March 6, 2016 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
03:12:14
3223 The Overweight Unemployed Spouse Who Calls You A Racist - Call In Show - March 2nd, 2016
Question 1: [1:49] - "How can Stefan hold onto the Austrian business cycle model in the face of its manifest problems? in particular, I'd like to take Stefan to task for his recent statement that 'right now, businesses don't know what the dollar will be worth in 5 years.'"Question 2: [1:16:35] – “My wife is overweight, unemployed and called me a racist in front of our children - how do I repair our relationships?”Question 3: [2:15:57] - “How do you explain the phenomenon of serendipity? Is there anything to the idea of destiny?”Question 4: [2:28:45] -“How is initial ownership established over anything under the non-aggression-principle? Do you only own what you can protect under the non-aggression-principle?”
The first caller wanted to hold my feet to the fire with regards to the business cycle.
you know, the boom, bust, echo, boom, bust, echo stuff that goes on, that he wanted to know how I could believe in the Austrian business cycle theory, because it's got so many problems, and we had a really, really great chat about what a truly free market might look like really great chat about what a truly free market might look like and how predictable it might be to do business in It was a really, really great conversation.
The second was a guy, well, let's just say there are concerns that his wife is marching him up the side of the volcano to throw him into the vapid pit of lava-based divorce lawyers, and what or what could he do to avoid such an outcome? and what or what could he do to avoid such Chilling stuff.
And the third caller was a lady who wanted to know how I could explain the phenomenon of serendipity or meaningful coincidences that seem to give a lot of information about life.
And fourth was a technical call about property rights.
And how on earth do you establish the ownership of something initially under the non-aggression principle?
Is it that you can only own what you can physically protect?
How on earth could all of this be done?
And there's a great set of questions.
FreeDomainRadio.com slash donate to help out the show, of course.
And FDRURL.com slash Amazon if you want to do some shopping and help us out as well.
Without further ado.
All right.
Well, first, we have Justin.
Justin wrote in and said...
How can Stefan hold onto the Austrian business cycle model in the face of its manifest problems?
In particular, I'd like to take Steph to task for his recent statement that, right now, businesses don't know what the dollar will be worth in five years.
That's from Justin.
Hello, Justin.
How are you doing?
Hi, Steph.
First of all, I do disagree with you, but I wanted to thank you for sticking your neck out there and You're taking a lot of really hard positions, especially over the last maybe year or two years.
I imagine you can imagine what I mean with all the racial issues and coming out in favor of Trump.
So I really am, I guess, grateful that you took those risks.
I kind of want to say I'm on your side and I have more of a technical disagreement with you on this specific topic.
Well, I appreciate that.
I appreciate that.
I mean, a lot of people think that I'm somehow supporting Trump, but...
When the media tells lies about someone, correcting those lies is not necessary.
Like if they said that David Duke was Jewish and I said David Duke is not Jewish, that's not a blanket endorsement.
And I know you're not in that category, but there are some people who feel that way for reasons that I'm sure are pretty clear.
People like to jump to conclusions.
But no, I appreciate that.
And I appreciate the fact that the audience of this show, to a large degree...
Is willing to go where the evidence leads.
And yes, we get, you know, some pushback and some people get kind of hysterical and they take their donations and they go home and all that.
And that's understandable.
But of course, I'm in it for the long haul.
And I think building up credibility over time by following wherever the data leads is important.
I mean, if you told me a couple of years ago, I'll be talking a lot about race and politics.
I'd be like, ah, nah, forget it.
Not that interesting to me.
And...
Still remain not that interesting to me philosophically, but it is important to talk about, I think.
So I appreciate everyone who's willing to sort of follow the data with me, even though it makes them and me, of course, at times, a little uncomfortable.
So thanks.
I appreciate that.
So I almost don't know where to begin.
I mean, this is something that, you know, thousand-page books have been written on.
Why don't you start with a brief description of the Austrian theory of the business cycle?
I've done a couple of podcasts on it way back in the day, which people can find at fdrpodcasts.com.
But why don't you give a brief description of them where you think my support is unwarranted?
All right.
So the Austrian business cycle, as I remember it from my Austrian days, which ended probably in about 2009, says that When governments control the money supply, and when they seek to use that control of the money supply to manipulate interest rates by inflating is the word that they use, increasing the money stock.
This will cause an artificial boom.
It will cause a bias in investment toward goods that pay off over a long period of time because it suppresses interest rates, so it makes borrowing money cheaper for a large capital investment.
Eventually what will happen is the investments made during the boom or the consumption will be somehow unsustainable and it will result in a sort of a deflationary recession or a recession in which the average prices tend to fall.
And this recession will be short and deep if the government or the central bank doesn't intervene.
It's not really clear what exactly is meant by that necessarily, but Like, the argument would be, in the 1930s, if in 1930, the Fed had, quote, done nothing, the recession would have been nasty, but it would have been over.
It would have been like maybe the 1873 recession in the US, which was very deep, but also very short.
Also, the 1921 as well was in the same category.
Of course.
That's even a better example.
The 21 recession.
That's usually the one that Mises pointed to.
Yeah, but if they instead lower interest rates, that will sort of...
It may be able to inflate the bubble again, but it'll just result in an even worse recession.
Or perhaps they won't even be able to reflate the bubble, and it'll be like the 30s where you have low prices, and it just kind of takes a long, long time to get out of it.
And I guess the...
The other side of that would be that the optimal monetary policy would be for new money creation to be essentially random and set by gold miners or, you know, the ability of miners to produce new gold or, you know, anyway, introduction of new gold into the money supply.
Do you think that's – how close is that to fair, do you think?
I think there's just a few points.
You didn't really talk much about interest rates.
One of the aspects of recessions and booms and busts that has always been tough for particularly Keynesian economics to explain is why booms tend to hit the market for capital equipment before they hit the market for consumers, consumer equipment, and why the reverse happens as well.
And so one of the arguments that the Austrian schools put forward is it's not just about money supply.
But it's also about interest rates.
So when interest rates are kept artificially low by the government, in a free market, interest rates would be low if people are saving a lot.
Because there's an excess of capital available, and therefore the price paid for that capital, which is interest rates, would decline.
And so when governments push interest rates artificially low, businesses say, okay, this is a great time to invest in upgrading our factories.
Because interest rates are low which means that people are saving more than they're spending or at least saving more than they used to.
And so because people are saving it means that they're deferring their spending.
So now is a great time for us to upgrade our plant and to get better equipment and train more workers and hire a bunch of people and so on in anticipation of the demand that's going to come in the future.
And when that demand comes and people start spending their money then there's less money available to borrow which means interest rates are We'll go up.
Now when interest rates go up, that's a signal to capitalists that what's happening is people are spending rather than saving.
So it's a good time to sell stuff but it's a bad time to invest because once people spend, after a while they have to start saving again.
So you don't, when interest rates are high, you don't want to borrow to upgrade your capital equipment.
Because it's very expensive to do so, and you're probably only going to get finished by the time that orgy of spending is drying up.
So it's partly money supply, but also partly manipulation of interest rates that goes on.
Now, as far as sound monetary policy, I don't know what all of the different Austrian economists believe about this.
But I don't believe that any true free market Advocate would accept something like the term monetary policy because that would imply a central role that government would have to play in the creation and promulgation of currency.
Whatever the free market determines is currency and of course back in the day it was the gold standard.
Now it would probably be something like Bitcoin for a variety of reasons I've gone into before.
But I don't think that people would say, if they're into the free market, and I think the more Austrian-style of an economic thinker you are, the more you accept that the free market should arbitrate these decisions.
Then I wouldn't say that they say, well, the best monetary policy is gold producers doing X, Y, and Z. My case has been that the best monetary policy would be to have some level of predictability.
In future value because it's hard enough to figure out what people are going to want to buy in 6 and 12 or 18 or 24 months or more if you also have to take into account what the government is going to politically do with regards to interest rates and money supply and also what the value of the dollar is going to be.
It's hard to really figure that stuff out and introducing Variables like what on earth is the money going to be worth in 12 or 16 or 18 or 24 months adds a layer of complexity that is pretty mental and very hard for people to navigate and as a result I think it's fair to say that people have become they invest less in capital equipment except in one circumstance and the one
circumstance is they invest more in capital equipment That can replace people.
Capital equipment originally was supposed to supplant people.
Sorry, it was supposed to enhance people's productivity.
It wasn't supposed to originally completely replace people.
And what's happened now is because the costs of having a human being involved as a result of Obamacare and minimum wages and various other kinds of insurance and unionization and regulations and It's just become so ridiculously expensive to have a human being plugged in anywhere in the manufacturing process that either companies have moved manufacturing overseas or they have striven as much as possible and as hard
as possible to replace human beings with machines of one kind or another.
So those are the only few things that I would throw in.
Okay, yeah, and that does sound, as I remember it, with the Hayekian triangles and all that.
But I actually do favor, I mean, insofar as it matters, I do favor Bitcoin over central banking, just for different reasons.
Basically because I don't think the central bank – sort of – I don't think they have the right – they don't have the right model, so to speak, of the macroeconomy to do – sort of it's too much power for them.
It's too much responsibility, and I would sort of just favor a shift to some sort of decentralized system so that the economy could organically over time adapt to a more chaotic form of accounting, value accounting.
But um so it's not a it's not a moral issue for you right?
It's more of a matter of efficiency or lack of knowledge on the part of the regulators?
Well, the issue is I just don't think that – I think that properly executed monetary policy can prevent recessions.
That's what I think.
And I'm basically representing a school of economics called – The market monetarist school, it's sort of an update of Milton Friedman's approach.
Okay, hang on, hang on.
Sorry to interrupt, but before we get too far off target as far as that goes, I just want to make sure I understand that it is not a moral issue for you.
So the fact that the government will use coercion to maintain its monopoly over the currency and to force people to adhere to its interest rates policies, that's not the fundamental issue for you.
I'm taking the approach of I'm the guy in the Soviet Union that has to get up in the morning.
I mean, I would love to live in an anarcho-capitalist society.
I would.
But I'm just saying, like, sort of from a brass tacks standpoint, like right now, I don't think...
I don't know why.
I'm sorry.
The fact that you might live in the Soviet Union and have to get into...
get up in the morning and there's something called brass tacks.
I have no idea what that means.
Sorry.
All right.
I'm saying that...
I think that it's wrong for the government to impose legal tender laws, the various laws that require people to use the dollar.
I think that that's wrong.
You're asking me to say if I think government control of money is right or wrong, right?
Well, I mean, it's the non-aggression principle argument, right?
Right.
Which is the initiation of force is wrong, and if I want to use Steph coins or something, or you want to use whatever currency you want to use, we're not initiating force against anyone, and therefore the government shouldn't be able to sanction us.
Yeah, I know.
I'm on board with that.
Okay.
Got it.
So, sorry, you were talking about an updated version of...
Yeah, an updated version of Milton Friedman's approach.
Yeah.
You said you want predictability, and that's actually what this approach is all about.
Basically, the essence of it is it's saying, to a state of central bank, it's saying, given the system that we have now, what we should do is stabilize the level of aggregate spending in the economy, the level of nominal GDP, On a trend line of 5% a year or 4% a year, and we should create as much money as is necessary to hit that target.
So we should give the private sector so much money, we should sort of foie gras the money into them if needed, so that we're always on that level path.
Or if we overshoot that level path, we We pull money in by selling assets that the central bank has previously accumulated.
And the part where the word market comes into it from market monetarist is what we might do to accomplish this is we might set up a betting market where people would bet on the future value of nominal GDP And then the government, or central bank, same thing, would use that market to adjust its monetary policy instrument, the monetary base.
It would increase the monetary base if the market were predicting below target nominal growth, and it would increase the base if it were Whatever, I think I mixed it up.
But you basically would use the efficient markets hypothesis to conduct your monetary policy.
It's a way of sort of making an imperfect situation better.
And what is the efficient markets hypothesis in this area?
The way I'm going to characterize it is just saying that markets are...
Pretty good at aggregating information.
And it's pretty hard to beat a betting market.
So if you want to know what the probability is of some candidate winning an office, you might go on to one of the...
I think they're in the UK. There's basically everywhere except America has betting markets for politics.
So you can look at the odds, basically.
So you let people bet with their own money, put their money where their mouth is, and Give you a forecast.
So you would, in this case, you might be interested in betting on what nominal GDP growth will be in four quarters or eight quarters.
And yet with something like monetary policy, wouldn't giving government control of the finances or the currency of a country automatically destroy significant foundations to the efficient market hypothesis?
Well, it's actually not changing anything compared to the system we have now.
We could actually do a form of it now by looking at markets in the US that essentially forecast the change in the CPI, basically inflation.
So you wouldn't have to change anything.
Instead of using the interest rate as the instrument, I would think they should use the monetary base as the instrument.
But they could very well use interest rates as well.
It doesn't really matter.
The monetary base is ultimately what matters, the amount of money in the economy.
So you could do it.
I mean, you're not really changing anything.
I don't really understand.
You don't understand what?
I think...
Could you...
Does what I said answer your question?
I think I may have not...
No, I don't know what you're talking about.
So...
If you talk about the efficient market hypothesis, you're saying that markets are good at aggregating information.
Yes.
And of course, Mises would talk about price as the most important or one of the most important pieces of information that you get for free in the market, right?
If you want to know how valuable something is, you just look at the last price that somebody paid for it, and that's probably in the ballpark.
But when you get governments setting interest rates and money supply, the prices, particularly the price of money, It's no longer part of the free market calculation engine, and therefore is giving wrong signals to people.
I guess my question is, how does central planning mesh with some sort of efficient market hypothesis, given that the two are opposites?
Well, let's put it this way.
Let's say we're back in the 1970s in the Soviet Union, and we have all of our commissars together trying to plan the economy.
We wanted to know which factory was the most efficient at producing whatever useless product it was producing.
What we might do is have the comment in the workroom or in the planning room on which factory was going to be the best.
It's still the efficient markets hypothesis.
It's still people voluntarily looking at what the market's currently predicting.
Wait, sorry to interrupt.
I apologize for interrupting.
Are you trying to give me a market scenario involving 1970s?
Yes, I am.
Dude, come on.
Come on.
You can't call that even remotely a free market.
People are basically ordered...
Where to live, how much they make, sometimes even what their occupations should be.
Everything is centrally planned.
There's no pull.
There's no pull of supply and demand.
This is not a market economy, right?
I mean, I'm willing to go with you as far as I like, as far as I can, theoretically.
But the idea you're going to give me some sort of free market scenario in Russia in 1970 is too much.
I'm saying within the workroom.
I'm just saying you could set a market up anywhere.
You can set a market up and within the bounds of that market, it can still...
No, but a market requires a market.
If you're going to call something a market, basically, and I hate to use such an extreme term, but you're conflating lovemaking with rape.
So are you saying that when people trade cigarettes in prison, that's not a market?
They're not in a free system.
But are you saying that supply doesn't equal demand in a prison?
No, no.
Hang on, hang on.
What I'm saying is that for there to be a market, there must be significant elements of volunteerism in the transaction and trade of things.
People must have property rights.
They must have a relatively uncorrupted or less corruptible political environment.
They must have contracts that are respected and publicly enforceable.
Obviously there needs to be, I think Mises said, That the one defining element of a free market was the presence of a stock market.
And none of these were present in the Soviet Union in 1970.
So I'm not sure how it is that you're getting to free market situations in a central planning economy.
I'm willing to not go down the road with that example.
I think it's a good example.
But let's back up and let's talk about the United States today.
What's the stock market doing?
What does the S&P 500 represent?
And that's a rhetorical question.
I'm sorry for phrasing it that way.
