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July 16, 2016 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:22:33

3351 JUSTICE - Call In Show - July 15th, 2016

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	Hello, hello everybody.
	Hope you're doing well.
	Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
	So, did a call tonight.
	Bunch of great callers.
	The first caller was a 32-year-old woman who's trying to figure out if she wants to have kids or not.
	She's kind of leaning towards not.
	And we had a great conversation about, you know, worrying about the future, where we are in history, whether it's safe to have kids, whether it's morally or rationally justified to have kids.
	And I guess we all have to make that decision at some point.
	You should really listen to this.
	The second caller...
	Wanted to know about a resource-based economy, and he got this from Jacques Fresco.
	And we talked about currency and money and government and economics, and I really enjoy that stuff, so I hope you will too.
	The next caller wanted to know why there was so little masculine influence on little boys in school.
	You know, it's kind of an estrogen wall-to-wall situation.
	Lady Fest in early education up to sort of like puberty or whatever.
	And what effects does that have?
	And I talked a little bit about my own history in school and an all-male school for a while.
	And that was very interesting, I thought.
	The last question, ooh, that's the meat of the matter for me.
	I love talking about...
	Hypotheticals and theoreticals when it comes to philosophical definitions.
	Tonight we are serving you a full buffet discussion of the term justice, which is a great, great topic, and I really enjoyed the conversation.
	Freedomainradio.com slash donate to help out the show.
	Please, please do.
	Follow me on Twitter.
	It's Stefan Molyneux.
	You can go to FDRURL.com slash Amazon.
	Just set it as one of your homepages if you've got shopping to do.
	And FDR Podcast, of course, to share the show.
	And, of course, YouTube.com slash Freedomainradio.
	Please like, share, and subscribe what you like to hear.
	Alright, up first today we have Laura.
	Laura wrote into the show and said, I recently divorced my husband because I didn't want to have children, and he did.
	It has been a really tough six months, but little by little things are improving.
	What are your thoughts about educated, well-performing women not wanting to reproduce?
	In a bigger picture, I realize I am now taking part in the European suicide, but is that the wrong thing to do?
	Should I reconsider my choice?
	That's from Laura.
	Well, hello, Laura.
	How are you doing tonight?
	Hello, Stefan.
	How are you doing?
	I'm very well.
	Thank you.
	Very well.
	Happy to be chatting with you.
	Yeah, me as well.
	So, how long were you married for?
	We were married for four years.
	And we met a bit more than eight years ago.
	And outside of the kids thing, were things pretty well?
	Pretty good?
	Well, actually, everything was great.
	Of course, not everything, but I think we had almost the perfect relationship economically.
	We loved each other.
	We loved each other's families.
	We had friends together.
	Of course, we still have those friends, and it was good.
	So it's been really sad six months now.
	Slowly but surely, we're both getting somewhat over this and ready to start our new lives, maybe.
	Hope so.
	And when you were dating, did you talk about having kids before you got married?
	Yeah, we did.
	And the funny thing is that I always thought that I really did want kids.
	And actually, like a few months before we got married, we had an argument about this because I had some hesitations about the thing.
	And I wasn't all that sure at that point whether I wanted children.
	But after the fight, I started thinking about it and told to myself that I will survive the first few rougher years and then things will get better.
	Wait, sorry, do you mean the first few rougher years with kids?
	Yeah.
	You know, I think.
	Oh, I know.
	I know.
	Right.
	Right.
	And then what happened?
	Well, then what happened?
	Actually, last fall we were looking for a house.
	We were looking to buy a house for us.
	We were planning on moving to a smaller place.
	We live in a kind of small city now, but it's an even smaller place.
	And we were looking at houses and then it kind of hit me that there are so many rooms.
	What do we do with all those rooms?
	Is now the time?
	Am I ready?
	Do I really want this?
	Oh my god, oh my god.
	And after keeping that to myself for a few months, I finally decided I have to confront him with that.
	And we had the discussion one night and the rest is history.
	So you really did change the deal, right?
	Yeah.
	I kind of did.
	I kind of did.
	No, no, you really, really did.
	I mean, if he's marrying you to have children, and then you decide you don't want to have children, that's, you know, worse than an affair.
	You think so?
	Oh, absolutely.
	Okay.
	I think so.
	I think so.
	I see your point.
	I'm not trying to make you feel bad.
	I'm just pointing out that marriage, you know, because now he's going to be in his, what, early to mid-30s, and if he wants to have kids, you just took up eight years of his life, right?
	You could put it that way, but I've talked to him.
	Tell me how else I should put it, right?
	He wants to have kids.
	You said you were going to have kids with him.
	Actually, he's younger than I am.
	I'm 32.
	Okay.
	He still took up eight years of his life and his very fertile years and so on, right?
	And now, of course, if he wants to have kids, he's got to try and find a woman in, I guess, her late 20s or early 30s who's unattached, who's sane, who's attractive to him, who's, you know, it's tougher, right?
	Like the market has thinned out.
	It's sort of like that idea of used cars, right?
	The used cars that are on the market Are generally not good cars because the used cars that are really running well, people don't sell them, right?
	So as you go forward into your sort of mid to late 20s to early 30s, particularly in your mid 30s, the people who are available to you for date are the people that usually nobody else wants.
	That doesn't mean, right?
	It's just a reality, right?
	The people who are the best partners have usually been snagged and kept, so to speak, right?
	Yeah.
	I see your point.
	But I don't agree with the eight years.
	I agree with like one year.
	I stole one year from him because I think for the last year, maybe.
	Wait, so for the first seven years, you never talked about having kids or not?
	Yeah, we did.
	Oh, you did.
	Yeah, we did.
	And I really thought I would want children.
	I actually, truly and honestly did think that I wanted children.
	No, and a lot of people really think that they're going to Be faithful to their partner until they're not, right?
	So, I mean, I'm not saying you're bound to have children because you got married, right?
	I mean, it's just the reality that your marriages can survive affairs, but if one person really wants to have kids and the other person changes their minds, that's pretty tough.
	Yeah, I know.
	I hear you.
	I hear you.
	Well, you know, because you're divorced, right?
	Yeah, I'm divorced and I'm not sure I might have Gotten the shittier deal in that one, in our divorce, maybe.
	What do you mean?
	Well, he's a good catch, to say the least.
	Eligible bachelor.
	Yeah, he's a good catch.
	I'm the one not doing so well, maybe.
	He's a good catch, really.
	And I'm guessing that you're a professional in your career?
	Yeah, I'm an entrepreneur, been for the last seven years, and I have big plans for my future concerning my career.
	And your ex-husband?
	He's more of a working guy.
	So the white collar, blue collar, if you know that phrase?
	Let's see.
	I don't remember which is which, but I know.
	Well, so the blue collar, like they're the guys who are like plumbers and electricians and working factories.
	Yeah, the blue collar.
	Blue collar.
	Right.
	But he has somewhat a big inheritance.
	What is it?
	Inheritance?
	So he had enough money that if you had wanted to stay home with your kids, that would have been doable?
	Yes.
	Right.
	And since we divorced, you know, the Scandinavian things.
	But anyway, I don't get anything from this divorce.
	Nothing.
	Maybe some.
	But the heartbreak.
	I didn't get anything from him.
	Well, you know, you're still better off than Henry VIII's wives, because if he found they were infertile, he'd just toss them in the tower and have them beheaded.
	So, still one step up from history.
	Yeah, maybe one step up, yeah.
	Do you have siblings?
	Yeah, I have two brothers.
	And do they have kids?
	My older brother has three children, and they're wonderful.
	And you like being an auntie?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Actually, I love kids.
	I love to be with my brother's children.
	They're adorable.
	You would be a perplexing person to be married to.
	A what?
	You would be a confusing person to be married to.
	Maybe, maybe.
	I love kids.
	I want to have kids.
	Yeah.
	I don't want to have kids.
	I don't want to have kids.
	Right.
	Now, I know you've obviously put some thought into this, and there could be a number of different reasons, Laura, but why do you think that you don't want to have kids?
	Well...
	No, it's not like it's broken.
	I mean, it's not like you have to have kids.
	It's not like, what the hell's wrong with you?
	But given that you did and then didn't, what happened?
	Well, actually, what happened like three years ago, I started spending time On the internet, looking at things, widening my worldview, finding people like you, people like Sam Harris, Dave Rubin, Gadsad, Christopher Hitchens, although he was already passed away at that time.
	And I got really interested in the things that happen in the world.
	In Finland, this is like a place that nothing bad ever happens, you know.
	We've been yet, nothing has yet happened in here.
	So, actually, the reason, when I talk to my friends or my family and tell them about, and told them that I don't want children, it was easier for me to say that I love my freedom.
	I want to have the career I've always wanted.
	I have to, I want to do anything and everything.
	But the more I've thought about it, the more I think that Actually, I'm afraid.
	I'm truly afraid.
	Because today, you know, something's happened.
	I woke up to the news in Nice and all the other news from this year alone.
	What is the future for our children?
	What can be expected?
	That's maybe one of the biggest reasons, honestly.
	Yeah, no, I understand.
	And of course, there's a military coup underway in Turkey, which, you know, maybe people say, ah, the military is more secular.
	It's like, yeah, well, maybe it'll go more secular, or maybe it'll go full Ayatollah Khomeini.
	We don't know.
	I mean, time will tell.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So, the thing is that in Finland, you cannot talk about these things without being blamed as a racist or a tyranny.
	Tinfoil hat person, or whatever you call them.
	It's easier for me to say that I love my freedom.
	Of course, those are part of the reasons.
	But actually, I'm just so afraid of the future.
	I think many generations have been...
	Every generation is afraid of the future.
	But somehow I think that we are...
	This is worse.
	This is bad.
	No, no.
	No?
	No, no, that's not the case.
	And, you know, this is the problem with, you know, we're not taught much about history anymore other than white oppression and patriarchy.
	All nonsense, right?
	But, you know, people had babies during the fall of Rome.
	People had babies during the Dark Ages.
	People had babies during famines.
	People had babies when Vikings raided the fishing villages and stole people away.
	People had babies when their People had babies in Greece when they were ruled by the Ottoman Turks who would regularly take their children away and force them to fight in the armies to the point where the mothers would sometimes cripple their children, their sons, to have that not happen.
	During World War I and after World War I, when there was the Spanish flu that killed more people even than World War I did, people had children during the Great Depression, people had children during the Second World War, people had children after the Second World War, when it seemed for quite a few decades, certainly when I was younger, that the world hovered on the brink of nuclear annihilation, you know, there was this journal of the atomic scientists or something, and The clock, which was midnight is nuclear war, was always two minutes to midnight or three minutes to midnight or one minute to midnight.
	And we basically weren't sure whether we would wake up at all, whether we would be people with math tests or nuclear shadows on the wall with no future cares.
	And so as far as problems in society goes...
	There are many problems in the West, and they're all solvable.
	They're all solvable.
	This is why I keep doing videos.
	This is why I keep talking about things.
	They're all solvable.
	And now, if you're a professional, if you're an entrepreneur, well, you can have kids.
	And if you can gather some resources, you have choices.
	You have options.
	You have lots of different places in the world.
	You can move to and live if you want.
	You can, you know, fight the good fight for freedom, truth, reason, and empirical evidence on the internet.
	You can do wonderful and amazing things.
	And are there risks?
	Are there storm clouds on the horizon?
	Of course, of course there are.
	And this is, I've mentioned this before on the show, but there was an old show called WKRP in Cincinnati, which was a sitcom.
	And Gordon Jump, perfectly named kind of a jumpy character, his wife got pregnant when they were kind of older, and he said, these are troubled times.
	And she said, people have been saying that for 5,000 years.
	And it is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
	Certainly, if Europeans, white Europeans, stop having children, the future that is feared will certainly come to pass.
	No doubt.
	But...
	Being afraid of the future is natural.
	And we used to have this every single year.
	Every single year.
	You know, in certain regions in Europe, throughout the early Middle Ages, dark ages and early Middle Ages, like 5-10% of the population would just starve to death.
	Just starve to death.
	Imagine what it was like.
	A French commander, after the Treaty of Versailles was signed...
	Said, this is not peace.
	This is a truce for 20 years.
	And imagine what it was like to have children during that time, to have sons during that time, and to see the clouds of war gathering overhead throughout the 1930s.
	People still had children.
	We are a resilient species.
	We are a resilient race.
	And...
	Where there's a will, there's a way.
	Where there's life, there's hope.
	Where there is neither will nor life, there is no way and no hope.
	And everything that we have that's great in this life, Laura, we have because people refused to surrender, refused to give up, refused to run away.
	Refuse to bury their heads in the sand, take to the hills, live in caves.
	There's a book I read when I was a teenager called, I think it was called Lucifer's Hammer.
	Spoilers.
	And it was about life after a giant comet hit the earth.
	And there was a speech in it.
	Where they were trying to decide whether they should try and rebuild a power plant or something like that, or whether they should just hunker down for the winter and eat the animals they had gathered and basically go back to the Stone Age.
	And the phrase about why they should go and rebuild a power plant is the man said, and we used to control the lightning.
	We cannot give up.
	We cannot surrender.
	We cannot go back to the Stone Age.
	We cannot give up.
	Our intellects, our capacity.
	There is a terrible lesson to be learned over the next decade or two.
