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Oct. 11, 2016 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:49:01

3448 Selling Yourself When Nobody Is Buying - Call In Show - October 7th, 2016

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	Hey, hey everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio.
	How are you doing?
	I hope you're doing very, very well, and I hope you're enjoying our headlong rush to save Western civilization, and I hope, I hope that you will help pitch in for that very selfsame course at freedomainradio.com slash donate, not to mention following me on Twitter at Stefan Molyneux and using our Amazon affiliate link, fdrurl.com slash Amazon.
	So, let's say that you're interested in dating a substantially younger woman, and you wonder if it's going to work out or not.
	Well, this is the question of the first caller.
	Is dating younger people immoral?
	Is it impractical?
	What are the costs and benefits?
	So, we brought some facts and some reasoning to that, which I think will be very helpful.
	The second, it was an essential call from a mother and father of a very, very strong-willed toddler.
	What do you do when they just don't listen, when they don't obey?
	Is it possible?
	Is it plausible?
	Is it acceptable to use any kind of restraint or force, even to stop them from rolling off the change table and so on?
	Is that violation of the non-aggression principle?
	And I broke that down, I think, pretty solidly.
	And please, please just listen to this.
	If you're not going to become a parent, you're going to know someone who is.
	If you are a parent, this is very, very helpful.
	The third caller is a filmmaker who's interested in film.
	A cinematographer, and the very first project he was involved in was an Oscar-worthy, Oscar-nominated production, and he's finding, though, that he's having a real difficult time trying to get work these days in his industry.
	So we started sniffing around for the possible precedents of social justice warrior leftist incursions, and we talked about some possible solutions around that.
	You're probably going to face that at one time or another, so you hope you'll check that one out.
	The fourth caller said, why not just vote for Hillary so she's in charge when everything falls apart?
	Now, I made this argument many years ago, so I had a chance to revisit it and rethink about it before the show, of course.
	So we had a very good discussion about all of that.
	Please remember, freedomainradio.com slash donate.
	Alright, well up first tonight we have Asaf.
	He wrote in and said, Is dating someone significantly younger than you immoral or abusive?
	Or is it fair and simply frowned upon by society for no good reason?
	That's from Asaf.
	Hey Asaf, how you doing?
	How you doing, Steph?
	I'm well, I'm well.
	So, is this something you're doing?
	You're contemplating?
	How empirical are we here?
	Maybe contemplating.
	I mean, I'm only 24, so I haven't had a lot of experiences with significantly younger women, obviously, but...
	You know, I'm getting old and I'm starting to get more and more attention from, you know, 18-year-olds, 19-year-olds, even 17-year-olds.
	And I'm starting to think, I mean, am I missing great opportunities or am I being morally right by dismissing those opportunities?
	I think you're not missing great opportunities with the 17-year-olds other than being run out of town with a shotgun or being arrested.
	So I don't know where the laws are.
	It doesn't matter where you live, but always check these laws where you live.
	Here it's 16, but...
	Well, it depends.
	I mean, what are you looking for?
	I'm looking for relationships, actually.
	No, I get that.
	But what kind of relationships?
	I mean, do you want to settle down?
	Do you want to have affairs?
	Do you want to have flings?
	What's your deal, mate?
	I've had enough flings.
	I mean, I listened to this show for a while now and I completely changed my mindset around women.
	So, I'm looking to get married, and I'm looking to build a family.
	I know that's my long-term plan, but I haven't had a lot of experience with serious relationships.
	So, that's why I'm coming to you.
	Because for me, when a young woman flirts with me, I mean, there's no morality involved.
	I mean, it's me trying to balance, on the one hand, my sex drive, and on the other hand, I'm just scared of social pressure.
	People will look at me strangely if I date someone who's 18.
	Right, right.
	Well, so if you're talking about, what, like five or six years?
	Yeah, something like that.
	Okay.
	Well, there's some data that I've read it both ways, right?
	So we'll put the links into the show.
	So just starting from a baseline of no difference, right?