I would say that it represents a forecast of nominal corporate earnings in the future, discounted by some sort of long-run discount factor.
Do you disagree with that?
Yes, completely.
What do you think the stock market represents then?
It's not what I think, it's what I know.
That the stock market represents the desire and willingness to part with their money that people have for particular financial instruments.
That's all it is.
Some people certainly trade on future expected earnings and so on.
Other people trade because they've thrown a dart at a dartboard.
Some people trade because they've got a friend who says something.
Some people trade because they've got some sort of insider information.
Some people trade because they're forced to be there and have handed over all of those trades to some third party.
Who may or may not be acting in good, honest intent or whatever.
But the price of a share represents nothing objectively more or less than people's willingness to part money to buy a share.
I don't know.
I mean, there are some people who use the methodology that you talk about.
They may, in fact, be a majority.
But the only thing we can objectively say about the stock market and what it represents is it represents people's willingness to part with money for shares.
Well, if that's the case and there's no predictive value, or I don't mean to straw me in your position, but let's say there's little predictive value in the stock market as to where corporate earnings will be in the near future, say over a five-year time horizon, or there's no predictive value in, say, a copper futures market, a gold futures market, then it should be easy.
That's why people hedge, right?
That's why people hedge.
Because they don't know.
That's why, I mean, I worked in a stock trading company for a while, so of course people take positions that assume that the stock will go up and then they take a position that the stock will go down so that hopefully they can limit their losses.
But they don't know for sure enough to risk it all, usually.
I just, I just, it can't, it's almost, it's almost like a impossible for me to imagine that this would be the case, that markets would be kind of They would be systematically random.
They would have no predictive component.
Take the price of gold.
If you really thought that the market wasn't a good predictor of the future, those people who did have a good model for, on the average, over many years, Being correct in the future exchange value of gold because gold, unlike stocks, actually changes hands at some point in the spot market.
They could just use their methodology to predict what the true expected value of gold would be by futures in the gold market and they would get rich over time if they did that.
Well, except everybody who comes up with a good methodology for predicting the future value of stock Usually talks about it, they're interviewed about it, or someone figures it out, and it's incorporated into everyone else's calculations of that stock price very quickly.
Exactly.
And the market, over time, learns, and it becomes a, over time, it adapts to the changing world, and it becomes a, at least you would think, and this is what we've just discussed, it becomes a prediction engine.
It becomes a means of aggregating human knowledge into the best current guess.
Well, except for the fact that there are complete unknowns, right?
There's some guy working in his basement somewhere who's going to come out with some product that's going to change entire industries.
Right?
I mean, as of, what, 10 years ago even, the mainstream media pretty much had a lock on public opinion.
And with the internet and, of course, the growth of conversations and shows like this, that's all changing.
And now, like in Canada here, the newspapers are They're literally on the verge, a lot of them, of going to beg for government money.
This is how pitiful it's become.
And so there are situations and conversations and innovations that happen that cannot really be predicted by people.
And that's always going to be the element of chaos or creative destruction in a market.
So predicting things five years out.
I don't know.
It's a pretty tall order.
I'm not saying that it's really possible to predict, especially when it comes to – I mean, another thing is the stock market's hard to predict because you're essentially trying to predict the arbitrary decisions of people like Ben Bernanke.
Will he cut rates after Lehman Brothers blows up?
We think so.
Oh, he didn't cut rates all the way down.
Is there going to be a $700 billion bailout or not, right?
These are all good questions.
Yeah, and that's another reason why I don't favor central banking because it's just arbitrary and it makes markets less predictive.
Or next thing you know, Steve Jobs, because he's some fruitarian hippy-dippy whack-dog, ends up issuing traditional cancer treatments and dies.
Yeah, though I guess Tim Cook's done a pretty good job.
I think Apple stock is down, isn't it?
Yeah, maybe.
Maybe.
I don't know.
Steve Jobs is a great guy.
I don't know.
No, he was actually a whole...
I mean, these are the kinds of people get hit by buses or, you know, they just decide to embark on ventures that end up not being profitable and all these kinds of things.
So there is a lot of...
And all monetary policy, as you know, affects things in the 6 to 12 to 18 month range.
Because it takes people a while to adjust to new possibilities, and then they usually have to wait and see if those new realities are going to stick around or not.
And so, the idea that monetary policy can somehow be set by people, A, not in the marketplace themselves, like government regulators and the Fed and so on, they're not in the marketplace, they're shielded from competition by state power.
They're not in the marketplace themselves, and B, They face no positive or negative incentives for success or failure.
If they succeed, which they never seem to do, but if they succeed, they don't become rich.
And if they fail, they don't become poor.
And it's always struck me as just so bizarre, you know, if you don't mind a little side tangent, it's always struck me as just so bizarre that we tell people Kids, I don't know if this was still the case when you were in school, but when I was in school, they'd put on some movie when the teacher didn't feel like teaching.
And first question ever was, is this going to be on the test?
And that let you know whether you had to pay attention or not.
And so we have kids, we give them clear markers of success and failure.
You know, if you pass this test, fantastic, you pass the course.
I don't think they...
I think they just shovel all the kids forward in a row now, but back in the day when I was a kid...
You could get left behind and being like the only guy shaving in grade 6 or whatever.
And so with kids, we expect them to respond to positive and negative incentives.
But when it comes to central planners, their income is not dependent on the success or failure of their policies.
So they're heavily susceptible to political influence, as we know.
If the central planners want a particular politician to get into office Then they contract the money supply when everyone's running for the election and the economy goes into the toilet and then the new guy gets in and if they want a guy to stay in power, they'll flood the market with money during re-election and because that boost in stimulus props up the economy for a while, then that guy stays in power.
So they're very susceptible to political influence.
They're not gambling with their own money and they don't have any particular Rewards for success or punishments for failure.
So all of this is exactly why – imagine running a school that way where you pass no matter what.
You don't have to study.
And kids would barely show up, let alone study for their tests.
I would push back – So you basically made the position of long and variable lags.
That is, make a change in money supply and it takes a couple of years to flow through, right?
I said 6 to 18 months is usually what I think about.
I mean, I think that's a fairly defensible front timeframe.
Well, if you actually...
There's a phenomenon the market monetarists speak of called the Chuck Norris phenomenon or the Chuck Norris effect.
And this is the idea that like, so the cheesy Chuck Norris joke is like, you know, Chuck Norris just has to look at you or like move his arm slightly and you react.
And sort of that's actually what markets will do is the markets will guess what the Fed is going to do.
They almost know the Fed better than the Fed knows itself.
And they will anticipate Fed moves and actually do a lot of the heavy lifting for the Fed before An interest rate policy is even announced.
So you'll see, you know, like the three-month treasury yield will start to lift a little bit in the months before an expected rate hike.
Or if you look at a plot of like the Fed funds rate with the three-month yield, the three-month yield actually moves before the Fed.
Yeah, but you also have to know what the hedge positions are there as well, right?
I mean, they may be hedging their bets.
Is your case that the financial industry is really good at knowing the effects of monetary policy?
Because then the tech boom and the housing crash become a little tricky to understand and explain, don't they?
Yeah, my position is that they're pretty good, actually, especially at the macro level.
So things like oil prices, things like copper prices.
Why would they need a $700 billion bailout if they're really good at predicting what the Fed is going to do and what the effects of monetary policy are?
Well, that is because...
They were all going into the toilet.
They made a lot of, you know, countrywide and these subprime companies made a lot of very bad bets in like the 2003 to 2006 period.
And there was a bad, you know...
And this was a couple of years after the tech crash.
So, you know, in the space of five or six or seven years, you have two enormous crashes almost entirely based upon...
The vast majority of...
Sorry to interrupt, but not to mention the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s.
The vast majority of the crisis in 2008 and 2009 was caused by tight money by the Fed.
The Fed did not supply enough money to prop up nominal GDP. And essentially a line that had been straight since 1991, about 5% nominal GDP growth a year.
The average agent in the economy, the average person, the average company had basically become used to this idea of about 5% nominal growth.
And then the Fed allowed nominal spending and the Fed is responsible for nominal variables.
I don't know what you mean by nominal variables.
A nominal variable would be like I pay $20,000 for my car.
I'm not using some sort of price index to map the price of my car today back to like 1950 or something like that.
It's just looking at the amount of spending, what people think of when they think of spending.
Economists usually will think of real variables.
They'll try to deflate it by some price index.
I'm talking about just spending.
That's the Fed's...
You know, the reason we have in the United States, you know, 50,000 US dollars per capita GDP, roughly.
And in, you know, Sweden, they have, you know, 100,000 local currency units of...
I'm sorry...
About a million, I think it is, local currency units per head is because of the quantity of money.
There's more Swedish kronor in the Swedish economy per person than in the US. It's just nominal, but it doesn't matter, so to speak.
So I'm saying the Fed allowed a variable that they set because they're the ones that control the money supply.
There's no choice in a statist monetary system to not have monetary policy.
It's like saying you're driving a boat and we want to have no steering policy on this boat.
Somebody has to make a decision.
No, that's a terrible analogy.
Honestly, I'm sorry, because a boat, you have to have a steering mechanism in the boat.
It's sort of like saying you have a boat and you can either have your own steering mechanism or it can be remotely controlled by El Chapo.
This is the actual option that you're talking about.
It can either be remotely controlled by a drug lord who's going to steer you back and forth to pick up cocaine or you can have your own steering.
That would be a more apt analogy, I think.
But I would argue, and I've made this case before, I did a video a couple of years ago called House MD, the real cause of the housing crash, that with regards to the housing crash, I mean, one of the main...
Drivers was there was a perception that minorities were being discriminated against by banks because there were fewer minorities, particularly blacks, to a smaller degree Hispanics.
Of course, the Chinese and the Japanese, the Koreans, the East Asians remain forever invisible in the giant equation of racism in the United States.
But there was a perception, and this was because of a faulty study that was put out saying, you know, well, minorities get fewer loans from banks, but once they adjusted for income, that Disparity disappeared, but who cares?
And there was this big stampede to try and get minorities into houses.
And so the banks were forced by the government to relax their lending standards and put people on variable rate mortgages with low introductory rates that they couldn't possibly sustain over time, which drove, of course, a lot of housing construction and got people into a lot of houses, which they then lost their money in when the variable rates kicked in.
And they could no longer afford, right?
So it was the fact that people don't understand race and IQ, the fact that people don't understand income disparities, and the fact that black banks actually give loans to blacks at even lower rates than white banks do, because there's not a lot of black guilt around black people, although you could argue there should be, because blacks get killed by blacks more.
But, um, that is government policy that was not directly impacted by Fed Federal Reserve policy.
And that had a lot to do with driving the housing crisis.
But because, you know, I just watched the big short, right, this, this movie, uh, and I'll sort of do a review on it later this week.
But, um, because people don't understand race and IQ and government policies, then they thought that the housing market in the mid 2000s was exactly like the housing market before.
But no, I mean, if you force banks to take people who don't even have to declare their income, don't have to verify their income, the so-called liar's loans, then of course people are going to end up in houses that they can't afford.
I mean, they can't afford them in the long run because, you know, it's like, you know, you get those offers from internet companies and say, first three months is only $59.95.
You know, after that, we take your kidney, your firstborn and your pets.
And people say, well, I can afford $59.95, and they don't read any of the fine print.
And then, of course, when it kicks in to like $99, then people can't afford it.
So I don't think it was just Federal Reserve policy that drove the housing bubble.
2006, 2007, that's the subprime blow-off.
That's your Angelo Mozilla, a Baptist and bootleggers sort of fraud scenario where, yeah, you have the Mexican strawberry picker.
Borrowing $700,000 to buy a house.
That definitely happened, and it definitely was an issue in 2006, 2007, and into 2008.
But it's not obvious why certain banks failing because they made bad loans should cause, say, a steel mill in Alabama to fail.
What do you mean?
Steel is used to make houses, right?
So when the housing market crashes, then steel foundries are going to face far lower demand for their services, and so they've got to lay people off, right?
It doesn't explain the fall in spending.
Why would spending a nominal...
I'm sorry to use that word because it's not part of your vocabulary.
It's this sort of jargon that I've accumulated, but why would...
You mean real spending, right?
Adjusted for inflation?
No, I mean just spending, not adjusted for inflation.
So something the Fed could theoretically set to be whatever it wants.
Are you saying why did spending decline when people lost their houses?
Yes, why didn't the Fed offset that?
Or I know why they didn't.
They were afraid of high oil prices in the summer and the weak dollar.
In 2008, oil prices went up like 150 and the dollar was...
At like 140 or something like that against the euro.
It was very weak.
And they had a very tight policy through that period and they allowed spending to fall.
But they had it in their power to prop up spending.
And so what I'm saying is like...
But how would they have propped up spending?
They have a printing press.
They can set spending to be whatever they want just by threatening.
But they did.
I mean, they gave $700 billion to the banks.
The banks did something with that money, right?
I mean, the Fed can't just mail a check to everyone in America, right?
That's not how monetary policy works, at least not usually.
I mean, it would be illegal, but they could do that.
That could be done.
It would be called a helicopter.
Yeah, okay, but that's not really how it works, right?
They create the money, and then they sell the bonds, or they find some way to transfer that money to financial institutions.
But the financial institutions in 06, 06, 07, the financial institutions had virtually no one to lend to.
Because people were being kicked out of their houses en masse.
They were losing their jobs.
And that's not when people want to spend a lot of money.
Or I guess you could say they do spend a lot of money.
They just spend it on things like moving to some rental place.
Think of the millions and millions of dollars.
Maybe hundreds, tens of millions or more that was spent just on moving companies and all.
So people just don't want to spend at that point.
Well, the thing is that...
The Fed did increase the monetary base a huge amount, especially in 2009.
They called it quantitative easing.
They had two big rounds of it in 2008 and 2009.
But they paid interest on that money.
They paid a higher interest rate on those reserves than one could get in the treasury market, at the short end of the treasury market.
So there was really no incentive for banks To risk that money.
And the other thing was, imagine the Fed tomorrow said, we're going to double the money supply this week, but then next week we're going to take it back in.
Like, no one would act.
No one would I mean, they might be a little nervous at the erratic policy, but prices wouldn't double, is what I'm saying.
People would be like, well, I'm not going to buy a house this week when prices go up.
I'm sort of making a cute story here, but you could see what I'm getting at.
Because next week, prices are going to come back down.
The expected long-run effect of prices is going to come back down.
When the Fed says things like, we're going to print a whole bunch of money, but if inflation gets above 2%, we're going to rein it back in.
It sort of doesn't have the effect, because we had a screwed up economy in 2008.
We had a supply shock from high commodity prices, and we had—well, I guess the commodity price issue is the main issue there.
So, you know, a robust economy, a U.S. economy, you know, where many people are employed Would be an economy with possibly high inflation and you could argue maybe we should have had a lower trend nominal GDP growth rate.
Maybe it should have been 3% instead of 5%.
But the government also calculates the GDP growth rate.
They calculate the inflation and all of those numbers are tainted by political considerations.
So you have literally the blind leading the blind.
So I think you're trying to find some way to rescue central planning from its inherently immoral and unproductive uses.
And I don't think you can do that.
I mean, not only is the foundation of central planning immoral, it's the initiation of force, but also it is always going to be corrupted by the political process.
Alright, well, you know, I gave it a good go, I think.
Oh, and for those, we've got a presentation called The Truth About Government Debt, which people can find out more information about this in House MD as well.
I also, one of my very first podcasts, Well, 1180, the supercharged stock market, people should check out.
Podcast 9.
Podcast 9.
Oh, I was so young.
Understanding the stock market, speculation versus investment.
So, I just, I don't believe that giving people the power of currency can do anything other than corrupt society as a whole.