	It will be learned about the compatibility of various groups.
	The lesson will be learned, and it may be learned sooner than you think.
	I definitely hope so.
	Because this is chaos.
	I'm working to help, Ed.
	And I appreciate it.
	I really do.
	Your show is great.
	I've been binge-watching it for weeks now.
	Your grandmother may have been born during World War II. 1930.
	Right.
	Right.
	My mother was born in the late 30s.
	In Germany.
	They had kids.
	Am I going to say they shouldn't have?
	I like drawing breath.
	I like being alive.
	Passionate about existence.
	It's an incredible rare gift for all of this star stuff to reverse coalesce into my consciousness and then be scattered in a few decades back to the ether that spawned it.
	And so fear Caution.
	Concern.
	These are natural.
	And these are healthy.
	These are normal.
	And they should guide our path.
	They should not paralyze our actions.
	They should help us to fight the potential immoralities that may arise in our lives or that seem almost certain sometimes to arise in our lives.
	But They should not paralyze us into infertility and into fearing babies.
	You know?
	Every time you have a child, you wear your vulnerability.
	Your vulnerability waddles around in diapers and face plants into couch cushions and enjoys giggling when you throw it in the air.
	That's your vulnerability.
	It's natural.
	Everybody knows it.
	But to be afraid Of bringing life into this world, because there are bad people in this world, is surely to surrender the greatest treasure of life to evil.
	You've lost.
	You've lost.
	Already.
	Well, I guess I'm a coward in that way.
	Because...
	And...
	There's recent problems we've had.
	It's not just that...
	I fear that what the society will be when maybe things like AI or stuff like that improve and only the most fittest and most intelligent might be able to survive even.
	Will my child be part of that group or part of the group that surrenders and has to give up?
	Who knows?
	Wait, you're not really saying that you can't have babies because there might be killer robots in the future?
	No, I am not saying that.
	Okay, now help me understand because there's no such thing as AI. There will be no such thing as AI for the foreseeable future.
	And so I'm just trying to understand if like...
	There are many opinions about that.
	I have some technical expertise.
	I'm not entirely coming out of left field.
	I spent many, many years as a computer programmer.
	Well, maybe not AI, but anyways, the way things are going, the working people, the blue-collar people, color, whatever, those jobs are vanishing rapidly.
	Of course, some jobs are emerging from the technology, but A large person is vanishing.
	Intelligence is 60-80% heritable.
	You're a smart woman.
	What does that mean?
	Your kids are far more likely to be intelligent than the kids of the average person.
	Everybody who listens to this show has little to fear from genetic falls in intelligence.
	Yeah.
	No, it's like, you know, I assume you would have a kid with someone who's intelligent, so you're like two tall people saying, well, you know, short people have a tough time in life.
	Well, you know, but your kids are probably going to be kind of tall.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So now you've debunked me.
	Well, there must be more.
	Of course there is more.
	And those are the...
	That was one of the big reasons.
	And of course there are other reasons.
	It's...
	The older I've gotten...
	The more I've got to enjoy, get a taste of the free life and the wealth.
	It feels so, what's the word?
	Whatever.
	I don't want to lose that freedom now.
	You mean the freedom to buy stuff and go places?
	Basically that.
	Buy stuff and go places.
	That's all it is, right?
	We do money.
	We buy stuff and we go places.
	We buy materials and memories.
	We do things and we have hobbies.
	We're just buying stuff.
	No.
	Partly maybe.
	No.
	Do you have a hobby that's free?
	No.
	This is free.
	No, not totally free.
	But almost free.
	Right.
	Okay.
	And you're 32, right?
	So statistically, you probably have another 50 years on the planet, right?
	Hopefully.
	Which is like almost twice as long as you've been alive.
	So imagine going back to zero and back to where you are.
	And you're probably still going to be alive.
	You know, I'm just telling you, Laura, that's a lot of time to spend buying stuff and going places.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	The world isn't that interesting.
	It's not that.
	There's, you know, wow, here's a beautiful mountain.
	Here's another beautiful mountain.
	Nice sunset.
	Oh, look, there's a house on stilts.
	Wow, that was a lovely blue heron.
	Ooh, look at those ripples on the water.
	It's like glass.
	Year after year after year of that's as pretty as a postcard.
	You're so misreading me.
	I think the beautiful thing about this world, even though I said what I said earlier, are the people.
	I'd much rather see a new person and talk to him or her than see a gorgeous mountain.
	Did you hear what you just said, Laura?
	Yeah, I did.
	You'd much rather see a new person and talk to him.
	You know how you can do that?
	Have a baby or five.
	Lots of new people that you can talk to who will be with you as your decent, good, loving parent who will be with you For your life.
	They're not going to move away!
	They're not going to get bored of you.
	Again, if you're a good, decent parent, maybe they'll move away, but you just move with them if you get older or whatever it is, right?
	But they're going to be with you your whole life.
	You want to meet new people.
	Listen, I'll tell you this.
	Let me ask you this.
	How many new friends have you made over the last six months?
	Um...
	Acquaintances?
	No.
	Friends you can open your heart to.
	Not so many.
	I would like to say like one.
	But that is really who I can open my heart to.
	Who I can spend time with and have a good time.
	I would say like 10.
	But not yet opening my heart totally.
	That number is going to go down as you get older.
	See, right now, in your 20s, there's lots of people who are single, lots of people who are in couples but don't have kids yet.
	Lots of time for dinner parties, lots of time for hanging out, lots of times for walks down by the river and hikes in the woods.
	Lots of time.
	As you move forward in life, people just have less time.
	Because they have kids, their kids are getting older, they need to take care of their kids, and then their kids, you know, maybe they need to work extra hard if their kids want to go to college.
	Maybe that's different in Finland, but, uh, and then maybe their parents get ill and they need to spend a lot of time doing that.
	And then, you know, their kids get married and they want to be there and help them with that.
	And then maybe their kids have babies and they're just going to be busy.
	They're going to be busy with all the new life that they have created that they're interacting with.
	And you?
	I'm busy doing things and buying stuff.
	Yeah, you're doing things, you're going places and you're buying stuff.
	Buying stuff, yeah.
	And that stuff will be all around you.
	Yeah.
	That stuff will be all around you.
	I will be swimming in it.
	As you get older and older, all that stuff will be piling up all around you.
	Like a big wall of materialism.
	But what about my brother's kids?
	I'm involved in their lives and I want to be even more involved as time goes by.
	Yeah, but being an aunt is like being a mistress.
	Really?
	Yeah, you don't have the primary relationship.
	You're just there.
	Yeah.
	Who are they going to call?
	They're going to call your brother, I hope.
	I mean, they'll call you and all that, but he's the, you know, he's married to them and you're just the mistress, so to speak, right?
	It's not the same.
	Yeah.
	And they're not your genes.
	Yeah.
	I mean, they're some of your genes, right?
	But they're not your genes.
	I hear you.
	I hear you.
	They're not half you.
	What are you?
	I think that's the reason that I, before we got married, when I had these things, had these thoughts in my head, I thought the thing that I, why I got married to my soon-to-be ex-husband was that I could convince myself about the great joys of having children later in their life.
	So that I could help them with their schoolwork and...
	Wait, so are you having children later in your life?
	No, no, no, no, no.
	Sorry, my English.
	When they are a bit older, I want to...
	Because...
	Kids between ages 1 and 3, maybe even 1 and 6, this might sound harsh, but they aren't all that interesting.
	Might sound harsh, but that's...
	The way I see it.
	They are not so great to talk to.
	And why do you have that impression?
	I've been around lots of kids.
	Maybe you're boring.
	Maybe I am.
	Maybe you don't know how to talk to kids in a way that gets them to...
	Kids are very excited to talk to adults.
	I mean, this happens every time I go to a playground or something.
	We end up with a bunch of kids having conversations.
	I find kids are very, very eager...
	To talk about their thoughts, their experiences, their feelings.
	Well, maybe I am boring.
	I think I... Well, if you think they're boring, right?
	If you think that the kids are boring, you're not going to put much effort in and, hey, guess what?
	Self-fulfilling prophecy.
	No, but maybe I mean the age when they can say the same sentence ten times in a row because it's so exciting.
	Maybe I mean that.
	Maybe it's like between one and four.
	And that's quite fun.
	But when they start to have their own thoughts, their actual own thoughts, and they start to think about things, and they can express them, what they think, what they really think, instead of just repeating things.
	What they have heard or what the other person is saying.
	So when you socialize with your adult friends, you spend the vast majority of your time speaking about original thoughts and deep ideas?
	No.
	No, of course not.
	You, as the phrase goes, shoot the shit from time to time.
	It's the same things with kids, right?
	Sometimes you have great deep conversations and other times you have tickle fights.
	I mean, it doesn't always have to be, right?
	This deep thing.
	But anyway, I mean, let's talk a bit about your parents.
	Yep.
	What do you want to hear?
	What age were you, Laura, when your parents got divorced?
	They haven't gotten divorced yet.
	Oh, they're in the process?
	No.
	It's, how do you say, complicated.
	They're still married.
	They've been married for like 35 years or whatever.
	But...
	Oh my god, I can't tell you all the details because someone might even recognize me, but my mother lives with another man.
	He's been living with another man for the last four years.
	My father lives elsewhere, but they're still married.
	Is it religious or tax or what?
	I think it's economic.
	My mother lives in the house that my father built.
	It's our childhood home.
	And if they got divorced, that place would be...
	They would have to sell that place and neither one of them really wants that.
	So they want to have the place.
	Even my father, he wants us to have the place for us children to go.
	And it's really bizarre.
	So are they, would you call them, functionally divorced?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	They...
	They come along with each other, but no affection, no love, nothing like that.
	Well, your mom's sleeping with another guy and they're living separately, so I would say that is not two become one.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And why did they get divorced?
	Or why did they end up in this, I don't even know what to call it.
	I think the main reason is my father is an alcoholic.
	Maybe that is why my father is accepting the situation.
	He's been an alcoholic since I think.
	I remember when I was like an eight year old, seven years old, then the alcohol started to become an issue and it got worse and worse and worse and worse and the atmosphere, home wasn't all that great.
	So finally he moved out.
	And mother's new boyfriend moved in.
	Was he, and I'm sorry to hear that, of course, Laura, but was he what would be called a raging alcoholic?
	Or was he just distant and emotionally unavailable?
	Was he passed out on a couch?
	I mean, how sort of one to ten alcoholism?
	He was never violent.
	Never, never, never.
	Nothing violent.
	Our mother used to shout and yell.
	Father used to sit on the sofa and be annoying and He went to the warehouse and he had a hidden bottle there and he came to the sofa and started to ramble about his day like everything is shit.
	Things like that.
	Everything is always shit and that's the way it went.
	Was your mother more educated or did she have a higher status career than your father?
	I think they were on the same line.
	My mother was a housewife for Until she was like 45 or something like that and then she went to be a saleswoman and now she has her own business.
	I'm guessing that your father didn't make quite that leap forward.
	What do you mean?
	Sorry?
	I'm guessing that your father as an alcoholic didn't have that same sort of renaissance or professional success that your mother seems to have had.
	No, actually my father was also an entrepreneur.
	Oh, okay.
	Functional, I think.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Functional.
	He was functional, yes.
	He had his own business.
	And we had a childhood.
	We were like a middle class at some point, maybe even upper middle class.
	So the business was going great.
	He was functional.
	But every time he came home from work, the bottle...
	It was always there.
	And he denied it.
	He always denied it.
	I'm not drunk.
	I haven't taken anything.
	But we could tell.
	We could tell from the first beer.
	We heard it from him.
	Yeah.
	I mean, the first addiction is always a lying.
	Yeah.
	And then whatever comes after that is that.
	Did so would it be fair to say that your parents were not that available to you when you were younger because your mother was upset and your father was drunk?
	You could say that.
	You could say that.
	And to be quite honest, I spent like 10 years of my adult life, like almost the past 10 years being the social worker and the psychologist and the shit taker in our family.
	Shit coming from all directions, especially from my mom.
	But now the last couple of years have been better.
	What did your boyfriend and fiancé and husband think of all this?
	Well, he always thought...
	He could tell when I had been...
	When there was problems in our family.
	When I came home, he was like, okay, just tell me.
	Let it all out.
	I'll listen.
	And he...
	He saw that it was not...
	In that way, it wasn't a very functional family.
	But...
	The funny thing is, or the strange thing is that me and my two brothers, maybe apart from my not wanting children, are very successful and very outgoing and very good citizens, if you put it that way.
	So they must have done something right.
	And of course they did something right.
	What did they do that was right?
	They taught us right from wrong, I think.
	What?
	No.
	Come on.
	Okay.
	Come on.
	Okay.
	Your mother is yelling and your father is lying and drunk and they're teaching you right from wrong?
	How exactly?
	Okay.
	To be frank and totally honest, we are still wondering with my brothers, how did we turn up this way?
	What happened?
	How is it possible we are so functioning people, even though our upbringing was Not the best one, but we always had food in the table.
	They both, my mother and my father, they were both very interested in our schoolwork and the choosing of our professions and all that stuff.
	And we could always bring friends home.
	The house was clean.
	Things like that.
	And I think it got worse after I moved out of there when I was, what, like 20.
	That's when the really bad problems became, when they were kind of left alone there in the house.
