it's practically advisable to do so.
	Well, you tell me.
	I mean, you're the one who...
	I mean, it's your opinion, right?
	So I just wanted to clarify, because this would be a big change for you.
	I'm a long-time listener, and I always thought that you were an anarchist.
	Listen, listen, Andrew, if I were to make a change like that...
	I would have to do it in a very, like if I said, okay, I'm now, you know, I'm pro using the state, I'm pro borders, I'm pro the initiation of force.
	I'd have to write like an entire big book about that.
	And I would have to consciously and openly reject and repudiate the principles that I have been discussing in the public sphere for about years.
	A decade and in the public slash private sphere for over 30 years.
	What a massive change.
	I wouldn't just try to slip that in.
	Like, I wouldn't...
	Okay, no principles.
	Ethic, morality, initiation of force is now good.
	Government is now good.
	And, like, that would be such a monstrous change that, you know, I would not try and slide that in somewhere like it was not...
	Yeah, so it seems at least that's like a popular perception of you amongst many libertarians is that you're in favor of immigration restrictions.
	So just to be clear, are you in favor of open borders?
	Provided that a state does exist now, are you in favor of liberalizing immigration policy?
	Again, I don't know what any of this means and I'm not trying to be dense.
	I just, I genuinely don't know what it means.
	So there is a state now.
	The state prevents people from entering the United States.
	And there are people who want to stop the...
	Sure, and exiting.
	I'm just talking about the case of immigrants right now.
	But the state prevents people from entering the United States and restricts their movement.
	And plenty of libertarians say the state should not be allowed to do that.
	And regardless of what other aspects of state policy we can affect, like the welfare state, taxes, whatever, we should have open borders.
	We should eliminate coercive restrictions on immigration.
	And it at least seems like you're not in favor of that, at least provided that a welfare state exists before or after immigration liberalization.
	Again, I'm sorry, I'm still trying to follow what you mean.
	You've given a description of something, but I'm not sure what my position or non-position is in your perception on that.
	Sure.
	So I just wanted you to clarify your position.
	So it seems to many people that you are in favor of restrictions on immigration, provided that a welfare state exists.
	You think that it's a bad thing that immigrants come to the United States because they'll vote for welfare.
	And provided that a welfare state exists, the U.S. should prevent immigrants from coming to the United States because they will vote for enlarging the welfare state.
	So is that not true?
	Am I mischaracterizing your position?
	Well, again, I don't like to say that I support A government program or I support the initiation of force is a very complicated thing to put across.
	Now, I will tell you what I have repeatedly said.
	I'm guessing, have you read quotes that other people have posted about me or have you actually listened to shows where I've talked about this?
	No, I'm a long-time listener of your show.
	I've been a long-time fan.
	Okay, so what have I said with regards to government immigration, government programs in terms of its relationship to ethics?
	As far as I know, you think that the state doesn't change the moral landscape at all?
	We still have the same moral duties that we had if a state didn't exist?
	What?
	I don't know what that means.
	So you think that whether or not the state exists, we have the same moral rights and the same moral obligations, correct?
	Whether or not the state exists, we have the same moral rights or moral obligations.
	Sorry, I don't know what that means.
	I'm sorry, my audio cut out for a sec.
	I'm sorry, explain that to me a little more.
	I don't know what that means.
	Sure, so if we have an obligation not to coerce other people, that obligation holds whether or not there exists a state, right?
	Again, I'm sorry, I genuinely don't know what this means.
	And I'm not trying to be dense.
	Are you saying that the initiation of force, regardless whether the state is there or not, everybody has the same requirement to not initiate force?
	Sure.
	But the state is the initiation of force.
	So if there is a state that exists, by definition, there are millions of people who thoroughly endorse the initiation of force.
	So I'm not sure what it would mean to say what you're saying.
	All right.
	So here, let's imagine that we live in anarchist society.
	There is no state.
	You are morally obliged, moral for you to steal from someone else, right?
	In this anarchist society.
	In a free society, absolutely.
	Stealing is immoral.
	Is stealing not immoral if we're living in an unfree society?
	So if we have a state and the state steals from everyone, is it still immoral to steal?
	Well, if you're concerned about the morality of stealing, Andrew, why wouldn't you go and talk to the state who is doing the vast majority of the stealing?
	No, I completely agree.
	Why would you focus on a podcaster?
	Like I'm just kind of curious about this, right?
	Why focus on me as an individual if the state is doing the vast majority of stealing?
	And the reason that I'm saying all of this is because it is wrong to destroy people's property, right?
	It's wrong to destroy people's property.
	However, if they kidnap you and lock you in a basement, Are you justified in breaking down the door to the basement in order to escape?
	Sure.
	Right?
	So you're lecturing the guy down in the basement who's locked in the basement.
	You're lecturing him and saying, but you cannot destroy property even if you've been locked in the basement.
	It's immoral to break down someone's door, to break their window.
	So why are you not talking to the kidnappers rather than the guy locked?
	We got to be kind of confused.
	I'm just generally interested in your position on immigration.
	I'm not lecturing you as if you're, you know, the cause of statism and all evil in the world.
	I'm just generally interested.
	No, but you started with a, if we live in an anarchist society.
	Of course, if we live in a free society, and people in general recognize that the initiation of force is wrong and theft is wrong and so on, of course, it's absolutely immoral to steal.
	Sure.
	And look, in a free society, what the hell would I care who lives where?
	And also, even if I did care, what conceivable mechanism would there be in place to enforce my particular preferences?
	There would not be a state that has this giant apparatus of controlling human movement.
	So in a free society, of course you should not initiate the use of force, and moving is not the initiation of force.
	So I've said that repeatedly, and I don't see how that would be a violation of any Right.
	So I guess my question is, in a free society and in an unfree society, the same actions or the same moral principles hold in both cases, right?
	Absolutely not.
	No, absolutely not.
	They absolutely do not.
	And I have said this so many times, you have to have worked fairly hard to miss it, I'm afraid.
	Of course the same moral standards don't apply to a state of society as they do to a free society.
	But it seems like, you know, things like rape, always wrong.
	It doesn't matter if there's institutionalized rape in prisons, it's wrong.
	Okay, we can't bring rape into this.
	No, listen, we can't bring rape into this because that is a moral crime that can never, ever be justified.
	But you can steal something back that's been stolen from you.
	So leave rape out of this.
	I think that would kind of obviate the definition of stealing.
	Okay, no, I understand that.
	Okay, just for those who are, I don't mean you, but those who are dead set against understanding what I have said repeatedly and clearly, is that when you are in a statist environment, ethics do not apply.
	Because you are in a situation of coercion.
	Half of your property is going to be taken from you by force.
	Your children are going to be usually forced to go into government schools or you're at least forced to pay for those government schools which results in massive amounts of indoctrination.
	Your property is not your own because you have to rent it from the government by paying property taxes or they'll take it away from you.
	Your productivity and your life and your labor and the productivity and future life and labor of your children are all stolen from you.
	By the government borrowing money on the collateral of their future productivity.
	Your money is not your own because you can take your money out of the bank, put it under your mattress, and the government sends in the invisible elves of inflation to steal it from you repeatedly.
	So you are in a situation of near universal compulsion when you are a vassal of the state.
	So when you come to me, Andrew, and you say to me, well, what moral rules apply when you're dealing with the state?
	I say, as I have said a million times before, the answer to that would be none.
	Because you are a victim and encased and enclosed in a situation of near universal compulsion and coercion, moral rules that would apply to a situation of choice do not apply.
	Okay, so moral rules, you still believe that there are moral rules which dictate how we ought to behave with respect to one another, right?
	In situations of choice, absolutely.
	Morality is universal.
	Morality does not apply when you are in a situation of coercion.
	So...
	If someone, and this is an extreme example, but just to make the point, if someone has a gun to your head, what is the moral thing to do?
	If someone has a gun to your head and says, shoot that cat, what is the moral thing to do?
	Well, I don't believe in animal rights.
	I think you can kill the cat regardless.
	Okay, if someone says, shoot that homeless man, what is the moral thing to do?
	I think you're obliged not to shoot the homeless man.
	That is the wrong answer.
	Morally, there is no moral thing to do.
	Ethically, when you have a gun to your head, there is choice and all of that is out the window.
	If we're going to have moral sensitivity to any situation, we reserve our moral condemnation for the man who has a gun to someone's head, not to what that panicked, freaked out human being does in a moment of extremity.
	Did you see?
	You're jumping over the guy who's got the gun to your head and you're trying to lecture the guy who's got a gun to his head.
	Sure.
	I don't reserve my moral lecturing for the person with the gun barrel in the head.
	I reserve my moral lecturing to the guy with the gun.
	Sure.
	I think we have broader ethical disagreements about whether or not there are moral standards which apply under coercion.
	That might be another interesting topic for another time or now if you want to discuss it.
	But I guess my specific question is that we still have moral obligations with respect to other citizens who are not coercing us, correct?
	To be clear...
	Who are these other citizens who are not coercing us?
	I'm speaking generally here.
	You mean the people who vote for more and more government programs or the people who support fiat currency or the people who really cheer war and would voluntarily send their money to the state or are happy if the state takes their money for war?
	Who are these very peaceful Sure.
	Fellow citizens that I'm supposed to be morally obliged to.
	Sure.
	So if I could just lay out this scenario really quickly.
	Sure.
	You don't have to be quick.
	These are important issues.
	And I appreciate you bringing them up.
	All right.
	Thanks.
	So there are other citizens who, or other individuals, I'll just use that term, other individuals who live under states with us, correct?
	We have other citizens, neighbors who are also in a condition of coercion.
	And many of these people will support coercion.
	They'll pay taxes to the government, they'll vote to increase taxation, whatever.
	What sort of coercion can we use against them to prevent them from doing that?
	So you seem to think that the conditions under which coercion are okay depend upon self-defense ordinarily, or whether or not we have a choice in using coercion.
	So we can use coercion defensively, force, to prevent someone else from violating our rights, for example, from robbing us.
	So the question is, can we use coercion to prevent someone from violating our rights in supporting the state, which would be the immigration example.
	That's why I think that you have said that you think that you at least have sympathy for people who support restrictive immigration policy, because it's a way of preventing people from supporting the welfare state.
	So the question is, what sort of moral obligations or what sort of restrictions on our ability to coerce other people do we have towards people who will support the state?
	If you need me to clarify, I realize I was rambling a little bit.
	Yeah, I'm still not sure what the question is.
	I may have just missed it, but feel free to synthesize.
	Sure.
	So, there are people who will support the state, right?
	They'll support state coercion, and as a result of their action, state coercion will increase.
	Do you think it's permissible to use coercion against these people to prevent them from increasing state coercion?
	I'm sorry, you're back to permissible.
	I don't know what that means.
	Do you mean capable of being achieved within reality, or is it some sort of moral permissibility?
	So, yeah, again, I might be misunderstanding you when you say that there's no moral principles which apply under conditions of coercion.
	Because it seems like there definitely are, you know, even if you are coerced, you might still have other moral obligations.
	For example, you live in a state of coercion with respect to the state, the state taxes you, but you're still duty-bound not to kill your neighbors, right?
	Again, I think that you can't kill your neighbors because they don't understand the coercion that they are subjecting you to according to their statist philosophy.
	So you educate people.
	Let's leave the question of neighbors being statist aside.
	Let's just say that your neighbors are also anarcho-capitalists.
	It would be immoral for you to kill them, despite the fact that you're both being taxed by the state.
	You're both living in a state of coercion.
	Well, then you're allies.
	So, yeah.
	But again, I'm not sure why we are, like, into killing people here.
	I mean, that seems like an extreme example.
	It's just an example.
	All I'm trying to say is that under these conditions, we would still say that we can have moral judgment for your actions, even though you're being coerced, correct?
	Well, but it depends.
	Honestly, honestly.
	I mean, first of all, When it comes to ethical questions, we are, at least I am, aiming to build a world wherein ethical questions can be explored and answered in a non-violent, non-coercive environment.
	That sort of, you know, goal of peaceful parenting and education that I put out towards the world.
	And so, of course you should not go and shoot your neighbors.
	Of course you should.
	I mean, the fact that that would even be a topic is...
	I kind of get where you're coming from, like a principle kind of thing.
	You should not go and shoot your neighbors.
	And as far as, you know, you can say, okay, if a tiger is charging at you and you're an adult male with a blunderbuss, which is some big shotgun firing thing, then do you have the right to defend yourself against the tiger?
	Well, sure.
	Of course, you don't want to get eaten, right?
	However, if you are a three-year-old toddler and a tiger leaps out, would you say to the toddler, well, you have the right to...
	Defend yourself against the tiger.
	It would be kind of meaningless because the toddler cannot defend itself against the tiger.
	It's too small.
	The toddler is too small.
	And so with regards to the state, the state has overwhelming power and the massive support of the population.
	So the idea of defending yourself against the state is sort of a theoretical who cares, right?
	All it would be is suicide.
	And I think that we kind of need people to educate the world as a whole.
	So that's, you know, my sort of general approach to it.
	Sure.
	So I guess my question is still, you think that there are conditions for moral judgment even under conditions of coercion, correct?
	We live under circumstances where we're coerced into doing things.
	You might get mugged one week.
	You might be regularly mugged, which is the case of the state taxing you.
	Mugging is a terrible analogy.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	Because you can do something to avoid mugging, and you can also defend yourself against mugging.
	So this is not a particularly good example of the state power relative to the individual.
	Yeah, I'm just using the analogy of the sake of demonstrating that you are regularly and systematically coerced in the status quo.
	You live under a condition in which you are the object of coercion.
	For a duration of time.
	But during that period of time, you might still have But hang on, why are you focusing on the moral duties and moral rights of the citizen rather than the state?
	It just seems to me like you're picking on the weakest, most defenseless person here and calling yourself some sort of chest-thumping moral hero.
	Why don't you reserve your moral condemnation for state actors rather than people struggling to survive in a coercive environment?
	Why are you lecturing morally the people at the receiving end of the gun rather than the people holding the gun?
	Because I think people on the receiving end of the gun can also do bad things.
	But who's doing worse things?
	Who's worse?
	The person trying to survive in a status environment or the people who...
	Praise and use and support state power.
	Who is the worst moral actor?
	The person trying to survive a statist environment or the people loudly cheering the jackbooted thugs who steal from everyone and start wars and sell off the kids and steal money through inflation?
	How is it that you're focusing on the victim rather than the perpetrator?
	That's what I want to understand.
	Certainly.
	I understand that there are degrees of moral responsibility and degrees of moral gravity here.
	So the state is worse than any private individual because the state does worse things than any private individual.
	Well, not just worse.
	It's a lot worse.
	I mean, states have killed a quarter of a billion people in the 20th century, so I'm not sure why you're focusing on the person struggling to survive the victimhood of such a predatory regime.
	You know, this is what it's like to me.
	I don't know if you know much about the Soviet gulags that Solzhenitsyn writes about.
	But it's like, you know, the government, the state, the Soviet state, has taken people in the middle of the night for non-crime, shipped them off to Siberia.
	That's not enough to eat.
	And you, the big moral crusader, are spending all your time lecturing the prisoners about their moral choices rather than condemning the system that has encased them there in the first place.
	Sure.
	I just don't think that statism is the only moral question, right?
	So, you know, for example, you say that...
	What?
	Did I ever say that statism was the only moral question, or are you just making stuff up now?
	I didn't say that that's what you said.
	I said, for instance, you think that we can morally judge the behavior of parents.
	It's wrong when parents beat their kids.
	You know, it's probably less terrible than the Holocaust.
	States like Nazi Germany is worse than a parent who spanks their child.
	But it's still a relevant moral concern that a parent spanks their child.
	So we should still think about...
	Well, especially if the parent spanking the child is the cause...
	Of something like Nazi Germany, which I think I made a very good case for.
	Not my case, although I've made it somewhat on the side, but for those interested, you can get my free reading of Lloyd DeMoss' book, The Origins of War in Child Abuse, in freedomainradio.com slash free.
	So this is a false dichotomy, because you're saying, well, if you talk about parents not hitting their kids, not being abusive towards their kids, that's a lesser crime than talking about...
	The Holocaust.
	But if something like World War II came about to a large degree because of people beating their children, you're actually talking about both of those things when you are encouraging peaceful parenting.
	So my point is that let's imagine that as an empirical matter, that's not the case.
	That World War II was not caused by Hitler getting spanked as a kid.
	It still seems as though we can talk about hitting your kid is a bad thing, regardless of whether or not it has any relation to the state.
	So we can morally judge the actions of individuals, and even though the actions of states are worse than the actions of individuals categorically, it still seems like it's not a bad thing to talk about how individuals ought to behave.
	Are you still there?
	My only point here is that it seems like it's a relevant concern to talk about how should people behave under conditions of coercion.
	And that even under conditions of coercion, there might be some moral principles that obliges to behave in certain ways.
	For example, parents have moral obligations to children regardless of whether or not That actually fights the state, you know, them not spanking their kids.