I mean, it certainly will corrupt the people who have that kind of power.
I don't think anyone is wise enough to act...
In a way that...
Like, if I were to...
And this is sort of a fundamental thing about politics, so get comfy because I'll try and keep this brief, but it may not be that brief.
If I said to you that if the Federal Reserve officers, like the chairman and the heads of the various Federal Reserve banks, if I said to you the government was allowed to torture them if they didn't do...
What the government wanted.
Would you think that would have some effect on their decisions?
Of course, yes.
Of course, right?
And if we were to say that the President or the Congress can grab Janet Yellen, hang her up by her thumbs, and blast Radiohead full volume at her while occasionally spraying her down with ice water, In Minnesota in February, until she agreed to do what the politicians wanted, then we would say, well, good heavens, of course that's going to be an entirely corruptible situation.
But the reality is that when you face social rejection or ostracism in the world, it activates the same pain centers in your brain and in your body as physical torture does.
And so, when you get to that kind of position, you want to have the approval of those around you.
And, I mean, we can see this with Alan Greenspan, who was a one-time aficionado of objectivism, but Ayn Rand kind of nailed his weakness by saying he's far too dependent upon the opinions and needs and desires of others.
He's a social metaphysician.
He wishes to have approval.
And, you know, to be fair, Ayn Rand herself desperately wished to have approval in the last sort of 40 years of her life.
We're to me kind of a testament as to what happens when somebody who really wants to give the world a gift is attacked and ridiculed and rejected for the provision of that gift.
And so people want to have the approval of those around them.
And we are hardwired that way.
That's why cultures exist.
That's why Judaism exists.
That's why Mormonism exists.
That's why LDS exists.
That is why almost all cultural and religious groups exist.
Because we desperately desire the approval of those around us.
Now, to overcome our desire for conformity, we need the profit motive.
In the absence of the profit motive, All decisions are based on greed and fear in the absence of the profit motive.
And so when you take monetary policy away from the market, you surrender it to the political process wherein people are bribed with money and power to do what the politicians want.
And if they were to not do what the politicians want, They would be attacked, humiliated, ridiculed.
Every single piece of dirt in their life would be dug up and thrown against them.
They would be ostracized.
They would be condemned.
They would be outcasts.
You know, the whole reputation would be destroyed forever.
I mean, all you have to do is look at what happened to one senator, Joseph McCarthy, in the 1950s, who stymied the plans of the communists who'd infiltrated the State Department by threatening to expose their numbers.
And now, Many decades after he died, of stress from being continually attacked, many decades after he died, people still believe this nonsense that somehow he was some race-baiting crazy guy.
There weren't any Soviet spies in the State Department and they didn't surrender China to the Communists and anything to do with that.
In the free market, people also want The approval of their peers and all of that.
But in the free market, there is the desire for profit and the fear of loss that tends to condition that.
But it's amazing the amount of conformity you can get when you threaten people with torture.
And for most people, particularly ambitious, hard-driven Taipei people, rejection is as bad for them as torture.
And so this is why power corrupts.
And this is why, you know, you look at the media, you look at banking, I mean, this group think it's because human beings are social animals.
And in order to survive, we need the cooperation of our tribal members.
And this is why rejection from our tribal members is to many people a fate worse than death.
And so expecting...
For the Federal Reserve to somehow be independent of the political process is like expecting people to go about their day under the constant threat of torture as if that constant threat of torture never existed.
It's not ever going to happen.
This is why there's such blinding uniformity and conformity.
So whenever you think of a government institution, all you have to think of is people who, by being separated from the market, are subject to the threats of torture, of ostracism, of social exclusion.
Which is gene death throughout our evolution.
I mean, either because if you're socially ostracized, women won't sleep with you and therefore you can't reproduce.
Or even if a woman will sleep with you and you're both ostracized, your chances of survival go down enormously because you don't have people to help guard you while your wife is breastfeeding or you're off hunting in the middle of the night or whatever.
So it is a kind of social death.
To be rejected by a tribe, which is why it's very hard, absent the market, for people to summon the moral courage to do so.
And of course, in the market, if someone comes up with some great new product tomorrow, that's not a moral issue.
But the Federal Reserve and so on is all clouded in sort of moral issues in a lot of ways, which makes it that much stronger.
This is sort of why I don't believe that government monopolies can ever produce anything of lasting moral value.
Not only is the root of it immoral, but when I look at conformity in a government-protected environment, I mean, think of academia.
It's a government-protected environment, and think of how many cool, new, wild, exhilarating, exciting ideas you've seen coming out of academia lately.
I honestly, with a few exceptions, and we've tried to snag people Who are those few exceptions and get them on the show, but with very few exceptions, I'd have to say almost none.
Almost none.
And that's because the conformity, you know, people have their First Amendment rights, but not really.
Not really.
I mean, if you say things that academics disagree with, particularly if they disagree strongly, your career is done.
You're toast.
And you're ostracized.
And you're attacked.
And you're slandered.
And the left really gets this, which is why the left always goes for reputation and is willing to spit as much bile at you as humanly possible until people just can't stand looking at your melting face.
I mean, they're just willing to retch up as much acid as humanly possible and to hate you with such intense ferocity that people think, well, there must be something wrong with that guy because people hate him so much.
And hatred within a tribe marks someone for social exclusion.
This is why it's so powerful.
The left understands tribalism in a way that the right doesn't, for a variety of reasons, which we have to do with our case stuff.
Like when you're in something, you don't recognize it as much.
But the left really understands tribalism.
And this is why they constantly attack.
And we've tried to give voices for people who've been attacked by the left.
And we've had...
Helmuth Nyborg on the show.
That hasn't been released yet.
Linda Gottfriedsen.
Jason Richwine.
A variety of other people who've all been attacked by the left.
I stand sort of in solidarity with people who've been attacked by the left.
And there are, of course, a few people who've been attacked by the right.
But in my experience, it's sort of a lot more rare.
But the left really understands tribalism and they understand the torture of ostracism.
And that is so funny because they say that we should have multiculturalism, but they're the ones who actually understand the power of tribalism.
And this is why, you know, like Donald Trump, now, you know, the left will just generally try and associate Donald Trump with the three letters KKK as much as humanly possible.
It's because it's not an argument, it's just a smear, right?
And they really, really understand the power Of that.
And, of course, the left is selling the products of productive people to unproductive people.
That's their basic gig, right?
They're stealing from people.
They want to steal from people who are productive and give to people who are unproductive.
And I think we're kind of close to an Atlas Shrugged situation in the West where people are saying, okay, why?
Why do I want all of these third world immigrants coming in?
Why do I want all these third world migrants coming in?
What's the benefit for me?
What's the benefit for me?
Who gave Minnesota to Marco Rubio, the Somalians?
And so people are just basically asking that question, what's in it for me?
Let's say you're in some town and you've got your kids and your kids are going to some school where everyone speaks English.
I don't care about that race.
Everyone speaks English and everyone kind of has Western or American values as a whole.
And then someone comes along and says, okay, we're going to bring in 15 children from Syria who don't speak any English.
As a parent, what conceivable benefit would that be for you?
No benefit.
Oh, plus their families, 90 plus percent of them are going to be on food stamps, 60, 70, 80 percent of the families are going to be on welfare, so your tax bills are going to go up, and a lot of teacher resources are going to be diverted to trying to teach these kids who don't speak English, which means your kids get less attention.
Or they build some other school, which means your taxes go up because these people are on welfare, they can't pay for it.
So you're paying two or three times.
You're paying for, well, you're paying for the school, you're paying for the teachers, you're paying for the welfare, you're paying for the food stamps, and your kids are paying with less teacher attention, time and focus.
So on what conceivable basis could that be sold as beneficial to the local population?
And of course in a free market it wouldn't be.
And it wouldn't happen, right?
But of course, we're not in a free market.
So the left knows that people are kind of waking up.
So why are they screaming at Donald Trump that he's a racist?
Why is David Duke, who was in the KKK when he was a teenager?
Oh yeah, because we all made such great decisions when we were teenagers, which should haunt us for the rest of our lives.
So when his brain was still more than half a decade to a decade from maturity...
He was in the KKK. But you see, the reason why David Duke is held up and used to attack people all the time is that white people are not allowed to organize.
White people are not allowed to organize.
Black people can look at and say, well, what's good for black people?
Hispanic people, Mexicans can look at, what's good for Hispanics?
What's good for Mexicans?
Women can get together and say, what's good for women?
What's good for us?
But white people are never allowed to get together and say, wait a minute, what's good for us?
What's good for us?
How does this benefit us?
Because given that white people are generally more productive than, say, Mexicans, if the white people get together and say, well, wait a minute, what's in this for us, and start refusing the subsidization, then the left have nothing to sell to the people they're bringing in and can't get their votes and actually have to make an honest case to the American people as to why they should vote on the left.
And so, it's an odd place for me to even be intellectually.
I never really thought that much about race in the past.
But it's kind of inescapable that if a black group gets together and organizes to advance black interests, that's considered to be not only legitimate, but praiseworthy and noble and good.
If a Hispanic group gets together.
And wishes to advance Hispanic interests.
That is called pride and noble and good.
But if white people want to get together and protect or advance the interests of white people, well, you're automatically KKK, white supremacist, Nazi, whatever, right?
And that's sad.
Because I would love to live in a world where the races acted pretty much the same.
It would be lovely.
Where, you know, they tested about the same and they acted pretty much in terms of like crime rates and divorce rates and welfare consumption.
They acted pretty much about the same.
Ah, that would be a lovely world to live in.
However, of course, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride and we cannot live in fantasy, particularly when that fantasy is doing its very best to level Western civilization as a whole.
And so we must deal with the facts, which is that the races and various cultures do not act the same.
And we have to be realistic about that.
And this is why you see this visceral hatred coming out towards Trump.
Implicitly white candidate, right?
Well, yeah, I mean, he is protecting the interests of black people.
And he's certainly protecting the black people who want Less immigration, particularly illegal or low-rent immigration from Mexico.
Blacks want less immigration from Mexico because they're taking black jobs and they're driving down black wages, right?
Welfare is a zero-sum game as well.
Oh, it's a negative-sum game because only 20% of the money gets to the welfare recipients, right?
So he's speaking for the productive classes as a whole.
Now, do the productive classes generally include more white people and include more East Asians?
Yeah, because of IQ. Does the productive classes include more Ashkenazi Jews?
Yeah, because of IQ. But can we expect Jews to look out for the interests of white Christians?
Of course not.
Does that mean they're necessarily hostile to?
No, it's just they're Jews.
So what do Jews look out for?
They look out for the interests of Jews in general.
And do we expect the Chinese group to really start fighting for white identity?
No, of course not.
Any more than I wake up wondering how I can protect the identity of people and the culture of people in Japan.
It's not really on my list.
And so There is this general fear that Donald Trump is going to ask that basic question, which he kind of – and please, this is just my thoughts and opinions.
I have no idea what the guy thinks.
But there is this general terror in the world, which is that what if the productive groups in America – and I'm just going to talk about whites in general – what if the whites wake up tomorrow and say, nah, I think I'm done with this.
It's not working.
You know, we've tried living without a group identity.
We've sort of unilaterally disarmed in the hopes that other groups will do the same.
But it's not working.
We've said, okay, we're not going to have any group identities.
We're never going to talk about what's important to white groups or anything like that in the hopes that other people would do the same.
But, of course, you have to track what's actually happening.
And it's not like as white people have given up their collective identities or collective preferences.
It's not like other groups have then followed suit.
No, they've intensified their race-baiting in general, at least some of the more vocal and powerful elements.
And of course, since all groups other than whites are allowed to advocate for their own ethnicities, but whites are never allowed to, then you have in the political arena a whole bunch of groups who are armed and one group that isn't.
A whole bunch of groups that are allowed to collectively agitate for their own benefits, and one group that isn't.
And we all know how that's going to go in the long run, right?
Monetary policy and ethnic identities are very tightly bound up.
Are very tightly bound up.
And one of the ways in which Moral posturing has been available to people is because the true costs of moral posturing are hidden through borrowing and money printing, through debt.
And so if the true costs of this kind of ethnic transfer of wealth are immediately portrayed to people, just as if the true costs of war are immediately portrayed, like, oh, if you're in favor of the Iraq war, Here's a $10,000 tax bill for the first year.
And so monetary policy allows for this kind of moral posturing because it appears to come for free.
And because it appears to come for free, anybody who would object to this moral posturing of, you know, whatever money transfers between ethnicities, anybody who objects to this moral posturing must only be doing so out of racism.
And so, this moral posturing, which is, you know, so faced with a fact, right, faced with a fact, for instance, that black home ownership is lower than Asian home ownership.
Faced with this fact, there's, I mean, that's an alarming fact, because if the free market It's discriminating against black people unjustly.
Ah.
Well, you see, that's a massive business opportunity.
It's a massive business opportunity.
In other words, let's say blacks, 13% of the population, let's say they're only getting 6% of the loans, but the other 7% of blacks are perfectly capable of paying these loans.
By God, what a fantastic business opportunity.
And so when faced with number disparities, The free market solution is to look for the true cause.
You say, okay, well, why are blacks in homes less than whites or Asians?
Well, blacks have a lower income.
Okay, well, why do blacks have a lower income?
Is it because, well, it could be one of a bunch of things, right?
There could be cultural aspects within the black community that work against The success of blacks, you know, maybe they hate the dominant culture, maybe they're expecting big reparations checks, maybe they believe that they live in a horrifyingly racist environment and don't want to participate, maybe they're strongly anti-capitalist, maybe they don't have a strong work ethic, you know, could be any number of things that would cause this.
In which case, you know, people who cared about the black community would work to try and improve Certain ideas or approaches within the black community, you know, maybe there's a lot of unwed moms around.
And that's lowering the human capital because unwed mothers have less time to invest in their children because in the same way that if you have two people in a canoe, it can go a lot faster than if you have one and usually in a straighter line as well.
The other thing you can say is you can say, okay, well, the society as a whole is racist even though there's absolutely nothing wrong in the black community.
Nothing wrong.
The black community does everything the same as every other community and they are the same in terms of intelligence tests and educational attainment and so on.
So the black community does everything the same as every other community And has identical test scores and so on.
Okay, then you're getting closer to the answer of racism.
But then what you have to say is people like being racist more than they like making money.
And historically, that's not really the case, right?
People like making money.
And of course, even if there was racism against the blacks and they did everything the same as everyone else, then of course the blacks could accumulate their own money and start lending to each other and become financial powerhouses because of that.
Because, you know, they have...
An additional 7% market of the entire US population, which is a huge number of people.
But you see, because there's money printing and because the government can force people to do stuff at will or at whim, the government can pass laws seeking to wallpaper over problems with black IQs and problems with black culture by simply forcing banks to lend to them.
And it's not just blacks and it's not just whites, but in general.
That's where the problem at least first started.
Now, if the price for this actually had to be paid up front, in other words, if there was no Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation or anything like that, then a bank which began lending to hundreds of thousands of people who did not meet that bank's lending requirements, what would happen?
The bank's insurance for failed loans would go through the roof.
It would increase many, many times.
And so what would happen then?
Well, the banks would have to pass those charges along to someone.
So they'd have to pay you a percentage or two less in interest to cover the risk of all these bad loans.
And then people would, other banks would see this.
Let's just say one bank did it.
The other banks would see this and they'd say, oh look, you're only getting 3% of this bank.
We'll give you 5% of free Winchester.
And we'll even phone them to transfer your account over to us.
And so they would pay immediately.
And so this, an error, which is pretending that the only discrepancy between black and white home ownership rates is rampant racism.
The discrepancy Would show up and people would pay very quickly.