	Right.
	So from one to ten, how would you rate the sort of happiness of your childhood?
	Right.
	Hmm.
	I would have to say it's like an eight.
	Eight.
	An eight?
	Yeah, it really is.
	Because even though my father's alcoholism, that was the bad thing.
	But in other ways, I had lots of friends.
	My brothers were excellent.
	I loved their company.
	We had everything we needed.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Well, I'm going to go out on a limb here, Laura, and I appreciate the frankness and the honesty.
	Yeah.
	I'll tell you something about being a parent, and I think parents with self-knowledge may back me up on this.
	This isn't my thoughts.
	It didn't come to me first.
	It just came from someone else.
	When you have kids, if you're a good parent, the truth about your own childhood becomes very clear to you.
	The truth about your own childhood is inescapable when you become a parent.
	If you don't act it out, like, I mean, if you don't do the bad things your parents did.
	And...
	With my daughter, what's...
	I shouldn't smile, because, I mean, I've complained about other people too, but with my daughter, Laura, it's very easy to not get angry.
	It's very easy to not yell.
	It's very easy to not be a jerk.
	It's very easy.
	In fact, it would be inconceivable to do those things.
	Doesn't mean I never get frustrated, but you know what I mean.
	I can say, I'm frustrated and let's talk about it or whatever.
	But it's very easy to be a good parent.
	I'm not saying all the preparation for it was easy, but the actual process of doing it is very easy.
	And I'm pleased with that.
	I'm happy with that.
	We were talking about happy groups of people and she said, she was dancing around to Harlequin's song, Innocence.
	And she said, we are the happiest people.
	That's beautiful.
	That's beautiful.
	And Realizing how easy it is to be a good, kind, loving, happy, connected, empathetic parent throws my own childhood into very sharp relief.
	For reasons I'm sure you can imagine.
	I've talked about it before.
	If my parents failed to lift an elephant, we can forgive them, right?
	They're only human.
	They failed to lift an elephant.
	However, if it turns out that being a good parent is about as tough as lifting a teacup, well, that becomes a different situation to think back on, right?
	If you were to become a mother, you would I assume it's part of listening to the show and general pursuit of self-knowledge and so on.
	You would make significantly better decisions than your own parents, right?
	I would like to think so, yeah.
	I would hope so.
	More than hope.
	Yeah.
	I would expect so.
	And you would find that making those better decisions and acting on those better values is very easy.
	I keep waiting for the tough part of parenting to start.
	Oh, you wait till the...
	Oh, you wait till the terrible twos.
	Man, she was like charm with a jetpacker when she was two.
	Oh, you wait for the...
	Maybe now it's all you wait for puberty.
	And it's like, no.
	No, it's great.
	It's good to hear that.
	And it's easy.
	No, it's easy.
	It's easy.
	And it's so much fun.
	It's so much fun.
	Do you really think, because there's the issue of motherhood and fatherhood, is it easier to be a good mother or is it easier to be a good father?
	Or is there a difference?
	I can't imagine why there would be a difference in the pairing, right?
	So, I mean, I've said this before, that moms are a little bit more, be careful, right?
	And dad's a little bit more like, eh, if she falls, she'll figure it out, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And that's natural.
	That is a perfectly now.
	We've got this sort of feminist hypercaution.
	Female hypercaution has gone, has metastasized in society to some degree.
	And now, you know, we bubble wrap these kids.
	We don't let them out.
	And somebody phoned the cops.
	There's a nine-year-old on the street alone.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Safety is everything.
	That's because the dads, you know, we've got a lot of single moms.
	And the single moms...
	Are hypercautious.
	And there's nothing wrong with that hypercaution.
	It's a perfectly wonderful part of femininity and motherhood.
	Candy needs to be balanced.
	You need a little yin with that yang, right?
	You need to balance it out.
	And of course, you know, we don't necessarily want the men in charge solo because maybe there's a little too little caution.
	You know, oh, I'm sure that yogurt's fine.
	Just give it a shot.
	So we need that balance.
	But if you have the right...
	Husband or wife to have kids with, I don't think one is easier than the other.
	I do think that, you know, with breastfeeding and so on, there's, let's just say, some additional time commitment components to the early stuff.
	But there's a beautiful bonding in that, too.
	There's a beautiful bonding in that, too.
	I mean, my wife and I have different relationships with our daughter.
	Both complementary, both great.
	And I wouldn't say which one is easier.
	And which one is harder?
	I mean, they're just different, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, it does.
	It does.
	The one thing, you talk about single motherhood a lot, and that's one more thing I was afraid, because because of having these doubts, I'm afraid that if I had to go ahead and would start a family with my ex-husband, that at some point...
	I would have regretted my decisions and it would have been affected to our relationship and somehow I would have ended up as a single mom.
	Of course, in Finland it would be like week and week.
	But anyway, that's also a risk at this stage because I have these doubts.
	But you're an entrepreneur, for God's sakes, Laura.
	Yeah.
	Your business might fail.
	A giant fissure may open up.
	A meteor, dinosaurs might be reanimated and brought back to life.
	And Michael Crichton might return from the dead and strangle me.
	I mean, obviously, right?
	Divorce doesn't just happen to people.
	It doesn't just, oh no, a divorce landed on my house out of clear blue sky.
	Divorce happens because of a whole series of bad decisions that people have the choice to reverse as they see fit.
	Assuming that you didn't just marry a completely mental human being, right?
	Which, you know, you were with this guy, you're a smart woman, right?
	So divorce doesn't just happen to people.
	As I said before, and I'll say it again, my wife and I are never getting divorced.
	Never getting divorced.
	Oh, you wait.
	Nope.
	There are no terrible twos and there will be no divorce.
	No divorce.
	And I might become a single mother.
	Well, your kid might have some horrible disease.
	Yeah, that as well.
	Absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	You're digging all my fears up.
	Absolutely.
	And your fears, Laura, are wonderful.
	Your fears are beautiful.
	Because that's what keeps the world...
	Safe for children.
	Do you really think...
	Do you really think that when men were in charge of the world, there were bike helmets?
	No, I say.
	I never saw one as a kid.
	Occasionally we'd put a colander on our head and pretend to be a knight, but that's about it.
	Do you really think when I was a kid, there were little things that you put in the wall sockets to make sure the kids...
	Or little things that you lock the toilets with to make sure that the kids...
	And little things...
	No!
	No!
	Women are like socialist intervention survival camp.
	And that's great.
	Men are just like a little bit more Darwinian as far as that goes.
	And so your caution, your concerns, your fears, wonderful.
	I wish, and maybe he did, but I wish that your husband had been able to assuage your fears.
	Because the fear, the caution, the concern, wonderful.
	The empathy, the projection, all of that's a great aspect of femininity.
	It needs to be contained with staunch masculinity, in my opinion, because there's the yin and the yang.
	We complement each other.
	We revolt that way.
	Too much female is socialism, paralysis, and open borders.
	Too much male is dissociation and war.
	We need the combo of the two together for a free and peaceful society.
	And I don't know much about Finland other than what Monty Python has sung about it.
	Still famous over there, that song?
	Anyway.
	But if it's like most of Europe, you know how they said, you know how they said, if there's global warming, the ice caps melt and New York is under eight feet of water, right?
	The way that I view Western civilization now is with global cucking, we are now 2,000 feet under estrogen.
	It's just gone crazy with the women's stuff.
	No one should suffer.
	Single moms should be taken care of.
	All children should be educated the same.
	nobody should be better or worse and nobody should be ever exposed to any kind of danger or failure or her.
	It's mental.
	Again, you need the balance, right?
	When women vote, women take over the political apparatus, and it all becomes bubble wrap and bike helmets and slow decay of civilization.
	Whereas, you know, men, it's a balance.
	It's a balance.
	In a free market, you'd have a balance, but the estrogen is too damn high!
	A good example, I have to tell this today, what happened in Nice.
	And there was this Finnish woman columnist in a big newspaper.
	And she wrote that the thing we have to do now is to not talk about this.
	Because if you talk about this, the terrorists have won.
	They get the power.
	If we talk, we have to stay silent now.
	I remember all of the women writing about that with regards to the patriarchy.
	You know, we don't want to talk about the patriarchy otherwise.
	The men win.
	Yeah, I don't remember that.
	But of course, so women, conflict avoidance.
	Conflict avoidance.
	A big criticism of women is to say someone is divisive.
	Who cares?
	Divisive just means you have integrity and some people don't like you.
	Who cares, right?
	But, yeah, conflict avoidance, right?
	I mean, what is the migrant crisis but a giant case of estrogen-based conflict avoidance?
	But anyway, go on.
	Well, maybe my decision of not wanting to have children is conflict avoidance.
	With your kids?
	With your husband?
	No, no, no.
	Maybe me not wanting to have kids is my way of avoiding conflict.
	But with who?
	With what?
	Well, the whole thing.
	I don't know.
	It sounded better in my head.
	Let me ask you this.
	It sure didn't help with conflict of violence with your ex-husband.
	But anyway, let me ask you this.
	Laura, if somebody was dying and you had the power to grant them life, would you?
	I have to be honest and say it depends.
	Somebody you cared about.
	Of course, of course.
	Yeah, your husband is in an accident and your blood type matches, you would donate blood, right?
	Absolutely.
	Maybe even give him a kidney, who knows, right?
	Of course.
	And that's the power that you have in your belly.
	Right?
	Instead of saving someone who's dying and thus allowing a life to continue, you create a life that wasn't and allow a life to grow.
	You have the power to create life.
	Men have to be cast as wild-haired, crazy, Austrian-accented science madmen in black and white movies to be able to create life.
	You have this power, this ability to create life.
	That's even more powerful than saving a life.
	Saving a life, some of it's already been spent.
	You create a life, you're starting it from scratch, right?
	You have the power to create life.
	Life.
	You enjoy being alive.
	So you're very happy that your parents took the time, effort, and energy to create life and feed it and nurture it and so on.
	You.
	You.
	If you could go back in time to your parents when they were deciding whether to get married or have kids and they were, eh, I'm not sure, what would you say?
	Please do.
	Please, I want to live!
	Please, here, let me give you the Kama Sutra.
	Let me give you a whole bunch...
	Of special oils.
	Look, I'm like a bartender back here with all of these weird special oils.
	Some will make you tingly, some will make you feel warm, and some smell like elderberries.
	It's just casting pretty widely.
	So let me put on a little Nora Jones for you.
	Don't worry, she's from the future, but she's very good for middle-aged people to make babies too.
	So let me just turn down the music, crank up the lava lamps, turn on the Nora Jones, and pull out the Super 8.
	No!
	I won't say that.
	That's too great.
	That's too gross.
	So you would go back in time.
	Like the Nora Jones wasn't too gross.
	Sorry, that just must be a generational thing.
	But here's the thing.
	You would desperately wish for your parents to have you so that you could be alive.
	And you would try to convince them to get married, to make the beast with two backs, and you.
	So there is three cribs out there With babies in them, begging you to have them.
	The same way that you would beg your parents.
	And you can't universalize this, right?
	This is not a moral argument, but it is an argument from universality.
	All who enjoy being alive would doubtless convince their parents to have them.
	You enjoy being alive, you would doubtless work very hard to convince your parents to have you.
	I speak on behalf of your future children, and they are begging you Begging you to have them.
	Because they will love being alive as much as you do.
	And nobody but you can do it.
	I hear you.
	I hear you.
	Maybe the biggest reason that I earlier thought I wanted to have children was the curiosity.
	What would they be like?
	How would they look like?
	What's their personality going to be like?
	How am I going to influence them?
	And the curiosity, that's the thing I think I will miss the most.
	Not knowing what it could have been.
	But at this time, at this moment at least, It just feels like it's not going to happen to me, for me.
	Well, certainly if you take a passive approach, it probably won't.
	Yeah.
	Because this is something you make happen.
	It's like saying, well, you know, that business I was thinking of starting, I just don't know if it's going to happen to me.
	Things just happen to me.
	Those sit-ups aren't just going to happen to me.
	Nope.
	Yeah.
	And...
	I do know older people who really regret not having children, but I don't know any people who got older who regret having children.
	I'm just putting that out there for something to mull over.
	You've got a long time to be on this planet.
	But don't you know any older people who are happy and who don't have children?
	I can't say that off the top of my head I do.
	Okay.
	Because I do.
	Yeah, and look, statistically, I mean, statistically, there's some arguments to be made that having children reduces happiness for a time.
	Hasn't been the case for me, but I think that what happens is people have kids.
	If they haven't become better parents than their parents were, or if their parents weren't great, then they end up either acting out as their parents did, which makes them unhappy, or they're unhappy because they realize that Their childhood wasn't what they thought it was.
	And the number of lies, I mean, you've heard this show, and I'm not saying they're conscious lies, but the number of lies we tell ourselves about our histories are legion, and as well armed as a Roman garrison, so...
	Anyway, thanks for your call, Laura.
	I appreciate it.
	I hope you'll let us know what happens over time.
	But I'd still think about guarding those eggs and still think about if, you know, if you approach dating with the option of having kids, you'll get a different kind of guy than if you don't.
	So, you know, my only suggestion is keep your options open.
	And if you find just the right man, then it might be something that you are more drawn to.