	Even if it didn't, we should be able to judge abusive parents as being abusive and bad.
	Does that make sense?
	Yes.
	Is that it seems like we can judge the actions of individuals in supporting certain political policies, even though they live under conditions of coercion.
	So, for instance, if someone supports the war in Iraq, or supported the war in Iraq, which I know you were against, we can morally condemn their support for the war in Iraq, right?
	And say, you should not have supported the war in Iraq.
	It was a bad thing that you got out to bat for the Bush administration.
	But why on earth would we want to pick and choose which particular status policies?
	I'm just using that as an example.
	Hang on.
	Do you trim the branches or the leaves of the tree of evil that you hack at the roots, right?
	The root of state power is the initiation of force, which is justified and praised by the population as a whole.
	So why would I want to pick and choose which particular flower of the tree of evil to condemn when I could just go for the roots and talk about, well, A, child abuse, and B, the non-initiation of force as sort of a moral ideal through, you know, my universally preferable behavior.
	So I'm not sure why I would say, ah, well, supporting the war in Iraq is bad, because by implication, I'm saying that it's somehow much worse than everything else or in some sort of different category from other things the state does that the person opposes.
	It's not any particular government program that is the problem.
	It is, of course, as you know, the taxation and theft and counterfeiting that is the heart of state power that is the most important thing to oppose.
	I would not necessarily pick on someone and say, well, your support of the Iraq war is really, really bad, because, you know, that's just one of the particular fruits that fall from the bitter tree.
	Right.
	Again, I'm not trying to pick on anyone here, and I don't think that You know, focusing on these sorts of minor issues is necessarily the most productive use of time.
	I just think that it's a way of using some time.
	So, like, for instance, I'm not trying to pick on you for saying that, oh, you're for immigration restrictions.
	I'm still not sure exactly what your stance is, but...
	On 99% of issues, I probably agree with you.
	I'm also an anti-statist.
	I think that talking about how the state is bad is probably more important than talking about how Donald Trump is bad.
	I'm just saying that on that 1% of issues that we might disagree on, it might be worth considering how morally responsible we are for the policies we advocate.
	Yeah.
	I'm not sure what the question is there, so I'll just give a little speech.
	If you're against government subsidies, you are not against the free market.
	Would you agree with that?
	I'm sorry, can you repeat the question?
	If you are against government subsidies to business, you are not against the free market, right?
	Not necessarily.
	Okay.
	In fact, being for the free market, would that not lead you to oppose government subsidies?
	True.
	Now, would we not say that opposing government subsidies is a reasonable thing for a libertarian or an anarchist to do?
	True.
	Okay.
	When it comes to, say, Syrians from the war or from the displacement or the civil war, whatever you want to call it, from the conflict, How did the Syrians get to the United States?
	By boat or air, I assume.
	Probably mostly by ships.
	Yeah, and generally the airfare is paid for by the government, right?
	Because people are not hugely rich, right?
	I would assume, sure.
	So when they get to America, they are met by legions of social workers who signed them up for every conceivable government program that can be imagined, right?
	Sure.
	And then they put their kids in government schools, and the government schools' budgets go up enormously because now you have multilingual issues to deal with, not to mention kids who've been educated according to different curriculums, different timelines, different subjects, and so on, right?
	Sure.
	And who pays for all of that?
	Is it the Syrians themselves?
	No, U.S. taxpayers.
	Okay, so immigration in this particular context is paid for enormously by the states.
	So the cost of resettling Middle Eastern refugees, if people were to send $1,000 to the Middle East, they could resettle someone from the Middle East, someone from Syria and so on, in the Middle East.
	However, it's almost $13,000 to bring that person To the United States.
	Right?
	Alright.
	So, immigration right now is highly subsidized.
	It is a highly subsidized government program.
	Is that fair to say?
	Sure.
	For the most part, in this particular context.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So, when I say that I'm against this kind of immigration, Am I saying that we should initiate the use of force to keep people out?
	Well, the only reason they're here is because of the initiation of force.
	In other words, because of government subsidies.
	So if I say, I don't want, quote, green energy companies to get billions of dollars in government subsidies, and then people scream at me that I'm against the free market, you could understand that that would be a little frustrating if it happened month after month after month, right?
	Right.
	So this is highly subsidized human movement.
	And frankly, at the expense of kids, because there are fewer resources to bring to kids who are born in America because of all of these immigrants, not just from the Middle East, but other places where language is incompatibility is an issue.
	So being against government subsidies, which is how the immigration in a lot of ways works these days, It's not being against the free movement of human beings any more than being against government subsidies to business, it's being against the free exchange of goods and ideas.
	Alright.
	Can I respond?
	Of course.
	Sure.
	So it seems like in this case we're against the subsidies, not the free movement, just to clarify, right?
	So, we're against the welfare state which incentivizes immigrants to come to the United States.
	Not necessarily immigrants coming to the United States.
	I think I've made that point pretty clear.
	I just want to recap really quickly just to make sure that...
	Look, the National Research Council in 1997 estimated that during his or her lifetime...
	The average immigrant with less than high school education created a net fiscal burden of minus $89,000.
	Well, it's got to be paid for somehow, right?
	Sure.
	Plus, of course, we're not even talking about the health care costs of immigrants, right?
	In a free market, if you want to come from some godforsaken area where you have to end up looking like a cactus with the number of inoculations if you're from the West that you have to get in order to go there...
	What will happen is...
	Imagine a free society.
	Let's just take this.
	And I'll shut up and let you go after this.
	I appreciate your patience.
	Okay, free society.
	And some Syrian guy wants to come over to the free society.
	He can't speak English.
	He's got bad teeth.
	He's not well.
	He's kind of traumatized.
	He's got pretty bad education.
	And he wants to come on over to a free society.
	Right?
	Well, what is his health insurance gonna be like?
	Well, it's gonna be pretty high.
	He's not probably gonna be able to get any dental insurance.
	What is his job value going to be?
	Coming over.
	Well, it's not really very high.
	Now, in the Middle East, he speaks the language.
	He's got the same culture.
	He's got the same religion.
	He's used to the same climate.
	He knows how to drive in the sand because he's not going to have to learn how to drive in the snow.
	So economically, in a free society or in a free world even, it is going to be much more advantageous for that North African or whoever it is to stay in his own local country.
	In the same way, and it's nothing to do with Africans in particular, if I move to Japan, what is going to happen to my economic value?
	Let's just say I have to speak Japanese.
	Well, it's going to crater.
	Because I don't speak the local language, so it's very inefficient.
	And this is not even just talking about crime.
	Crime is also a big issue among the immigrant population.
	A German government report just got leaked, I think as of today or yesterday.
	Refugees from the Middle Eastern countries, North Africa, committed 200,000 crimes between 2014 and 2015.
	200,000 crimes That otherwise would not exist if they weren't there.
	So, with regards to all of this, it's the practical reality that immigration right now is heavily, heavily subsidized.
	I mean insanely subsidized, particularly from, you know, incompatible cultures with incompatible languages.
	So, if immigrants...
	Had to pay the full freight of coming over to a free society.
	And also, of course, if people were allowed to discriminate.
	If people were allowed to discriminate.
	One of the horrible things about government, the government program called immigration at the moment, is it forces people to integrate economically, so to speak.
	It's not a very good way of putting it.
	Let me see if I can take another run at that.
	It forces people to associate whether they want to or not.
	It's a form of cultural or economic rape.
	Because there are lots of people in America, so white Western Christians and so on, they don't really like Muslims.
	Why?
	Well, because Christianity has been at war with Islam for over a thousand years and because Sharia law is wildly incompatible and because the Muslim countries subjugate Christians a lot of times in those countries and force them to pay a special tax that is really economically burdensome and tends to strip them of human rights.
	So...
	You know how certain, you know, Jews, when they see other Jews being oppressed, they're like, hey, come on over.
	You know, this is really bad.
	The people who are oppressing you are really bad.
	Well, Christians look across the Middle East and see Christians being ground down into the dust by their Islamic overlords.
	So a lot of Christians are not huge fans of Islam, to put it mildly.
	And I just wanted to put out a correction.
	I had said that Muhammad married a nine-year-old and then consummated the marriage at 12.
	I was repeatedly reminded, and I apologize for the error, that he in fact married his wife, I guess you could say, when she was six years old and apparently consummated the marriage at Which I guess would be pedophilia, rape, when she was nine years old.
	Not wildly compatible with a lot of Western values, to put it mildly.
	And so if Muslims wanted to migrate to the United States, in a free society, the people would be able to say, close their doors to them.
	Say, I don't want to rent to you.
	I don't want to hire you.
	I don't want to do business with you.
	I don't want to treat you as a doctor.
	I don't want...
	Like, I don't want...
	To have you come into my country and into my culture or into my geographical region, and we may like that, we may not like that, but it's a fundamental human right to have freedom of association.
	And forced association, as you know, is a violation of freedom of association.
	So in a free society, there would be cultural barriers, there would be, I guess, philosophical barriers if it's going to be a free society.
	They also might say, well, look, We, being in a free society, we raise our children peacefully, we raise our children well, we don't indoctrinate them, we don't hit them, we don't bully them, and we treat our women well and so on, right?
	And so they would say, well look, what is the value for me of bringing in a culture that kind of wants to grind me underfoot, that has oppressed people I really care about, that has theocracy as its goal and world domination as its objective and ideal, and also which, you know, brings in, this culture brings in child Unfriendly practices, to put it mildly.
	And a free society would know where those child unfriendly practices lead to, child abuse and so on, because they know.
	They would know all about the relationship between child abuse and adult crime, child abuse and adult dysfunction.
	So they would say, okay, well, what's the value?
	What's the benefit of me having these people come in?
	Where, you know, likelihood is they're going to cause problems, commit crimes, and if they get their way, end up installing a theocracy that's going to grind me underfoot, or is going to be a convert or die system.
	Not to mention the last thing which we've talked about before, these blood-related marriages.
	You know, we've got...
	From 34% all the way up to, I don't know, what's the, Nubia, 80%, right?
	These cousin or blood-related marriages which shave 10 to 18 IQ points off the general population.
	So in a free society, yeah, I mean, no initiation of force is no initiation of force.
	No one can force you to pay for these people to come over.
	Nobody can force you to hire them or to subsidize them or to treat them or to let them come to your mall or drive on your roads or whatever.
	So there'd be kind of a resistance and pushback, which would be socially enforced, possibly through ostracism to those who would deal with people like this.
	And that's a free society.
	And that's a wonderful way, I think, to maintain cultural integrity.
	Right now, immigration is a massive, heavily subsidized herding of people for the cause of voting Democrat and expanding dependence on the welfare state.
	So I don't see how restricting immigration at the moment is like restricting subsidies to businesses.
	And then people yell at me and say, "Well, Steph, if you're into restricting subsidies, you must be pro-status." It's like, nope, restricting subsidies.
	Every person who does not come into America from the Middle East, say, and there could be other countries as well.
	But when people come into America, they are triggering massive subsidies from the state.
	And so if I oppose subsidies, somehow paying people to come over and bribing them basically to vote Democrat has become the word immigration.
	But it's got no more to do with actual immigration or the free movement of peoples than a government union has to do with the free market.
	Okay, can I respond now?
	Mmm.
	Sure.
	Just a quick thing.
	It seemed like the last analogy you ended with about restricting subsidies and immigration, in this case, the subsidies are akin to welfare, which incentivizes immigrants to come to the United States.
	It seems like immigration is more akin to the product that's provided.
	It's like if you're in favor of restricting subsidies to solar panels, this would be like restricting production of actual solar panels by having a production cap.
	But in any case, if I followed your argument, it seems like, and this is the question that I wanted to ask at the beginning of the show, it seems like we justify other sorts of practices or support for other sorts of practices that are obviously wrong.
	So in this case, we say that immigration is subsidized, and this is why it would make sense to restrict immigration, because it's compensating for the subsidy.
	It's your opposition to the subsidy.
	Plenty of poor Americans, like poor southern whites or urban American blacks, their reproduction is subsidized, right?
	Because the federal government will subsidize them having kids through the public education system or whatever.
	But it would be obviously wrong And it would be morally blameworthy if voters came out and said that we should restrict the reproduction of urban blacks.
	We would say it's obviously wrong if we would say we're going to sterilize you after you have one kid.
	Because that would be the initiation of force, even if both the person who's being sterilized and the potential future children of that person would support the welfare state and take from the welfare state.
	Even if it's a necessary way, provided the welfare state is going to exist, to prevent someone from abusing the welfare state, voting Democrat or whatever, it seems like the way of compensating for these subsidies by restricting the good which we subsidize, in this case restricting reproduction, in the other case restricting immigration, is obviously wrong.
	I assume that you're going to say that it's wrong to sterilize urban black people.
	And it seems like voters who support that sort of thing are still blameworthy, right?
	We wouldn't say that it's a state, you can advocate whatever you want because there are no moral principles anymore because the state placed you under a condition of coercion.
	So that's kind of what I wanted to talk about at the beginning of the show.
	If you think that, like, how are these two things not parallel?
	How is it not the case that we wouldn't condemn the person supporting sterilization in one case, but you think that it's also not condemnable to support immigration restrictions?
	So you can reply.
	Sure.
	I can answer that if you like.
	Sure.
	Go ahead.
	So somehow you're equating these two scenarios, one in which jackbooted thugs kick down people and chloroform them, you know, give them vasectomies and hysterectomies or some other way of preventing give them vasectomies and hysterectomies or some other way of Like, so massive amounts of government initiation of force directly against citizens, which is going to be fantastically expensive.
	Ridiculously expensive, right?
	I mean, getting operating theaters for hysterectomies and vasectomies and all of that is ridiculous.
	Like, it's, I don't know how much...
	Maybe, Mike, you could look this up.
	How much does a hysterectomy cost?
	I assume it's going to be tens and tens of thousands of dollars.
	That will drain away resources from other people who actually need operations.
	Let's imagine that it saves money, though.
	Let's imagine that it's cheaper than we expected.
	No, no, forget.
	I gave you your scenario.
	Let me give you my pushback.
	I mean, you can't just say, let us imagine that it saves money.
	I mean, if you're going to say it's got something to do with saving money, then you can't just say, I mean, I guess you've never been in business, you know.
	I'd like to build product X. Let's just pretend that it's fantastically profitable.
	It's like, well, you can't just pretend that.
	You can't just make these things up, right?
	I mean, there's ways of figuring that out, right?
	Blacks are 13% of the population.
	I guess fertile blacks, maybe a third, sort of half to maybe 60% of that population.
	Could I clarify something quick?
	If you're going to want the government to kick in the doors of millions of people, drag them off to hospital, kicking and screaming, drug them, slice them open, rip out internal organs, and then sew them up, give them some sort of recovery area and so on, and then ship them back to their houses...
	First of all, the U.S. would have nowhere near the hospital beds or surgical expertise to do any of that.
	So this is a completely insane scenario.
	It could never possibly occur.
	There's no way that it could actually save money, by the way.
	So you're comparing dragging people out of the house, gassing, ripping them open, extracting organs, sewing them up, and so on, with you can't get on a plane to come here.
	Or you can't stay.
	Like, I mean, these two scenarios...
	In one, you kind of have to do nothing, and in another one, you've got to hire hundreds of thousands of jackbooted thugs and 10,000 surgeons per state to rip people open and scoop out their internal organs so they can't have kids, as opposed to preventing the problem by having people not come to the country to stay.
	So that, I think that those two are not really the same when it comes to state power, the initiation of force, or even basic practicality.
	So it seems to me that, first of all, Deportation isn't the same thing as doing nothing.
	So I never brought up the case of the Syrian immigrants.
	I was talking about immigration in general.
	The U.S. spends billions of dollars, probably more money than we save from Mexican consumption of welfare, rounding up and deporting Mexicans.
	The second thing is the reason why I said that I wanted to clarify is because it doesn't seem like saving money is actually a moral consideration here.
	Regardless of whether or not it would save money to sterilize American blacks, it would still be a wrong thing to do.
	And the third thing that I wanted to bring up is that...
	Sorry, what was this?
	Oh, sorry.
	Also, American blacks, by having babies, have not broken any current laws, right?
	Oh, sorry, because if we're switching to deportation, that's a different conversation.
	Could I continue after I answer this question really quick?
	No, they haven't, but it doesn't seem like that's a relevant consideration of whether or not it's moral to sterilize them or moral to deport someone.
	But the last thing that I want to bring up is it seems like the— Wait, wait, hang on.
	You just said something rather extraordinary there.
	It doesn't seem like whether or not someone has broken the law justifies using violence against them if the law itself is not just.
	Okay, so for you, the government coming in and ripping out women's internal organs when there's no law against it, having the kids and so on, that that is...
	The same as people who have illegally entered the US, who falsified records and who often have gone through identity theft processes, which is very harmful to existing Americans, moving them back to the country they came from when they entered illegally.
	Is that on the same moral plane as ripping people open and sucking out their internal organs?
	After I answer this, could I just finish my last point?
	Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
	All right, so the quick last point, and then I will answer this question, I promise, is that it seems like the severity of these two scenarios is actually quite comparable.
	So, for example, deporting existing Syrian refugees in the United States or deporting people who, you know, are from Nicaragua And they go home and they get killed by cartels or tortured to death or whatever.
	That actually might be worse than being sterilized by the government.
	But the second consideration is that my point was that it doesn't seem to be the case that whether or not the government institutes a law Would actually mean that it's morally permissible for the state to coerce you.
	For example, if the government says that Jews are not allowed to live here anymore and they have to get out, this is like Nazi Germany and you mentioned they expropriate property from Jews, that wouldn't mean that it's illegitimate for Jews to demand to continue living in Germany or to resist being executed or whatever.
	But that's not the same scenario because the Jews living in Germany did so knowing that they were there legally to begin with and they're trying to restore a situation that they started with.
	The people who've come across from, say, Mexico know that they're breaking the laws of the United States and know that the punishment for that is deportation.
	So this is not a situation that is analogous to a law suddenly passed to kick people out who are there legally.
	It seems odd to me that you think that if the state passes a law, this means that you're obliged to behave that way.
	And that if you are coerced...
	Do you pay your taxes, Andrew?
	Because I'm scared of going to prison, yeah.
	Okay, so don't give me this, I don't obey the government's laws, or there's no need to obey government laws.
	That's what the government is.
	It forces people to do stuff.
	Is it legitimate?
	No, of course it's not legitimate.
	But...
	That's the reality of the situation.
	It seems like deporting Mexicans isn't legitimate then.
	Like it might be, you know, it might be a relevant reason why not to come to the United States that you're scared of getting picked up by immigration.
	No, no, I'm talking about, oh my God, look, you came up with a situation or scenario where legal citizens in Germany who are Jews were being deported and then you suddenly equated that to people coming in illegally.
	They're not the same situation.
	Well, they're not legal in Germany once the government deprives them of citizenship, right?
	Right.
	You can legislate away their citizenship.
	Yes, but the people here are not...
	They come across knowing that it's illegal, knowing that they're breaking the law of the host country.
	That's different from living there, and then a law suddenly gets passed, which makes you illegal.
	There's foreknowledge.
	I guess I don't understand why it means that deportation is then legitimate, though.
	I didn't say deportation was legitimate.
	I'm pushing back against the moral equivalency of these two situations.
	Sure.
	It doesn't seem like either of them is immoral, though.
	Either of which is immoral.
	Either Jews continue to reside in Germany or Mexicans illegally immigrating to the United States.
	It depends.
	I mean, again, there's no morality in these situations, in any of these situations, right?
	I mean, I already came up with this.
	At least I came up with the argument.
	I can't remember if we agreed on it or not.
	But in a situation of near universal compulsion, there are no such thing as ethics.
	To be clear, I thought we agreed that there might be ethical imperatives.
	Yeah, I thought we agreed that there might be.
	So, for example, you have duties to your children even though you live under a state.
	There are wrong ways to behave.
	I might be misunderstanding you, so please correct me if I am.
	But it seems like there are definitely still ethical duties even under coercion.
	But we're not talking about private relationships.
	Okay.
	Private relationships...
	Are not coerced by the state, right?
	So me, like, there's no state edict.
	You're not under the compulsion of the state when it comes to hitting or not hitting your children.
	So, for instance, there's no tax on people who don't spank.
	If there were, then spanking would be a state consideration because the state is interfering with that relationship through incentives or punishments, right?
	So when you talk about purely private relationships, that's why I was confused about killing your neighbor or whatever.
	When you're talking about purely private relationships, yeah, there are moral obligations there because there's no state interference in that relationship.
	But when you're talking about immigration, there's massive state interference in that relationship and therefore the ethics don't matter.
	Just to clarify, because the state doesn't have special moral legitimacy, it would be equivalent if any private individual were to coercively interfere in your relationship, right?
	So the state interfering in a relationship between you and your children is the same as a local mafia, so interfering in your relationship.
	If your neighbor breaks into your house, And holds you hostage, I would not lecture the hostage.
	I would lecture, if I were to do anything, I'd try and save the hostage.
	But I would not sit there and lecture the hostage about his moral obligations if his neighbor has broken into his house and is holding him hostage.
	Right.
	So, my point, though, is that it seems like...
	No, no, but this is an important difference, right?
	Because I think we're able to resolve.
	Because you keep talking about private relationships, and I'm talking about State-coerced relationships.
	And immigration, we can both agree, right, immigration is a state-coerced relationship at the moment.
	Sure.
	I mean, you're forced to pay.
	In Europe and a lot of places, some people have been kicked out of their homes.
	You're forced to subsidize, forced to pay for healthcare.
	I mean, it's a heavily state-subsidized relationship.
	Now, to be fair, that's not just true, as you pointed out.
	It's not just true with immigrants, for sure.
	I mean, it's not like all the immigrants take welfare and none of the domestic population takes welfare.
	I fully accept and understand that.
	But the difference is that there are moral obligations in private relationships, which, as I say, peaceful parenting is good.
	That's a private relationship uncoerced by the state, at least not directly.
	But immigration is not that.
	Immigration is a state-facilitated, state-subsidized, state-coerced relationship at the moment.
	If we're living under such conditions of coercion, it seems like all economic relationships are state-interfered.
	Almost all private relationships would be state-interfered.
	Your family is regulated because you receive subsidies from the state or you receive taxes from the state.
	I receive taxes from the state?
	No, I pay taxes.
	I mean, you are taxed by the state or you receive subsidies from the state or you're regulated by state legislation.
	It seems like this would mean that almost every relationship is coerced, right?
	I wouldn't agree with that.
	No, I wouldn't agree with that.
	So, for instance, if I go and become an employee for a company, then I have chosen to work at that company.
	Sure.
	If I choose who to get married to, then I have chosen someone who I'm going to marry, and I've chosen to marry at all, right?
	And it's the same way if I choose to have kids, the state doesn't force me to have kids or forcibly prevent me from having kids and so on.
	So there are a lot of relationships that are largely voluntary or have significant elements of choice in them.
	It's just that, tragically, immigration is not one of them.
	them.
	You know, immigrants choose to come here, though, don't they?
	Well, I mean, that's like saying that, you know, if you if you give a guy half a million, if you give a guy 500 million dollars to go start a company, he's choosing to create the company, right?
	I mean, if the government subsidizes a whole bunch of stuff, that is going to encourage particular kinds of behavior.
	And if the government is going to subsidize immigrants, on average, you know, 20,000, $40,000 a year, well, is that a choice?
	I don't know that it is.
	Because when you have that amount of subsidy, you know, I don't know that you can really say, well, it's just a choice like any other.
	I mean, it's an incentivized choice, one with distorted incentives, but it's still a choice.
	I guess that, again, I don't see...
	No, no.
	Come on, look.
	Come on, man.
	Listen, no, listen.
	Let me finish.
	You've got to finish this point.
	If you have sex with a woman voluntarily, that is making love, right?
	Sure.
	If you pay her to have sex with you, that is not making love, right?
	That's prostitution.
	Which is a choice.
	You say, well, the only difference is a couple of dollars change hand.
	Well, it's a pretty important difference, I would say.
	Right, but that's different from rape where the object of the coercion doesn't have a choice.
	I've never brought rape into it.
	I'm just saying that going from a voluntary situation to a situation of massive subsidies...
	I mean, we can't even conceive.
	I mean, you sound like a first world kind of guy, Andrew.
	Like, we can't even conceive how much money this is for these people.
	You know, how many years wage for your average North African is the amount of subsidies that it takes to get over to America and to be subsidized in the way that they're subsidized?
	It would be like somebody offering us a million dollars a year or something like that.
	Well, you could say, well, you know, but there's still a choice in it.
	Yeah, okay, there's still a choice in it.
	But that amount of subsidization is extraordinarily distortionary.
	Sure.
	I guess the reason why I brought up the rape example is because the prostitute still chooses, right?
	It's a voluntary relationship.
	I'm sorry, who still chooses?
	Earlier you had brought up the example of a prostitution and consensual sex, and then I brought up the rape example.
	So the reason why I brought that up is because the prostitute still chooses, right?
	She might have an incentive to choose a particular way, but she isn't the object of coercion, whereas in the rape example someone's the object of coercion.
	Absolutely.
	And someone who wins a $10 million lottery can choose not to cash that ticket.
	Right.
	But how many people actually do not cash that ticket?
	Sure.
	So my argument is that immigrants choose to come to the United States.
	It's a voluntary decision.
	They're not the objects of coercion, right?
	So it's a legitimate choice.
	I'm sorry.
	Say that again?
	Immigrants choose to come to the United States.
	They aren't coerced into doing so.
	They're incentivized to do so, but it's still a voluntary decision, right?
	Well, but do the people—if I know that something is a stolen good, is it morally neutral for me to accept it?
	No, but not all immigrants accept the stolen goods.
	No, I didn't say all, right?
	But what I'm saying is that if an immigrant is coming over and immediately goes on welfare, the immigrants know for a simple fact— That if you've just come to the country from North Africa, and let's say that your airfare was paid for by the U.S. government, right?
	And let's say that your housing is paid for, at least for the first part, by the U.S. government, and your health care, and your dentist care, and your children's education, and all this stuff, because they just line up and sign up for these welfare benefits.
	Like 90-95% of these migrants end up on these welfare benefits, right?
	Sure.
	Now, they know for a simple fact That they have never paid one thin dime into the U.S. tax system, right?
	Sure.
	So they know that all of this money is taken from Americans by force, right?
	Sure.
	And it's 100% funded by other people's coerced labor, which they have done zero to contribute into, right?
	Sure.
	I guess I still don't understand how this is on each other.
	Hang on, hang on, hang on.
	Sorry, go on.
	What do you think of that moral choice to take coerced benefits from other people in a system you've never contributed a penny to?
	That would be immoral.
	Okay.
	Yes, I don't understand.
	So the immigrants who take government benefits are immoral, according to your argument or your agreement with my argument.
	Right.
	So why are you lecturing me?
	So I guess I don't understand what the difference is between the immigrants example and the sterilization example, other than sterilization being expensive.
	So in the sterilization example, someone decides to have children knowing that this will increase the burden on the welfare state.
	And the state can intervene to prevent them from doing so in order to prevent strain on the welfare state.
	But this is obviously morally horrible to do, regardless of the cost, like even if it were free to sterilize people, like a new invention came along that made it was free.
	So what's different between the two cases?
	What's different between dragging people from their homes, ripping them open, scooping out parts of their insides, sewing them back up, versus not paying them to get on a plane?
	I mean, I don't even know what to say about that.
	You really feel that this is somehow in the same moral bucket?
	You're mischaracterizing my position.
	So I'm not drawing an equivalency between sterilization and financing people's trips to the United States.
	I'm drawing an equivalency between sterilization and deportation.
	Well, you've got to tell me when we're switching from one to the other, man.
	You can't just get mad at me because you switched something under the table and now we're not talking.
	I was just talking about planes and people coming in and taking welfare when they've never contributed to the system and now you're suddenly switching and talking about deportation.
	Give me a sound, like an owl, something like that, when you're switching from one to the other because otherwise it looks like a kind of bullshit trick.
	It was not a trick.
	Would you allow me to clarify my position or do you want to interrupt me again?
	What?
	Are you getting pissy with me because I'm interrupting you?
	When you just switched from, we were just talking about people coming over from North Africa, and now you're suddenly talking about deportation.
	You didn't tell me you were switching.
	To be clear, I never talked about Syria or North Africa.
	You brought that up.
	You've never talked about Syria or North Africa?
	I don't think we could.
	We could listen to this after the recording is finished, but I was talking about Mexico and Nicaragua.
	Okay, so we'll go back to deportation.
	Go ahead with your point.
	Alright, so, as I said before, the subsidies are equivalent to welfare in this example.
	Immigration is equivalent to the product that subsidies subsidize.
	Or, you know, immigration is subsidized by welfare.
	So, in the example that I provided, the analogy of sterilization, it doesn't seem like Sorry.
	In the analogy of sterilization, what I'm saying that sterilization is morally equivalent to is restrictions on immigration.
	Restrictions on immigration are not the same thing as financing immigrants' trips to the United States.
	So a restriction on immigration, for example, would be building a wall Preventing Mexican immigrants from crossing that wall, using coercion, deporting people.
	If you've listened to this after the podcast is done, that's what I've talked about persistently.
	Not subsidizing immigrants coming to the United States.
	So it seems like deporting people, sending jackbooted SWAT teams into their house, picking them up, and shipping them to Nicaragua, that seems like it is morally equivalent to sterilizing people.
	Both are the initiation of force.
	Both prevent someone from using welfare in the future.
	You know, both prevent an immoral practice which people shouldn't be doing using welfare or, you know, I guess in both cases it's using welfare or having children who will use welfare.
	I don't see what the moral difference is.
	Alright, you done?
	Yeah, sure.
	Okay, I'll make the case again.
	That the people who are having babies are legally having babies.
	No law against it.
	Tragically, there's a lot of subsidies, but that's, you know, the welfare state's topic for another time.
	The people who have come into America know that they're breaking the law, know that it's illegal, and know that they face deportation.
	So the two are not equivalent because you can't just suddenly pass some retroactive law or pass some law and so on.
	Now, should, and this would never happen, like Mike looked it up, it's like at least $3,000 to $4,000 for a hysterectomy, bare minimum.
	That's from the Oklahoma Surgery Center.
	I got it.
	That's bare minimum.
	And if you count lost productivity, transportation time, hospital time, risks of infection and all that, it's like 10,000, 20,000 bucks easy.
	Because this is a pretty slow thing to recover from, right?
	There's no conceivable way.
	Like this example of like...
	I don't know, forced hysterectomies on poor people.
	But never in a million years happened because there's no conceivable way there are enough surgical resources or that it could ever conceivably save enough money.
	Because there's a much better way to get people who can't afford kids to stop having kids.
	It doesn't involve a massive government growth in power.
	It simply involves not subsidizing them through the welfare state.
	So a shrinkage in government power is how you would achieve that, not a massive expansion.
	In government power.
	So I just sort of wanted to point that out.
	Now, as far as deportation goes, look.
	My ideal would be, let's just have a free society.
	And if people can make it, they can make it.
	And if they don't, they can do what about a third of 19th century Europeans did who came over to America and just leave because they don't like it or they can't make it or it doesn't fit them or their parents get sick or they miss the old country or they miss their line dancing in lederhosen or whatever the hell they were doing before they left.
	So that to me is the ideal and that actually works perfectly.
	Pretty well.
	There are places where sort of limited deportations have occurred and what happens is people just start leaving of their own accord.
	You don't actually have to go and kick everyone's door down and pull them out and send them across a border because people start self-deporting when this whole process starts.
	So I don't want anyone's door to get kicked in and people dragged off.
	My goal, of course, would be to reduce the welfare state so that This would occur on its own, right?
	And again, by occur on its own, I don't mean everyone would leave.
	What I mean is that the people who can survive and flourish in a free market will do so, and the people who can't will leave of their own accord, and no initiation of force has occurred.
	In fact, by reducing the size and power of the welfare state, You are reducing coercion overall.
	I mean, that's the beauty of it, right?
	That's the beauty of having a small and non-existent welfare state is that you're not initiating force against people to pay for the welfare state.
	People aren't coming across to be accomplices in the initiation of force against citizens by sucking resources out of a welfare state they're never paid into.
	And it all is a beautiful expansion of the non-aggression principle.
	And I think that you and I can agree, since you, you know, libertarian, minarchist or anarchist kind of guy, That you and I can agree, Andrew, that if we can reduce the size and power of the government-run welfare state, that is by far the best solution to the problem as a whole.
	Can we agree with that?
	Sure.
	When people from third world countries who are used to and have a moral framework, so to speak, of turning to the state to solve virtually every problem, when they come in and overwhelmingly vote for a big welfare state, and the statistics are pretty clear on that, how are you going to eliminate or reduce the size and power of the welfare state when people are flooding across the border who are attached to that welfare state and will fight tooth and nail to maintain and expand it?
	You can't.
	Well, it's worse than you can't.
	You go in the opposite direction, right?
	You get a bigger welfare state.
	Not only can you not reduce the welfare state, but you're making it harder to even bring it up, right?
	Sure.
	Okay, so given that you and I both want to reduce the welfare state, and given that the welfare state is currently bringing people across who are going to vote for more of the welfare state, on average, then restricting immigration is a way of Keeping the possibility open of reducing the size and power of the welfare state, which is what we both want, right?
	Sure.
	Right, right.
	Excellent.
	Then I think we're in agreement.
	But we're not.
	I still don't think it's justified to restrict immigration.
	Well, again, we're back to I don't know what the word justified means.
	Like, I still don't think it will be moral for someone to support restricted immigration.
	So just if you would allow me to go through the example again.
	So we could eliminate the welfare state.
	No, no, no.
	I don't repeat arguments.