And this is why the only fundamental subsidy I believe that occurs is the subsidy for moral posturing, for moral vanity, for the moral self-congratulation of thinking you solved a problem when you haven't.
You've in fact just made it worse.
I mean, this is the great tragedy for me.
It's the great tragedy.
It's really, really heartbreaking.
And the tragedy is this.
What has...
What has this housing crash done to people's perceptions of certain minorities in America?
I mean, I genuinely believe this has set back any kind of productive race relations by decades, if not more.
It's unbelievable just how tragic it's been, how desperately bad it's been, and When people get to print their own money, when people get to force other people to assume their own risks, either indirectly through FDIC or directly through bailouts, then they can make really bad politically correct decisions.
And other people have to subsidize their moral posturing.
At some point, At some point, America is going to have to grapple with the IQ differential between the races.
And the longer it is postponed, the worse it is going to be.
If America had grappled with it in the 60s, who knows what could have happened.
I mean, I see this alternative history going along.
I really do.
That if America had said, okay, Jim Crow, largely a Democrat measure, bad stuff.
You know, we need equality.
If America had decided to privatize government schools instead of this forced integration, a forced integration was terrible because you had kids.
I mean, and it's less pronounced when the kids are younger, but certainly as they get a little older, you have differences of abilities between blacks and whites, between Asians and Hispanics.
You have differences of abilities.
Of the kids coming into the school.
But then if you have high standards for the Asian kids, well, more white kids are going to fail, more Hispanics are going to fail, and a hell of a lot of blacks are going to fail.
And then what are you called?
You're called racist.
Called racist.
But if the schools had allowed to self-segregate by IQ, Which is what would naturally happen.
I mean, you want smart kids going to school with smart kids and less smart kids going to school with less smart kids.
If school is even necessary or required in the future, who knows?
But if America in the 60s had said, okay, we have an IQ gap between the races.
We can't wish it away.
We can't magic it away.
We have to deal with it.
Well...
It would have been a very different, we would be living in a very different environment now.
So if the theoreticians are right that IQ is sort of 50 to 80 percent inherited, then it seems to me entirely possible that if science had focused on the genetics of intelligence starting from the 1960s, I know that some of the more important tools for exploring genetics have been developed only recently, but if There had been a big focus on the genetics of intelligence in the past.
Who knows where we could be now, 50 or 60 years later?
Maybe there would be gene therapies which would promote more equality of intelligence between the races.
And wouldn't that be a wonderful, wonderful thing?
Or, given that that may not be possible, who knows whether that's possible, But even if that were not possible, we would say, okay, well, we have a group which overall has lower IQs, so we really need to work on culture.
We really need to give this kind of feedback.
We really need to work on culture.
And who knows where that could have gotten people.
IQ is not everything, I don't believe.
I mean, there's work ethic, there's self-knowledge of strength and limitations and so on.
I think that can go a long way to reducing gaps.
If the problem had been acknowledged and if resources had been applied in an attempt to solve it, who knows where we could be?
Maybe the problem would be entirely in the rear view.
But no, we can't have that.
And the reason that we can't have that is because of the general riots in the 1960s by blanks it's because of the riots in Los Angeles when the Rodney King beat down cops were acquitted and of course more recently in Ferguson people
Don't concede things to particular groups.
I think at this point, it's not even about moral posture.
At this point, it's just fear.
It's just fear.
Fear of the effects of many decades of race-baiting and blame-whitey and all of this junk that's been going on in the mainstream media.
They've really got everyone cornered now.
Turning this around will take at least a generation or two.
And there's no indication that it's starting now.
And so you've got a group of people who feel helpless, who feel trapped, who are in terrible situations in general, who don't have a school system which is responsive to their needs and to their abilities and to their preferences and to their capabilities.
And you have a whole bunch of Race whisperers constantly, like Iago, pouring poison into the ear of groups and saying, oh, it's not your fault.
You're just as good as everyone else.
You're just as capable as everyone else.
You're just stuck like a fly in amber in this horrible world of bottomless racism.
And you can never get ahead.
And these white people, they just hate you.
Every day they wake up and they hate you.
And Mississippi burning.
And Deep South.
And racism.
And we can't talk about East Asians because they don't fit the narrative.
But you can never get ahead.
They hate you so much.
Don't you hate them too?
The only reason you're not doing well is because of their hatred.
And that's what they live for.
Those white devils and blah-de-blah-de-blah, right?
You hear this over and over again.
And you hear this...
In your churches, and you hear this in your communities, and you hear this from a lot of black leaders.
Well, how can you change that?
I don't know.
I don't know.
But it's not how it had to be.
It's not how it had to be.
So, let's move on to the next caller.
Thank you very much for your call.
Alright, up next is Camillo.
They wrote in and said, What do you think?
That's from Camillo.
That's a good question.
That's a good question.
Has anything changed since you first wrote the email?
Not significantly.
Thank you for your time.
My pleasure.
Just in my marriage, we've had some really rough patches and I'm trying to figure out ways to Keep our family together.
There's been a lot of problems.
What's going on in the marriage?
That sounds a bit more immediate than who should your kids socialize with.
I think that might have been the question under the question.
I married when I was a religious person.
I truly believe that I had to marry my wife.
It was kind of a white night kind of situation.
She was a single mom and we had met in the church way back in high school.
And we had a long relationship as friends.
She had a one night stand with this guy that she met while in college and she became pregnant.
But she didn't want to have an abortion because she had convictions not to do that, especially as a conservative Christian.
And so she carried the baby through, and we started kind of exploring our feelings for one another when the baby was about a year, a year and a half.
And so, you know, we started having a relationship, and we ended up getting married.
But in retrospect, it was a really bad decision.
A lot of people warned me against it, and I was kind of transitioning between churches at that time.
And my newer pastor at that time had told me to not do it right away, just Wait out, do some couples counseling, you know, figure out a lot of specific things in regards to communication and money before I ever committed.
But I just had a sense that I wanted to do it, and that was the right thing to do, and I just kind of dived into the The marriage, and we had two of the kids after that.
But it's just been really hard, at many times, almost a nightmarish situation, just to try to keep the relationship together.
And I know on her side, I'm sure she probably believes that I've caused her a lot of grief.
I was very unprepared.
I was only 21 when I got married.
We're in our six to seven years of marriage and it's been very rocky, to say the least.
What was it that primed you to do this white knighting stuff?
What was it that gave you the impulse or the need to save a woman from her own bad decisions?
I had a bit of a messiah complex at the time and a bit of a superiority complex.
I thought that I was I was going to be used by God to save the world in different ways, right?
And there was the example of Jesus dying for others and sacrifice and whatnot.
And I really thought that me, being a super good Christian and with the help of God, would be able to change the situation for her.
I knew and I'd seen All the bad signs, all the things that, you know, she had a pretty rough childhood, and I knew I was stepping into a really sticky situation, but I thought, empowered enough to be able to fix it.
But I was completely wrong.
It just didn't work out the way I thought I had planned.
So you've kind of not answered my question, although it seems like you have.
Okay, sure.
Where did your Messiah Complex come from?
My wife thinks it's my mom.
Kind of putting me in a pedestal since I was very young.
I was a very smart kid when I was little and she always Try to show me off, right?
So I think some of that desire to be a white knight comes from that relationship.
And my mom can be very pushy at times and kind of play the guilt manipulation card.
I remember when I was little, For some reason, we started talking about, you know, when I grew up, I'm going to go to Japan and, you know, be an engineer and work really hard and buy you a house.
So I don't know the background of that conversation, but I remember me saying that to her.
So for some reason, I've always felt like I had to save my mom also, right?
So that might be a bit of a...
And your father?
My father, well, passed away about eight years ago.
Yeah, eight or nine years ago.
He had issues with my mom during the whole relationship.
He also married very young and almost as a result of an out-of-wedlock pregnancy.
He married my mom because he just had to and it was the right thing to do, though he was very young at the time.
My mom was probably 18.
He was probably in his early 20s too.
Right.
But, yeah.
So, um, why did your parents have an out-of-wedlock pregnancy?
They were in South America.
At the time, my mom...
I don't know.
She...
I don't know what she was like at the time, to be honest.
But she didn't have a good role model of a father, right?
Her father had seven kids with my grandmother and...
Another kid before that, before they got married, with somebody else that he almost never recognized.
But a lot of times he was in and out of the relationship.
They would get into fights.
And my mom tells me that when she was little, her parents would argue and he would leave and go to the countryside for like months and then come back with potatoes and kind of saying sorry.
and then they would be back together until the next argument right so I venture to say that's probably she didn't have good role models in in her life and I don't know.
Okay, so you're kind of an excuse machine for women, right?
It's hard to not do that.
It just like instantaneously comes to mind.
Can you hold on just a sec?
Let's call you back in just a sec.
I'm in trouble with my recorder.
No problem.
So we were just talking about how you might be just a little bit of an excuse machine for...
Yeah, it's been hard to get rid of that habit, to be honest.
Now, what's your mother's story about why she was the way she was?
I don't know.
She's pretty much the same way.
She can be very stubborn.
I don't know.
Beyond that, I'm not sure what her motivations may be.
So, your father You had a tough enough time getting along with your mom that he would go, as you said, into the wilderness for months?
Oh no, that was my grandfather.
And come back with potatoes, which I find kind of interesting.
That was my grandfather.
My father would have fights with her, but he would never leave the house for extended periods of time.
He would just kind of go out and have a smoke or whatnot.
But for a while, I lived with my mom when she immigrated to North America.
And so it was essentially me, my mom, and my sister since I was 12, 13.
And what has your mom done in North America?
What does she do?
Well, she would clean houses for a living.
She did a course on early childhood education.
And so she worked at daycares and whatnot.
Right, okay.
Okay, good.
And is she the kind of person...
I'm getting a sense, and correct me if I'm wrong, but...
Sure.
Is she the kind of person that has a tough time admitting she's wrong or apologizing or anything like that?
Yeah, very much so.
I've tried to confront her about certain things that she's done in our relationship, and her excuse is, you know, you've got to forgive, right?
And so I tell her when I've done things to her...
You just have to forgive me, right?
Because that's the standard that she has for relationships.
She's like, no, you have to forgive your elders and whatnot.
So you have to show respect for your elders, but they don't have to show respect for you.
You have to forgive your elders, but they don't have to forgive you.
Right, right.
So she's a hypocrite.
Yeah, yeah.
Got it.
Yeah.
Got it.
When it came to you getting involved with your wife as it stands now, back in the beginning, obviously your mom knew that this woman had a child.
Yes.
And what did she think about you getting involved with this?
Oh, she didn't like my wife at all.
She thought it was the worst idea I had.
She knew about some of my wife's past and Her temper and whatnot.
And she just wasn't in with the...
She completely decided the plan.
From the minute that we even started dating, she thought it was a horrible idea.
And why didn't you listen to her?
I don't...
I was kind of in a rebellious phase, you know, because she was very...
She could be very controlling.
And a lot of my extended family would notice and tell me, and tell her.
And so I just felt like her advice was just bad, biased and whatnot, right?
So your mother didn't have credibility with you when it came to what she thought would be in your best self-interest or what would be against your self-interest.
She didn't have enough credibility with you.
To help you avoid what could have been a bad decision, right?
That's a very good way of putting it, yes.
Yeah, and that's one of the problems.
Of course, if you boss and bully your kids, then they generally tend to stop listening to you and paying attention to your advice.
And then what happens, of course, is when those kids get older, if they're going to make a bad decision, then when you need your most credibility, you have your least, right?
Yeah, and also my dad was dead at the time, right?
So I didn't have him to...
To tell me, you know, think about it twice or just wait a little bit longer, right?
Right.
And, of course, you have a culture that is constantly telling you how great single moms are, right?
Yeah.
They're heroic and they're great.
Yeah, and it's just a worship of mom, you know.
Yep.
Yeah.
I can't believe there's a society that has to conform to the vanity of women.
Yeah.
It's an anthropological curiosity.
Yeah.
Now, how much does your wife have in common with your mother?
She has in common sometimes the unwillingness to admit that they're wrong.
Stubbornness.
Stubbornness is kind of morally neutral.
If you're in the right, being stubborn is heroic.
If you're in the wrong...
It's called being a total douchebag, right?
Yes.
So, stubbornness is one of these very nice ways of putting it, but if she's in the right, stubbornness is admirable, and if she's in the wrong, stubbornness is quite the opposite of admirable.
So, what do you mean?
She has opinions that are emotionally based, and even if they're incorrect or we have disagreements over certain things, Her reaction is emotional, so she tries to protect those opinions on an emotional basis.
Alright, hang on a sec.
So, opinions emotionally based.
Yes.
Doesn't want to admit she's wrong.
Escalates with aggression when confronted.
Yes.
Yeah, I think I might have known just a few women like that over the course of my life, and the first one I found who wasn't like that, I married within 11 months.
Yeah, and...
It's just been very difficult.
I think that if it wasn't for the two boys that we have, I wouldn't be with my wife.
I just wouldn't.
I would have run away many, many years ago.
I'm sorry to hear that, Camilo.
I really am.
That's a very tough situation to be in.
It is.
And many times I find myself thinking, okay, what if I, should I just have a separation and try to What would be better for the kids?
They didn't actually be in this whole mess, right?
That was my decision and my wife's.
So it tends to be a bit difficult, especially when we have arguments and whatnot, right?
Right, right.
Yeah, you know, when you think about society as a whole these days, a lot of society...
It's organized around women not having to admit that they're wrong.
Political correctness, which I think is largely driven by women, political correctness means never having to admit that you're wrong.
Because you put forward a proposition, if that proposition is true, well then of course you don't have to admit that you're wrong and you shouldn't because it's true.
If it's not true, then you cry or you yell, in which case the person is wrong for upsetting you.
So basically, if you look at political correctness, the welfare state, immigration policy, divorce laws, family courts, they're all simply around women never having to admit that they're wrong.
Now, I grew up with a woman, so just so everyone knows my personal experience with this, and you can take what I'm saying with an appropriate grain of salt.
Sure.
I grew up with a woman who could never admit she was wrong.
I don't know what it is.
And I knew a lot of women who were like this.
Like women who, rather than admit they were wrong, would detonate entire marriages.
Rather than admit they were wrong, would alienate children, husbands, friends, rather than admit they were wrong.
I don't know what it is.
Maybe it's modern women, maybe it's women as a whole, but I don't know what it is with women, why it's so important.
And you know, if you're a woman out there and you have some insight into this, or maybe I'm just completely wrong and biased based on my own experiences with women, but You know, call in and let me know, but I cannot figure out for the life of me what it is with women, why it's so impossible for them to admit that they're wrong.
And again, there are exceptions, but they seem to be a little bit rare.
You know, the sentimentality around multiculturalism is driven by women.
Political correctness, I think, largely driven by women.
It's not to say that women are the major architects and so on, but I've noticed that as more and more women have flowed into higher education, Political correction, correctness and my feels seems to be all that higher education in the humanities has become about.
It's just feelings and I'm right and therefore I'm not going to admit that I'm wrong or I'm wrong but you've hurt my feelings therefore you're bad.
You know, have you ever heard this from a woman?
It's not what you say, it's how you say it.
My wife says that all the time.
Right.
That is the closest that a lot of women will get to admitting that they're wrong, which is saying that there may be some validity in what you say, but you've hurt my feelings.
Yeah.
And it's so funny, too, because I don't remember women as a whole caring that much about men's feelings when men were being called patriarchs and misogynists and sexist pigs and rape culture.
And I don't remember women being overly sensitive to men's feelings But this, I don't know, whenever you start to get the upper hand in a conversation with most women, they'll simply trot out the, I'm offended, I'm upset, I'm angry, I'm hurt.