	And of course, you're probably only a couple of years from getting baby rabies anyway, in which case you'll probably just trip a guy in the subway.
	So...
	But thanks for the call.
	I hope that you'll stay in touch.
	Okay.
	Thank you.
	Take care.
	All right.
	Up next is Jesse.
	Jesse wrote in and said, Do you think a resource-based economy without money is a viable way for a society to succeed?
	That's from Jesse.
	Hello, Jesse.
	How are you doing?
	Good, Stefan.
	How are you?
	Good.
	It's been a while since we've had an RBE person on the show, so I'm very glad that you called in.
	How are you doing tonight?
	I'm very well.
	Thank you.
	Good, good.
	Give me a little bit of your history with this resource-based economy idea.
	Did it come from P. Joe himself or someone else?
	No, actually it came from Jacques Fresco.
	I actually saw a video on YouTube of him and he just explained all the negatives of money and it made a lot of sense to me.
	I actually agreed with a lot he had to say about the subject and That's just, I believe that that's the only way for the future to succeed is to just completely eliminate money.
	Now, when Jack Fresco talks about, he's a Venus Project guy, when Jack Fresco talks about money, What does he mean?
	Because money has taken a wide variety of forms throughout history, some of which are private and some of which are government-controlled.
	And certainly almost all of the modern currencies are fiat currencies created at the stroke of a computer keypad and controlled and counterfeited and used as civilization strangling vote-buying utility bots by the state.
	So I'm not sure what he means when he's talking about money.
	Well, just the incentive...
	Incentive-based working to get paid, I think, is what he means.
	I mean, he's 100 years old, and he grew up during the Great Depression, and he's talked a lot about that.
	And it's just...
	So many times, it's just...
	It's just money...
	I feel it slowly...
	It slows progress as far as...
	People only go to work to get money.
	Most people that go to work are unhappy.
	And it's just...
	It slows progress.
	Space exploration, everything.
	It just...
	Everything needs money to go forward.
	And it just...
	I believe it stops society in its tracks.
	Um...
	I don't know if you're aware, do you think that you answered my question?
	What Jacque Fresco views as money?
	Yeah.
	I believe it's paper money, the barter system exchanging something for goods, either work or money itself.
	So, because there's government money and then there's private money, right?
	And private money traditionally has been gold and silver, maybe a little copper thrown in for D&D fans, but if he, or let's just say you, right, based on your understanding, if you mean that all mediums of exchange, whether it's salt or seashells or gold or whatever it is, all mediums of exchange are somehow bad or negative, that's a different...
	Positioned and saying government-controlled counterfeit fiat currency is bad.
	Now, with the latter agreement, it's not only bad, it is in very many ways outside of child abuse, fiat currency is the single greatest source of evil in the world.
	Yes.
	Because you can't have wars without it.
	You can't corrupt governments and private citizens by buying votes with it.
	You can't fund arms sales.
	You can't fund a massive police state without government control of the currency.
	You can't in debt and sell off future generations outside of child abuse.
	Fiat currency is, in my view, the greatest source of evil in the world, and I'm sure I'd be passionate, maybe even more passionate than Jacque Fresco or yourself, in expressing my deep abiding contempt, rage, hostility, and hatred of government-controlled fiat currency, which turns to poison and ash over time everything that it touches and is the most dangerous drug known to mankind.
	Yes, I agree with that.
	Now, people who wish to trade...
	People who wish to trade, like if I have an apple tree and my neighbor has a peach tree and I'm tired of apples and he's tired of peaches and we want to trade some, I can't see how that's holding back the world at all, right?
	I understand what you're saying, yeah, the barter system, but I mean, I feel that we're in a time today where we have the technology that To mine and...
	No, no, no, no, no.
	Sorry to interrupt you, Jesse.
	We can't go off.
	We can't leave this part yet, right?
	Because clearly barter is fine, right?
	I mean, there's nothing wrong with barter, right?
	I mean, if I live in a climate where, I don't know, I can grow watermelons and some guy lives in a climate where they can grow bananas and we want to trade, if we just exchange, like a straight exchange, you know, I'll take a couple of bunches of bananas, hopefully Harrod Belafonte and Tarantula Free, take a bunch of bananas and here's a couple of hopefully Harrod Belafonte and Tarantula Free, take a bunch of bananas I don't think anyone's going to say that that is somehow foundationally oppositional to human progress.
	So the mere act of exchange...
	Is perfectly fine.
	Right, okay.
	Now, there is, you know, in sort of the general theories of why currency arises, why some sort of universal medium of exchange arises is what is called the coincidence of once.
	The coincidence of once.
	So, if I need somebody to repair my toilet and all I have is a bunch of bananas, then the only way I'm going to get my toilet repaired is I mean, taking, you know, general approach to economics, is I have to find somebody who's good at fixing toilets, but who also wants a lot of bananas, right?
	That's not easy to do.
	And I remember reading this story as a kid, where like one animal, all he wanted was an acorn.
	But all he had was a pine cone.
	And he took the pine cone and he exchanged the pine cone.
	Do you have an acorn?
	No, I have this leaf.
	Okay, change it for the leaf.
	And he goes all the way until he finally, like after 400 pages, finds somebody who wants the last thing he's got and actually has the acorn.
	And that left a big impression on me because it's so ridiculously inefficient.
	Now, if there's gold or some sort of limited currency or Bitcoin or cryptocurrency, whatever, then you don't need to find...
	The plumber willing to fix your toilet who also wants a lot of bananas because you can pay him in a currency and he can use that to buy whatever he wants and it liberates you from the tyranny of the coincidence of once that you just happen to find somebody, you know, like, I mean, I go for a haircut, right?
	Not as often as I should, but I go for a haircut.
	Now, how many haircutters would I have to go to where I say, listen, you cut my hair, I'll talk philosophy with you.
	While you cut my hair, we'll call it a trade, right?
	Well, I don't know, because I've never tried, but I imagine it would be quite a few haircutters that I would need to go to.
	Now, there are, without a doubt, people who listen to the show who cut hair, and what do they do?
	They donate to my show.
	And so, in a way, I'm doing philosophy while they cut my hair, right?
	Because I can just take the money they donate to me and take it to some local hair cutter, and it's a different person who's cutting my hair than the person who really wants philosophy, but it all works out to be the same.
	And so this coincidence of once is one reason why almost all societies above basic tribal primitive levels try to come up with some sort of medium of exchange so that they can figure out how to trade without having to wait for the stars and planets to align and deal with this problem of the coincidence of once.
	So as far as I'm concerned, Simple exchange can't be a problem.
	Can't be a problem.
	I mean, there's no initiation of force.
	Both people are doing it voluntarily.
	It's about as morally controvertible as voluntarily having sex with someone, right?
	I mean, it's just fine.
	You're just exchanging stuff.
	Fluids, watermelons, whatever.
	Maybe they can all be involved at the same time.
	So that's fine.
	And then given that there is this ridiculous inefficiency where you have to try and get the coincidence of once solved, having a medium of exchange that everyone's voluntarily participating in and is not able to be created magically, causing inflation and massive economic dislocation and unemployment and war and debt and blah, blah, blah.
	Well, that's not the initiation of force.
	If people are happy to use gold or silver or copper or Bitcoin or whatever it's going to be as their medium of exchange, that's fine too.
	And so I don't see how...
	Again, I'm happy to hear arguments to the contrary, but I don't see how people voluntarily engaging in trade, either through barter or through a medium of exchange that they generally recognize as worthwhile, how that's a problem.
	Now, of course, being forced to participate in a government-fiat currency Ponzi scheme, that's a great immorality.
	That's why I'm sort of curious about the distinction between the two, if there is such in the theory.
	No, well, the problem I have is let's say all the people, all the people who don't have a skill or a product to give into the society and the government just takes care of them.
	That's where, and there's so many, I recently saw, I read something, 2013, more people received government welfare than worked in Full-time in that year, and that's just unacceptable.
	I feel that that's a big problem, and that needs to be eradicated.
	Oh, I completely agree with you, and that is what always happens when the government takes control of the currency.
	When the government takes control of the currency, it immediately begins to dilute it, right?
	The dollar, U.S. dollar, has lost 98% of its value in just about 100 years since the founding of the Fed in 19...
	13, and I'm working on my Roman presentation, you can see the devaluation of the denarius follows almost exactly the same pattern.
	It takes a little longer because it's a bigger region and it's a more physical currency.
	But when the denarius was originally silver, okay, it was limited.
	But by the end of the Roman Empire, the denarius had almost no silver left in it.
	It was all just a bunch of junk metals and it was...
	In fact, the government in Rome was so disgusted by its own currency, it stopped taking it for tax payments.
	It says, okay, we're going to pay you in money, but we're not going to take that money.
	You've got to pay us in kind because the money is crap.
	So, yeah, they start devaluing and they start to buy off votes.
	And the same thing in Rome.
	What did you have?
	You had free bread and entertainment, right?
	The entertainment of the Colosseum, the bloody...
	Gladiatorial fights and so on and all this stuff.
	So yeah, you've got, you know, welfare and PS4. You've got bread and circuses.
	It's the same cycle where the government takes from the productive and gives to the unproductive.
	And basically because you're taxing strength and subsidizing weakness, your whole civilization rots and falls apart at the base.
	So I'm with you guys 150% as far as the evils of fiat currency.
	I'm there.
	But to me, banning all currency because of coercive currency is like banning sex because there are rapists.
	Or banning owning property because there are thieves.
	And I think that's, I don't know, a step too far, to put it mildly.
	Okay.
	How do you feel if the state...
	Let's say we woke up tomorrow morning and the state and government welfare stopped, that all stopped.
	Do you feel that all these people on welfare will magically learn a skill or will contribute to society or will they just rape and pillage the ones that do?
	Well, we don't need to ask that question theoretically because this has happened a number of times throughout history where there has been a big dependent class and welfare has been cut back significantly And people just shrug and get jobs, for the most part.
	Yeah, I don't know.
	I feel that...
	I just feel that the money is not the biggest problem, but it's enabling...
	It's enabling the big problem.
	I don't know if that makes any sense.
	No, can you explain it a bit more?
	Like...
	In America, so many people...
	Just aren't interested in working.
	They'd rather sit at home and just have the state support them, pay their utility bills, pay this, pay that.
	And they are extremely happy with this.
	They feel like most of them are immigrants.
	And the countries they come from, living this way is like paradise if you compare it to where they come from.
	So it's just...
	Well, okay, first of all, I mean, I understand where you're coming from, but there are some arguments against it, which is that, I don't know if you've heard about this, but when some factory opens and they say, you know, we need 300 workers or 200 workers or 400 workers, do you have any idea how many people line up to try and get those jobs?
	I mean, it's like 101, 500, I mean, the number of people who apply For jobs is astonishing.
	And if you look at transitions like the fall of the Soviet Empire, right?
	I mean, did it all just turn into barbarism and people, you know, eating goats and other children and other kids?
	But no, I mean, they just adjusted.
	We're a very adaptable species.
	There's usually a lot of fuss and fighting, particularly from lower IQ members of society.
	But, you know, if welfare stops, jobs...
	Will appear almost immediately.
	Because there will be a giant, like all the money is being taken from job creators and given to welfare people.
	If it's not given to welfare people, the job creators will create their jobs.
	And society will become more unified and interlinked and cohesive.
	This is the great tragedy of the welfare state, is the degree to which it atomizes and isolates people.
	So, if you got a, I don't know, a whole bunch of single moms living in an apartment complex, the welfare stops, but they can get jobs, what do they have to do?
	Well, they have to get together, they have to sit down, and they have to figure out their babysitting schedules.
	Okay, I got to work from here to here, you got to work from here to here, you can take care of my kids here, I can take your kids there, they get to know each other, they figure out who they can trust, who they can't trust, and everyone gets together, because they're not isolated by this weird, invisible moat of welfare that goes around people.
	And separates them from the consequences of their own bad decisions and consequently from other people.
	We'll actually have a society again rather than these vertical wells of isolated individuals all acting selfishly with no common goal or interaction.
	You actually get a society back again and that would be a completely wonderful thing.
	But again, this is not to do with...
	Currency, in terms of voluntary, private, free market stuff, it's to do with the government.
	So, you know, immigration is a government program, and immigration, of course, when you have the welfare state, I mean, this is why it's so frustrating, and I've said this before.
	Hey, Europe, got a problem with immigrants?
	Stop the welfare state, and it will all sort itself out, right?
	I mean, people will self-deport if they can't make it.
	They'll get off their butts, they'll learn French, they'll integrate if they can, they'll get jobs, and it'll be fine.
	I did a show years ago when I was subbing in for Peter Schiff on his radio show where I talked about Spenumland and Spenumland was the same kind of thing in England.
	They tried all of this, tax these people and give to these people and it was a giant mess because what happened is as soon as poor people heard that the welfare rolls were big in a certain area, they all swarmed in there and then all the productive people moved out and there was a general collapse and it actually depressed workers' wages for many years.
	So, I mean, all these problems eminently solvable with the right voluntary approaches, but I think it is, as the old phrase goes, throwing out the baby with the bathwater if you say, well, government currency is really bad, therefore we must ban all currency.
	Why don't you think there's been a movement as far as a political movement to eliminate welfare?
	Why hasn't there a politician stepped forward and really pushed for this?
	Because women vote!