	We either understood it or we didn't.
	But I'm not going to just repeat the same arguments again.
	I'm not saying your example.
	I'm just going to clarify my view.
	So we could eliminate the welfare state, but at present that's not an option.
	Because people are having children that will vote Democrat at a higher rate than people who are having children who will vote Republican.
	So we could, on the other hand, restrict them from doing that.
	And those people are immigrants, right?
	Immigrants or native-born Americans in the castration example or whatever, the sterilization example.
	Well, no, no, because certainly on average, third-world immigrants lean more left than the average of the domestic population.
	Right, but we could isolate the area of the domestic population, which does lean left, and prevent them from having kids.
	Right?
	Noah, you can't.
	Noah, how can you?
	You could determine what characteristics, like, generate...
	Oh, no, no, I understand the methodology, but how could you?
	Put sterile in some drinking water of urban areas.
	What?
	All of the urban areas?
	What do you say?
	Urban areas with a disproportionately high black population or high Democrat population, you could do it.
	It would probably be cheaper than actually hysterectomies or whatever.
	Okay, okay.
	This is new, right?
	I mean, I just said sterilization, not hysterectomies.
	Even with the hysterectomy example, that would probably be less money for a surgery than...
	Can you deliver effective birth control waterborne?
	I don't know, maybe.
	Let's imagine a new invention.
	I don't think you can.
	It's pretty concentrated hormonal treatments, and I think you'd, I don't know, get guys with John Anderson voices and man boobs pretty quickly.
	I think people would kind of notice.
	Even the hysterectomy example, the cost of a hysterectomy is probably lower than the cost of welfare that a person will consume over the course of their entire life.
	So, net cost, you're probably preventing, and even if it weren't, you're allowing us to eliminate the welfare state someday because there aren't future Democrats.
	So we could eliminate the welfare state now.
	That's not an option.
	We could, on the other hand, prevent future Democrats from preventing us from eliminating the welfare state, but it would require us doing something distasteful, like sterilizing people or deporting them.
	Sterilization and deportation are not the same thing.
	One is a law already on the books that people knew about before they came into the country.
	Sterilization is a whole other Different thing that is roundly against every conceivable legal more that America has and would never have a chance of passage and would never ever be implemented.
	However, deportation is the enforcement of accepted, agreed upon laws that have existed in America for centuries.
	So you cannot put these two things in the same bucket when it comes to state power.
	Alright, so just to clarify, your argument on this issue boils down to one practice is legal, and that makes it acceptable for us to implement, but the other practice has no legal precedent, and that's why it's unacceptable.
	That's the distinction between the two.
	No, I'm just saying that you can't put these things into the same moral category.
	Or into the same category of implementation.
	Because one is simply the existence, like, when it comes to the state and its actors.
	And look, I've said this a million times, I wish none of this shit existed at all, but it does.
	You have to, you know, you have to deal with the world as it is, not a fantasy ideal world and so on.
	And so all children consume resources.
	All children consume resources.
	And of course, all immigrants consume resources.
	Everybody consumes resources.
	So the idea that you minimize resources and so on is somewhat specious.
	However, enforcing existing law Is a very different hurdle to get over than creating some new law to forcibly or surreptitiously sterilize large urban populations by putting some weird shit in the water, right?
	You understand that from a practical implementation standpoint, from actually getting something done, enforcing a law that is existing and has been accepted in America for centuries is very different from creating a law profoundly unconstitutional in every conceivable way.
	So the difference is that sterilizing blacks is harder than deporting Mexicans?
	Well, you're answering a question with a question, and that's not how debates work.
	To be clear, you asked me if I understood.
	I don't understand.
	I want to be clear on the principle.
	The principle is that one is harder to do than the other.
	No, the practicality.
	There are no principles in state action.
	When I say the principle, I mean the force of your argument, why you believe that they're different.
	The distinction is that one is more practical, that is to say, it is easier to do than the other.
	No, one is possible and already accepted and agreed upon by the state, and one is completely impossible and would never, ever be achieved in America.
	So, I mean, you're talking about, well, who would win a horse or a unicorn?
	Well, I don't care about the unicorn because it doesn't exist.
	And this idea of you're going to put something in the water that's going to target Democrat.
	I mean, you have to listen to yourself, man.
	You put something in the water that targets Democrat voters and has them not breed.
	Why would any politician do that?
	Because no politician would see the benefit of that for 18 years when they're long out of office.
	I mean, just who cares for the scenario?
	It doesn't matter.
	It doesn't mean anything.
	It's never going to happen.
	I mean, my point is that if it seems like your moral standard would justify something bad, even if it's unlikely to happen, then it's probably worth reconsidering the moral standard.
	So the distinction here we've drawn is that one is likely to happen and one is unlikely to happen.
	No, no.
	One is already legal and accepted in American jurisprudence, and the other one is impossible and will never happen.
	To be clear, sterilization of blacks has happened in U.S. history in the early 20th century.
	So, you know, it's unlikely to be in the current political climate.
	To the point where it affected elections by having fewer Democrats, which is sort of the purpose of what you're talking about?
	I don't think so.
	So I just wanted to be clear that the distinction between why one is acceptable and the other one is not.
	No!
	There is no moral actions in a statist environment.
	So you're trying to pull me back to this sort of moral justification.
	I don't want deportation.
	I don't want anyone to be sterilized.
	I want none of this stuff.
	But if we have agreed that the goal towards a freer society will have a lot to do with reducing the size and power of the welfare state, and if the enforcement of existing laws within America would help reduce the number of people dependent on and voting for the welfare state, okay, that's a potentially practical action.
	Is it moral?
	Is it justified?
	Is it not?
	I don't know.
	I don't care.
	It doesn't matter because it's a state environment.
	Yeah, so it seems again like you said, our disagreement is more foundational than I expected.
	So I apologize if this has been a very rambling debate.
	I just disagree with the fact that there aren't any moral standards if you exist under conditions of coercion.
	So like earlier with the Iraq War example, it seems like we can judge people's political behavior morally.
	It would be immoral to behave a certain way politically.
	So throw your political support.
	I didn't agree with that.
	What did I say about that?
	I'm just curious whether you're listening.
	I might be misremembering.
	What did I say about that?
	I don't have your quote written down.
	I haven't been transcribing.
	Quote written down?
	We're having a conversation, Andrew.
	What did I say?
	I'm just curious at the degree to which you're listening or whether you're just waiting your turn to talk.
	You said that we should be judging the behavior of the state and not judging the behavior of the individual because the behavior of the state is worse.
	That's not what I said.
	You also said that individuals live under conditions of coercion.
	No, no, no.
	You're wrong.
	What I said about that was that I don't particularly want to get focused on judging someone's All right.
	Thank you.
	Alright, up next is Andrew number two.
	He wrote in and said, is human nature fixed, specifically female nature, in terms of hypergamy?
	And will the only way to make any meaningful change in the men's rights movement is to implement an Islamic-style patriarchy, making women the lawful property of men?
	The reason why I ask this is why I believe that all women are hypergamous in terms of always looking for the next guy with more resources and that I believe that this nature is fixed.
	I believe that in order for any meaningful change to happen in the men's rights movement...
	Regardless of what that change might be, that change will have to be done using force, since women are the majority of the voting population, and I simply don't see women voluntarily voting for a system that limits their influence on politics and the society at large.
	That's from Andrew.
	Hello, Andrew.
	How are you doing?
	Hello, Mr.
	Mullen.
	I'm doing good.
	How are you doing?
	I'm doing well, thanks.
	Good.
	So...
	Making women the lawful property of men?
	I gotta tell you, you're gonna have a bit of a hill to climb, my friend.
	Oh, I know.
	Well, because I've been listening...
	I mean, do you mean...
	I'm sorry to interrupt.
	Do you mean that or are you kind of just being provocative?
	Well, a little bit of both, I guess.
	I'm not sure if I would agree with that actually happening, but with like the men's rights movement, I see them like trying to make things like more equal in terms of the law and how men are viewed and how men are kind of like disposable.
	And I don't see the men's rights movement succeeding in any way, simply because women are, like I said, the majority of the voting population.
	So I don't ever see them voting for something like that, especially with feminism gone wild as it has been.
	Oh, it's not going to happen through voting, man.
	The change is going to happen.
	The relations between the genders are going to normalize when the government runs out of money, not because women or men, for that matter, wake up and start voting in terms of long-term common sense and productivity.
	Yeah.
	Well...
	But so, I mean, this idea that...
	I guess the question is what happens after the government runs out of money?
	That's actually what I was just going to ask.
	So what would happen then if the government were to run out of money?
	I don't see any peaceful outcome coming from that.
	That kind of puts me out of a motivation for a job.
	I mean, I think that peaceful things can come out of it, but I think we need to work hard to bring the message across to people.
	Well, even if the message were to come across and, you know, go to people, I don't think they're going to listen.
	I mean, the average person...
	I'm not going to try to sugarcoat it.
	I mean, the average person is pretty darn stupid, you know?
	So, I don't think that logic...
	Well, but...
	Sorry to interrupt.
	That's because stupidity is subsidized.
	You don't have to be a good hunter if your food gets delivered every day, right?
	I mean, you don't have to.
	Stupidity is subsidized.
	I think people are smart.
	They're just underutilized because the state is doing so much of the heavy lifting for them, right?
	And so, you know, people are, you know, people survived.
	You know, there was an ice age that reduced the human population down to about 10,000 people, all of whom formed an Islamic village and married their cousins.
	But there is, like, human beings have survived.
	And look, I know disaster peace theater is something that runs in my head sometimes, for sure.
	But I sort of remember, okay, you know, end of the First World War, you have 10 million people dying from combat in the First World War.
	You have 20 million people or so dying from Spanish flu and other related illnesses brought back by the troops coming home.
	Then you have this manic...
	Growth in the economy, the sort of Fed-fueled cocaine binge of the 1920s.
	Then you get this grinding Great Depression that goes on for 13 years.
	And then you get another giant war that culminates in nuclear weapons and causes the deaths of 40 million people.
	That was some shitty times.
	Now, the welfare checks running dry is not in the same category of shitty times.
	People will adapt well.
	They'll try like crazy to continue to get the free Mountain Dew drip of state goodies for sure.
	They'll freak out.
	They'll riot.
	And then what happens is people just kind of switch over.
	They go, okay.
	Okay, I guess I'll do X now in order to...
	Human beings are relentlessly adaptable.
	You know, push them into the Arctic, and they'll survive there.
	You know, push them to the equator, they'll survive there.
	Push them to Siberia, they'll survive there.
	And human beings are, like, relentlessly adaptable and...
	Flexible.
	And so, what is the big transition?
	Do we have a giant meteor that hits the ground that reduces the temperature 20 degrees?
	Nah.
	Do we have massive heating that increases the temperature 20 degrees?
	Nah.
	Do we have a giant war?
	A giant plague?
	Do we have worldwide famine?
	Nah.
	What happens?
	Little yellow check stops coming.
	You know, like I just, I can't get, and I do, look, I get it.
	I mean, I'm not sure, but part of me is like, we're a lot more robust than we think we are.
	And human beings are very adaptable.
	And right now, Let me give you an example.
	Okay.
	The number of times that people have called in, I don't know if you've listened.
	Have you listened to the show much before?
	Yes, I started listening about a couple years ago.
	Okay.
	So you've probably heard this, where people say, my parents beat me up, beat down on me, hit me, until when?
	What happens?
	Until they submit to them.
	Yeah, and then what happens over time?
	When do the parents decide magically to stop hitting their kids?
	Well, when the children get bigger.
	Yeah, when the kids get bigger.
	So there's this adaptation with parents, which is like some mean parents, abusive parents, who they're hitting the kids, they're yelling at the kids, they're dominating the kids, because they're five times and four times and three times the size of the kids, and then two times the size of the kids, and then they're not, right?
	Yeah.
	And what happens?
	They magically find other ways to try and dominate their kids than hitting them.
	In other words, when the power relationship changes, the behavior changes.
	And with men and women, women have had this crazy relationship with the state, right?
	The state plus femininity plus white knighting, right?
	The urge that all men have, protect the eggs!
	Wake up!
	Protect the eggs!
	Find the eggs!
	Hopefully access the eggs!
	Whatever you do, protect the eggs!
	That's just basic biology, right?
	A tribe with one woman left can't survive.
	A tribe with a lot of women and only one man left can't survive with a very contented male.
	And so this basic biology is clear and you have to protect the women.
	Now, you combine the female vote and females' capacity for manipulation and playing the victim and setting men against men and all that kind of stuff, plus hypergamy and so on, it metastasizes, right?
	And you get women who vote for massive increases in state power who wish the state to backstop the risks they take when they have kids with a guy who may turn out to be good, may turn out to not be good and all that.
	And then, of course, you get the single moms.
	And single moms have, in general, generalization alerts.
	But single moms, well, they had high hopes.
	around and then they didn't.
	Like either they had a great guy and they drove him away or they had a shitty guy and drove him away or he left or whatever, right?
	And so they have a lot of anger, frustration and resentment towards men.
	And this spews out and is one of the emotional drivers behind feminism.
	Feminism, radical feminism wants to set the genders against each other because that way women who will always want to have kids, women will have kids.
	They will, men will be driven away or will run away from these increasingly shrill Marxist driven harpies.
	And then they glom on, the single moms glom onto the state.
	And then the single mom's frustration and anger towards men is taken out against the boys.
	and the boys grow up fearful and resentful towards and off women, and it just messes the whole thing up.
	But all of this requires...
	That the states step in to pay when the father of the children don't.
	And so women can treat men like crap, and we've seen this going on for ever since the welfare state started, women have been treating men like crap.
	You look at the Lever to Beaver.
	Barbara Billingsley was the actress, right?
	I mean, she...
	Mr.
	Beaver comes home and she's got her hair in this, you know, Phyllis Schlafly virtuous 50s helmet.
	And, you know, she's got a white dress on and she's, oh, I've got to put on makeup because my husband's coming home and I'm going to have dinner ready and the kids are going to be bathed and I want him to come home to a good household which he's happy to be at and so on, right?
	Yeah.
	And she's vacuuming and she gets the kids all dressed up nice.
	Can't forget about that part.
	Yeah, you know, here's your favorite chair.
	You know, the doc's going to bring you your paper.
	And here's a glass of whiskey, right?
	I mean, that was, and it's a bit of a cliche, but there was some definite truth in it.
	And why?
	Because she needed the man to be happy because the man brought home the cheddar, right?
	He brought home the bacon.
	And so she needed the man to be happy and he needed to keep her happy as well.
	Right.
	And so there was sort of a mutual mutually assured destruction that was the foundation for the longevity of those relationships.
	Right.
	Now, the welfare state comes along and the feminists need the welfare state in order to be able to split up the family because the family will prove impervious to break without the welfare state by and large, because the women are going to be like, OK, well, if he leaves, I'm going to end up, you know, living in the basement of the church or in a van down by the river on a living in the basement of the church or in a van diet of government cheese.
	And so women with the welfare state no longer needed men.
	They no longer needed men.
	And so because they no longer needed men for bare survival, well, they can...
	Shit on men all they want, right?
	I mean, no-fault divorce and patriarchy, which is a giant insult towards men.
	They can go around insulting men like crazy.
	Well, sure.
	Because they can get the resources from the state.
	And so, what is it that normalizes Well, government runs out of money and women who have kids in particular or who want kids need men again.
	And what happens?
	Patriarchy will be in the rear view and the benevolent, uh, Niceness of men will come to the forefront and women, of course, I can virtually guarantee you, Andrew, women will not say sorry, but will continue on and just start being nice because they're adaptable.
	We can adapt to the ice age, we can adapt to the end of the welfare state.
	And they'll just march forward and they'll be much nicer and you'll get your foot rubs again and you'll get a sandwich and the woman will listen patiently to your fishing stories and all that kind of stuff.
	And that's just the existing women, the new women, right, the women who were growing up, the teenage women and beyond, they'll sort of say, okay, well, without the welfare state, I really have to rely on a guy.
	So I better choose a really good guy.
	I know there's that sexy guy with that stubble and the dark circles of vindictive malevolence that's oh so sexy under his eyes and that tousled Marlon Brando in the wild one style hair and leather and he's he's going nowhere but he's going nowhere fast and he's got a great ass and the women will be like no can't grit teeth Poke clitoris, cross legs, stitch up vagina, whatever it takes.
	Got to stay away from the bad boy.
	And they'll get into the quality guy who's going to be there and stay.
	He may not be the most exciting guy in the world, but he's a lot less terrifying than the guy who's going to knock you up and take off to Toledo because there's a motorcycle convention somewhere in the mountains.
	So this will all just change and women will adapt and men will move on as if they were never owed an apology.
	And, you know, hopefully through that process, the parenting will become better.
	We can get the peaceful parenting message across.
	People will self-deport without the welfare state of every ethnicity.
	They'll go back to something that's more comfortable.
	And government unions will lose some of their power because there just won't be enough money to pay them.