And then you're somehow supposed to deal with that.
And it's like, it's so cliched.
It's so Victorian, you know?
It's like, oh yeah, ladies, if you want to be equal, great.
Then you can't pull the, I'm upset card, because that never works for men.
You ever try that at work?
Somebody dresses you down for not hitting your sales quota and you burst into tears and claim to be upset and run to the bathroom and everyone's like, oh, we should never do that again.
I don't remember that showing up a lot in basic training for soldiers either.
Yeah.
I broke a nail.
Right.
So, does it happen where, so you're in a conflict with your wife, you prove her wrong about something or you make a point that she can't rebut...
And then she just turns on the feels and tries to distract you from anything you say?
It gets even worse.
To give you a point of reference, just last night we were out in a restaurant and I asked her what she thought about the whole Oscars controversy, right?
The whole Oscars are white.
And her immediate reaction was, oh, it's discrimination.
And I asked her, okay, so I said discrimination.
Oh, because they only had one black person win for like the...
I guess it was called the...
I forget the name of the band that won an Oscar last night or a few nights ago.
And I asked her if she felt the same way about the NBA, only having one Chinese player.
Would that be discrimination too?
And her reaction was to...
And also, you know...
Discuss some IQ and stuff.
And I asked her questions.
How would she respond to those things?
And her reaction was to call me a racist.
Right.
In the middle of a restaurant.
And I'm like, what?
And yeah, she's like, yeah, you're a racist.
You support Donald Trump.
I'm like, I don't support him.
I just I don't believe all the hysteria against him, but yeah.
Oh, I think we do understand all the hysteria against him, but I appreciate it.
So basically, when you put some rational counter-arguments to her perspective, she just escalated and insulted you rather than answering your rational arguments.
Yeah.
And your kids saw this?
Your sons saw this?
Yeah, they were right there.
She called you a racist in front of your children?
Yes.
Holy shit, man.
And this is the first time she's done it, but I told her that's a very insulting thing to say to anyone without any evidence.
Like, tell me how I'm a racist.
And I kept asking her, like, tell me how that's true.
Like, if you're going to have all these allegations up there, you have to have some evidence.
And then she got upset over the fact that I was questioning her too much.
Well, you didn't bow down to the bullying, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so she got upset.
And then today she had to schedule with a surgeon because she has to get some sort of surgery.
Don't get into details.
It doesn't matter.
Yeah.
So anyway, she has to do minor to medium surgery.
And she was like, and she told me, why aren't you comforting me?
I don't feel comforted by you.
Is this after she called you a racist in front of your kids?
Yeah, and all she did yesterday when we got home is to say, you know, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have called you a racist.
Oh, she did apologize?
She did one of those quick apologize.
It felt like a drive-by apology.
Did she apologize in front of your kids?
Yes.
Did she explain to your kids that you're not a racist and that it was very unjust and unfair for mommy to call you that horrible name, especially in public, especially in front of the kids, and mommy was totally wrong to do that?
Yes.
Well, she didn't went into detail.
She just said, I'm sorry I called you a racist.
It was an unfair thing to do.
And then she kept going.
What do you mean she kept going?
We were walking home.
And I didn't react.
I didn't say anything.
And she said, oh, okay, so you're not going to accept my apology.
And so I'm like, okay, first of all, just because you just said you're sorry all of a sudden doesn't mean that the insult goes away.
It just doesn't erase it.
Does it happen with her that if you do something that's really upsetting to her and you apologize, does she immediately get better?
No.
No, of course not, right?
It takes a while to mend.
And the longer it takes from the insult to the apology, the longer it takes to fix, right?
I mean, if you wait a day, if she waited a day, that's a big deal, right?
Yeah, and she insulted me in public, but she apologized in private, right?
Just me and the kids.
But she was happy saying that.
Yeah, I mean, they're the ones who matter, right?
But I know what you mean.
Yeah, so I told her today, you know, I don't feel...
That you were comforting to me.
You expect me to be comforting to you when you haven't been to me.
And her reaction is, but I apologize.
Right.
And yeah, so she feels entitled to me being completely okay.
Right.
Yeah.
Now, why do you think she apologized to you?
Because I'll tell you this.
When an apology immediately turns into a demand, I don't trust the apology.
I didn't either.
If somebody says to me, hey man, I'm really sorry that I called you a racist white supremacist, now can I borrow 500 bucks?
Yeah.
I don't know.
Why do you think she apologized to you?
I think...
She realizes that she can't go on as life is without me being there, like if I leave.
And we had a bit of a separation last year.
And she realized that I don't have to be there.
Just because, you know, I'm not forced to be there.
And so she fears that she may push me away to the point of no return.
You know what I mean?
And why would she be bothered by that?
Is it because she loves your company so much and she cares about you so much?
That's what she says, but I don't know.
I don't think that's necessarily true.
I really don't.
I just think it's convenient.
She says she loves me and she has all these feelings for me.
But when it comes to really tense situations, that kind of goes away.
It's all words.
No actions.
And it's funny because that's what she used to tell me when we started dating.
I used to tell her that I loved her and that I cared for her.
But because I wasn't doing any actions, she would say, oh, you know, you still talk, right?
And at this point in the relationship, it's her, the one that's all talking.
I don't even...
It's hard for me to say I love you anymore just because of the person that she's been with me and all the stuff that's going on.
And does she work?
She was working, but right now she went back to school for nursing.
And who's paying for that?
Well, she took OSAP and that's basically how she's doing it right now.
So she's taking loans out, is that right?
Yeah.
Part loans, part grants, yeah.
And did you have to co-sign any of those loans?
No.
I did not.
It's just her.
Okay.
Okay.
And how long is that going to take?
It'll be probably another three years at least.
Wow.
She's on a bridging program and whatnot.
She tried to work in a couple of places and didn't quite work out.
She had issues with different jobs.
Well, wait, wait.
What didn't work out?
She just felt that she wasn't happy with management at the different companies that she's worked for.
Wait, what does that mean?
Does it mean she got fired?
No, she didn't get fired, but she was just really unhappy.
I don't think it's the workplace.
It could be her.
She's quick to blame Thanks on other people, right?
Wait, wait.
A woman who's quick to blame problems on other people?
I know.
Sorry, I'm just making notes here, just in case God needs a blueprint again.
Yeah, it's a specimen.
Maybe she called her boss a racist in front of employees.
Or maybe she didn't because he had power over her.
She doesn't.
And as a thing, I've talked to her and I've told her many times, you wouldn't talk to me You don't talk to your boss the way you've talked to me in the past.
You never say those things.
She can't say, no, that's not true.
It's totally true.
Does she think it's going to be different when she becomes a nurse?
She thinks she's going to have a higher income.
She's going to have, I guess, more, you know, she'll be able to work in a better environment.
So she thinks that she's working for the government, because you're not in America, she's working for the government, that she's going to have a better situation?
Yes, she thinks that, you know, the income is a big aspect of her decision.
She thinks that she's going to make a lot of money as a nurse.
Yeah, I don't know.
I think she has a moderate to good work ethic, but I just really don't know what will happen, to be honest.
And so, is it basically four years in total, is that right?
And you're paying all the bills while she's doing this?
Well, with her also, she's kind of helping a little bit.
Well, no, she's not helping at all.
Fucking taxpayers are helping.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's true.
I mean, she's not helping at all.
You know, from Canada, I'm helping.
No, and that's how she, in her mind, she's helping.
But it's true.
You're not.
She's not.
And she's going to have to pay it back.
Is it grants or loans?
It's a combination of both, right?
Right.
Yes, that's But it's not covering your expenses with three kids, right?
She's not covering half the expenses with this, right?
No, not really half.
So what percentage are you paying?
I would say about two-thirds to three-quarters, maybe, of the expenses.
I don't believe you.
I mean, I'm not saying you're lying to me.
Because her student loans are supposed to be going for school, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, she put in to qualify for living expenses and whatnot, right?
And so, you know, she gets a little extra for living expenses, not just for tuition, but for living expenses, which she's going to have to pay back too, right?
Right.
Okay, so you're paying three quarters for the next couple of years, right?
Yeah.
And has she acknowledged that that's a very big sacrifice on your part?
She's mentioned it two or three times in the last couple of months.
You know, she says, you know, thank you very much for letting me go to school.
You know, I appreciate the sacrifices you've done.
But yeah, beyond that, that's basically it.
Okay.
Yeah, I mean, if somebody was paying most of my bills for a couple of years, I'd be, you know, I'd be offering them all the foot rubs and whatever else I could, right?
I'd be like the nicest person.
I mean, I try to be nice anyway.
Yeah, no, and for the first few years in our relationship, I was paying all the bills because she's an American citizen, but she came to Canada and couldn't work for quite a bit, quite a while, right?
And so I was taking care of all the expenses at that point.
Wow.
So you took on a single mom and paid a whole bunch of her bills.
Like paid all her bills.
Pretty much.
And I somehow feel that her mom...
Holy disposable male, Batman.
Yeah.
What is so wrong?
Like, do you have like a giant hump?
Do you have like a penis coming out of one of your knees?
Oh, actually, maybe that'd be kind of cool.
But what is it that has made your sexual market value so low that it's got to be you plus a giant checkbook just to get a woman?
It hasn't.
I just...
I don't know.
I was just...
I told you it was just a white knight situation.
And, you know...
Is she...
How pretty?
How pretty is she?
She's...
Well, right now, she's probably a two, to be honest.
A two?
Yeah.
So she's got a penis coming out of one of her knees.
Actually, that could also be kind of cool, depending on what you're into.
She's had three kids and she used to be about a seven.
Oh, so you're saying she's gained a lot of weight?
Yes.
How much weight has she gained?
Quite a bit.
I don't even know the weight.
She doesn't tell me, but she's heavier than me.
I don't know about that.
You could be Danny DeVito for all I know.
I'm six inches taller than her.
So she's fat?
Yeah.
Well, it seems to be the rule that in Canada, if you want to be a nurse, you've got to be obese.
It's just the way that it works.
Every single nurse, just about without exception, that I've met.
Yeah, and it's just difficult.
There's not even anything romantic between us anymore.
She wants to have something romantic, and it's just hard.
As a guy, it's just difficult to You know what I mean?
You're not turned on because she's fat, right?
Yeah.
It becomes very difficult.
I can't.
I'm not trying to be mean or anything.
It's really hard.
I've tried to talk to her about her weight issues and I've tried to be very nurturing but she gets upset and she thinks that I'm I'm doing an intervention and I'm treating her like she's a meth addict.
Oh, so you can't bring facts about race and ethnicity and IQ without being called a racist.
So you can be unjustly accused of something.
But when you point out that she's gotten fat and it's unhealthy and it's bad for you and it's bad for your marriage and it's bad for your sex drive, that's bad, right?
Yeah, she participated in a statistics I did a survey from Health and I got the results and I was really concerned, right?
Because it was all in paper and it's all basically where she's at.
Do you mean like DMI stuff?
It wasn't a good result.
Yeah, yeah.
DMI is, I forget the number, but it's like, you know, the top category.
Yeah, obese, right?
Yeah.
And, you know, I'm not...
I also think that's kind of, you know, I hate to say it, but I also think it's kind of tough for the kids.
Like, it's tough being the kid of fat parents or of a fat mom.
You know, it's just kind of embarrassing.
Yeah.
I feel that way sometimes.
You know, it's just...
Every guy wants to introduce his wife and people say, whoa, lucky guy, right?
Yeah, yeah.
And if she's fat, you know, there's not a lot of people saying, oh, lucky guy.
Like, it's kind of humiliating for you too, right?
Even if she was a great person.
Of course, if she was a great person, she probably wouldn't be fat, right?
Yeah, yeah.
And it's not like, yeah, it's just, I think, I don't want to be vain, but maybe people do think that she's lucky.
And she's told me that she's lucky in the sense of having me.
But on my end, it's hard.
And do you think she's smart?
I don't know.
She asked me this question, too, and I told her I don't know.
She's very emotional.
You know, I gotta tell you, I'm sorry to interrupt you when you're just starting to say something.
I gotta tell you, when most people are described as emotional, do you know what I hear?
What?
They're bullies.
Yeah.
Because emotional might be Her coming up in tears saying, I love you so much.
I'm so sorry about the fat.
I've got to lose the weight.
I feel terrible.
I'm so emotional.
I'm thinking about being around for the kids when they get older.
I'm thinking about I'm not able to play with them at the park because I'm so fat.
And that could be emotional, right?
And she'll have those extremes too.
Like she'll have extremes of compulsive and just crying.
Okay, but is she ever emotional when She loses some conflict as a result of being emotional.
No.
So, that's what I mean.
When I hear emotional, when someone says, oh, so-and-so is emotional, I just assume that they're a hysterical bully.
Yeah.
And she had a rough childhood, too.
Oh, no, no.
No, no, no.
No, no, no.
That does not give anyone an excuse to be a bully.
And the fact that you're inventing this sort of stuff, you have a daughter too, right?
Yes.
So if you excuse the mom's behavior, what you're saying to your daughter is, you can be a bully if you have a bad childhood, you're off the hook.
That's correct.
Yeah, that shouldn't be the case.
And you're saying to your sons, you can't judge women who've had a bad childhood.
How was your childhood?
Wasn't that great?
It was not...
No.
It was...
I don't know.
I don't know on the scale from 1 to 10.
Probably around 5.
But don't make up excuses for people.
It doesn't mean you can't have sympathy.
But sympathy is the opposite of making excuses.
Because sympathy is genuinely caring about what happened to someone.
Making excuses is saying, you had a bad childhood, so I'm going to continue to treat you like a child.
That is correct, yeah.
So you have a fat, expensive wife who calls you a racist.
Yeah, that I have two boys with.
It's a very difficult situation.
I just don't know.
It is?
I feel like running away many times.
And...
And she apologizes to you when she needs something.
In other words, she needs support for her minor surgery, so she apologizes to you and then gets angry when you don't immediately feel better and give her what she wants.
Yeah.
Great.
I don't know.
Being a woman in modern Western society a lot of times means never having to grow up.
Yeah, that's what I feel like.
I think that many times she's just trying to be a teenager.
Or, you know, I don't know.
Do you think that she might be willing to do something like therapy?
I've talked to her about it, and she said yes, but when we actually have something scheduled, she'll have something more pressing, right?
And after we got a Temporary separation last year.
She started talking about therapy at that point again.
But there was never anything conclusive.
Right.
It's just kind of a buzzword.
Right.
And to be honest, at this point, I don't know if I don't even know if therapy would fix all the underlying issues, right?
And I don't know.
Well, she just doesn't sound like that nice a person.
No.
I'm sure there are some nice aspects to her.
Like, I mean, maybe she's good at certain aspects of parenting or whatever, but...
She's funny and, you know, but nothing in the...
Like, if you ask me what kind of virtues does she have, I wouldn't be able to give you...
It's a tough situation.
I can give you some advice if you like.
I mean, I obviously can't solve any of your problems, but I can give you some thoughts if that helps.
Sure.
Are you ready?
I am ready.
All right.
It is hard to take a stand on After you're committed.
Is that a fair way to put it?
Correct.
Especially after you've had kids.
Yes.
Right?
I mean, you don't take a convertible home and then try and turn it into a minivan, right?
Yeah.
So it's very hard to take a stand after you've made a commitment.
And so, of course...
I'm not saying you don't want to be a father to your two boys, and I'm not sort of trying to put you in that.
But, you know, obviously you'd prefer to be married to somebody who was closer to you in values, and I would argue probably in intelligence.
Yes.
Because you have the capacity to look at new information and process it, where she gets emotionally reactive and kind of bullying and manipulative and all this kind of stuff.