	I'm not saying they shouldn't.
	I'm not a fan of voting as a whole, but because women vote.
	What is the welfare state?
	The welfare state is the single mom state.
	Almost all the money that goes on welfare goes to single moms.
	Now, disability and other...
	Welfare is the single mother state.
	Almost completely.
	Right.
	And so, as soon as you start talking about eliminating welfare, you have these sad-eyed single moms parading around, holding up their babies, saying, you know, we'll starve and all that kind of stuff.
	And women vote more than men.
	Is that true?
	Oh, yeah.
	Women vote at higher rates than men, for sure.
	And the old vote at higher rates than young.
	Yay, Brexit!
	But, you know, why don't politicians do it?
	Well, for two reasons.
	Number one, because women vote.
	And number two...
	Because the media will wrap the narrative around that you're a misogynist, you hate women, you hate children, you want people to feast on their own offspring.
	And, you know, because people can't think for themselves, they're very easily programmed by the media, right?
	The media is not the great evil.
	The great evil is government education.
	That's what wounds people and drives them into the ditch.
	The media that comes and pecks on their eyeballs and brains, they're just profiting off the wounding of the mind by the government educational system or government propaganda system or whatever.
	So yeah, because people can't think, then they react emotionally.
	And you know, funnily enough, when a society starts reacting emotionally, women tend to gain even more power.
	So yeah, that's my theory.
	Yeah, I guess you're right.
	That makes sense.
	I think we should definitely try to eliminate welfare before we eliminate money.
	That's step number one.
	Oh, we don't need to try to eliminate welfare.
	Don't worry.
	Welfare is going to be eliminated because math.
	Math will do the job.
	Those numbers are very libertarian.
	You know, math will take down irrationality no matter which way you cut it.
	Six different ways from Sunday.
	You don't need to lift a finger.
	For the welfare state to end, it doesn't hurt if you lift a finger to educate people or raise your voice to educate people.
	But the welfare state and all of these problems with immigration, I mean, how it's going to go after, I don't know.
	But there's simply no way.
	Mathematically, it can continue.
	So it's just a matter of time.
	I'm not sure where the countdown clock is, but it sure ain't at infinity.
	Is it going to happen in our lifetime?
	Oh, yeah.
	Oh, yeah.
	Wonderful.
	I can't wait.
	And like the fall of Rome, which is often viewed as a great tragedy because the historian Edward Gibbons, who wrote massive tracts on the fall of Rome, he said, this was I think in the 30s, oh no, sorry, Gibbons was earlier.
	Anyway, he said if you were to ask where human beings were happiest, almost everyone would say the 1st and 2nd century AD under Rome, when Rome was generally free market.
	It protected persons and property, brought peace to the world, built roads, and the average Roman citizen had to work for two days a year to pay his taxes, to maintain the entire empire and its infrastructure.
	And he would say that.
	Now, by the time the end of Rome came along, most people were breathing a huge sigh of relief that it was gone.
	Because barbarians would come in and They'd cut people.
	But eventually they'd say, okay, well, we're settling in and we're going to just start becoming the aristocracy and all of that.
	And people were a lot freer after the fall of Rome than before.
	And so it's the same thing with the welfare state.
	There's all this crap when it collapses.
	Yeah, there'll be people who complain for sure.
	A bunch of senators got mad at the end of Rome.
	But the average person would be like, whew, glad we got that Band-Aid off now.
	Let's get something productive going.
	Now, what do you do for a living, Jesse?
	Carpentry.
	I'm a carpenter in Boston.
	I think I can tell that.
	Excellent Matt Damon impersonation of somebody impersonating somebody from Boston.
	How is, and how do you like your work?
	I hate it, but I like the money, so I stick with it.
	So do you think that it's entirely possible when you say that people do stuff for the money, that it might be like they hate their jobs, they do stuff for the money, that you might be mistaking everyone on the planet for your own particular relationship to work?
	Yes, maybe.
	If you could do anything together.
	That's a great question.
	I could do anything to get money.
	Wow.
	I really have to think about that.
	I don't know, maybe a politician?
	you I don't know which show you think you're calling into.
	I don't know.
	I couldn't answer that.
	I'd really have to think about it.
	Well, you should, you know.
	I mean, you don't sound old, and you've got a long life ahead of you, and you might want to end up doing something that's going to give you more joy and pleasure than a job you hate and just do for the money, right?
	I mean, because that's going to make you hate money, but the money is not the problem, at least in this situation.
	The money is not the problem because there's lots of different ways to make money.
	And there is something to be said for follow your passion.
	Like if you follow your passion, the music will follow.
	If you follow your passion, the money will follow you in some way, shape or form.
	Do what you love and the money will find you.
	And there may be options for you to engage in trade, even under the current system, that don't have you waking up and hating money.
	Your job and grudgingly getting through it so you can get your hands on some greenbacks.
	What do you hate about being a carpenter?
	Jesus seemed to like it.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Getting up at four in the morning, always being dirty.
	You know, it's not a clean job.
	I don't wear a suit and tie.
	And just a commute to work, sitting in traffic.
	It's just brutal.
	The daily grind gets old.
	Is it pretty seasonal?
	Some years it is.
	Some years, yeah, I could get slow in the wintertime.
	I might have a couple months where I don't work.
	Usually around Thanksgiving, Christmas, that's the slow season.
	Why are you getting up at four in the morning?
	You don't milk cows before you go to work or something, right?
	Well, generally we like to start at six, so we don't have to deal with as much traffic as The general population does going into Boston every morning.
	No, Boston traffic is brutal, right?
	Yeah, it's very bad.
	Right.
	And do you work for someone else?
	Yeah, I work for a company.
	I'm in a union.
	Ah!
	The union, also known as where entrepreneurial aspirations go to expire.
	And would you ever think of starting your own shop?
	Well, that's the only way I feel I can...
	Continue doing this trade, if I'm not in the union, is to start my own shop.
	Because non-union, the wages are much, much less because of the undocumented workforce.
	Right, right.
	Yeah, that's why you were talking about immigrants earlier, and I certainly understand that.
	I mean, the unions and the undocumented workforce are kind of the yin and the yang of the state pendulum of power.
	But yeah, I mean, it may be something to think about.
	Yeah.
	In terms of having a more productive relationship with your own career, you know, either finding something that you care about more or finding some way to be a little bit more in charge, right?
	Because working for other people is...
	It can be a bit of a challenge for happiness.
	Yeah, I agree.
	Definitely.
	Right.
	And so the issue may not be money.
	We can't all be the chiefs, though.
	Some people have to be the Indians.
	Well...
	If you listen to this show, you might have a little bit more chief in you than you think.
	I agree with that.
	All right.
	So, no, I don't think a resource-based economy with no money is a viable way for a society to succeed, but I have no hostility to the idea whatsoever.
	My view is that in a free society, stateless society, there will be lots of experiments.
	So you and a bunch of people may get together and say, you know what, we're just going to grab this track to land and we're going to have a whole group of people around and we're not going to use money.
	Now, do you feel a stateless society could succeed as an independent nation or do you feel the whole world would have to be stateless?
	Oh no, gosh, I'm waiting for the whole world to become stateless.
	I don't know if the aboriginals out back in Australia are about to understand the finer points of Rothbardian anarchic theory, so no, no, the whole world doesn't need to be stateless for a stateless society to...
	Succeed any more than the whole world needs to be capitalist for a capitalist society to succeed.
	So, yeah, my goal is in a free society, people will be experimenting with different forms of currency, with different forms of social organization, and people say, well, why don't the workers run the factory?
	It's like, great, why don't you go get a factory and then let the workers run it and see how well that goes?
	Maybe it'll go well, maybe it won't.
	But so there'll be this constant form of social experimentation.
	So I don't feel that I need to convince anyone, and I know that I shouldn't have to convince anyone, of the best way society should be structured.
	Because that's all a thou shalt.
	And a thou shalt is infinitely more repressive than a thou shalt not, right?
	If I say to you, you can go anywhere but the North Pole, you're pretty much free to roam at will.
	If I say you have to go to the North Pole, well, there's only one destination you can go.
	And so...
	In a free society, people will be experimenting, trying various different things.
	The only thing I say is, don't initiate force and keep your word, right?
	Criminal law and contract law.
	Those are the only basic moral requirements of a free society.
	Non-initiation of force and fraud, right?
	Keeping your contracts.
	So, if people don't want to have contracts, nobody's going to force them to have them.
	If people don't want to use money, want to go on a handshake and want to go on the movement of the stars or the blowing of the leaves or they want to Create giant robot mommy cities to cater to their every whim from cradle to grave?
	Go for it.
	I don't want anyone pulling guns to make it happen.
	But people can go and do whatever they want.
	And you see, here's the thing.
	I don't like, and I'm not accusing you of this, Jesse, I don't like nagging.
	Nagging, and the welfare state is nagging.
	Oh, you've got to go help these poor people.
	You've got to help these poor people.
	This is the only way to help the poor people.
	We've got to tax you to help the poor people.
	Nag, nag, nag.
	You know, if you've got a great idea to help poor people, go and help the poor people and publicize it.
	Why, look, I found this magic wand that makes poor people wealthy.
	Well, I'd like some of those wands because I'd like poor people to become wealthy too because then I have a bigger market for my podcast and I care about people.
	So, this...
	Ideas.
	This is how children should be educated.
	Okay, why don't you just open a school, educate kids that way, and show us how great it is.
	You know, this is how I'm going to solve the problem of crime.
	Excellent.
	Go and solve the problem of crime.
	Show us how great it is.
	You know, there's that old thing that says, statism.
	Ideas so good, they have to be mandatory.
	It's like, well, good ideas don't have to be mandatory.
	That's the whole point.
	So, if people in a resource-based economy want to go and create some wonderful place...
	Where people can fulfill their artistic potential and desires to their heart's content and it's multi-layered, non-STD-based orgies, whatever people want, go make that place.
	And then people will just flock there.
	Like, you know, a number of people who write to me and say, healthcare ought to be free.
	It's like, great, don't nag me.
	Stop nagging me.
	Go become a doctor and don't charge your patients.
	That's all you have to do.
	Just go become a doctor.
	Education should be free.
	Great!
	Stop nagging me.
	Stop talking to me.
	Go become a teacher and give away what you do for free.
	But all this nagging, you know, we gotta give money to the poor.
	Stop nagging me and stop using the state.
	Go give money to the poor.
	Just give stuff for free.
	So in a free society, you can do all of that.
	And I'm pretty sure you can do some of that even now with the society that we have.
	So...
	The great thing about having basic principles is you don't care where the dominoes land.
	Doesn't matter.
	Doesn't matter.
	You know, say, well, do you think that a society without slavery would pick cotton more efficiently?
	Don't care.
	Slavery is wrong.
	Right?
	I mean, how should society be configured in the absence of...
	Don't care.
	Doesn't matter.
	And even to ask that question or to attempt to answer it fundamentally is to buy into the premise of central planning.
	I have done some of it, but, you know, if you really spend your life doing that, you're kind of wasting your time.
	Let freedom reign and the chips fall where they may.
	So thanks a lot for calling in, Jesse.
	I hope it was helpful.
	And I don't want to keep you up late because it sounds like you got pretty gruesome in the early morning.
	So, hey, you know, four o'clock in the morning, you're getting up to go to work, and I'm going to bed after recording five shows about terrorist attacks.
	So I'm not sure who has a better day after that.
	But, yeah, thanks for your call.
	It's a great question, and I'm sure we'll talk again.
	Thank you.
	Alright, up next is Samuel.
	Samuel wrote in and said, It seems there is a strong female-centric left-wing bias in education, especially in kindergarten and elementary school.
	This very strong bias has a massive impact on boys while in school.
	I feel teachers are more politically biased than ever.
	Do you think the problem in education is with personal biases of teachers or a systematic bias?
	Do you think having more male teachers in elementary schools could help bring masculinity back to young boys?
	That's from Samuel.
	Hey Sam, how you doing?
	Hey Steph, thanks for having me on.
	Is it okay if I do first syllable with you?
	You did Steph, right?
	So Sam is okay?
	Oh yeah, perfectly.
	Okay.
	I remember this girl that knew when I was younger.
	Hey Andrea!
	It's not Andrea, it's Andrea.
	Thank you very much.
	I had a girl in my class, her name was Janice, and they called her Janice and she wasn't having it.
	Right.
	And people say to me, is it Stefan?
	Stefan?
	It's like, I don't care.
	I don't care.
	Like there's some objective place you can go and find this at, right?
	But do you have boys?
	I assume you are a boy.
	Yep.
	Nope.
	I'm 24.
	I took some time off after high school.
	I didn't really get into the whole college thing until like a few years ago.
	Hey, me too.
	That's a good part.
	Yeah, I kind of just...
	I got a job.
	And I think, like, maybe my question...
	Wait, wait.
	Hang on a second.
	Did something just land in your eyeball?
	Because this is what you said.
	I got a job.
	Was that a job that you hate?
	Is that...
	You're not working with the last guy, are you?
	No, no, no.
	I've worked...
	I've kind of bounced around to a lot of jobs.
	Okay.
	All right.
	All right.
	So...
	So, as far as...
	Okay, what was your experience when you were a boy in school?
	Well, I'm not trying to make it sound like the schools I went to were just a bunch of prisons run by misandrist, but there was a real bias.