	And through that process of better families, stronger families, a more consistent culture, we can get the peaceful parenting message across.
	Hopefully we can prevent the recurrence of yet another stupid state cycle like it's been going on for the last 200 years in the West.
	End of my intro.
	It's all yours, man.
	Well, I mean, that's kind of what happened after World War II, after all the men went to war and they all died, right?
	So then during the 50s was the fabled patriarchy era, like the one you were just describing.
	But then in the 60s and 70s, and then that's when feminism came, second wave feminism, then third wave feminism through the 90s.
	So, I mean, patriarchy will come.
	Well, I don't want...
	No, no, no, no, no, no, listen.
	I'm sorry to interrupt you.
	It's not patriarchy.
	Equality between the genders is not patriarchy.
	Look, I'm sorry to interrupt.
	I'll make this very brief, I promise.
	Listen.
	You're good.
	Listen.
	I'm all ears.
	It's really a matriarchy.
	Genetically, it's a matriarchy.
	So you say, oh, but, you know, the woman is dependent on the man to bring home all the resources while she's pregnant and breastfeeding and stuff, right?
	The woman is dependent on the man and that's way too much power for the man.
	No, it's not.
	Do you know why?
	Because the man relies on his woman to not cuckold him.
	Because cuckolding is a genetic disaster for men.
	See, you know, there's this old Strindberg play I read when I was taking English many a moon ago.
	And in it, he basically points out that a woman always knows the child is hers, but the man never does.
	I mean, evolution occurred prior to genetic testing and all of that.
	So the woman always knows that the child is hers, the man never does.
	So the man, yeah, he's got to go and work and all that, so maybe he's got some power there, but he's got to keep his woman happy.
	Because if he doesn't keep his woman happy, she'll do the ultimate screw you and have him spend 20 years of resources raising one or more of some other guy's kids, which is a total genetic disaster.
	So there is no patriarchy in a free environment.
	Because the woman genetically holds virtually all the cards.
	Because the man is out working, she can go and bang that good-looking gardener from Desperate Housewives.
	And then, you know, assuming he's not rainbow-colored and it half comes out in the wash of the genetics, then he's, you know, he's got to be sure of her love, devotion, and commitment to him.
	He's got to be good in bed.
	He's got to keep her laughing.
	He's got to keep her happy.
	He's got to keep striving for that alpha perfection because, She has the option, which a lot of women take, surprisingly large number of women take, to just cuck him up the stream and have him waste his entire genetic potential and his 20 years of resources on some other guy's kids.
	So it's not going to be a patriarchy because there is always the genetic matriarchy.
	But sorry, go ahead.
	Well, isn't she just going to do that anyways?
	Aren't women always looking for, you know, the better man with more resources to offer her?
	Yeah, isn't that great?
	No, listen, that's why we have cell phones.
	Cell phones are the giant cocks of dweebs, right?
	The guys who can't get abs to save their lives and who can't grow a mustache with Crayola and concentration, so they have to go out and transform nature into massive amounts of additional resources because their chicken-chested knobbly kneed and spent too much of their reproductive early years playing Dungeons and Dragons.
	So it's wonderful that women continually want to trade up.
	We all, you know, people say hypergamy is a female thing.
	Okay, yeah.
	Okay, fine.
	But men want to trade up as well, which is why...
	A lot of men will trade in for a younger wife later on because they want to trade up and have more fertility opportunities.
	And so there is, you know, you're probably not using a giant shoebox cell phone from 1985, right?
	You want to trade up your cell phone.
	We want self-driving cars.
	We want, you know, teleportation.
	We want, you know, a lot of people want to...
	3D printing, you know, have you ever had a graphics card fast enough for every single game for the next five years?
	Probably not.
	People want PS4s.
	People will want PS666s when they come out in two years or whatever, right?
	So it's not a female thing.
	A female thing manifests itself in a particular kind of way.
	But yeah, you have to keep working in a relationship.
	You know, a relationship is like a shark.
	It stops swimming and it sinks and dies.
	You have to keep working in a relationship.
	Come up with new stuff.
	And it can be a challenge after a long time.
	Come up with new stuff, interesting stuff.
	Take up new hobbies.
	Make more money.
	Expand your capacities or something.
	Learn a cool new language that you can converse in.
	Like, whatever keeps the woman's interest and has you keep moving up the ranks in the hierarchy of the species is fantastic.
	And so, yeah, women want the best around, which is why men should always continue to strive to be the best and to do the best.
	And that is a wonderful thing in society.
	You know, when the South Korean economy emerged from, like, third world status, it had 30 years of 10% sustained growth.
	And that was just so men could gather resources to buy prettier vaginas.
	Yeah.
	You know, women were looking for that stuff.
	And that's fine.
	Women put on, you know, their tiny Sailor Moon pantsuit K-pop stuff and they dance around so that the men can bring more resources to them for fertility.
	And, you know, these sort of primitive Aztec style dances have been going on since the beginning of time.
	And so, you know, hypergamy is great.
	I mean, it gets men off their ass and out into the world to make things better.
	Well, I understand that hypergamy has its benefits to mankind, to humanity, in terms of us always improving our standard of living, improving technology, improving the way we live our lives.
	But I don't see it as being beneficial for men, because if you always strive to try to make yourself the alpha male, try to make yourself better, Try to increase the number of resources that you have.
	I mean, you're basically living up to her expectations and to society's expectations.
	You're not really living for yourself.
	No, you are.
	You are trying to buy the most attractive fertility wagon you can, right?
	Are you saying to me that men don't like dating or getting involved with the most attractive women they possibly can?
	No, of course they do.
	Okay, so you are doing something that you want, which is you're getting enough resources to get the highest quality, at least highest genetic quality woman that you can, whatever that is for you.
	Well, that's true.
	I would agree with that.
	But...
	I don't see how, like, for me personally, like, I stopped.
	I haven't dated in quite a while.
	Just because I got just tired of all the pressure and all the stress of trying to constantly live up to her expectations just in order to keep her from going to somebody else.
	You know, it's all the stress, all the pressure.
	Sorry to interrupt, Andrew.
	What were those expectations?
	What was she looking to trade up?
	Well, with money, with resources, getting promotions, getting better jobs, behaving in the way that she approves of, you know, behaving in a way that her family and the culture approves of.
	It just got to be too much to where I realized that I wasn't really living.
	I wasn't really doing what I wanted to do.
	I was only doing what I had to do in order to keep her and to have her and her family approve of me.
	You know what I mean?
	You're in the dating phase, right?
	There is a lot of posturing and here are all my resources.
	Here's my big wagon of...
	Penis gold.
	But that's the dating phase, right?
	Listen, the sexual market value of a woman, like in free society, the sexual market value of a woman before she gets pregnant is...
	Is high.
	Very high, right?
	Fresh eggs, come and get them, right?
	However, once you knock her up, It's like a stuka that can't pull out of the dive bomb, right?
	So once you knock her up, then the hypergamy stuff, like the hypergamy is for before she gets knocked up.
	Once she's knocked up, in a free society, like with the welfare state, she now has assets because she's now got additional welfare checks.
	In a free society, when you knock the woman up, She now has liabilities, not assets, right?
	So, you know, her boobs are hanging down.
	She's got stretch marks.
	Her ass has probably gotten bigger.
	She's got very little time to take care of herself in terms of her appearance.
	And she has one or two or three or more, you know, squalling little kids who need constant time and attention from her, right?
	So she ain't out there looking all kinds of taut and shiny, clubbing it up under the disco star beams, right?
	And so, this all beforehand, after, in a free society, afterwards when a woman goes from asset, which is potential fertility, to liability, which is Ex post facto fertility known as kids.
	That's a different matter.
	Now, because her sexual market value has plummeted, the hypergamy slows down in a free society.
	In a state of society, she can run off, take half your stuff or more, get a bunch of welfare payments, get a bunch of subsidies, the school is paid for, and all of that, and...
	Healthcare now in many places is paid for and women use more healthcare resources than men and so on.
	So in a state of society, one of the reasons this hypergamy and divorce rates are still so high is because the women don't go through that post-getting-knocked-up collapse in their sexual market value.
	But in a free society, they would.
	So hypergamy is not a dance that goes on forever.
	Like once you get married and once you have kids in particular, then a woman's Sexual market value craters.
	And it never really comes back up, right?
	Because by the time the kids are grown, you know, she's like 45.
	And, you know, I mean, she's not fertile anymore.
	And men look for fertility signs as the highest value of female accessibility.
	And so this sort of brief flash of time from like 18 to 25 or whatever, I mean, I guess, you know, it used to be the case that women were told, enjoy it.
	Enjoy your time.
	Enjoy the fact that all these guys are bringing you drinks.
	Enjoy the fact that all these guys are asking you out and draping their capes across the mud on the way to your pumpkin carriage to take you to the ball where you can lose a slipper made of glass.
	Enjoy this time.
	But this is the time when you have to be very, very choosy and picky about the man you're going to end up with.
	Because at the time of greatest attraction is also your time of greatest danger.
	Because if you get knocked up by the wrong guy...
	All of that glitter vanishes.
	Like, you know, there is this analogy or, I guess, story of Cinderella, which is the woman is fantastically attractive until midnight, in which case everything turns.
	Well, this is her brief flash of maximum sexual attractiveness from biologically younger than 18, but legally 18 to 25.
	Okay, so this is her time of maximum attractiveness.
	And then midnight comes and she's, you know, gets all Crypt Keeper on you.
	And so that flash of glorious stardom, like, you know, most men don't know what it's like to be a movie star, but, you know, reasonably attractive young women know what it's like to be a movie star because they get the red carpet all the time everywhere they go.
	And it used to be Received and accepted female wisdom that don't squander that you know Don't win the lottery and blow it all because you win the lottery as a woman when you're young and Don't squander it make sure that you get a commitment from a solid dependable maximum attractive guy that you can Because then he's gonna knock you up You're back to being a nobody with kids again, right?
	I mean in terms of sexual market value Well, hasn't the welfare state stopped that tournament-style dating from happening, given child support and jail time for not paying child support or alimony and all of that?
	I kind of want to go back to my original question.
	It kind of ties into that.
	Would this biology of men always catering to women because they have fertile eggs, can we ever change that?
	Is there ever a way to where we can change that from...
	Change society from being a matriarchal society to being a more egalitarian society.
	No, no.
	I'm sorry.
	I'm sorry.
	Why is it that because women have higher sexual market value than men when they're young, why does that make things so fundamentally unequal?
	I mean, because later it changes.
	Like a 45-year-old man with a decent amount of resources is much higher sexual market value than a 45-year-old woman because he can still have kids and he's got more resources than he had when he was 20.
	So it's just a pendulum, right?
	It's like saying, well, the pendulum is always on the right.
	It's like, wait for it, wait for it, over to the other side, right?
	So it's not a permanent thing.
	It's just the way that nature works at that time.
	Yeah, but...
	You know, politicians and feminists are constantly trying to change that, you know, stop that from happening through, like, the divorce and, like, no-fault divorce and alimony and child support.
	So I guess because you're a men's rights activist, am I correct in assuming that?
	Well, I like to consistently apply the non-aggression principle.
	I've certainly spoken at some men's rights conferences and sympathize with a lot of their goals, but they're still a bit more statist, of course, than I would be, to put it mildly, but go ahead.
	That's why I think that they're ultimately, like, they're going to fail.
	Like, their endeavors are futile, you know?
	They'll never be able to succeed simply because of our biology and how we constantly, men being constantly looking for, you know, eggs and younger and younger women.
	And I just want to see if, like, if there was ever a solution to that, if we can ever change that biology, which, I mean, I kind of already know the answer, but I kind of wanted to get your view on it.
	Why would you want to, though?
	I mean, I think it's a delightful dance that men accumulate resources to attract the most attractive female they can.
	And see, hypergamy is supposed to be quenched by motherhood, but because of the state, it can just go on and on and on, right?
	I mean, most women can no more resist attractive men offering them free stuff than young men...
	Can resist attractive women offering them free sex, right?
	This is just the way that biology works.
	A woman is especially tickled by an attractive man offering her free stuff, politicians and all that.
	So that is something that is going to normalize, right?
	In the absence of a state, then...
	A woman will recognize that her short flash-in-the-pan time of maximum sexual market value is when she needs to judiciously choose the very best man around her and to grit her teeth and avoid the sexy but Dangerous man or inconstant man, and men have to do the same thing too, right?
	It's that there's going to be some Jessica Rabbit, I'm just drawn this way, I'm not bad, I'm just drawn this way.
	There's going to be some Jessica Rabbit vixen, you know, with the curves of Sofia Vergara, and you know, she just might be a total man-eater.
	And that level of hypergamy, like the more attractive woman that you want, the more you are risking death by hypergamy, right?
	I mean, and so we all have to figure out what, you know, everybody, but maybe a lot of people would like to be a movie star or, you know, be the lead singer for the Rolling Stones or something.
	But we all have to accept what we can reasonably achieve given our skills, desires, and abilities.
	And so, yeah, women always want better.
	So what?
	Men always want better, too.
	Yeah, that's true.
	I'm sorry.
	Sorry, in the absence of the state, we learn to compromise with reality, but the state can feed our fantasies to truly mutated levels.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Well, the thing is, though, because men have to work so much harder in a relationship just to keep the woman, so how would it be advantageous then for the man to constantly, I mean, because we all want, well, straight men anyway.
	Dude, I feel like I've got two Andrews who don't listen.
	Okay, let me just mention it very briefly.
	You're in the phase of life where you have to pedal like crazy because you're young, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay, what did I say in a free society after the woman gets pregnant?
	Her sexual marketplace value goes down, plummets.
	It craters.
	So this idea that you have to keep working that hard?
	No.
	Listen, we all know this cliche.
	The first time you ask the woman out, you take her to an expensive restaurant, you buy her flowers, you pay the waiter...
	Violet is to come over and play the theme from Titanic and all that kind of crap, right?
	And then, you know, after a couple of years of marriage, you fall asleep with half a slice of pizza resting on your beer belly, right?
	I mean...
	There is a little, it's not all like that, but there's a little bit of that.
	You know, when my wife and I were first married, it was like, birthday, here's my fireworks display coming out of my armpits.
	And now it's like, hey, was it your birthday?
	You know, it's just, you know, you can, you're not peddling uphill as much.
	So you're in the phase where it seems like it's going to go on forever.
	And because of the state, there's a little bit of truth in that.
	But it really does change in a, certainly in a free society, it will change, it changes over time.
	And the man actually gains the upper hand after pregnancy because the woman is much more dependent on him.
	And so the man gains the upper hand.
	In a free society, the man gains the upper hand.
	And of course, the man has the option to, like, let's say, you know, you get married at 20, you have kids at 25, your kids are grown when you're 45.
	Well, as a man, you can just, you know, pull the eject and go have family number two, right?
	The woman can't because she's too old to have kids at that age, right?
	But the man can't.
	Yeah, but he pays a heavy price for that, though.
	No, no, no.
	Free society, man.
	Free society.
	Free society.
	Right now.
	I mean, you know, I don't want to talk about, you know, talking about the gender relations in a state of society is like trying to talk physics with someone on LSD. You're just baffling them and annoying yourself.
	But in a free society, the woman knows that That this is the time of maximum sexual market value for the 45-year-old male and minimum sexual market value for hers.
	Because fundamentally she has no sexual market value because her fertility is done, whereas the man has a lot of additional resources.
	So women need to plan and maybe even plot for that eventuality, for that reality.
	That she starts 10 and he's like 2, right?
	And then whoop!
	20 years later or 25 years later, it's totally switched.
	And he's a 10 and she's a 2.
	So all the work that you have to do in a free system, all the work that you have to do to woo the woman who has a lot of options now, switches around later and the middle-aged woman has to woo to keep the man.
	Because he has lots of options and she is at the bottom of the list of sexual market value.
	And of course, women hate that, right?
	I mean, in the present, right?
	In the past, it would be something you would gracefully accept, you know?
	But, you know, middle-aged women these days are like, I don't know, bald guys with a comb over it.
	It's like, you're not fooling anyone.
	One additional bit of lipstick is not going to erase your crow's feet.
	So, in a free society, I don't think we'll have to do anything.
	Other than be free and let consequences accrue naturally.
	But we don't live in a free society.
	Well, yeah, but I can't talk about gender relations in a state of society other than women plus state.
	And listen, women plus state is what people focus on because it's more immediate.
	Women plus state create, you know, divorce courts and alimony and child support and welfare and healthcare costs through the roof and government schools and government unions, right?
	I mean, because government unions are ridiculously overstaffed by women.
	And because, you know, nice to have all that time off and sick pay and benefits.
	So right now, Women drive domestic policy, but men's giant raging bunker buster hard-ons for blowing up countries overseas drives the military industrial complex.
	So it's not like men are these giant libertarians, you know?
	I mean, of course, you go to a Democratic convention and it's all, you know, pinks and hugs and taking care of each other and all that.