Hysterical.
Yeah, which is another word for bullying.
Yes.
So, but here's the challenge, which is that if you stay in the marriage and you continually cave, your life becomes miserable and you're setting your children up for failure.
Because they will look at, you know, children learn how to love, not just by being loved, but by watching how their parents treat each other.
Right.
And so if they see, if your daughter is continually imbibing this lesson, which is scream, cry, and bully, and you get what you want.
You never have to be reasonable.
And you can say the most shitty things, like call someone a racist in public in front of their kids, and then you can just apologize the next day and everything will be fine.
Immediately.
Right.
These are very, very bad lessons to be teaching to your daughter.
And the lessons to your son, your sons are scarcely any better, right?
Yeah.
So, as far as, you know, I'm just going to continue along this road, and I'm going to continue to be beat down and ground down.
By all of this stuff, and I'm going to continue to have to comply to her bullying and all this kind of stuff, is not healthy to anyone involved, in my opinion.
It's all my opinion, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Now, you have to, I would argue, start treating your wife as an equal.
Because right now, you're horribly sexist.
In other words, you let your wife get away with shit that you would never let a man get away with.
Yeah.
You know, there's an old saying from Ann Coulter which says, any woman her salt knows exactly when to cry to win an argument.
Right.
And understanding female nature, and by that I don't mean all women are the same and so on, but Nonetheless, there are some things that you can say that are not bad places to start in terms of commonalities.
Understanding female nature is really, really important for you to get a hold of, to understand, to grasp.
And I'm concerned that you're being set up for a divorce.
Because your wife's weight gain has killed your sex life.
And in relationships, no matter how dysfunctional I believe, the sex life is the last thing to go.
Once that's gone, I mean, what the hell is left, right?
Not much.
So here's my concern.
That if I had to put money on a prediction, I would say something like this.
Dude, this is what's going to happen.
The reason...
That she wants you to pay for her education is because she wants to leave you.
And so she is going to have you pay for her education and then she's going to divorce you.
And she's going to take half your money and half your stuff before she gets a job.
Right?
So then you end up paying in baby jail for the next 15 years or more Right.
And then she can go and get a job and it's going to be too emotionally exhausting and draining and expensive for you to go and adjust the payments.
So now she gets two incomes.
She gets half your money and she gets her income as a nurse.
Right.
There is...
In the absence of values, in the absence of philosophy, because this sounds like I'm begging on women.
I'm not.
Because in the absence of philosophy, of values, of virtue, every human being in the known universe defaults to naked economic emotional advantage.
That's all it comes down to.
And so it's not like women are bad.
No.
I mean, all...
Human beings who don't organize their decisions according to objective or philosophical values, all human beings are shitty manipulators in the absence of virtue.
I don't mean shitty manipulators like they're bad at being manipulators.
People who have virtue are bad at being manipulators, but they're low-rent, mere momentary, advantage-seeking self-missiles, you know, whatever is going to Get them what they want in the short run.
That's what they'll pursue.
And so my concern is that you're going to get shafted bad and hard and probably not in the way you like, right?
And she's going to get you to pay for education.
She's going to divorce you.
She's going to take half your stuff.
And if you're not having sex, And you're not getting along, what's her incentive to stay?
Well, her incentive to stay right now is that you're paying for her education.
A lot of times women will collapse their income before divorcing a guy, for obvious reasons, right?
So that's one of my concerns.
What do you think?
Hello?
No, sorry.
I lost the call.
I lost you for the last two minutes.
I apologize.
Okay.
I think she might be preparing to divorce you, and you need to be aware and alert to that.
Yeah.
And the divorce will probably occur right after she's finished her education, but before she gets a job.
I don't know for sure.
Obviously, I don't know for sure.
But here's what I would suggest.
You need to get involved into some men's rights groups.
You need to have other men Who understand amoral female nature, which is fundamentally no better or no worse than amoral male nature.
But amoral female nature is about resource maximization, hypergamy, and always being in the right.
Yeah.
Amoral male nature has its own characteristics, but you may be, if she's not philosophical, then what she is, and everyone who's not philosophical is a manipulator.
Everyone who's not philosophical is a sophist.
And so you need to be aware of what female nature is because you're dealing with an unreconstituted female personality.
In other words, you're dealing with a female personality that has evolved to maximize its advantages rather than Pursued principles in order to pursue virtue.
And so you're dealing with someone who's going to manipulate you because they don't have any values by which they're willing to sacrifice their immediate preferences.
Does that make any sense?
It does.
So, you know, you can look them up online.
I don't have any affiliations nor do I have any recommendations because I don't...
You know, I'm so happily married that I don't really need to follow this stuff, but...
And I'm sorry, that sounds kind of dickish, but I just...
You know, that's why I don't...
But if you have a look online, exploring what people think of female nature can be very, very instructive and very liberating.
Very helpful.
Men and women are not the same.
Biologically, women have evolved.
They're smaller and they're dependent, which means that they have resorted to a lot of emotional tricks, And bullying in order to get what they want.
And you need to be alert and aware to that.
Now, your wife obviously at some point will face a choice.
When you start to become stronger and more assertive, she will face a choice.
And when a man starts to become assertive, the marriage is either saved or it's damned.
So if a man starts to become more assertive, let's say you become more assertive, and you sit her down and say, look, things have really been going off the rails.
We have been...
Drifting and drifting badly.
You know, we're not having sex.
We're not getting along that well.
It's not good for me.
It's not good for you.
It's not good for the kids.
So we need to fix things.
And what we need to do is we need to have some standards about how we interact.
And these are like no shit standards.
These are like no kidding standards.
I mean, I remember once I had a girlfriend who would raise her voice whenever she didn't get what she wanted.
Not to sit her down and say, nope.
No, no, no, no, no.
We don't...
You know, you're not too...
You cannot just raise your voice when you don't get what you want.
That's called being a bully.
And we have to have these rules.
Now, it's not really particularly relevant how that ended up going.
What is relevant is that you have to have some standards.
No name-calling.
No raising voices.
No substituting upset...
For interaction.
Like, you don't get to pull the I'm upset card.
I mean, you should never get to pull that in society as a whole.
But you have to have these standards, and she has to agree to them.
And any standard that she won't agree to, you are not bound by.
If she says, well, I get to yell at you if I want, say, okay, well then I get to yell at you if I want.
Right.
And then...
Once you have agreed on these standards, you know, no name calling, no yelling, and we work it out.
And we sit there and we work it out until we feel better, until things are resolved.
And no hysteria, no blame, right?
Just, you know, we talk like reasonable human beings, reasonable adults.
So, you have to have some rules, and she has to agree to them.
Now, she can choose not to agree to them, but then don't feel bound by any rules she's not bound by.
That's called Not being sexist, which is not having different standards for men and women.
Now, if you become assertive in this way, then what will happen is your marriage will be saved or it will be damned.
Because women almost involuntarily respond to assertiveness.
And she'll test it a lot.
I mean, you're basically trying to raise a toddler.
If she's got this kind of hysterical emotional reactions, and that's kind of an insult to a well-raised toddler, but you know what I mean?
Yes.
And so, if you're firm with your standards and firm in your interactions, and you simply don't accept bad behavior, if she calls you names, you simply cease interacting with her.
Right?
If she calls you a racist in front of the kids, You turn to the kids and you say, Mommy has just insulted me terribly for no reason whatsoever.
I do not accept that kind of behavior.
Mommy has just something really terrible.
And I'm not going to chat with her until she really apologizes and makes me feel better for what she did.
And that might take quite a while.
I apologize for what she did.
I can't control what she says.
But what she just did was really terrible.
Now let's you and I play some noughts and crosses, some X's and O's.
Let's do a maze.
Let's play some hangman.
Because I'm not interacting with mommy until she apologizes for what she did.
And then if she says, well, sorry.
No, it's not a real apology.
And you just don't engage.
She starts yelling at you, just walk out of the house.
Take her water around the block.
Say, I will only interact with you if you're reasonable.
And because she's an amoral advantage seeker, she will try everything she can to get her way.
And if you allow her to get her way, then she'll just reinforce the behavior.
Right now, you're complying...
And you're feeding her amoral advantage-seeking, right?
Because it works.
And we generally, in the absence of philosophy, we do whatever works.
And because you're not standing up for yourself and modeling that to your kids, her behavior works.
And in the absence of philosophy, we just do whatever works.
So that would be my suggestion.
But again, I would, you know, if she doesn't want to go to therapy, okay, fine.
You go to therapy.
And get, you know, maybe a male therapist, maybe somebody more experienced with men's rights issues and so on.
You can go to therapists.
You can go to therapists and you can find some way to stand up for yourself that, you know, I'm a big one for, you know, in relationships.
I don't like just barely treading water, barely keeping my nose above the water.
Like I'm either in or I'm out.
And I think where you are right now is going to be pretty brutal for you in the long run in terms of happiness.
And I think that it's probably important to find a way to make your relationship work and give it everything you've got, which means stop complying, stop obeying, stop appeasing.
Give it everything you've got so that it can become better or maybe it will end.
But you'll be better off.
So that's my only thought to it.
I'm sorry we lost the caller.
I'm sure he'll listen to this afterwards.
Let's move on to the next caller.
Tess wrote in and said, How do you explain the phenomenon of serendipity?
Is there anything to the idea of destiny?
That's from Tess.
Hello, Tess.
How are you doing?
I'm doing well, thank you.
How are you?
I'm very well, thank you.
I lost my Bluetooth.
Is my microphone still good?
Yes, all right.
Okay.
So, yeah, what do you think of this?
Well, I'm not sure what you mean.
I mean, is there an emotional state called serendipity, or is there some objective reality to serendipity?
That's what I'm not sure what you mean.
Well, each person's subjective reality of serendipity is different.
But people experience serendipity, which could be like deja vu and that ironic kind of a coincidence that happens that can either be life-changing or it could bring you insight into something you were having difficulty with.
There's reports of people who have had dreams of people they know coming to them the night they died.
Someplace far away.
Things like that.
Well, I mean, are you saying that people are experiencing astral travel from other people's souls in their dreams?
I don't think I want to go that far because jumping into that sort of...
Mystic way of looking at it.
I've been reading recently the crowd.
And there is a phenomenon of people when they get together that something happens and there's almost like a collective unconscious force that is directing the individual people.
Well, crowds can form.
I'll certainly agree with that.
Okay, okay.
And that this...
Collective unconsciousness can sometimes make random jumps.
Like, you can kind of see this a little bit in quantum physics even, where one individual particle can affect another individual particle, like, miles away from one another.
We don't understand how it happens, but it happens.
And so, what is your argument?
Because, look, I've dreamt of lots of people who haven't died.
Now, if I dream of someone and it turns out that they died, I'll remember that a lot more, right?
I mean, I've had dreams where it's like, I literally had a dream a year or two ago.
My dreams are not always the most exciting things in the world.
I went to a mall and got a bagel.
Went to a mall and got a bagel.
And then, what do you know?
A couple of days later, I was in a mall and I got a bagel.
Right now, I remembered that just because when I was getting the bagel, I had this sense of deja vu.
And I was like, oh yeah, I had a dream a couple of nights ago where I went to a mall.
So I remembered that.
But all the dreams I have which don't end up corresponding to any reality later on, I don't remember, right?
So our capacity to make associations...
It's very strongly reinforced, but not statistically significant.
In other words, we remember the dreams that, quote, come true, and forget all of the thousands of dreams that don't come true.
And so when we think back, we can say, oh yeah, I remember that dream that came true, and it seems to have more reality to us.
And that there's good survival reasons for that, right?
I mean, if you live in the jungle, every time you hear a twig breaking, you have to generally worry that it's a tiger or some...
It's an animal that's going to come and rip your face off.
And so we're very good at making associations because that's a survival mechanism.
And so that same survival mechanism that has us not ignore a tweak breaking, even though it could be any one of six million different things, I think that also helps or encourages us to remember Dreams that come true or coincidences that seem more meaningful and so on.
But the real test, of course, is not our subjective experience.
The real test can be objectively replicated, right?
And to my knowledge, none of this stuff can be objectively replicated, which is how we know it remains a purely subjective experience.
Okay, so it's kind of like how, like when you're looking at the clouds, you can see shapes of figures because our brains are wired to And our biology is wired to do specific things.
Yeah, and we remember things that are kind of cool coincidences, right?
So I remember once saying to my daughter, oh, look up there.
There looks like a cloud that's almost exactly in the shape of a seagull.
And then a cloud of seagulls, like a flock of seagulls, flew in front of that cloud.
It was really cool.
However, I have, like most people, stared at clouds for countless hours during my life or glanced at them or noticed them.
And I remember that because it was such a cool exception.
But does that mean that clouds produce seagulls or clouds produce things that look...
No, of course.
It's just one thing I remember because it was pretty cool.
Okay, okay.
I get that.
So...
I think I would probably agree with that now that I'm thinking about it.
Now, do you think there's anything to this idea of destiny?
There was a show that you put up recently on YouTube.
I disavow it.
Oh, sorry.
Sorry, go ahead.
No, no, I have actual fact this time.
It's not just me making conjecture.
Wait, did you download the actual show?
I did not.
I disavow it.
Mike, delete it.
Sorry, go ahead.
Quit, delete it.
No.
The...
Why liberals are wrong about inequality.
And in an example, you gave this Starbucks barista who was basically fulfilling her destiny.
And I think those are the exact words you said was fulfilling her destiny of being a Starbucks barista, but she doesn't need all of the student debt that she can't pay off.
Right.
And...
How much of destiny is involved in these coincidental acts that just happen to come about?
Well, I mean, physical characteristics both limit and expand one's opportunities, right?
It's like no one is going to hire me to show how great their haircutting skills are, right?
Because I'm largely bald.
And...
I mean, if a woman is significantly overweight and doesn't have a pleasingly symmetrical face, then her opportunities in the modeling industry are somewhat curtailed, to put it mildly.
And if someone doesn't have a good singing voice, then their capacity to make money as a singer is significantly curtailed.
And if somebody isn't tall, then there are opportunities to Make a living as a basketball player or somewhat curtailed and so on.
And if somebody has an IQ of 90, then their capacity to succeed in higher education is significantly curtailed, if not impossible.
And so certain physical characteristics, I don't know if I can say exactly destiny.
In other words, if somebody has an IQ of 90, then being a Starbucks barista in the long run might be the best that they can do for it.
But it doesn't mean that because they have an IQ of 90, it means they have to be a Starbucks barista.
But it does mean that they're not going to be a brain surgeon or a lawyer or a very successful politician or whatever, right?
Whatever is, you know, a physicist or not going to get a master's degree in philosophy or anything like that.
And so destiny is more about what you can't do than what you can do.
The fact that I can't be a hair model doesn't I mean that I have to be something else.
But there's a certain number of limitations.
There's a whole bunch of things I can't do because of my physical characteristics.
And that doesn't mean that that explains exactly what I can do.
Like if someone says you can't go north, that doesn't mean you have to go south.
It just means you can't go north.
And so there are certain physical characteristics that limit what people are capable of.
But I don't know that that's exactly the same as destiny.
Okay, so it seems to me that what you're saying is it boils down to biological determinism.
Well, no, as I said, it's not determinism, right?
So let me put it to you this way.
Okay.
I've, you know, I worked as a dancer when I was in theater school.
Okay.
And I was a bad dancer for a variety of reasons.
Number one.
I don't like to practice.
Number two, I'm really not flexible.
Like physically, I can't even touch my toes and I never have been able to.
And you know, everybody and their dog used to say, well, all you have to do is stretch.
And actually that's not true.
Stretching does not make your tendons longer.