	I didn't even know a male teacher was a thing until I was in fifth grade.
	I'd always ask my mom, why are there no male teachers?
	You know how young boys are.
	We're a little boisterous, kind of aggressive.
	It was a little tough with some of these left-wing-leaning feminist teachers who didn't know how to Handle boys and their aggressiveness.
	Well, they do.
	They generally try to handle them by dropping enormous amounts of maternal guilt bombs onto their young male shoulders to the point where they say, I can't breathe.
	So guilty for being male.
	I can't breathe.
	Yeah, like I went to visit some friends.
	They got some boys.
	And, you know, I walk in the house.
	The boy says, catch!
	Throws me a sword.
	And it's like, whack, whack, whack, whack.
	And he was actually pretty good.
	Sounds like my childhood.
	Sorry?
	That sounds like my childhood.
	Oh, absolutely.
	Yeah, no question.
	You have to be pretty quick around boys.
	So that is an important aspect of things.
	If you're not willing to Get suction-y things stuck to you with sticks on them, you know, from Nerf guns or whatever.
	It's just not going to work.
	So, yeah, so boys are rambunctious and they are physically aggressive or assertive and they really need, you know, they're very affectionate, but generally the affection first comes as an attack and afterwards comes with a cuddle.
	And it is, to me, a great tragedy, of course, that It's not a tragedy, it's a great evil that men have been driven out of early childhood education.
	Well, you know, why would you want to work with children unless you're some kind of creep?
	Yeah.
	The one male teacher at my school, there was one male teacher, he was a fifth grade teacher, and he was an old gay man.
	And that was like, you can't really get masculinity from him.
	I think that may be fair to say.
	But now, I mean, of course, and I just did a podcast on this.
	I haven't done anything with it yet, but I won't go into the whole detail.
	But I mean, I did go to a very masculine environment when I was a kid.
	Like I was in boarding school for a couple of years.
	It was an all-male boarding school.
	There was a female side, but they were like way over and we barely ever saw them and so on.
	And yeah, a lot of male teachers, a male headmaster, boys, boys, boys.
	And I think there was like one...
	Music teacher who was a woman and maybe one gym teacher, although I could be complaining that with someone from junior high.
	But I was in a very masculine environment with all of the pluses and minuses.
	And there were a lot of pluses in that.
	But my experience was somewhat different in that sort of time frame than a lot of the kids who grew up in North America or places where it's just...
	Women, women, wall-to-wall women in terms of raising kids.
	And of course, you know, for the kids who have single moms and maybe absent or distant dads, You know, they go from the single mom-dominated household and environment, because single moms tend to be friends with, you guessed it, other single moms, because married women don't always want that destabilizing element around their husbands.
	And so, yeah, a lot of single moms around, a lot of single moms.
	You're in matriarchal manners, as I called them when I was a kid.
	So you see families run by moms, and then you go to school, and it's all run by moms.
	And then, many, many, many years later, You get told that it's all some kind of patriarchy, and it's like, I think I may have gone past that stop for the first 12 years of my life, because I didn't really see it.
	So, yeah, there is a song, Female Strength.
	And Left-Wing Bias?
	The Left-Wing Bias is more innate to the fact that it's a government-run, unionized system.
	I mean, when you can corrupt people with force, they will instinctively cover up the violence.
	I mean, if you give people stolen money, they will cover up the theft.
	And particularly, if they wish to retain moral authority over children, they can't.
	I mean, how can a teacher say to kids, don't use force to get what you want?
	We're going on strike!
	Right?
	I mean, we have a monopoly.
	We're paid for whether your parents like us or not.
	We're paid for by whether, even if people don't have kids, they're forced to pay for us.
	I have summers off, not because it's convenient for the parents, but because I want summers off.
	And a long time ago, it used to be really hot in classrooms in the summer, so nobody could really teach anyone anything.
	Or, don't use force to get what you want.
	Okay, kids, your parents don't get out till 5 o'clock and they don't get home till 6, but I'm turning you loose at 3.15 because I'm all about the convenience, right?
	And so how can teachers tell children not to use force to get what they want?
	You boys are really, really rough.
	Hey, there's a strike breaker.
	Go hit him with a two-by-four.
	I mean, come on.
	Come on.
	I mean, so as soon as you can get people to feast on the corpse of force, you know, they have to dress it up as a buffet and pretend it's all very civilized.
	And so, to me, it's not the female-centric aspect that's the strongest.
	It's simply the fact that the moment you pay people with a lie, they cannot tell the truth.
	And you cannot talk about the nature of the state to children who are forced to be under the care and control of the state.
	Oh, the state is really bad.
	It's the initiation of force.
	Now, off to government school you go.
	It's like, hey, teacher, my dad says, you know, how's that going to work out, right?
	So, yeah, once you can get people to take the stolen money, their entire...
	Lives are spent covering up that theft, while at the same time complaining about any thieving in the private sector.
	Yeah, that sums it up.
	Oh, my God!
	Hole in one!
	I hope you don't mind.
	Please feel free to call back in with a more complex question.
	But I'm going to keep going.
	If I did something that quickly, maybe I can do the next one in three syllables.
	I wonder if...
	Oh, I'm done.
	All right.
	Well, thanks, Sam.
	I appreciate the question, and you're welcome back anytime.
	Yeah, thank you.
	Alright, up next is Stephen.
	Stephen wrote in and said, What is the philosophical meaning of the word justice?
	I've seen the term used in so many different contexts, in combination with so many other words, so it's clearly an important word to define, yet upon reflection, I realized that I could not come up with a consistent definition of the term.
	To me, this topic is especially relevant in an era when it's become commonplace for people to toss around the term social justice as a catch-all term for whatever agenda they feel like pushing.
	That's from Stephen.
	Hey Stephen, how you doing?
	Hey, Stefan.
	I'm doing great.
	And yourself?
	I'm doing as well as I can for somebody who wants to start with a lame joke.
	Are you ready?
	Are you strapped in?
	Absolutely.
	What is the philosophical meaning of the word justice?
	Well, who's above the law?
	Say the powers that be.
	Just us!
	All right.
	I'm done.
	That's all I wanted to say.
	All right.
	Moving on.
	I'm kidding.
	Okay, so we'll do the general Socratic approach here, and we'll look at a few things that may fall into the category of justice, and we'll see if we can extract a principle or two.
	All right?
	Yeah, sounds good.
	If someone steals your bike, is it just or fair to steal it back?
	Yes, it is fair and just.
	I think most people would say that...
	We're not...
	We're not defining it yet.
	We're just looking for examples.
	Right, right.
	Absolutely.
	All right.
	If someone slaps you in the face, can you shoot them?
	No.
	I mean, I don't want to say that's unjust because we haven't defined the term yet, but no.
	No, no, no.
	Forget the definition.
	We're just looking for examples that instinctively kind of feel true.
	Yeah, yeah.
	No, I see what you're saying.
	Yeah, I would not say it's acceptable to shoot someone who slapped you in the face.
	Right.
	So, I mean, that would be a disproportionate response, right?
	Yes.
	So, if someone causes material damage to you, right?
	Like, they...
	Ski your car, whether it's an accident or not, but they cause $500 in damage to you.
	Is it just for them to pay for the damage that they've caused?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	So we've got a couple of examples here of what justice may be, right?
	I mean, maybe.
	I think a lot of reasonable people would kind of go along those lines, right?
	So the question is, What is it that makes these things just or fair?
	And justice is not quite the same.
	Fair usually doesn't have a moral component, but justice is usually more elevated and more serious, right?
	So, you know, it's fair to give people even slices of pie, but it's not immoral to not do it.
	But justice usually has something to do with morality.
	Is that a fair thing to say?
	Yeah, no, that makes sense to me.
	And that was one of the things...
	Yeah, sorry, go ahead.
	If you borrow $500 from someone and say you'll pay it back next week, is it just and fair?
	If you don't pay it back for the person to come and get the money?
	What do you mean, come and get it?
	I don't necessarily mean with a gun, but to come to your house and say, listen, you owe me $500 and you said you'd pay it back next week, I need the money, and do you have the money?
	Can you give me the money?
	It's just and fair for them to ask that.
	It's not wrong, right?
	Right, right.
	Yeah, I see what you're saying.
	Now, if you refuse to pay them back, is it fair for them to say, well, you have a bicycle there that's worth $500, I'll take that instead?
	Ooh.
	Wow.
	Geez.
	Let me ask you something that's a little easier because I get you're confrontational.
	It sounds confrontational, right?
	Let me ask it this way.
	Is it fair if someone can deduct...
	I don't know what, $10 a week from your paycheck to pay them back.
	Let's just say they can do it.
	It just gets magically deducted and put in their bank account.
	If you borrow someone, if you borrow $520 from someone, is it fair if you don't pay them back for them to get $10 a month off your paycheck for a year?
	Sorry, $10 a week off your paycheck for a year?
	Yes, I think so.
	I mean, I'm I'm kind of lost on how that would be done.
	If you want to go back to the...
	No, no.
	Forget the methodology.
	We're just looking at the principle.
	Right.
	Yeah, it seems fair.
	Even back to the bike one, now that I've thought about that, even though it would be confrontational, it does seem fair.
	If they slam the door in your face and you didn't get your $500, there's the $500 bike.
	Right.
	Now, let's say that you...
	You enter into a contract to buy a car, and you're going to pay, I don't know, 500 bucks a month for a year.
	Now, six months, you start paying.
	Is it just or fair at some point for the people to repossess the car?
	Yes.
	I think that's reasonable.
	That's fair, right?
	So then the question is, what is happening in all of these situations?
	Now, one of the things that's happening in all of these situations is restitution.
	Somebody steals your bike, is it just to steal it back?
	Well, I think we say yes, because you are restoring the property to its original state, which is you being in control of it, right?
	Yes.
	And proportional.
	Right?
	Proportional restitution, I think, has something to do with justice.
	And we'll sort of figure out what that is as we go forward.
	Is that a reasonable place to start?
	Yes.
	I mean, the only thing I could say is that all of these seem to have to do with theft.
	So there's a monetary value attached to it.
	Yeah, and we're looking for the easiest so far, right?
	And there are other things where you cannot get proportional restitution.
	So if you kill my cat...
	I cannot get restitution because you cannot bring my cat to life, right?
	If you steal my bike and burn it or melt it or whatever it is, turn it into a Terminator, right?
	So we're just looking at things where restitution is possible.
	Now, the reason why I can't shoot someone who slaps me in the face is because that's not actually restitution, right?
	Because they slapped me in the face, I shoot them, that's not restitution because they didn't shoot me, right?
	Yes.
	It's certainly not proportional restitution.
	We could say, I can slap someone back in the face, but I can't go way above and beyond.
	Does that make sense?
	Yes.
	Are we saying that slapping someone back in the face who slapped you in the face is an example of justice?
	Well, let me put it this way.
	It's not something I would have a huge problem with if I saw it.
	Like, so if one guy pushes a guy and the other guy pushes him back, I'm not going to go yell at the guy who's pushing back.
	Right, right.
	I tend to agree.
	Now, if somebody chooses to walk away, that's fine too, but I would not have a problem with self-defense.
	But it has to be somewhat proportional, right?
	Yes.
	Right.
	So, if you cost someone $500 in damage...
	Then if you repair that damage and pay for it, then you have returned a problem to its original state.
	You have returned the property.
	Somebody scratches your car and they pay to get it painted and fixed, assuming it looks fine.
	They have restored your car to its original state.
	Same with the $500 debt, $10 a week coming off your paycheck or 520, I guess, 52 weeks in a year.
	They, you have restored the person who loaned the money back to their original state, they have the 500 bucks, right?
	Yes.
	Same thing with the mortgage, right?
	I mean, if the bank owns the car, or the car company, the bank owns the car, and you say you're going to pay for the car, and the bank trusts you, right?
	The bank doesn't say, no, no, no, you've got to give me $6,000 up front, or you don't get the car.
	So the bank is taking a risk by giving you the car with payments over time.
	The bank would much rather get that money up front, depending on the interest rate or whatever, right?
	But the bank would, in generally, rather get the money up front.
	So if you don't pay for the car, then the ownership reverts back to the bank, right?
	Yes.
	Because they're loaning it to you on condition that you pay them back.
	So the ownership then reverts to the bank, so they're not stealing your car if they repossess it.
	They're merely reasserting their ownership just as you would if you'd lent it to someone and went to go and pick it up.
	So we've got something to do with proportional restitution when it comes to justice.
	Now, there is another component to it, though, which is that there is a time element always involved in restitution.
	so if you steal my bike and I have to drive around town until I find it and then I have to go and steal it and I have to bring it back to my house that might have been a couple of hours, right?
	Yes, yeah Plus there's some element of risk what if I got the wrong bike, right?
	What if, it's not something I would choose to do, right?
	So if somebody said well listen, Steve, I'm going to steal your bike but don't worry you can go around town and try and find it and get it back you wouldn't say, okay Yeah Yeah So this is why, in general, restitution is usually over and above the mere immediate loss.
	So if you scratch my car and I have to take it into the shop and I've got to pay for it, then I would expect some compensation for the time as well, right?
	So the way that restitution tends to work is you don't want to force people to pay disproportionate restitution.
	So if you scratch my car, you shouldn't have to pay me a million dollars, right?