	But you go to the Republican convention and it's all like, let's nuke North Korea until that weird haircut on the top of that That portly prince of Pillsbury Donus glows, right?
	I mean, so the men are driving it through the warfare state and the women are driving it through the welfare state.
	But men's aggression, like, I mean, I don't know how old you are, but I remember the days when the lead up to the Iraq war, people were like, yeah, America!
	War!
	Lights pretty on screen, death.
	And armchair warrior-ness makes hair glow with manhood.
	And so that is male aggression metastasizing through the remote power of the state.
	And women's hypergamy also mutates and metastasized through the brute power of the state.
	So men get to maintain their warrior fantasies through the warfare.
	And women get to create hypergamy and maintain their sexual market value through the welfare state.
	And so it's not as cut and dried.
	You know, it's easier to see the woman's side of things because that's in the house that we live in, the country that we live in.
	The men's stuff tends to result in countries regularly erupting into radioactive dust.
	In other parts of the world, you know, the CIA with their toys and their drones and their remote torture sites and overthrowing foreign governments and the spy networks of ultimate bullshit that never seem to stop anything.
	So this all the boys with their toys drive up a huge amount of government debt and girls with their fields and their welfare state drive up a huge amount of domestic debt.
	But it's easier for men to see the women's effect on it.
	And it's a lot easier, I think, for the women to see the men's effect on it.
	But I don't know that either gender is particularly to blame.
	Well, to answer...
	Well, it wasn't really a question, but I'm 28.
	So, can I give you a little bit of background about myself just so you understand, like, where I'm coming from, like, why I'm thinking this way?
	Sure.
	So, well, I'm Middle Eastern.
	My dad is Syrian, and my mom's Jordanian.
	So, in the Middle Eastern culture...
	The women, they don't treat the men better as they get older.
	They actually treat them a lot worse.
	They become like, after they get married, they become like monsters.
	Like completely different people.
	Or maybe they're showing their true selves.
	I don't know.
	Is it from like Natasha Atlas to Crypt Keeper in the blink of an eye?
	Yeah.
	That's a pretty good way to put it, actually.
	Yeah, right.
	So...
	shame their husbands much more.
	They yell at them a lot more and they expect a lot more as they get older.
	Like they expect to be, they expect to be treated from princesses as when they're younger to being treated as Queens when they get older.
	So it becomes that much worse.
	So in a free society for other cultures, I think, as you were describing, I completely agree with that.
	But for other cultures, and the Indian culture is very similar as well, it's just simply not like that.
	Indian women can...
	Can take on a tad bit of bloating after marriage.
	Yeah, and Middle Eastern women are exactly the same.
	Please, no, sorry, my eyes.
	Anyway, go on.
	So yeah, Middle Eastern women are exactly the same.
	Okay, go ahead.
	And they actually, like the majority of them, get really overweight after they get married.
	They just let themselves go completely because divorce is basically non-existent in the culture.
	It's very, very looked down upon.
	It just very rarely happens because the people who are getting divorced, they're shamed into submission.
	And what I mean by that is submitting into staying within the marriage even if the husband or the wife is a really awful person.
	Most of the time it's the wife being just really awful to her husband and to her kids too.
	Except to her sons, actually.
	The mothers are much kinder to their sons, and I think it has partly to do with the fact that once her husband dies, she's going to lose her main provider, so then it goes down to the eldest son to be the main provider.
	Yeah, you've got to groom the new arteries to fasten on to later, right?
	Exactly.
	No, and I remember this.
	I had a friend when I was growing up.
	Indian family.
	Two daughters, the son.
	And, you know, I'd be over for dinner.
	And, of course, you know, I was used to doing the dishes and clearing the table and so on.
	And, like, literally it was like, no!
	This is the job for the daughters.
	You go and sit on the couch and Yeah.
	And here's a drink.
	And, you know, the daughter is, you know, but, you know, they would not.
	And the guy's like, yeah, come with me.
	And he goes and stretches, you know, the Indian guy just stretches his legs out.
	It's like, yeah, it's good.
	It's good life, right?
	Whereas, of course, you know, I'm like, you better get a taster for your food that your sisters prepare because I don't know how well that's going to go for you.
	I'm sorry.
	No, go ahead.
	That's how it used to be, but the girls in my generation, they're not like that anymore.
	If their fathers told them to, well, you have to clear the dishes, they'll just say, no, that's sexist, don't put me in that position, I'm better than that.
	They just go absolutely apeshit crazy.
	So it's not like my parents' generation to where if my grandmother told my mom to set the table and to cook, she'll do it without question.
	She'll complain about it the whole time, granted, but she'll do it.
	But like my sister, I remember one time Thanksgiving a couple years ago.
	So my dad was having financial difficulties.
	So I helped and then some other people helped to pitch in and to buy the food.
	So my mom told my sister, hey, you have to set the table.
	She went just ballistic.
	Apes shit crazy.
	Honestly, I kind of lost focus.
	I forgot what we were talking about.
	Where would your sister get the idea that it was totally wrong for her to set the table?
	Well, she went to a very liberal college, so I'm assuming that had partly to do with it.
	I'm guessing you're not calling from Syria.
	No, no.
	All right.
	All right.
	Okay, so your sister has gone through this sort of liberal education, and it's like, that sexist has become like the thing, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, don't get a lot of that about divorce court and family.
	That's sexist.
	No, no.
	It's okay.
	Because that's the sexism that benefits a lot of women, so that's kind of different.
	Okay.
	So, when it comes to your dating, are you dating mostly within the Middle Eastern community?
	Are you branching out?
	Are you heading to the Himalayas?
	I'm definitely not dating any Middle Eastern girls.
	Actually, I kind of stopped dating the past couple of years.
	I mean, I went on a few dates here and there.
	But, like, see, I've dated maybe a lot of girls in my life.
	So, I've been with at least a couple dozen girls.
	You unbelievable man whore.
	What do you mean?
	Well, I didn't sleep with all of them, but I did it.
	Hang on a sec.
	Hang on a sec, man.
	I'm going to see if you got a sultry picture on Skype.
	Hang on a sec.
	I'm not sure if I do, but I don't even know if I have a Skype picture up.
	You don't.
	Okay.
	I'm very disappointed.
	Okay.
	I don't want to say charisma has more to do with looks.
	I tell myself as I repeatedly get older and haggard.
	Are you a very good looking guy?
	Are you tall?
	Athletic?
	What is it that's giving you this va-voom?
	I'm 6'1".
	I'm very physically fit.
	I weigh 255, but I'm 12% body weight.
	So I'm very physically fulfilled.
	I think you mean 12% body fat.
	What did I say?
	I'm sorry.
	You said 12% body weight.
	Oh, body fat.
	I'm sorry.
	I just got this image of this giant frame with these tiny legs.
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	Yeah, I meant body fat.
	Okay.
	And yeah, not to sound arrogant.
	So unlike me, you have more than – like you have abs plural rather than just one ab, right?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Yes.
	So I've had a lot of experience with girls and every single one of them with Middle Eastern girls being the worst of this, I would treat every one of them with respect and be kind of like the nice guy initially just to see how – just because that's how my parents raised me.
	I'm sorry.
	That just sounds kind of ominous, you know?
	I treat them really nicely at first.
	And then...
	No, so you start off with this, like, I treat people the best I can the first time and then see what happens, right?
	Yeah.
	And what happened?
	They quickly got bored.
	So I learned as I got older, they all told me I would be too nice.
	So then I would start being an asshole to them.
	A complete douchebag.
	What do you mean?
	What would you do?
	I wouldn't return their calls.
	I wouldn't return their text messages.
	I would check out other girls when I would be with them.
	They would seem like they would be mad at first.
	But then they would...
	Just like become more interested and they would be just more like sexually willing, I guess.
	After I treat them like I'm an asshole, like I'm a douchebag.
	So they start to become more clingy after that.
	And do you know why that happened?
	Why they become more clingy?
	No, why they were attracted to you when you treated them badly.
	Why they were more attracted to you.
	Because I was exuding more alpha male traits, more confidence.
	Wrong?
	Well, I think so.
	Keep this very brief, Andrew, and then please continue with your story.
	But I think it's because female sexuality has been divorced from consequences.
	It's been divorced from the need to find a good provider.
	Now, in the absence of the use and evolutionary utility of female sexuality, which is to be as good-looking as possible, to be as attractive as possible, and to be as pleasant as possible so that you can find a good provider, the highest provider that you can get a hold of, in the absence of that biological imperative, female sexuality has become merely status Olympics.
	That's all it is.
	And so, in status Olympics, it's all about supply and demand.
	Not the supply and demand of good, honest, decent, providing men.
	It is all about supply and demand in terms of if you are less interested in them, it's because you must be able to get a better woman.
	That just means more attractive woman.
	So you must be able to get a more attractive woman if you're losing interest in them and treating them badly, not returning their tax and checking out other women.
	It's because you don't feel any loyalty to them, which means that you...
	Must be a higher status male than they thought and therefore they should hang on to you because if you dump them for a more attractive female, they'll feel like crap because they'll be lower in the pecking order.
	So it's all become about the status Olympics.
	Is this the kind of guy that my girlfriends are going to be jealous of?
	Is this the kind of guy that's going to make me look good?
	And so this status Olympics is what female sexuality has devolved into in the absence of its original purpose, which is to get the most stable provider that's possible.
	Instead of getting a good man, they just want a shallowly defined high status man.
	So beforehand, when you would treat a woman badly, she'd say, well, this guy would never be a good provider.
	So I'm not interested in if he treats me badly because the whole point of female sexuality was to get the good provider.
	Now, now that it's all about the status Olympics, if you treat them badly, you must be high status and thus of greater value because you're aiming up the ladder of attractiveness and they don't want to reveal that they're lower.
	Does that make any sense?
	It does, yeah.
	It makes perfect sense.
	All right.
	So, what would happen then after you'd start treating these women like crap?
	I would imply that their sexual marketplace value is lower than what mine is.
	Sure, and then what would happen?
	So they'd then want to Basically, they want to daze you by shooting you with the hypodermic dart of Vaginaville, right?
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Because, you know, you know what it's like.
	I mean, how many great poems are written right after an orgasm for a man?
	Unless the poem goes something like this.
	Right?
	I mean, it's a blow dart of nippledom that goes into your thigh and it's like, oh, I used to have ambition.
	I used to have drive.
	Right?
	So, you know, this squeeze your brain with a woman's thighs until it loses oxygen and becomes compliant is pretty common in the dating world.
	So they try to drug you with sexuality in the hopes that you can just be around as a high-status male to make them look good, right?
	Yeah.
	And then what would happen?
	After, I'm sorry, what would happen after what?
	Wait, you didn't just rub one out, did you?
	Don't, don't daze out on me, bro.
	Wait, are you just thinking about tits again now?
	It's like, have I just made too many sexual references of, you know, bring the blood back!
	North, north, my friends!
	Sorry, I tried to call myself out.
	No, what I mean is, so after, like, after you start treating them like crap, and they try to bang you into compliance, and, you know, dunderheaded obedience, what would happen then?
	I think the pattern would just repeat.
	So then once I started submitting to her, to her will, she would start to kind of go back to trying to find another guy.
	I went back to being nice to her like I was before.
	Oh, right.
	So once you go back to what used to be high status when women had to depend on men, you've now become low status because you must want her.
	In other words, she is the best you can do and so she must be able to do one better.
	Exactly.
	All right.
	Right.
	And then how would it end?
	Well, it would be just a repeating pattern just happening.
	So I'd be nice and then she'll want to look elsewhere and I'd be mean and then she'll want to stay with me.
	So I think it'll just keep repeating until one of us just gets fed up with it and leaves.
	Fed up with what?
	Like just not liking each other?
	Fed up with...
	The whole game of flip-flopping back and forth between one person having a higher sexual marketplace value than the other and then switching the other way.
	Well, that's what I think anyways.
	Right.
	And what made you stop dating?
	Kind of like what I was talking about before.
	So I just got like all the girls that I would date, they would all like try to convince me to go to medical school, go to law school, get a really good paying job and I would tell them I don't want to do that.
	That's not something I'm interested in.
	And then they would – Yeah, that's the high income vampire livestock pen that a lot of women may try to get you into, right?
	Hey, why don't you work super hard so I can shop?
	Well, basically, and that was especially the case with the Arab girls that I dated.
	My God, let me tell you a story.
	So, one Arab girl I dated, I went to her house, and I could never, like, date her alone.
	I would have to take her two brothers along with me, because her parents wouldn't let me.
	And I would have to call her mom to ask her for permission just to take her daughter out with her brothers, not even with just her alone.
	And she would ask me just the most inappropriate questions.
	Like when I would be at her house on the dinner table, she'd ask me, how much money do you make?
	How many women have you had sex with?
	How much money do you expect to be making?
	What kind of job do you want to have?
	And it's quite the experience.
	Why are those inappropriate questions?
	Because she asked me in front of her whole family.
	And this was the first time that I met them too.
	Okay, so she's efficient.
	I don't want to sound overly sympathetic, but when she's asking these questions, how much money do you make, she's kind of giving you an IQ test, because as we know, IQ and income are closely correlated.
	So if you say, well, you know, I make $12 an hour, and, you know, I'm hoping to make assistant manager at Starbucks by the time I'm 40, well, that's not just ambition, there's an IQ. So it's kind of a genetic test to ask you about your ambitions and so on, right?
	Yeah.
	Well, she knows what my education is, because I have two master's degrees, so she's well aware of what my IQ range is.
	Not to say that education necessarily correlates...
	No, no, I'm with you.
	If it's a good college, master's degree is 120 plus at least, right?
	And two is probably 130 or more, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay, and was she of a status and level of attractiveness...
	That justified her asking these demanding questions?
	No.
	I would give her maybe a seven.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	Are we talking like Roseanne Barr grilling George Clooney?
	Are we talking that kind of stuff?
	No, I would say she was probably a seven, seven and a half out of ten.
	I mean, she was a good looking girl, but not like, you know, she wasn't a model.
	And you know, it's tough to date women when their mom's around, because you get that fast forward, right?
	Yes.
	This is the now, and this is the model you're getting in 20 or 25 years.
	It's like, ooh, ooh, I don't necessarily want to see the 67 Corvette and the crushed up boxcar that it turns into in 25 years, because, you know, that's gonna...
	Yeah, exactly.
	The first time I saw her mom...
	I just kind of got a little scared because, you know in Snow White, you know the witch?
	Remember what she looked like?
	She kind of looked like her.
	Not even like.
	Chilly.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	I just imagined myself banging her 20 years from now and my dick just curled back inside its shell.
	So it's...
	Forgive me for swearing.
	I gotta hate it when the Audi becomes an innie.
	That's a tough thing.
	Because then, you know, ladies don't know this, but you have to hold your nose, pretend to sneeze, and jump up and down on a trampoline to pop that baby back out.
	So, did you end up ever dating this woman?
	Well, yeah.
	I dated her for about three months, and then she invited me to her parents' house.
	And, well, I... But yeah, she told me, like, right from the beginning, though, like, she couldn't go.
	Like, she wouldn't date me unless her brothers came.
	So, of course, you know, I was thinking with my little head, not my big head, so I went along with it.
	I'm like, yeah, okay, that's fine.
	And it was just awful.
	Like, her brothers wouldn't even let me sit next to her, like, in the movie theater.
	That's how bad it was.
	Extremely conservative family, to say the least.
	So you're just basically going to the movies with some Middle Eastern guy who doesn't like you.
	Well, two Middle Eastern guys who don't like me, and yet...
	Two Middle Eastern, that's right.
	Right, it's the worst date ever.
	Okay, so why did you date her?
	Because if she wasn't that pretty, like if you're a 9 or a 10 and she's a 7 or whatever, I mean, what's the...
	Well, she had a nice body, so...
	Okay, okay, all right.
	Yeah, it's like when you go to the museum and there's the Michelangelo behind glass.
	Nice body, bonk.
	Nice body, bonk.
	Oh dear, the brothers of the plexiglass.
	That would be an appropriate analogy, yes.
	And why did it end?
	Because a friend of mine was on Plenty of Fish and he saw her profile on Plenty of Fish.
	I'm guessing that Plenty of Fish is not a place where you meet people who like fishing?
	No, it's a free online dating site.
	It's basically where the ones and twos go to find dates.
	So it's kind of like Tinder.
	This is like, I'm 32 years old and here's my picture from high school.
	Yeah, basically.
	Okay.
	So yeah, we had a good laugh about it.
	But look, I mean, could she not have been just fish curious?
	I mean, does it necessarily mean that she was stepping out?
	Well, maybe not.
	You make a good point.
	Maybe I might have overreacted, but at the same time, I felt like if I were to go through...
	Because how many guys would have put themselves in that situation to go out...
	First of all, Andrew, remember...
	It is a truism of life.
	Middle Eastern men never overreact.
	That is the one thing I wanted to get across to you first and foremost.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	No, yeah.
	Well, because I thought I was putting money in the bank, right?