What it does, it allows you to deal with the pain of your tendon stretching more, but it does not actually make your tendons longer.
So there was no way for me to make my tendons longer.
There's never going to be any way for me to touch my toes in this life.
And I actually did stretch for about an hour.
A day when I was in theater school in a variety of dance and warm-up programs and movement classes and so on and I still stretch 10 to 15 minutes every day just because if I don't stretch before I go to bed I get jimmy legs and all that kind of stuff and I kind of like the feeling of limbering it up, all that, right?
And so I could not have been a dancer.
I mean, I didn't really like it.
I wasn't very good at it.
I lacked the flexibility.
I mean, I would have just ended up injuring myself.
The fact that I couldn't be a dancer, is that biological determinism?
I don't think it is, because it doesn't mean that I then have to be something.
It just means I can't be that, if that makes any sense.
I couldn't be an opera singer because I don't have that kind of singing voice.
And does that mean, is that destiny?
Well, no, I don't think it's destiny.
It just means, okay, so there's a bunch of things I can't do because of physical limitations, but that's not the same as saying it's my destiny to do this.
It's just, it's impossible for me to do those other things.
But that's not the same as biological determinism.
Determinism is, it has to be, you have to go north.
All I'm talking about, sorry, all I'm talking about is that because of certain physical limitations, myself, yourself, Mike, everyone else has physical limitations, which means that they cannot do certain things.
I mean, just go to karaoke, right?
And you'll realize why Bruno Mars gets paid a lot, and most people at karaoke don't.
And so, because, you know, Bruno Mars has this great tenor voice, and most people at karaoke are just sort of snoring their way through Phil Collins or something like that.
And so these physical limitations, okay, so let's say somebody doesn't have a great singing voice.
Is that biological determinism?
I wouldn't say so, because determinism is like a rock falling down a hill.
The rock has to end up where it is, whereas all this is saying, well, with self-knowledge, I, for instance, would not be a good translator because I'm not interested and I'm not particularly good at learning other languages.
Computer languages, I'm great.
I know like eight different computer languages, but as far as human languages go, I'm not good.
I'm not even that great at grammar in my native language.
Certain kinds of grammar, contractions, you know, the its and stuff like that, I sometimes still have to look them up to check.
And...
That just means it would not be great for me to be a translator because I'm not particularly interested and I'm not particularly good at it.
Does that mean I have to be an online internet philosopher?
No.
It just means that based upon abilities and preferences, the other thing, it's not really a great use of my time, if that makes sense.
All right, can I move on to the next caller?
Is that mostly an answer to your question?
You know, yeah.
I mean, I was...
I definitely move on to the next caller.
I need to be getting to sleep anyway.
I get up early.
Thanks, Tess.
A real pleasure.
Feel free to call back anytime.
All right.
Thanks.
Have a great day.
Thank you.
Take care.
All right.
Well, up next is Jason.
He's got a couple liberty-oriented questions.
The first one is, how is initial ownership established over...
I'm sorry.
Just interrupt you at the beginning here.
The answer to all liberty-oriented questions is Donald Trump.
I want no one to be confused about that.
Give people an aneurysm right from the get-go.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
I'm just kidding, everyone.
Just kidding.
If it's not a weird whirlpool comb-over, I don't even want to know about it.
All right.
Go ahead.
How is initial ownership established over anything under the NAP? And then he writes, let us say 10 people get on a boat and set sail looking for new land.
When they arrive on a previously unmapped island, who is to say who owns what?
Even if they were all responsible and divided the island up ten ways equally, what if ten years later they discovered a unique and valuable resource on only one of the plots?
Does the guy who just happened to be on that part of the island get to hoard that resource just because of an arbitrary line under the NAP? Or do they all own the resource because they all found the island together?
That's from Jason.
Well, hey Jason, how you doing?
I'm doing alright.
Your guy explained the question pretty much as I wrote it.
There was just an add-on to that, a Part B, which is, do you only own what you can protect under the NAP as well?
But I'm more interested in Part A. Well, ownership is not just Violence, right?
I mean, if I have a machine gun and take a kid's bike, I can certainly prevent the other kids from taking it, but that doesn't mean I have legitimate ownership, right?
It just means I've stolen, right?
No, yeah, yeah.
Let's concentrate on the first part, because that's what I really don't understand, is how initial ownership is established.
Well, the first principle in ownership is self-ownership, right?
Do you agree that you own yourself?
Yeah.
Okay, I can't make your arm do things.
You can't, right?
Like, I can stare at your arm and ask it to lift itself three centimeters, but nothing happens.
But you can look at your arm and you can command it to lift itself three centimeters and it can happen, right?
Yeah.
So the neurological wiring, sort of base of the brain stuff radiating out through the nervous system to the extremities means that you are in control of your own body and nobody else, at least directly, is in control of your own body, right?
Yeah.
So you own yourself.
Now, to say that we own ourself but do not own the effects of our actions would be kind of nonsensical, right?
So we own ourselves and therefore we own the effects of our actions.
Like, if I go and kick your dog, then I have, through my own choices, I have created a bruise or maybe even a cracked rib in your dog's side, right?
I own...
The injury to your dog, because through my self-ownership, I have created said injury to your dog, right?
Yeah, I got it, sure.
Okay, so we own ourselves, and we are responsible for, or in a sense, we own the effects of our actions.
And that's fairly easy to see in terms of crime, and that's why I usually bring it up that way, right?
So we own ourselves, we own the effects of our actions.
Now, if I go out, and let's just say to an unowned area, and there are vast areas of the world that are completely unowned.
Like, there's like nine people in Canada not hovering within one degree of the 48th parallel, desperately looking south with green envy to Florida in the winter.
So most of Canada, the vast majority of Canada is largely unoccupied and unowned.
The same thing is true in America.
Vast tracts of land in America completely unowned and unoccupied.
And so if we go into one of these unowned areas, And I clear out some bush, right?
I go and chop down the trees and pull out their roots and so on.
And I convert the trees into some sort of log cabin, right?
And then I sow some wheat or barley or something which can be used to make beer.
Then, since in the same way that I own the cracked rib of your dog, if I kick it in the side...
Clearly, I have created arable land, I have created a log cabin, and after a certain amount of time and effort, I will have created the food which I'm growing.
Do we agree with that?
Yeah, but isn't, like, in terms of North America, isn't all land either owned by the government or by a person?
Is there any...
Well, yeah, but we're talking about rational ownership, not mafia government-style pretend ownership, right?
We're talking about how it would work in a free society, not how the government pretends it owns everything in the same way that the mafia pretends it owns a portion of your business in return for not burning it to the ground if you don't pay them protection money.
Yeah, that's why I made the island thoughtful Yeah, but I mean, you don't really need that many property rights if everyone's on a tropical island, right?
Which is why tropical societies usually don't develop very strong property rights.
I mean, why would you bother?
I mean, there's food everywhere.
And so you don't really...
Property rights tend to come about because...
Because the best productive use of a resource is very time-consuming, very time-intensive.
What I mean by that is it doesn't take a lot of effort to go and pick some fruit in the jungle.
There's more than enough fruit for everyone.
This is a very R-selected environment.
What kills you in the jungle is Other people and bugs and predators and diseases and so on, right?
I mean, so you're never going to run out of food in the jungle because the carrying capacity of the jungle relative to human life is very high.
And so when you get to a colder climate, though, and when you need to clear land in order to plant, you need to build houses because of winter, right?
And you need to build houses with Significant architectural innovations like maybe having two stories.
You need to be able to fence in because you have livestock.
I mean, there's a reason why before the Europeans came to Sub-Saharan Africa, there wasn't even a two-story building.
Pretty much everyone lived in mud huts because why would you bother building more?
Because, you know, to enclose your fireplace is pretty easy.
It's kind of tough to go from a mud hut all the way to air conditioning without a few steps in between.
And so with colder climates, Property rights become much more important unless the climates get so cold that you're beyond the reach of agriculture.
In other words, if you're the Inuit right up there in the Arctic, then it doesn't really matter because you can't plant anything.
The growing season isn't even close to long enough.
So when it comes to colder climates, that's where you really do need to have property rights because you really can't Survive in an agricultural environment without property rights.
Like why on earth would anyone clear, like do the, I don't know if you've ever had to clear land.
I only had to do it once or twice.
Dear God, it is insane how hard the work is.
I mean, a couple of times I've had to do some minor land clearing, mostly when I was working up north as a gold planner, a prospector and all of that.
And once or twice I had to dig a well.
Oh my God!
Clearing land is insane because you can't just cut the trees down.
You've got to pull out the roots of those trees.
I mean, you can't do it.
There's a fan of this show who was on a television show.
Still is on a television show.
Still is a fan of the show.
There was a scene where the kids were trying to get a tree root out.
They were like bombs and fire.
It's insane to get a tree root out.
It's literally mental and you have to do that dozens of times per acre.
The amount of labor it takes to clear land, to build a cabin, to Plant seeds to tend the seeds to harvest the crop.
Nobody's going to do that without a guarantee that their property is going to be secure, which is why colder climates are the ones that have produced, in general, property rights.
And so when you say, well, how would things work on some tropical island with a small tribe?
Well, You show me a tropical island without contact with the West, with Europeans in general.
You show me a tropical island that has ever developed a complex system of property rights, and I'll be interested in the question, but it seems to be too theoretical to be of value, given that tropical islands generally don't develop many property rights.
Okay, well, alright, let's go back to the Forest of Canada.
How does...
How does one establish ownership?
A friend of mine is very into all of your stuff and watches your show religiously and he was trying to convert me or whatever.
I don't know.
Let's just say enlighten you or make good arguments.
Convert you just sounds disrespectful to philosophy.
Not to me, but to philosophy as a whole.
Yeah, so he basically started off with this NAP thing.
It's very easy to understand, but what I didn't understand is how initial ownership of anything is established under the NAP. Do you understand what I'm saying?
Again, I've already gone through an example that we've agreed with, so I'm not sure what the problem is.
You already agreed with my example of how the ownership of something is established.
And basically, ownership is when things are produced which would not have been produced without labor.
See, ownership is not ownership of stuff that is pre-existing.
Fundamentally, that's irrelevant to ownership.
Ownership is ownership of stuff that is created Without which it would not exist without the actions of someone.
So if I, like if you go into the woods and you try to live off what's there, you're going to have a pretty tough time, right?
Yeah.
I mean, you can find some berries maybe.
You can try and trap a squirrel or something like that.
But it's pretty shitty trying to survive.
And the amount of energy you'd have to expend to survive would be prodigious, right?
I mean, and so like, you know, thousands of square miles I needed to just keep one tribe of hunter-gatherers going.
I mean, it's insane, right?
And it's highly risky, because you have to expend a lot of calories chasing game, and this is why the moment that people could start using agriculture, they leapt at the opportunity, because hunter-gathering, particularly in the winter, is brutal, right?
I mean, when the polar bears come out from being under the ice for a couple of months, they've lost, like, what, two-thirds of their body weight, and they basically have to find a seal within 12 minutes, so they're going to starve to death.
So it's really brutal.
So when you...
Look at property, you have to think not of there's something there existing and I cast this magical net over it and therefore it's magically mine.
What you have to think of is has something been created that otherwise would not exist?
So if I go and clear a couple of acres and I plant corn, Then the corn has come into existence which otherwise would not be there in the woods, right?
So, property is about what you create, not what you take possession of.
It's more about building a car than repoing a car, if that makes sense.
So, if you're a fisherman, you have created property in that you have transformed the fish into an unusable resource, something swimming at the bottom of a lake, Into a usable resource, something you can throw in a pan with some butter and have a tidy meal, right?
So in a sense, the fish as property, it has been turned into usable property by the efforts of the fisherman.
He has created the fish as usable property.
He hasn't obviously created the fish like magically, but he has transformed the fish into something which is not usable, into something which is usable.
And so he has created property And the guy who plants all the corn after clearing the woods, he has created a thousand year of corn because they would not exist otherwise.
So think of property more as creation rather than transfer.
Like, parents have, quote, ownership over their children.
But they don't have ownership if they steal someone's child, right?
If they go to the hospital and grab some baby and run off into the night, right?
Because it is through the parent's sexuality that the child has come into existence.
So the parents haven't stolen anything from anyone else.
They have created a new human being who would not exist if they had not rubbed their squishy bits together, right?
And so think of property not as something that you just cast this net over and suddenly stuff is yours, but rather it is things that you create that otherwise would not and could not exist.
Does that make any sense?
Yeah, but then what about natural resources, which is basically the part B of the question?
Like, let's say...
I'm asking...
The way you define things is far different than how I think of things.
Okay, tell me about what these natural resources are, because I'm not sure I understand.
Okay, so before the 1940s, uranium was useless.
No real use for it, actually.
It would probably be something you'd try and avoid, so you wouldn't get poisoned.
Same thing with oil, right?
Yeah, whatever.
There's all kinds of things that exist that we maybe don't know that it's insanely valuable until we discover a use for it.
So let's say you're this guy in the woods of Canada and you clear the land and you set up a cabin and you're growing corn and whatever and You know, you've got neighbors, obviously, as well.
And then, you know, some inventor discovers that widgets, you know, are, like, insanely valuable.
And there's, like...
No, this is too abstract.
This is too abstract.
Sorry.
So I don't know what widget's in a field.
I don't know what the hell that means.
So let's just look at oil.
Okay, let's go with oil.
Okay.
So, I don't know what a natural resource is.
In other words, something that has value without any additional labor being involved in it.
I mean, there certainly are, right?
I mean, you've got, like, air, which you breathe, and, you know, there could be some stream which you can drink from and so on, right?
But those are obviously very, very basic and not really what property is designed to deal with.
But, um...
Give me a natural resource that has value in and of itself that does not require any additional labor because if you have oil, well, if I find oil in my backyard in the 18th century, it's a drag.
No one's going to suck it up out of the ground and refine it and sell it on an open market to compete with the Saudis, right?
So there's a lot of additional labor that's required to transform oil into something that has value.
And there has to, of course, be demand, which means people have to invent the internal combustion engine and so on.
Right.
So if you're this guy in Canada and there's oil in your backyard, but you have no way of getting it out and providing any use for it to anybody, you don't own the oil?
Well, no, it's just who cares?
I mean, if it's, like, what does it matter?
Like, so, you would own the oil, I guess, because it would be on your property, and you'd probably pay to have it drained away and sent somewhere else, because, you know, oil would interfere with your crops, right?
You don't want everything to taste like petroleum, so oil would be a drag to have around on your property.
You'd probably, like swamp water, you'd pay to have someone drain it and get rid of it, right?
Or you'd set fire to it and burn it off or something.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I don't know about natural resources like there are these wonderful natural resources lying around that are just fantastic no matter what.
Like even a diamond you have to take to a jeweler usually to get it polished and cut and all that kind of stuff.
Okay.
So I think I was thinking about it in too American of terms with like magical property nuts.
Well, because, now, the one thing that I think people are confused by, maybe not yourself, is that generally in order to invest the labor into land, you have to have some surety that the land will remain yours until the fruits of your labor come about, right?
So, it's usually minimum a year.
I mean, just for agricultural land, right?
You fence off some land, you say, this is mine, right?
And usually it's at least a year, because you've got to clear it, you've got to plant it, and then you get to harvest it the next year, right?
Yeah.
Now, no one is going to put that effort into clearing and planting all of that stuff unless they believe or have some reasonable guarantee that That their effort is going to pay off, right?
That they're going to be able to keep the crops, right?
And so you do have to have the magical net where you just fence something off and it's yours.
You do have to have that.
But that is in order to be able to produce something of value later.
Okay.
And the way it has generally worked throughout history...
Is that if you fence something off, then you own it.