	Yeah.
	Because that would be crazy.
	Then I'd just pay people to scratch my car or trick people into scratching my car or whatever it is, right?
	So you want it to be so that it becomes just enough that it's like, I'm fine that it happened.
	You know, it's fine.
	It's fine.
	Right.
	And it's the same thing if someone steals your bike and you've got to spend a couple of hours and take it back.
	And let's say some kid stole your bike and then the parents come over and say, listen, you had to spend a couple of hours.
	You know, here's a coupon for dinner out for you and your family.
	Sorry about that, right?
	Now, that wouldn't be such a great gain that you'd be like, I can't wait for someone to steal my bike, you know, like, wow, that's fantastic.
	I can't wait for someone to steal my bike again.
	You'd be like, okay, we'll call it quits, right?
	It's not great, but you're also not at much of a loss.
	So there's a tipping point.
	Does that make sense?
	Too little, and you resent what happened too much, and you're eager for what happened.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah, I'm following you.
	Okay.
	Now, this is, of course, relatively easy when it comes to money, right?
	Stealing or, you know, 500 bucks that you owe or whatever, right?
	It does become more problematic when you're dealing with violence.
	And the way that...
	Certain legal systems, a little more voluntary legal systems used to work with something called the Ware Guild or whatever, where there would be a monetary value that would be associated with violent actions.
	If you beat someone up, you owed them five gold pieces.
	If you break a bone, then you owe them an additional 15 gold pieces.
	If you put out an eye, you owe whatever.
	I remember when I was a kid, there used to be this school book service called Scholastic, I think it was, And there'd be all these books you could order and stuff.
	In hindsight, a bit of a captive audience, but anyway.
	And they would also hand out these things, like you could get this insurance.
	If you lose a thumb, you get X amount of dollars.
	If you put out an eye, you get X amount of dollars or whatever.
	And that's tricky, right?
	That's tricky stuff because you don't want to make it so valuable.
	Like, you know, if you get a black eye, we'll pay you a million dollars because, you know, people would just stage that, right?
	And, you know, just to get a million dollars, I'll take a million.
	Right?
	So it has to be enough that people – so with a violent action, it has to be enough restitution that you're relatively okay that it happened.
	And that, of course, the more violent the action, the more difficult that becomes, right?
	Like there's no amount of money that would make up for some people to be blinded, you know, whatever it is, right?
	I mean, so it gets kind of hysterical at some point.
	And at some point, when the monetary restitution is not enough, when the violence has occurred to the degree that the people will no longer accept monetary damages, well, that's where, if I understand it correctly, or as I imagine correctly, that's where the idea of prison came in.
	And then the prison, of course, would serve two purposes.
	Number one, it would be a punishment more than monetary when monetary punishment was not enough.
	Like, there's probably no amount of money you could pay a woman to say, for the woman or the man to say, yeah, it's fine that you rape me.
	Nobody wants that, right?
	And...
	And so prison is where the monetary system can't solve the problem.
	And also, of course, prison is a way of taking people out of society for whom monetary punishments don't matter that much.
	Maybe they've got no money.
	Right, I was thinking that.
	Yeah, so if someone comes along and keys your car, he's some homeless guy.
	Well, saying you now owe me $1,000 for my time plus keying the car, well, he's like, I don't care, I got no money, right?
	Right.
	Yeah.
	And so that kind of person would have to pay with something else.
	And the payment would be time.
	It doesn't give money back to the person.
	Although I would imagine in a free market environment, that person who scratched your car might be put to work for a week or two, and then the profits of their work may be used to pay for you.
	Whatever.
	I don't know, right?
	So the prison situation is twofold.
	One, it's of course for people who don't have the money to pay restitution.
	And number two, It is to prevent another crime from being committed while that person is in prison, at least on the non-prison population, if that makes sense.
	Yes.
	So, justice is, I think, that tipping point where you return things to their original state as best as you can to the point where people feel satisfied but not eager for what happened.
	And it is composed of both monetary restitution and or a restriction of liberty like prison or something like that for the sake of people who don't have the money.
	Or if it's just so heinous that no restitution is possible, then they would have to surrender their freedom, which would at least prevent further repetitions of, further possibility of repetitions of that crime.
	So, that's sort of a bit of a way of explaining.
	It does sort of explain a lot of things that we're talking about.
	And that, to me, is sort of half of the idea of justice.
	What do you think?
	Oh, it makes sense to me.
	I mean, the reason the question came to me was I was reading a biography about Socrates.
	And what stood out to me most was his idea that, you know, one person...
	Wronging you does not make it just for you to wrong them back.
	And once I read that, I, you know, I felt that everything I knew, everything I thought I knew about justice just seemed to be wrong.
	Well, I mean, with all due respect to Socrates, that's begging the question.
	I mean, because if you wrong someone, of course you've done wrong, but that's begging the question.
	The whole point is to find out if you're wronging someone, right?
	I'm not sure I follow.
	Okay, so if someone steals my bike, clearly they've wronged me.
	Now, if Socrates were to say, Steph, if you go and steal that bike back, you are wronging them too.
	It's like, no, how do you, you just, what?
	Well, yes.
	But that can't be – they can't both be right, at least not equally.
	Because the person who steals my bike ends up plus one bike.
	If I steal my bike back, I don't end up with plus one bike.
	I end up with the bike I had originally.
	I have not gained anything.
	In fact, I've lost from the transaction.
	So the person who steals from me gains from the transaction.
	But if I go back and get my property back, I've lost from the transaction.
	I've lost time.
	I've got stress.
	You know, I may do the wrong thing.
	I'm stealing back.
	I may have got the wrong person.
	It's just a mess.
	So these two things, where one person gains and the other person loses, can't be both wrong.
	So somebody wrongs me by stealing a bike.
	They say, well, if you steal it back, you're wronging them.
	It's like, well, no, that's what we're trying to figure out.
	We can't say whether it's wrong to steal the bike back because we're exploring the issue.
	Yeah, I see what you mean with that.
	But what about, I mean, you brought up the idea of someone slapping you in the face.
	So wasn't Socrates' idea that it's not just for you to then slap them back?
	Honestly, I would have to reread the Socratic arguments for and against that.
	There are a wide variety of moral responses to being slapped in the face.
	Of course, you can slap the person back, and you're legally justified to do so, as far as I understand the principle of self-defense.
	But it is also perfectly valid to walk away.
	And I think in some cases that may be the better situation.
	Now, walking away creates a moral burden upon you, though.
	And the moral burden is this.
	If someone comes up and slaps you in the face and you walk away, then clearly you're not responding to the person and creating a disincentive for them to slap people in the face.
	So, in some ways...
	You have a minor degree of complicity in the next person that person slaps in the face.
	To take a more extreme example, if you're a man and you get raped and you don't do anything about your rapist, do you not have some minor degree of complicity in the next victim of that rapist?
	I mean, I see...
	Yeah, no, I think you're right.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, you do.
	You do have some minor degree of conviction.
	Because you have knowledge, which the next victim doesn't, which is this man is a rapist.
	Or this woman is a rapist if it's sort of made to penetrate situation.
	I know this sounds weird to people just look at the truth about rape presentation and you'll understand it's always supposed to be a woman.
	50-50.
	Right?
	Because if you choose not to act, and this is a challenge, right?
	And This comes back to a great scene in a great book, Les Miserables, where it's the beginning.
	It's not much of a spoiler, right?
	So Jean Valjean.
	At last we see each other playing.
	I love Javier.
	Anyway, but Jean Valjean steals from a priest.
	And the police catch him.
	Drag him back to the priest and says, he stole this from you because of silver candelabra or something.
	And the priest says, no, no, no, I gave that to him.
	Now, the priest is lying.
	And the priest says to Javert, if I remember rightly, okay, I gave you a real break here, now go out and do good in the world, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Now, Javert then becomes a fine, upstanding member of society, blah-de-blah-de-blah, right?
	Good job, priest!
	Right?
	Excellent!
	You rolled the dice, and you came up double sixes.
	Now, on the other hand, what if the priest says, yes, he stole from me.
	That is my Silva Candelabra.
	You need to go lock him up.
	Or make him pay restitution or whatever, right?
	Well, then the guy goes off to jail, or whatever would happen.
	But if the guy, the priest says, oh yeah, I gave it to him, he's welcome to go free, and how could you make such a mistake or whatever, and then Javert goes down the road and clubs some guy with a candelabra, right, and steals his wallet and he's dead.
	Right.
	We don't, how do we know what's going to happen?
	If we show mercy, how do we know?
	I mean, people who own stores face this dilemma all the time.
	Some kid comes in and steals a candy bar.
	Well, if you grab the kid and call the cops and whatever, right?
	Well, the kid might get beaten up by his parents.
	The kid might be traumatized, might be horrified, might say, to hell with society.
	Who knows, right?
	Yeah.
	Whereas if you let the kid go, or you catch the kid and say, hey, don't steal from this.
	This is wrong.
	Stop stealing.
	Off you go.
	Maybe the kid's goosed and scared and will never do it again, right?
	Or maybe the kid's like, sucker.
	And just says, wow, crime does pay.
	You know, I could have been up one candy bar.
	Now I'm not up one candy bar, but there was no real punishment.
	So woohoo, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	So, you know, as far as, you know, if someone slaps you in the face, do you slap them back?
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	But it's complex.
	There are certainly times in life where it is better to turn the other cheek.
	I'm sort of thinking like the don't engage troll stuff.
	There are times in life where it makes sense to turn the other cheek.
	There are other times in life where it does not make sense to turn the other cheek.
	And these are complex and challenging questions, which philosophy can only point out some of these dilemmas.
	There's a lot of...
	I mean, it comes down to brain science to some degree.
	You know, can they figure out if somebody's a sociopath by looking at the brain scan?
	Well, a sociopath will view kindness as a weakness, and it will probably increase their predatory behavior to some degree.
	Whereas somebody who's Making a bad decision and has a strong conscience, if you treat them with kindness, it may well have them reform their ways and be a better person and have a better life.
	And I don't know.
	I mean, some of it's brain science and, you know, some of it is instinct and some of it is a deep knowledge of human nature and some of it is the person's history and whatever, right?
	I mean, I was just reading the other day about road rage.
	Do you ever have that?
	Not entirely.
	I mean, I felt frustrated on the road but never acted out upon it.
	Well, it's actually pretty dangerous.
	Let me just see here.
	I just read this a little while ago.
	80% of American drivers engaged in an act of road rage.
	8 million drivers took part in extreme examples.
	Of road rage.
	Since 2010, road rage fatalities have increased 30%.
	It's still not that high a number.
	It's 1739 deaths from 2010 to 2014.
	That may be a bit more local.
	But yeah, road rage deaths are pretty high.
	Here's what I read.
	More than half of traffic fatalities are caused by road rage.
	Can you imagine?
	Half of traffic fatalities caused by road rage.
	Wow.
	Two in three drivers say it's a bigger problem today than years past and a serious threat to your safety.
	This is from the AAA, American Automobile Association, I would assume, or the people who make you make sounds at the dentist.
	AAA researcher Jack Nelson Whose half-brother, I believe, is very good at wrestling.
	Boom!
	We've all heard the old adage, quote, we all say things we don't mean when we're angry.
	Well, when you're behind the wheel, you do things that you wouldn't otherwise do when you're angry.
	The AAA study found the majority of drivers surveyed took part in a form of road rage.
	You might find yourself guilty of the top four aggressive behaviors on the roads.
	Majority of drivers said they purposefully tailgated another driver.
	Drivers guilty of yelling at other drivers, honked to show annoyance or anger, making angry gestures.
	The study also showed drivers trying to speed up and block another driver from changing lanes or cutting off another car on purpose.
	Some drivers even bumped or rammed another driver.
	Men between the ages of 19 to 39 were found to be the most aggressive drivers on the road.
	I, uh, I don't think that was broken down by ethnicity.
	But, um, yeah, no, I was talking about this with someone that said, you know, road rage, are you crazy?
	Um...
	You're driving an 8,000 pound bomb.
	You don't engage in this ridiculous stuff.
	So with road rage, obviously if somebody's driving dangerously, I like to slow down so they can have their accident somewhere else.
	But do you then engage in weaving?
	You don't escalate there.
	So it's a complex situation and I know we're just sort of brushing around the edges of it.
	But to me, that's the sort of restitution.
	Proportional restitution is part of justice.
	And the other part I think we can deal with much more succinctly, which is this question of universality.
	If somebody...
	Let's say you're engaged in a debate with someone.
	Christopher Hitchens was talking about this once.
	You're engaged in a debate with someone, and they slap you in the face, right?
	Now, that person has said...
	That debates should be resolved through physical aggression, right?
	Now, justice is saying, okay, that must be a universal principle, therefore you cannot object if it's applied to you.
	Right?
	Somebody who steals from you is saying, take what you want.
	There's no property rights.
	So how can they object when something is stolen back?
	So justice is accepting and universalizing the other person's innate principle of their behavior and recognizing that no person who initiates an action can justly complain if that action is returned to them.
	Right?
	So if I go out and push some guy, I'm saying it's fine to push people.
	So I can't complain if that person pushes me back.
	Makes sense.
	And we've all known those sucky kids.
	Ooh!