	If I go out with her and her brothers, that I would be metaphorically putting money in the bank until I found out that wasn't the case.
	So...
	And then plus I just got really sick of it and just tired of the whole situation of constantly having to woo not just her but her brothers and her mom too.
	And well her dad actually he didn't even he wasn't even involved at all because her mom completely ran the show.
	Like her dad is just to say he was in China would be putting it lightly.
	So, wait a minute.
	So, the fast forward is not just physically, but, hey, I could be like her dad in 25 years.
	Yeah.
	Completely spineless and man-gianted up the yin-yang, right?
	Yes, completely pussified.
	Right.
	Now, have you ever met a woman or dated a woman who excites you philosophically, morally, has courage and virtues that are deeply moving to you?
	Well, there...
	Well, the answer is no, but there was one girl who I thought enjoyed philosophy.
	She said she did.
	So then we'd end up talking about philosophy.
	We'd talk about feminism, economics, like Socrates, Plato, the classical philosophers, John Locke, even Jesus, too.
	But I quickly found out that she wasn't much of a philosopher, that she was only trying to say that she was and she was interested in philosophy because she knew that I was interested in philosophy.
	So she was just using it as a way to get to me.
	But no, I've never had a good philosophical conversation with any women ever.
	So whenever I talk about generalities with women, they immediately, every 100% of the time, they'll go into talking about the exceptions.
	And I'll say, well, the exceptions, they don't really matter.
	The exception exists because the general rule exists, and they simply just wouldn't understand this concept.
	So, well, long story short, no, I've never had a good philosophical conversation with a woman.
	Right.
	No, and this is, it's a form of feminine paralysis that often is squirted out of women-like metaphors.
	I'm not going to finish.
	And yeah, this, was it Mike?
	We had this poster, and it was something like, it was a poster that somebody sent.
	And it was a guy saying, You know, most women aren't really that into motorcycling.
	Most women are not really that into motorcycling.
	And then there was this woman saying, well, I knew a woman who loved motorcycling.
	And underneath it, it was like, statistical retards, you might know one too.
	That's on the Facebook page right now if people want to see it.
	Yeah, that's just indication of low.
	It's just a low IQ signaler.
	I mean, that's not even EQ because somebody with EQ but a low IQ would at least know how goddamn annoying that is to hear.
	So it's low IQ and low EQ at the same time.
	Is low EQ emotional intelligence?
	Yeah, emotional intelligence, which is sort of...
	Emotional intelligence is something invented to make women feel better for being lower on the IQ curve and higher, right?
	That's exactly what I was going to tell you.
	Yeah, no.
	I mean, the statistics show it's like less than 3%.
	They can tease out less than 3% of job performance out of EQ. And, you know, maybe it goes into the low double digits if it's a totally feels-based occupation, but EQ is a consolation prize.
	Hey, you never get a Pulitzer, so I'm going to give you something called EQ. Yeah.
	Yeah.
	So, yeah, look, as far as this goes, you're going to have to start, if you're interested in this, my suggestion would be, Andrew, you've got to start dating women who don't turn you on.
	Yeah, you're right, and I've tried looking for that, but the women who don't turn me on and who are smart are either overweight, non-attractive, or both, you know, so...
	Well, of course unattractive.
	Overweight is a different thing.
	They have to be at least decent looking, right?
	No, this is what I'm saying.
	Date women where you're not stupid from desire.
	Look, a man's frontal lobes, frontal cortex, they all shut down.
	It's like a meteor hitting a city power grid.
	Penis, penis, penis, vagina, vagina, penis, penis, vagina.
	That's all you're getting.
	This is why you end up squashed in between two Middle Eastern guys, four arms lengths away from a woman who won't let you touch it, right?
	Penis, vagina, penis, eggs.
	Penis, vagina, vagina, vagina, vagina, eggs, eggs.
	Right?
	I mean, so you have to date women.
	Where the immediate physical attraction isn't there so that you have what could colloquially be called a brain and a personality during the dating process.
	It doesn't mean you won't find a woman attractive over time.
	But, I mean, I'm just speaking from personal experience.
	Love my wife, think she's the most beautiful woman in the world.
	Neither of us were each other's type when we first met.
	Yeah, I remember you saying that.
	She got to know each other without, you know, vagina, vagina, penis, eggs, you know, constantly clouding our brain.
	Yeah, that's true.
	You're right.
	It might sound hypocritical though but I have gotten better at controlling those like what you were just describing.
	So like when I see a very attractive girl, I wouldn't immediately – just like my brain wouldn't immediately go to mush and I start thinking with my penis.
	So I've gotten much better at controlling that over the years.
	Yeah, but why bother?
	You know, why bother having to control it?
	Because, you know, the other thing too, but the problem, of course, you're going to have as a sort of physically imposing, alpha-looking guy, the woman's brain may shut down just because, you know, you might accidentally twitch a pec muscle, you know, and your nipple leaps out and blows away her capacity to reason.
	So that's a possibility.
	You know, I'm picturing that whole thing happening in my head right now.
	Excellent.
	All right, listen, I've got to move on to the next caller, but I really, really appreciate the conversation.
	You're welcome back anytime.
	It was a real pleasure.
	Thank you, sir.
	It was a pleasure to speak with you as well.
	Thank you.
	Bye.
	Thanks, Andrew.
	All right.
	Up next is Jason.
	Jason wrote in and said, I'm a 27-year-old in love.
	The girl I love is into polyamory and has a hard time sticking to one guy.
	She is only 21 and is therefore younger than me.
	I refuse to degrade myself as a man, as her elder, by ending up as just another guy.
	The logical experience side of me says she is a no-go, but I have a hard time restraining my emotions and desires.
	Should I confess my true feelings to this young woman, or should I walk away with dignity and go my own way until she is either older and more mature, or until an opportunity presents itself to enrapture her?
	Or should I write her off altogether as toxic?
	That's from Jason.
	Oh, Jason, I don't think you should walk away when you can, in fact, run.
	Hello, Stefan.
	Thank you for having me on the show, by the way.
	I just wanted to say that first.
	My pleasure, Jason.
	Am I talking to your penis or your brain at this point?
	I'm not sure, because it seems to me that your penis was trying to cockblock your brain from writing me a letter.
	Right, right, right.
	Well, I mean, I guess in a way this is a broader...
	It's kind of a broader discussion in dealing with kind of like the duality.
	You know, I do have a romantic side and I also have a logical side.
	And the deal with this particular young lady is that we actually do get along very well.
	I have kind of...
	I have kind of distanced myself very clearly from...
	From her in the relationship realm.
	If you know what I'm saying, like when I'm with her I make it clear that I'm basically, I mean, You could almost say that, like, I've kind of friend-zoned her, but I still can't help the fact that, you know, I mean, she's a woman and I'm a man and I have these feelings.
	Oh, dude, I gotta stop you because if I had a dime for every time I heard mealy-mouthed male statements when you've been dicknapped trying to justify what's going on, I'd be rich!
	So dicknapped is a phrase I use when your penis takes over and you can't think straight and you're just trying to justify everything after the fact, right?
	Fair enough, fair enough.
	How pretty is this girl?
	Give me one to ten.
	Um...
	I would say somewhere like 7.5 to 8.5.
	And you?
	Um, I actually, uh, probably the same, 7.5 to 8.5.
	I have a friend who calls me White Angel.
	I think he kind of overestimates my attractiveness, though.
	All right.
	Okay.
	So, you're of roughly similar physical attractiveness.
	Would she be, do you generally date women more attractive, less attractive, or about the same?
	Um...
	I've dated a few times in my life, you know, and generally it's been about the same.
	And what is different about this girl that you're willing to even contemplate polyamory?
	Well, here's the thing.
	I'm not willing to contemplate polyamory.
	I will say that I categorically have ruled that out.
	And I guess I just...
	The problem is, I guess, that...
	What I'm struggling to deal with here is that I do enjoy my friendship with her.
	I mean, we have similar interests.
	We hang out.
	We work great as friends is, I guess, what I'm saying, you know?
	What are your...
	Okay, I got to stop here because...
	Hang on.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	So I just need more detail.
	What are the similar interests that you share?
	The same movies.
	We play a lot of video games together over the internet, you know?
	We'll stay up late playing video games, just talking about stuff some nights, you know?
	Wait, wait.
	Okay, so we've got movies and games.
	Now, you went to talking about stuff, and what stuff are you talking about?
	Oh, let me remember.
	I'm sorry.
	I'm kind of on the spot right here, you know.
	I'm trying to remember the last big conversation we had.
	A lot of times we joke around a lot, you know.
	You're flirting.
	I don't know.
	Okay, let me ask you this.
	Let me ask you this.
	No, let me ask you this.
	It's a very, very simple test.
	When you have conversations with her, is it like on the talk chat of video games?
	Sometimes it is.
	I would say it usually is.
	I mean, every now and then we...
	Okay, no, that's fine.
	Just give me the short answer so I don't need the full spectrum.
	So, would these be the kinds of conversations that you would have with a man?
	Let's see.
	Or are you sillier, goofier, more playful, more flirtatious, or something like that?
	I wouldn't say flirtatious because I try not to come off as flirtatious with her.
	I think, in all honesty, the most flirtatious thing I'll do is I do have a tendency to turn my charisma on when she's around.
	I pay more attention to my posture and stuff.
	I tend to do this whenever there are any women around, though.
	So I clearly am very conscious.
	Up go the shoulders, in goes the gut.
	Okay, so you said that you love this girl, and I'm asking, I guess what I'm asking in a roundabout, but now direct way, is what do you love about her?
	I need specifics, not we get along, we're compatible, we share the same.
	This is all a description, right?
	What specifically, what characteristics, what virtues does she exhibit that you love?
	Okay.
	She has a good sense of humor that's always been important to me.
	Her sense of humor seems to line up well with mine, so we end up laughing a lot when we're together.
	I seem to do...
	This is going to sound like...
	I'm not a very spiritual person when it comes to dating, but it just seems like...
	Wait, are you dating?
	No, no, no, I'm not.
	Not at the moment, no.
	Okay, so...
	Okay, so what...
	Okay, she's funny.
	Not a particularly moral or virtue-based characteristic.
	You know, Lenny Bruce was funny.
	Bill Cosby was funny.
	So what do you love about her?
	Well, I would say that one thing that is positive about her is that she does have a good work ethic because I've been in relationships before with people who don't and that ends very badly.
	But she'll get jobs, she'll save up money, things like that.
	So she is, I would say she's fiscally responsible.
	Okay.
	She likes talking about big things.
	I will admit though that, I mean, when it comes to realms like philosophy, you know, I grew up with a professor as a father and he always loved explaining things to me and I actually enjoy, I guess, a lot of times we'll talk and There's a lot of things that she doesn't know much about, you know, and she'll ask me to educate her, and she seems to like learning things from me, you know, so I have a good time with that, I guess.
	Right.
	Anything else?
	Hmm.
	Virtues, virtues.
	Well, she takes care of herself, um...
	What, are we going with grooming and hygiene?
	Is that, come on, you can't lead me down to...
	But her dating history is certainly nuttier than a fruitcake.
	Sorry?
	I said her dating history, though, is certainly nuttier than a fruitcake.
	Okay, so I'm going to assume that she bathes, which is taking care of herself.
	What is the story with her dating history, and what is the story with her childhood?
	Let me speak to her dating history first, I suppose.
	She is a very...
	What's the word?
	I mean, I think she says it...
	I can only speculate.
	I think she says it for shock value, but sometimes she just calls herself a slut.
	She just says, I'm a slut.
	She brags about the number of men that she slept with sometimes, you know.
	And I just kind of roll...
	It was like, if I recall, it was eight.
	And I just kind of roll my eyes and I'm like, you know, I'm polite to her.
	I said, you can call yourself whatever you want, but I'm not going to shit on you, you know?
	So she's had intercourse with eight guys at the age of 21?
	Evidently.
	I mean, that's what she says.
	I don't know if she's inflated the number.
	Well, I assume that part of what you love about her is she's not a liar, right?
	I will say that, yes.
	She does seem to be an honest person.
	I will say that.
	She is a straightforward, honest person.
	All right.
	And why is it nutty about the...
	We can go with the doubling, that whatever a woman says, we can double, just like whatever a man says, you might be able to divide in two.
	But we go with the fact, if she refers to herself as a slut, then she's clearly not trying to pretend to be better or more conservative than she is.
	So maybe it's eight, maybe it's more.
	But do you know any of the guys she's been with?
	Have you heard anything about them?
	Actually, I do.
	I remember one night I was gaming with her.
	You see, I've...
	And I suspect it might be because I've always distanced myself from dating her.
	She always says that like, and she says it to me, she said before, whenever one of my male friends confesses his feelings to me, I feel like I always need to sleep with him.
	You know, and I've never confessed my feelings to her because I've seen what happens to these other guys, you know, and because I'm a realistic person.
	And yeah, they go and sleep with her, but then like pretty soon she gets bored with them and then they're tossed on the pile.
	And I don't want to end up, you know, a bitter, you know, bitter angsty like them.
	You know what I'm saying?
	So any man who says that he's attracted to her, she'll sleep with?
	Is that what she's saying?
	Well, her friends.
	I mean, not any man, but not any man in my experience.
	I've certainly seen people she's turned down.
	But she seems to have a physical attractiveness filter, but I'm higher on the attractiveness scale than at least some of the people that I know she's dated.
	Why is she not interested in you?
	Sometimes, well, I've never told her that I was interested in her.
	No, no, no.
	Forget that.
	Forget that.
	Why has she not said, you know, you're a nice guy, you come from a well-educated family, I assume you've got a decent education and some decent prospects, so why isn't she indicating some interest in you?
	It might be because, I can only guess personally, but there was...
	There was a time early on in our friendship when I told her, you know, you're fun to be around.
	I think you're a nice person.
	But I said to her, but I think that any guy who would date you is nuts.
	And I told her that flat out.
	But I said, I do enjoy being here.
	You said this, wait, hang on a second.
	You said this to a woman that you claim to love?
	That is a very, very deep insult.
	I'm not saying it's wrong, but it's deeply insulting to say that anyone who would want to date you must be insane.
	I guess you got me.
	I can't imagine saying that to someone that I love.
	So help me square this circle, if you would.
	Well, I do have to admit that at that time, I was in kind of a bitter place in my life because I had just gotten out of a relationship with someone else that ended rather badly.
	I'm guessing if you allow yourself to say these kinds of things, I'm guessing all of your relationships are going to end rather badly.
	If you give yourself permission to say something like, it's not funny.
	It's not funny.
	If you give yourself permission to say, I won't say abusive, but it's an incredibly nasty thing to say to someone.
	Because if there is someone in your life like that, don't have them in your life.
	But don't have them around and tell them something like that.
	If you give yourself permission to say things like that to someone that you claim to love, how is anyone going to feel safe around you, given that you can come in with such a javelin to the heart?
	I didn't feel any love for her at the time, if that makes any difference.
	Have you apologized?
	That might be a good idea, Stefan.
	You think?
	Also, I do want to apologize for laughing.
	I'm just nervous.
	This is my first time.
	No, no, I get it.
	I get it.
	And I'm not pointing it out of anger.
	I'm just saying I don't want to be discombobulated that way.
	Now, why do you think she would hang around with a man...
	Who's told her that anyone who would date her must be crazy.
	What's her childhood?
	What's her history?
	What's her family?
	How could that be?
	You want to know what I know about her family?
	Well, I don't want you to guess.
	Well, I'll be honest.
	I always hate it when people say that, because now I'm trying to think, well, what have you been doing up to now?
	Okay, yeah, that was a redundant preposition, I guess.
	I hope so.
	I don't know all that much about her family.
	From what I do know, when I've been over to her house...
	It's very strange that I've never been over to a friend's house before and not have their parents engage me.
	She lives at home with her parents.
	I've never been over to any friend's house before and I think it's especially peculiar if it's me as a guy going over to visit a girl.
	Her father says almost nothing to me.
	Her mother says almost nothing to me.
	I remember one time I walked in the house and he was walking down the hallway past me and he didn't even look at me.
	I said, hello, sir, to be polite.
	He turned his head for a moment and he just kind of flippantly lifted his hand and then put it back down and then just never missed a beat walking.
	So I don't...
	It's difficult for me.
	I don't want to speculate unfairly on what her home life is like, on what her family life is like, because I'm not an expert enough in psychology or anything like that.
	No, but I'm trying to, sorry, I'm trying to understand.
	Like you say, you love her, but you don't know much about her origins.
	And given that she's 21, the origins are a bit more relevant than if she was 51, right?
	Because she's right there living at home.
	You don't seem to know much about her childhood or...
	Her history, what have you been talking about?
	Like, you know what I mean?
	Like, it seems, I love this woman.
	I told her this mean thing, incredibly mean thing, and I really don't know anything about her history.
	Well, I guess I know a bit more about her history than I do about her family.
	I guess I would say that.
	She's 21.
	Her history is her family.
	She's still living at home.
	Right?
	For the most part, I suppose so.