If it's in an unowned situation.
This is just the common law.
There's no magical philosophical answer, right?
This is just what people have worked out.
If you fence something off, and I know this just because I was a gold prospector and panner when I was younger, so we would try and get a hold of the land, right?
And the way we did it was we would go and we didn't have to fence the whole thing because a lot of it was swamped crap.
But you would go and you would march in a kilometer square and you would nail Little silver plaques, or not silver, but tin plaques to a tree.
And you would blaze the trail along the way and the plaques.
That would establish your ownership for a certain amount of time, like a couple of years.
And then if you didn't do anything with the land during that time, it would revert back to an unowned status.
Okay.
And so what that did was it allowed us to, we would stake the claim, which would give us temporary ownership of the land.
And then if we found gold, well then we'd get to keep it, right?
Because we had blazed around the kilometer square and we'd do this a whole bunch of times.
And if we didn't find any gold, then we would keep it and then after a certain amount of time it would revert back to an unowned status because you'd put the little date and who you were and your ID number or whatever on the little tin plaque in the woods.
And that's just sort of how it's been worked out, and that's part of Canadian, I don't know if it still is, but it certainly was something like that back in the day.
And that's sort of pretty common, which is that when you start doing the labor to turn land into something that is, don't think unowned versus owned, but unproductive versus productive.
If once you start doing the labor, like once you start doing the labor, then whatever you invest your labor in becomes yours.
But what you're really doing is you are creating property out of the investment of your labor.
Nobody just goes and clears the woods for like a fun hobby.
They clear the woods because they want to build a cabin or they want to build a swimming pool or they want to build a tennis court or they want to have crops or something.
And so it is the necessary but not sufficient requirement to produce things that didn't exist before.
But to do that, you have to have A surety that the labor you invest won't be wasted by someone just coming along and saying, oh, thanks for planting all this stuff.
It's now mine.
Right.
Okay, well, I think I was just thinking about it, you know, in two abstracted terms or whatever.
What you're saying seems to make sense.
And of course, the first property that you invest labor into is your own body.
You feed it, you take it for walks, you water it, you exercise it, I hope, and so you invest effort into maintaining the value of your own personal property called yourself.
And in general, you know, whenever you get confused about this stuff, and it's easy to do, I do as well, because there's a lot of nonsense floating around around property, all you have to do is go back to thinking about vaginas.
I mean, not only is that a fun thing to do in general, But it's very helpful when it comes to property.
Because, you know, people talk about ownership of the means of production.
Well, the only means of production that means a damn thing is the vagina and the eggs in the womb, right?
I mean, that's how human beings are produced, which is the most amazing feed of production that there is.
And so, a woman, of course, has exclusive right to determine who does and does not.
Get into her vagina, right?
I mean, because if the woman doesn't want you in there, and you're in there, you're a rapist, right?
So, that aspect of things is really, really important.
Just go back to the vagina, which is in high demand, if I understand the internet itself.
The vagina is in high demand, and yet the woman gets to choose who gets to use it or not.
It's her vagina, and she gets to choose how it's disposed of, because she, I don't know, takes it to the OBGYN, Have some horrible things done to it with a speculum, which I can barely even imagine.
But, you know, she takes care of it.
She douches it.
She spritzes it.
She turns herself into something that looks like a windshield wiper frozen in time.
And she takes care of it.
And she gets to choose who gets to use it because it's her property.
And once she chooses who gets to use it, But if she has unprotected intercourse then the result may be a baby.
Now the baby is hers.
So it's your child, it's her child, she's the mother, it's her child.
And so her ownership of her vagina is the prerequisite for it being her child.
Now, of course, there could be rape and so on, all that kind of stuff, but in order for there to be a child, the woman has to have some control over her vagina, at least in order for it to be a productive relationship with a loving mother and someone, at least, ideally.
And that can be, I know it sounds a little ridiculous, but it can be quite helpful to go back to this.
And the reason why this is important is that there's a lot of sexism in property rights.
And the reason for that is that a woman's sexual value is her sexual availability.
And a man's sexual value is the resources that he can accumulate, right?
Did anyone ever expect George Clooney to marry someone who looked like Rhea Perlman?
Of course not, right?
He's got a lot of resources, you know, plus he's good looking.
And so he gets this Amal, whatever her name is, right?
Amal Clooney now, right?
Basically, it looks like a praying mantis with a wig, long and skinny, and, you know, obviously very attractive and so on.
And you see this, of course, right?
I mean, I remember seeing a boss sent me once a very inappropriate attachment to an email, which is like, how can you tell a man is a billionaire from the back?
And it's a short, fat, dumpy, bald guy with a beautiful, long-legged blonde walking beside him, right?
And so...
When it comes, there's a huge amount of sexism in property rights and property rights violations because when the government takes resources away from men, they're taking away sexual market value.
Taking away money from men in the sexual marketplace is the equivalent of artificially aging women or forbidding them from dyeing their hair or wearing any makeup whatsoever and exercising.
And so for men, it's really tough to figure out property rights in a lot of ways because our sexual market value is routinely stripped from us.
More men than women pay taxes and more women than men are on the receiving end of government largesse, whether it's welfare state or alimony or just government jobs where women are disproportionately represented and their wages are artificially inflated because it's government jobs, right?
So men are so used to having We're so used to having our property rights violated that it's kind of tough for us to come up with a consistent theory of property rights.
But when you start talking about a woman's self-ownership, it immediately clicks because that goes into the female preference society, this sort of gynocentric society that we're currently stuck into for a variety of reasons.
But it's a lot easier to think of property in terms of vaginas than it is in terms of abstract property rights for men.
Because our society is generally founded on men being taxed in order to give money to women.
In general.
Lots of exceptions.
And so we've been so indoctrinated as men that we don't really have any property rights.
And that women's needs vastly outstrips our own sexual market value.
And we've been generally cucked by the media as a whole to the point where if a man wants to exercise his own property rights, he's a racist, he's a sexist, he's a misogynist.
Like if I say, well, I don't want to pay taxes for single moms, suddenly I hate women, right?
Which is, of course, not an argument or whatever, right?
But no, it's actually because I really like women that I don't want to subsidize bad behavior.
Saying that you don't want to subsidize bad behavior...
Therefore, you must dislike someone.
It's ridiculous.
I mean, if someone is an alcoholic and you don't want to buy them liquor, does that mean you hate them?
No, it just means you hate their addiction.
And you would do it because you love the person behind the addiction.
So, we're so used to...
You can take away a man's sexual market value and his property remotely, right?
By deducting it from source.
There's no deduction at source for a woman's Sexual access.
Sexual access to a woman's vagina.
You can't sort of deduct it at source.
It's not sort of attached to your paycheck.
You know, here's your money and Susie down the hall owes you a blowjob.
That would never happen.
But you can say to a man, here's your paycheck and we're going to keep $500 a month for Susie down the hall because she didn't give a blowjob but instead got knocked up by a guy who ran off.
So you've got to pay for that.
Right?
So We just have this weird situation and it's just part of property as a whole.
It's nothing particular to any gender.
It's just the nature of property that it's a lot less violent and less intrusive and less invasive and less obviously wrong to strip a man of his sexual market value, which is resources, than to strip a woman of her sexual market value, which is youth and fertility.
So this is one of the reasons why I think it's confusing for men in particular when it comes to property rights.
No, I follow.
It's like you're talking about...
The way I was thinking about property is how I see it around me today.
Houses, cars, stuff like that.
You're looking at it from more of a philosophical point of view.
Well, where do you live?
Do you live in a big house?
A medium house.
And are you married?
No.
Do you have a girlfriend?
Yeah.
Do you live with anyone else?
No.
No, is that right?
No, I live by myself.
And why do you have a medium-sized house if you just live by yourself?
I'm just curious.
No, I mean like medium for one person.
What square footage are we talking about here?
A thousand square foot.
A house?
Not a condo, right?
Right.
House.
Tiny house.
Right.
Now, when you get, let's say you get married, do you think that your new wife will want you to upgrade your house?
Well, I'd never get married, but I... Just to go along with what you're saying, I would imagine so.
Right.
And even if you don't get married, but let's say you hook up with someone, shack up with someone, and you start to have kids, then your wife or your girlfriend or the mother of your children would probably also want your house to be upgraded.
Right.
And so when you say, well, I want to look at the houses around, well, when you're looking at the houses around, you are looking at sexual market value.
What?
Because men, generally, houses get nicer so that men can buy them for their wives and children.
Oh, I gotcha.
Right, so I mean, if you don't get married and you don't have kids, do you think you'll ever end up living in a 3,000 square foot house?
No.
That'd be ridiculous.
It would be.
And do you think that men buy expensive cars just because they're into expensive cars?
Or do men buy expensive cars as a form of sexual display?
Does that really work?
Oh, yeah.
Absolutely.
Oh, yeah.
Listen, you've got to go online and you've got to look at those videos online.
Of guys who've got a Lamborghini or something and they just tell women to get in the car.
And women do.
Oh, I did see that one.
Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about.
Guys don't drop $200,000 on a car because it's a chick repellent.
I would just...
If I were a woman, I'd be extremely unattracted by that because it's a waste of money.
No, no, but that's the whole point.
You can afford to waste that money, which means you have even more resources.
And of course, you as a guy would not be attracted to a guy in a car because you want to conserve resources, whereas women want conspicuous consumption of those resources because it implies or states that the man has excess resources, which means if he can afford that car, he can afford a lot of goods for the children.
Yeah.
So the fact that you wouldn't go for it is why you're a guy and not a woman.
I guess so.
Yeah.
Now, maybe you want a woman who would also not go for a guy's expensive car.
And there are lots of women who would not obviously go for a guy's expensive car.
But the guys who buy the expensive cars aren't really looking for those women.
Right.
Yeah, I can see that.
Because a lot of women want to walk around saying, this is what my vagina is worth.
And the more attractive the guy, or the more resources he can display, or the more money he spends on her, well, that's what her vagina is worth.
That's kind of fucked up.
I don't see why.
No, that anybody would think that way.
Sexuality is about having children.
And having children requires a lot of resources.
And so for a woman to say, I want to mate with a guy who's got a lot of resources is perfectly sensible.
Biologically, right?
The latter part.
Saying that my vagina is worth this much money.
Well, it's the way that beauty is sort of measured in a way by women.
You know, I've said this before, but I was in a mall the other day with some friends and we were at a You know, one of these girly stores which smells like some sort of obscene perfume factory stuffed up your nose or like a coating of mint and hysteria on a bowling ball shoved up in your face.
And over it was a makeup section and it said, here you go ladies, tools of the trade.
Tools of the trade.
And what that means is that the more attractive you are as a woman, the richer a husband you can get.
It's like that old song, your daddy's rich and your mama's good looking.
And we all know that.
I mean, we look at the celebrity pages, right?
Was Ashton Kutcher going to end up with Melissa McCarthy?
Or Mila Kundaris or whatever her name is, right?
No, he's...
A good-looking, I mean, a bit frat boy, but, you know, a bit boyish, but a good-looking, rich guy.
So he's not going to end up with Melissa McCarthy.
There are a few exceptions.
Pierce Brosnan's wife gained a lot of weight, but she was still very hot when she was younger, and they had some significant tragedies in their life, so, plus he's Catholic, so she's got the subsidy of no divorce, but, um...
And this is not anything negative towards men or for women.
It's just that we are Darwinian evolutionary biological species.
And a woman's beauty marks her genetic fitness.
Even features, a good hip-to-waist ratio, right amount of subcutaneous fat.
These are all markers for genetic fitness, for producing children.
And remember, evolution is all about Genetic fitness for producing children and providing resources to those children, right?
So, you need to have, to raise successful children you need good genetics and you need a lot of resources.
Now, evolutionarily speaking, it was the woman's role to bring good genetics because her ability to produce resources was severely limited by the fact that she was producing children.
And you kind of have to choose between one or the other.
You're either producing a lot of resources or you're producing a lot of children, but you're not doing both.
And so, evolutionarily speaking, a woman had to find ways to signal her good genetics.
And the way that she did that, and we've got the truth about makeup for all on this, was to provide visual cues as towards her Genetic fitness, long lustrous hair, even features, clear eyes, all the stuff that we've talked about before.
And a man's job was to show that he had a lot of resources.
And he did this through sort of great Gatsby-style conspicuous consumption.
And the more money he could afford to, quote, waste, well, the more money...
He had available for the children.
So a woman brings fertility, youth, good genetic fitness, which means that the kids are going to be most likely born healthy and all that.
And this is why we have this, we recoil a little bit from certain kinds of deformities because they lower sexual market value and all of that.
You know, obviously tragic for the individuals involved and so on, but From a biological standpoint, we look for all of the markers.
And when you look at girls considered to be very pretty, what they are is kind of like Jessica Rabbit star caricatures of good markers of genetic fitness.
That's all they are.
And...
I mean, this is what, you know, eye shadow makes the eyes appear brighter.
And of course, when somebody is unwell...
Their eye color, not of the pupils, but around their eyes, tends to change color or get dimmer or whatever.
So, you know, these are just markers of health and fitness.
And so, the woman is advertising good genes and the man is advertising good resources.
Which is why, historically, it has been better for a man to be rich than to be good looking.
In fact, women have, throughout most of human history, Been cautioned against who was called a rake.
A rake, not what you're thinking of, a companion to a hoe.
But a rake was a man who was good looking, but had no prospects.
And I remember, you know, one of the very influential courses I took when I was younger was on, I think it was 18th century novels, 19th century novels.
And in it, I read a succession of stories that were all designed to teach women To go for the good provider rather than the good-looking guy.
Now that's all changed because the government has become the good provider and therefore women can choose to go for looks alone because they don't need as many resources because a woman these days can get more resources from the government than she could have from even the richest man conceivable 40 or 50 years ago who couldn't have given her an Obama phone.
This is not you know and look we all know that we're biologically evolved human beings and the idea that since the onset of the welfare state our biology has completely changed is ridiculous and women are very frank about all of this.
Women are very frank if you listen to women talk amongst themselves and I've had that privilege once or twice they're very frank about this about the need to look good in order to get the good provider.
We've got to look good in order to get a good provider.
The better you look The better provider you can get a hold of.
Again, this is absent still state considerations and so on.
And, I mean, it's not a huge magical mystery key to unlock.
Just, you know, flip through the pages of People magazine and whatever and just look for the wives of rich guys.
I mean, come on.
Did you really think that Donald Trump was going to end up with Melissa McCarthy or maybe even Kristen Wiig?
I don't know.
But this is not any kind of criticism.
It's just an observation of empirical reality.
Now, of course, I would like it if people substituted virtue for mere physical attraction, which I think is much more productive in the long run.
I mean, given how risky marriage is these days for guys, you really want to find a virtuous woman.
And so that's sort of my suggestion on how to look at these kinds of things.
And I hope that helps.
Thank you everyone so much for listening.
I'm sorry about my voice but it should be back to normal in a day or two.
I made the mistake of leaving the underground bunker going out into the world where I picked up some minorly nasty virus that seems to be working its way through my system but I'm very glad that I fought my way through and croaked my way through to a great show.
Thanks again so much to the callers, to Mike, to you if you have supported the show.
If you haven't Go and support the show.
Come on.
Don't be silly.
You know you need to.
Exchange value for value.
FreeDomainRadio.com slash donate.
Do the right thing.
Pay for what you use because if you don't, somebody else has to and that's called being kind of a parasitical free rider.
So don't do that.
Do the right thing.
FreeDomainRadio.com slash donate to help us out.
FDRURL.com slash Amazon.
To use our affiliate link.
Thank you everyone so, so much for your honesty, openness, curiosity, challenges.