	I almost never dislike children, but there's a little bit something about this, you know, where the kid goes up and looks around to see if the teacher's around, pushes the kid down.
	Kid gets back and pushes them down, and what do they do?
	They go crying to the teacher.
	He pushed me for no reason.
	I'm...
	Right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Mm-hmm.
	You've been trolled.
	It's small, but it's trolly.
	And...
	We recognize that that is so manipulative, right?
	And there's something really fundamentally unjust about that.
	And the reason for that is that, and I talk about this in Universally Preferable Behavior, A Rational Proof of Secular Ethics, my free book on ethics, which people, go read, go listen.
	It's free, for heaven's sakes.
	Great book.
	I can endorse.
	Oh, thank you.
	At freedomainradio.com slash free.
	And if Bob pushes over Sally, Sally pushes him back, and he then cries and complains and says that she's so mean for doing it, we recognize that that's unjust.
	Because by complaining that the other person is doing something wrong, by Bob complaining that Sally pushed him over, he's saying that he knows that pushing over someone is wrong, but he pushed over Sally to begin with.
	Right?
	So that's the huge problem.
	And people who justify, who know what they're doing is wrong, and justify what they're doing, those are the people...
	If I had to make a line in the sand, those are the people to whom retaliation has value.
	Does that make sense?
	Right, right.
	Retaliating in, you know, you, if you don't retaliate, or you're saying if you don't retaliate, you're complicit in...
	Whatever people justify, whatever people justify, they will repeat.
	Right?
	This is why, in this show, I'm continually pushing back against what people justify.
	Oh, my parents were great.
	My childhood was an eight, said the woman in this call.
	So he's justifying it, right?
	Whatever people justify, they will repeat.
	So to take a sinister example, a rapist who says, she was asking for it.
	You know, she led me on.
	It's all her fault.
	I did nothing wrong.
	She's just lying.
	Let's say he's a real rapist, right?
	Well, he's justifying.
	So what's going to stop him next time?
	Well, nothing.
	Because he's justifying it.
	Whereas, you know, if you catch some kid stealing a candy bar, he bursts into tears and he said, I feel so terrible.
	I never wanted to steal.
	My friends are pressuring me.
	I've learned my lesson and he's crying and it's genuine.
	You know, it's not like, eh, right?
	It's real genuine stuff.
	Well, do you want to continue to punish that?
	I talked years ago about the show The Wire where there's some homeless guy, spoiler, causes someone's death and he's just, he's so broken up and shattered by it, the cops don't even charge him.
	No possibility of repetition because he's not justifying it.
	Whatever people justify they will repeat.
	You can look at this from a geopolitical standpoint as well and get some interesting and useful conclusions out of it.
	So because whatever people justify they will repeat, if somebody's justifying their immoral actions against you and you don't act against them back, whether that's called the cops or whatever it's going to be, then you're complicit in the repetition.
	So, justice is extrapolating, is taking people's actions, extracting the moral principle, and extrapolating it back against them.
	And that's why self-defense is perfectly valid.
	Someone attacks you, they're saying attacking people is fine, so they can't complain when you attack them back.
	I mean, they can.
	But who cares, right?
	Because, you know, you based them on...
	I mean, I'm an empiricist.
	I don't care what people say or what they do, right?
	So if somebody steals from you, steals your bike, and you go back and take it back from them, and they say, stealing is wrong, it's like, you stole my bike.
	Come on.
	Don't be silly, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	So that is...
	Those two aspects, the proportional restitution, and you could say the principled blowback, or whatever we...
	I don't even...
	I don't have a good pithy phrase for it, but...
	Payback.
	Payback.
	Principled payback.
	Proportional restitution and principled payback.
	I think those are the sort of two sides of the arch that holds up the concept of justice.
	And people feel uncomfortable about this to some degree.
	It doesn't sound like you are.
	But people do feel uncomfortable about this because we want, which is the Socratic idea, we want A standard of behavior that is independent of other people's actions.
	Because we feel that if our standards of behavior are dependent upon other people's actions, somehow it becomes relativistic.
	And it's always troubled people when I talk about this, you know, I treat people the very best I can the first time I interact with them, and after that I treat them as they treat me.
	People have a tough time with this.
	They really do.
	Because what you want to get out of Socrates is turn the other cheek.
	That's what people want to get out of Jesus, turn the other cheek.
	Yes, yeah.
	But that's not how justice works because clearly the goal of any moral behavior should be at least to some degree to reduce immorality and its power in the world.
	The whole point of being a doctor is to reduce the prevalence of ill health in the world, right?
	And the whole point of being a moralist is to do that which reduces the prevalence of immorality in the world.
	Now there are times when Turning the other cheek will reduce the presence of immorality in the world.
	But there are times when turning the other cheek will escalate the presence of immorality in the world.
	I mean, appeasement, Chamberlain.
	Right, yeah, yeah.
	That did not solve the problem of escalating immorality in the world, right?
	If people had listened to Churchill in the mid-1930s, there would have been no war as Hitler.
	Perfectly, he said, you know, when I tried to go into the Rhineland, if they'd done a show of force, I'd have been done.
	I'd have been done.
	So, we want to be programmed by philosophy.
	We want some routine, some, like, I mean, a computer routine, some subroutine that's going to be, boom!
	This is what you do under all systems, all circumstances.
	You turn the other cheek.
	But that's not being a thinker.
	That's not being a philosopher.
	And that's like saying...
	I'm a doctor.
	Therefore, everyone who comes into my office gets pills.
	Oh wait, that's being a psychiatrist.
	Bad pills.
	So you have to be flexible to what's going on.
	And justice...
	Should seek to reduce the amount of immorality in the world and sometimes that means turning the other cheek and sometimes it doesn't and that's why the second keystone of the arch is so or the second side of the arch is so important which is is the person justifying what they do and if they are justifying what they do then turn the other cheek is only going to reward that behavior and therefore cause an increase in immorality in the world if they are self-attacking with regards to their behavior if they have a conscience then turning the other cheek Will
	increase the amount of morality in the world because your gentleness and kindness and sensitivity to their moral sensitivity will be viewed as a positive thing for them and it will enhance their empathy which we need for people to behave well in the world.
	So that's my relatively quick sprint through the word justice and I leave you to tell me of its utility.
	Well, yeah.
	It certainly makes a lot of sense the way you just explained it.
	You can't apply it independent of what other people do.
	Sometimes it might be the best to react and do something in return if it means...
	A better future.
	I mean, I suppose you can't know that, but like you said...
	There are some indications, right?
	You can know it to some degree, and there will, of course, always be mistakes.
	There are people who were let out of prison.
	Recidivism, which is the recommitting of a crime, is hugely high, like 80% in a lot of places.
	There are some people you keep in prison who would be perfectly peaceful if they went out, and there are lots of people who were let out of prison who become aggressive or violent or dysfunctional again.
	So obviously we need better ways.
	It's a government-run system, and it's all pretty terrible as far as that goes.
	So there will always be mistakes, but I don't believe that it's something that is unknowable.
	And again, brain scans and there's things that can be done, lie detectors and so on, I think things that could be developed to be better, that I think would really help.
	Now, social justice leads me to my final point, which can be even briefer than the second one.
	Which is, if you are intent on committing immoral actions, then your goal is to paralyze retaliation, right?
	Yes.
	Yeah, yeah.
	That makes sense.
	Now, there are two ways to paralyze retaliation.
	Number one is to preach turn the other cheek.
	Turn the other cheek regardless of behavior, regardless of context, regardless of what's happening in the moment, right?
	If you can convince people to turn the other cheek, then it rewards people who are justifying their own actions and will continue, number one.
	Number two, which we can see playing out in America at the moment, if you wish to gain greater scope for your aggressive actions, what you do is you say that all responses to aggression are unjust.
	And the way you do that is you say, there was no aggression on the part of the victim.
	It was only the police officer who had aggression, who was acting aggressively.
	Therefore, there's this pattern of aggression against innocent victims.
	And that is another way that you have of trying to paralyze the response.
	And social justice warriors work more on the turn of the other cheek.
	And other groups work more on the There was the initiation of forces on the part of the police, and it's unjust and it's moral and racist, whatever, right?
	And so these are two groups that are attempting to paralyze responses because they may not have the very, very best of intentions.
	Yeah, I see what you're saying.
	I guess I was seeing the idea of social justice a little different.
	To me, it seemed that people thought social justice, people think it's just to...
	You know, just redistribute resources based on, you know, historical events or based on what they perceive would be the fair distribution of those resources.
	It didn't seem to me to be as much encouraging people to turn the other cheek, but rather to, you know, use force to breathe out.
	Oh no, it is turn the other cheek.
	Because they want to come and take your resources and convince you that they're right to do so.
	And that to defy them would be unjust and immoral and you hate the poor and you hate minorities.
	They totally want to get you to turn the other cheek so they can go through your wallet.
	Unobstructed.
	Oh, yeah.
	No, I see what you're saying.
	And convince me that...
	Yeah, convince...
	I'll just say me.
	You have privilege.
	Therefore, you should give your stuff.
	And it's wrong if you keep it.
	It's aggressive, of course, but it is turn the other cheek.
	Don't interfere with my pillaging of your person and property.
	Yeah, I hadn't thought about it like that.
	But yeah, wow, that makes sense.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, they just want you to just take it.
	Shut up and pay!
	Yeah, because what you have is unjust.
	It must have been gotten through injustice.
	Right, and of course, if injustice is the forcible taking of property, then they are committing the same injustice against you in real time in the present that they claim your ancestors performed in the past.
	which is a complete contradiction, right?
	Right.
	If taking people's property by force, which of course is the essence of slavery, is immoral, which it is, then taxation, which is another kind of slavery, is also immoral.
	And how on earth do we solve moral problems that were neither inflicted nor caused by anyone alive by inflicting and causing the exact same moral violations on people who are living in the here and now?
	It makes no sense whatsoever, right?
	But of course, they don't care.
	All they want is for you to have some sort of turn-the-other-cheek mentality, which is don't resist.
	Yeah.
	Wow.
	Huh.
	Yeah, you kind of just blew my mind with that one.
	I hadn't really considered it that way, but...
	Yeah, and I guess that's the idea behind all of the concept behind social justice.
	The whole fucking social contract.
	Oh, yeah.
	The whole social contract.
	Pay your taxes because you want to live in a civilized society.
	And if you don't, you're an uncivilized barbarian who wants to eat baby goats for breakfast.
	I don't know.
	Maybe some people do.
	But the whole social contract is, well, the government gives you all these services.
	You've got to pay for them.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Like, I can just go drop a car in your driveway and demand $50,000.
	I gave you a car, didn't I? Actually, it's a pretty junky old car.
	I don't care!
	I gave you the car and I give me $50,000.
	That's justice!
	No, come on.
	You gave me crappy education, decaying roads, no borders, massive national debt, and now I'm supposed to pay for this privilege?
	All right.
	I will, but not because I'm turning the other cheek, but just because y'all have the guns.
	Well, yeah.
	Yeah, exactly.
	And that turn the other cheek is terrible because it requires that bad people recognize the virtues of good people and use them to exploit them, right?
	It requires a deep knowledge of virtue to exploit, right?
	So, I mean, it's an old argument.
	It's not mine.
	It's repeating it.
	Which is that a real racist doesn't care if you call him a racist, right?
	Yeah.
	But it's only people who don't like the idea of racism and who are sensitive to the idea of racism and view racism in a negative light, which is a reasonable thing to do, Those are the people who are bothered by accusations of racism.
	Somebody who really hated women, if they were called a misogynist, they would say, okay.
	Yes, right?
	I mean, but only somebody who's sensitive to negative statements towards women or hatred of women for being women would be bothered by that, right?
	So, again, this is all a deep knowledge of virtue and using it to force people to back down in the face of aggression.
	And it is...
	This is why if it's not pushed back against, it's going to escalate.
	Because it's justified, right?
	This is how you know whether to push back or turn the other cheek.
	If the person's justifying what they're doing, it's only going to escalate unless you push back.
	And of course, I just mean sort of verbally and all that.
	But I think that's the dividing line.
	And that's where people have a tough time.
	Because we would all like to turn the other cheek in many cases, right?
	Because it's easier and nicer.
	And we can buy ourselves five more minutes apiece.
	But there are times where turning the other cheek...
	Is going to escalate dysfunction and immorality in the world, and it comes around whether the person who is being aggressive is justifying their own actions, particularly according to a moral standard, then, well, then you are not in the turn-the-other-cheek territory anymore.
	Yeah, huh.
	Yeah, so...
	That's why taxes keep going up, because they say it's for the good of society, right?
	They justify it, which means it's going to escalate, so...
	Anyway, it sounds like I should stop while I've stuffed your brain to the gills with potential degrees, but I really appreciate the call.
	I do love, oh, I do so love the abstract philosophy.
	I'm good at it, too.
	I'd like to do more of it, but I don't know, keep getting driven over by the Brad Pitt Fury-style tank of reality and current events, but, you know, that's all right.
	It draws people into more great conversations like this one.
	Ah, how lovely.
	So thanks a lot for calling in.
	And thanks everyone so much for calling in tonight.
	Always a great pleasure to chat with yowl.
	Did you catch that with Diamond and Silk?
	I don't know what happens.
	I talk to people with those accents.
	But thanks so much for calling in.
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