	She doesn't seem to talk about her family very much.
	I mean, if she's got a secret life with our friend from the last call, if she's got a secret life as a superhero, then okay.
	But she's 21.
	She's living at home.
	Her family, her history, her environment, that is most of who she is, right?
	I suppose that certainly would be pretty much the entirety of what has produced her as she is.
	Up to this point.
	Right.
	Especially if she's passive, right?
	Which is, guy tells me he wants to sleep with me.
	Open pod bay.
	Open the pod bay doors, hell.
	Open the pod bay doors.
	And so if she's not...
	If she's isolated from her parents, right, if she's not getting any attention from her father, if her father is, as they say, emotionally unavailable or depressed or whatever it is, right, so he's not there, then it seems likely that she would be very hungry for male attention, which is probably why she mistakes sexual desire for personal interest.
	It certainly seems plausible.
	Now, who in your family is the person who may have taught you some of the mechanics of this language that you have for people that you say that you love?
	You know, like anyone who would date you must be crazy.
	Like, is there someone in your family or your history that has that habit that may have kind of given you implicit permission for that kind of talk?
	Probably my father, to be completely honest.
	Again, I hope that you are being completely honest hitherto, but in what way did he do that?
	Well...
	This is a little difficult for me to talk about, you know, but...
	I have had people in my family who...
	Actually are or were crazy, you know?
	A lot of my family has, like, a history of some pretty serious mental illnesses and childhood traumas.
	And...
	My parents are divorced now, you know?
	I guess my father didn't take the divorce very well.
	I guess that's a word that I've heard him use to describe my mother at certain points because of her family history and some of her experiences.
	Right.
	So when you said to me that you'd had a bad breakup and you were Feeling kind of cruel or feeling bitter.
	I think you said it was in a...
	Yes, bitter.
	...bitter place.
	Then is that similar in a minor way, similar to your father after the divorce from your mom, that he was in a bitter place?
	I would say it is similar, yeah.
	Right.
	This sounds surprising to you.
	I guess I just never thought about this before.
	Good.
	Good.
	That's good.
	I mean, that means that there's great value in the conversation, I hope.
	So when you say crazy, you really know what you're talking about, right?
	It's not like, oh, that's crazy.
	I mean, the crazy is a very emotionally charged word for you, right?
	Sometimes it is.
	Sometimes it isn't.
	In that circumstance, I suppose in that circumstance, I was implying that there was something I was implying that there was something wrong with her.
	Something?
	I mean, that's very much wrong with her, right?
	I suppose so.
	Anyone who would date you must be crazy.
	would have to be crazy to date you.
	Certainly.
	Bye.
	Right.
	Do you remember what led up to that statement with her?
	that was that statement was actually a while ago so I'm trying to remember exactly what led up to it I believe that she was talking about
	There had been a gap in her and my friendship because she was actually a mutual friend between me and my ex who I had broken up with.
	So there had been a gap in our friendship and I was talking to her and she was talking about another guy she was dating at the time or something like that.
	This is when our friendship was starting to kind of reform.
	Hers and mine.
	I basically said I still want to be friends with you even though, you know, I broke up with my ex.
	And did she stay friends with your ex?
	Not really, no.
	I think that at first, like after we first broke up, my ex kind of dragged her over to her side.
	And I was just like...
	Sorry, what was your ex saying about you?
	I think she was saying that...
	Let's see.
	She was saying about me that...
	I would be...
	Excuse me.
	I would be getting too irritable, and she thought probably, I'm assuming she was saying that I drink too much as well.
	Thank you.
	And were those true?
	Were you getting too irritable and were you drinking too much?
	I don't like to make excuses for myself.
	The fact of the matter is, at that time in my life, I think you would certainly say that I was drinking too much and that I was too quick to be irritable at that time in my life.
	I think circumstances had a lot to do with it, though.
	I don't like to make excuses for myself, but circumstances had a lot to do with it.
	I'm certainly to blame.
	Do you want to hear what my circumstances were like at the time, or is that not of any interest to you?
	No, it's all of interest to me.
	Okay, well, my relationship with my ex.
	For about a year, everything was great.
	And then she quits her job.
	I get a job as a security guard, and I'm also in college.
	So there would be certain nights when I would work midnight to 8 a.m., and then I'd have to be on campus by noon for classes, you know?
	And that was hard, and she wasn't looking for a job at all.
	So, as you might imagine, things deteriorated pretty rapidly after that.
	I'd get home, I'd start drinking, I'd do my assignments, I'd get hammered, you know, and then I'd do it all again the next day.
	And I was bitter about those circumstances.
	You know, I mean, my ex wasn't looking to help me out at all.
	Why did you, you know, your father's a professional.
	Why is it that you had to work while you were in college?
	Um, well, actually...
	To be entirely fair, I didn't really have to, but I, um...
	I felt like we needed the extra income at that time.
	We?
	What do you mean?
	By we, I mean...
	I guess I just felt like I wanted the extra income, you know, for me and for my ex.
	Were you living with your ex?
	Um, whenever, let's see, we, for a while, we shared a apartment with a friend of mine.
	That would be the best way to Okay, okay.
	And why were you drinking?
	I mean, that seems like an odd thing to do if you're working hard and studying hard.
	Drinking is, well, expensive, right?
	I mean, it's expensive to drink a lot.
	And wouldn't that not help you get...
	Good sleep or be able to concentrate.
	Like you say, well, I do my assignments and get hammered.
	Those two things, you know, like every now and then I'll put on some, you know, like YouTube has these like classical mixes like a Mozart or Liszt or people like that.
	And, you know, every now and then I'll scroll down to the comments just because I love to hear how people love the music that I love.
	And people are like, yeah, this is the best study music there is, you know.
	So like Mozart in your ear, I can understand.
	You know, Jim Beam in your gut, I can't really.
	Well, my best friend, who usually is a pretty insightful fellow when it comes to me, the way he put it is he said that I come by it honest.
	I get it from my old man.
	That's his opinion.
	So your father was a drinker as well?
	Yeah.
	Is he still a drinker?
	I would say maybe not as bad as at certain times in his life, but he still does have at least a few beers pretty much every day.
	And was that instrumental in your parents' breakup?
	I think that was one of a lot of factors that contributed to my parents splitting up.
	Would it have been in the top three?
	Well, it certainly didn't help things, but when I look at all the things that probably caused my parents' breakup, maybe top four, I think that the thing that really drove my mother away was that she...
	She was afraid that my father was going to die, actually.
	Why would that drive her away?
	Her father died.
	My wife was afraid that I was going to die a couple of years ago, didn't drive her away?
	My mom's father died in front of her when she was a little girl after a very long, very slow battle with Schizophrenia and failing health.
	And was your father ill?
	Was he...
	I assume he didn't develop schizophrenia in his 40s or 50s.
	That's, as far as I understand it, usually a late teen thing.
	My father did get ill, you know, and he got...
	Pretty bad and the doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with him.
	And there was a while where neither of us were sure, you know, neither me nor my mother were sure if he was going to make it.
	And I think that seeing him, watching him seemingly deteriorate like that over such a long period of time, I think it probably took her back to her childhood.
	And I think that she ran away because she didn't want to live through that again.
	And then I would assume that some of your father's bitterness came from feeling abandoned in his hour of need kind of thing.
	Yes, certainly.
	I'm dealing with the illness and now I have to deal with a divorce on top of this mystery illness, right?
	Right.
	Did he drink, continue to drink through the course of this illness?
	Yes, yes he did.
	I suspect his drinking actually went on an upturn.
	And I wouldn't be surprised if the reason that he did that was to kill the pain.
	He was in a lot of pain around that time because of the illness, which ended up being a fistula, if I'm not mistaken, in his abdomen.
	which resulted in a big abscess and infection.
	And your father's childhood, that he ended up with a woman whose father that he ended up with a woman whose father died of schizophrenia after a long battle with failing health in front of her, What was your father's childhood like?
	My father is, for the record, he's about 20 years older than my mother.
	And you're older than this girl, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	His childhood, my father's childhood, his mother was very abusive to him.
	I guess she would sometimes beat my father and my father's little sister, my aunt.
	That got better after, essentially, my father was born to my grandmother while my grandmother was single, so she was a single mom.
	But after my grandfather came back from World War II, my grandfather married my grandmother, the single mom, who, you know, they had a relationship before he left for war and he continued it and married her after he got back from the war and he made her stop physically abusing my father and aunt at that point which I guess they were a couple years old at that
	point but I guess that he wasn't very he wasn't very present in the house in a lot of ways my father often says that he didn't really have any coaching growing up you know And it just reminded me of this woman's father who's also not present in the house.
	Your friend, your 21-year-old friend.
	Yeah.
	And your father, yeah, so your father didn't have coaching and was physically aggressive or abused by his mother.
	Did you know if he ever did any talk therapy to deal with these issues or was it pretty much the alcohol?
	We did a bit of family therapy, like sometimes individual meetings and sometimes on rare occasions as a family around that time because of the illness and because of my mother's struggling emotional status.
	We did do some therapy and I think that he did.
	I think he did learn some things about himself from that.
	I mean, that's how he learned that he had no coaching as a child.
	And that's how he learned that his experience growing up was not normal.
	But he never pursued it as far as, you know, he's got time off of the summers, but he didn't pursue it as a goal, right?
	I suppose not.
	I suppose not.
	Right.
	He changed the way that...
	Sorry, go ahead.
	He changed the way that he parented me around that time, I suppose.
	Certain things changed in the way that he treated me as a parent.
	He started giving me more coaching.
	He started getting more involved with me and he started to kind of protect me.
	Nice.
	Now, if we were to go to your 21-year-old female friend, how much of this would she know about of you?
	My family history.
	Probably not much of it at all.
	So this is what I'm talking about, Jason.
	You're a 27 year old man.
	You're in a relationship with a troubled 21 year old woman or girl.
	You guys spend a lot of time talking back and forth, but you don't really know much about each other.
	You're skimming along the surface.
	You're making jokes.
	Maybe you're flirting a bit.
	Maybe you're not.
	Talking about movies.
	But you're not talking about who you are.
	What shaped you.
	The trials and challenges and glories and opportunities of everything you experienced.
	You guys aren't learning about each other.
	You're not really there.
	In a very sort of real open and vulnerable way with each other.
	And I'm trying to move the needle of what you call love.
	I'm trying to move the needle of the whole damn world of what it calls love.
	And the reason that I'm saying all of this is because most times people avoid intimacy because they wish to inflict cruelty.
	In other words, if you knew as much about her history as I've found out about you in the last 45 minutes or hour, if you knew as much about her history, then you could not vent your cruelty on her.
	Because she would be real to you.
	Like intimacy, knowledge of the other person, particularly of their childhood, is the best chance we have to avoid the temptation to be cruel.
	And so you guys skim along at the surface, not really getting to know each other, so that you can continue to repeat childhood patterns with each other.
	Intimacy, the childhood dysfunction arises out of distance, arises out of alienation or abuse or neglect.
	Out of a lack of presence of true and real and vivid personalities in the room, in the house, in your heart.
	It is distance that creates trauma.
	It is the distance that creates the trauma that also contributes to the capacity for nastiness, bitterness, meanness, viciousness, verbal abuse, or even physical abuse.
	We cannot hurt those we are truly close to.
	And there's a reason why you haven't asked these obvious questions of her or shared these obvious answers of yours with her.
	And that's because you need her around in case you're upset.
	I don't mean that the whole time that she's around you're just waiting to vent.
	What I mean is that you need her to remain objectified in your mind so that she can be a punching bag if you're upset.
	Because if you really, there's a reason why people don't really try to get to know each other.
	And it's frustrated me my whole life.
	Why, why don't we ask and answer these basic questions about ourself?
	It's not a criticism of you because it's so common, Jason, everywhere in the world.
	Everybody's just flying past like mad jetpack helicopters in the middle of the night on lonely, stretched, unnavigated, unmapped mountains.
	And there's proximity and there's giggling and there's chit chat and there's shared interests.
	And I like this band.
	And wasn't that a cool movie?
	And I've always liked Jason Sedaris.
	And like there's all this froth and there's no tide at all.
	There are all these bubbles and there's no depth.
	And when I use the word love, I use the depth and totality of knowing someone's history, of being inside their secret places, of being deep within the heart whose of being inside their secret places, of being deep within the heart whose depth they didn't even know they had until
	You know, we create depth through questions, through interest, through acceptance, through curiosity about who the other person is and what really makes them tick.
	That's just not all about the dominoes of history, I mean, but it's a great place to start, especially when someone's 21 years old, or 27 for that matter.
	And so my invitation to you, Jason, is share yourself, my friend, with people.
	Be curious.
	I dare say relentlessly curious, although that sounds more Aggressive than it actually is.
	But don't take fog for an answer.
	Don't take I don't know for an answer.
	Point out people's contradictory statements.
	It doesn't have to be in a negative or hostile or difficult way.
	But, you know, like earlier I said, well, you don't want to give yourself excuses, but you said it was circumstances that drove you.
	It wasn't mean, but I'm just pointing it out.
	But share yourself with people.
	Open your heart and work to massage the depth out of other people's emptiness through your curiosity.
	Now, once you begin to really do that with people, to ask them questions, to be honest and deep in your responses.
	And the reason I'm saying this, Jason, is that you admirably did that during this conversation.
	And as you said, and I really listened to that, you said, this is hard stuff to talk about.
	And I agree.
	But it's harder to not have this level of intimacy.
	When you have this level of intimacy with people...
	You get certainty and you get safety because when you're really close to people, you can't hurt them any more than you want to punch yourself in the face.
	Cruelty requires distance.
	Distance feeds cruelty which requires distance which feeds cruelty and this is why cruelty drives people further away and increases cruelty because people see the life raft in the endless ocean of isolation drifting away from them and they freak out and panic and they strike out.
	And they swim towards it, but every movement they make drives the life raft further and further away, and it's an agonizing existence.
	And you're young.
	It has not fully flowered its evil seed in your heart, but I'm concerned that it will.
	I don't want you to end up like your father.
	I don't want you to end up like your mother.
	But for that, you have to worry less about things like polyamory, And less about self-management.
	See, when you say, well, I have a hard time restraining my emotions and desires, part of me says this, part of me says that.
	All of that self-management, all of that confusion, all of those contradictory impulses arise from a lack of intimacy.
	A lack of truly knowing someone.
	And truly having that person know you.
	And one of the reasons we're scared to do it, and this is why it's tough to do in all but the newer or newest relationships, is that if there has been cruelty in the past, intimacy may cause her to lash out at you.
	Because she's hurt.
	She has to be.
	If she has any heart at all, then what you said to her, that only a crazy person would date you, has to hurt her.
	And that hurt is there.
	It's in there like a red baby, crying, angry.
	And so, bring down her empty walls of distance, lower yours, there may be some backlash.
	Cruelty is another way of saying, well, it's unwise for me to lower my defenses.
	And I'm sure you saw a lot of what I'm talking about in the later phases of your parents' marriage and in the later phases of your relationship with the woman who was this 21-year-old woman's friend during the breakup.
	But this conversation, which I very much appreciate you engaging in, is a small example of the kind of conversations that you need to have before you can say that you love anyone, not least of all, yourself.
	Thank you.
	You're very welcome.
	Thank you.
	Will you try and have a chat about this stuff with this young lady?
	It seems like a good place to start.
	At the very least, I think one good thing to start doing One good thing to start with, I think, would be to say sorry for what I did, what I said.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I think so.
	That stuff can define broken people.
	Like, that stuff can be the container into which their fluid personalities pour themselves into.
	It can define Her for herself.
	And she may not even know it.
	And I may be wrong.
	Maybe she doesn't even remember it.
	Although that would be pretty crazy too.
	But yeah, I think that.
	And then, you know, at some point I would recommend, you know, talk to your father and your mother and whoever else is in your life about this kind of stuff.
	Learn about their histories.
	Learn what makes them tick.
	Especially, you know, if your father is a drinker and has had some bouts of ill health, it might be Is it worthwhile or prudent to do it sooner rather than later?
	I think so.
	Good.
	I'll do my best.
	Let us know how it goes.
	And also, you may want to engage a therapist if you're starting down this road.
	I always recommend therapy to just about anyone, particularly those who are on the cusp of pursuing self-knowledge.
	So I would certainly recommend that as a Something to look into, but I hope that you'll let us know how it goes with these conversations.
	I do give my best wishes to this young lady, and I'm sorry that her father seems to be so in orbit when it comes to family openness.
	I certainly hope we all try to do the best we can.
	All right.
	I'll have to take the platitude and run.
	But thanks a lot for the call.
	Thank you, everyone, so much for calling in tonight.
	It was a very enjoyable and engaging show for me.
	I hope it was that for you as well.
	And freedomainradio.com slash donate to help out the show.
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	Shave a few bits of sawdust off your cart of gold and have it fall into our chilly fireplaces.
	So this is Tevan Molyneux for Freedomain Radio.
	Thank you, thank you so much for listening and watching as always.
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