	This is chances of getting divorced.
	So if you have no difference in age, we'll just take that as the beginning point.
	If you're a year different in age, you're 3% more likely to get divorced.
	If you're five years different in age, you're 18% more likely to get divorced.
	If you're 10 years in age difference, you're 39% more likely to get divorced.
	20 years difference, 95% more likely.
	Or 30 years, which I guess for you would be minus six, 30 years age difference, 172% more likely to get divorced.
	So, no, it's not a moral issue.
	I mean, it's all voluntary and so on.
	But if you are in similar life situations, I think that breeds or brings a lot of compatibility to the mix.
	I mean, let's say you're 24.
	Let's say you finished your – if you went to university or whatever, you finished that and you're Starting your career, you're starting to date some 18-year-old.
	Well, either she's not going to college, in which case she's going to start a career, or she is going to college, in which case you're going to be starting your career while she's going to college.
	There's kind of like a mismatch.
	And then when she's finished her college and you're a couple of years into your career, she's going to start her career.
	So there's just a kind of laggy-ness that goes about it.
	Now, so if you're looking to sort of date a woman who's going to Get educated, get into the workforce and so on, then I think it's fair to say that there's going to be some gaps in your sort of experience.
	And on the other hand, if you want to marry a woman, you want to have a bushel full of kids and have her settle down, that's less important, right?
	Because if you're in your mid-20s and you're starting to settle down into a career or do whatever it is you're going to do with your life and she's going to stay home and she's going to take care of the kids, well, Then you don't have that particular issue of feeling like there's an echo, right?
	I mean that she's doing stuff you did a half decade before.
	So you're kind of in the way of her experiencing it for the first time and there may be a little bit sort of eye-rolling-y stuff for you because she's going through like that the first time stuff for her is like long ago stuff for you.
	So I think...
	It's not so much age as in particular life circumstances.
	Like if you're – let's say you took a whole bunch of time off and now you're starting school in your mid-20s and she's 19 and starting school.
	I think that's less of an issue if you're sort of in the same life areas.
	Well, there are big gaps in life areas.
	I think there can be problems in terms of getting along.
	So I think age differences maybe matter a little bit more at your age than they would somebody who's If you're 31 or somebody who's 37, well, you know, you're in your careers and so on doing your thing.
	But certainly for men, having a younger woman, if you want to have kids, right, having a younger woman gives you more time, right, because fertility begins to drop off in your mid-20s for women.
	So, no, I... I think if the values – I mean the values are key.
	If you share the same values, reason and evidence, we're going to – if you share reason and evidence, the beautiful thing is you never end up in these kind of knock-down, drag-out, emotionally volatile fights where it's just win-lose, dominate or be dominated like a Nietzschean vortex with tits and balls.
	That's just terrible stuff to get into.
	So if you have sort of reason and evidence as your guide, if philosophy is your guide, then you have – Reason and evidence mediates disputes and not just between nations or not just between business people and not just between politics and philosophy but in romantic relationships.
	That is the way to go.
	So if you share values and you're not too disparate in your life experience, I think the age difference is not going to be a huge issue.
	What are your thoughts about it?
	Well, you said something about if you make enough money and you want someone who's a stay-at-home mom, then the age gap is not going to be a big difference.
	Well, I work in IT. I mean, I'm a student, but I just started a career in IT. I mean, I want the best for my kids when I eventually come to building a family.
	So it's not much of an issue for me what she does for a living.
	I mean, if I can make most of the money and get most of the resources, then...
	What she's going to do for a living is be the mother to your children, which is a noble and beautiful and necessary profession for the continuance of the species and the civilization itself.
	So, yeah, I mean, and this is kind of a thing that we all understand, you know, as men.
	And I'm sure women understand it as well, but we understand this as men.
	I mean, a man can look, let's say you're getting your groceries, right?
	And They're going down that conveyor belt, and at the end of the conveyor belt is some stunningly beautiful young woman, right?
	Yeah.
	And part of you is like, well, cashier, but pretty.
	Whereas I don't know for some woman who's a career woman.
	She's an attractive guy.
	She'll sort of say, oh, that's an attractive guy or whatever, but the hypergamy just doesn't really kick in.
	Yeah, there's a lot of hypocrisy about this issue.
	I mean...
	It's not hypocrisy!
	No, no, no.
	No, from society.
	From society.
	I mean, men are attracted to younger women.
	Women are attracted to older men.
	But they still call it abusive.
	No, no, no.
	That's not precise.
	Men are attracted to fertile women, and women are attracted to men with resources.
	Again, assuming that the state isn't pouring all the resources that it can find down there, needy welfare, cleavage, or whatever, right?
	I mean, so, just let's be precise.
	I mean, if women...
	We're into the older men, then they'd all be swarming and thudding up against the walls and the windows of the old age home like hawks in pursuit of a kid in a glass hallway.
	So it is the fertility and resources where there's not a big load of state manipulation that's going on.
	Sorry to interrupt, but when there is a lot of state, you get a different type of market.
	You get a different type of sexual market.
	For me, when I meet women my age, it's a lot harder to open their minds to my set of beliefs and to my way of thinking.
	It's a lot harder to convince someone who's already doing a second degree or a master's or something to be a stay-at-home mom.
	Maybe younger women would be more open to these ideas.
	I mean, from my experience, younger people are far more open to new radical ideas that they haven't been met with.
	So maybe that's in my interest.
	Even though we are in a different stage of life.
	Yeah.
	Mike, you had some actual data that you wanted to bring to the conversation, thus disrupting all of the general windbaggery coming from my direction?
	Yeah, I'll probably find a presentation that we could cram this into at some point in the future, but I'll just read this little blurb from a recent study that came out.
	A woman slash man can choose between communicating with two people.
	One earns $60,000 a year and is more attractive than 9 out of 10 people on the market.
	The other earns X dollars per year and is less attractive than 9 out of 10 people on the market.
	Every other observable characteristic about these two is identical.
	We can use the information that tells us who individuals choose to communicate with to determine what X would have been in order to make a man slash woman prefer the less attractive person.
	Researchers have done this and find that for men, there is no amount of income that the woman in the bottom 10% in terms of appearance can earn to make men prefer her over women in the top 10%.
	That is, looks really matter to men relative to income.
	For women, though, if a man in the bottom 10% of looks earns more than $248,000, they will prefer him over the more attractive guy earning $60,000.
	So, interesting data coming out from a recent study showing that, yes, men are very, very, very, very visual.
	And women like looks as well, but they also like resources.
	And we'll defer to resources if, in this case, $186,000 per year is subsidized to the not-so-great-looking guy.
	Yeah, like there's that old sort of canard or cliche about unattractive women have great senses of humor.
	They have great personality.
	Oh, that's an old thing.
	Somebody sets you up on a blind date and you say, what's she like?
	And the person says, oh, she's got a great personality.
	And you immediately think, ugh.
	She's got to look like a troll if the first thing you mention is her personality.
	I'm not saying that's fair.
	This is kind of a cliche.
	And I remember a friend of mine from way back in the day.
	He's short.
	I think he's 5'5 or something like that.
	Like me.
	Oh, you're 5'5.
	Okay.
	5'6 or something.
	So it bothered him.
	He lacked confidence as a whole but it bothered him and he told me once that he'd read a study where there was a guy, his height on dating profiles and they kind of figured out what they needed to add to his profile in order to get him the same number of responses as your average six foot two or just six foot schmo, right?
	And he had to be like a doctor.
	He had to have an income of a quarter million dollars more a year.
	There was all these things that they had to keep piling on to make him just equal some other guy who genetically turned out to be six inches taller.
	But this is one of these circular things that makes sense, right?
	If shortness has lower sexual market value, Then a woman is going to be less likely to choose a short guy because her sons are going to be shorter.
	Shortness doesn't seem to be much of a problem for women, but if the man is short, then his sexual market value is going to be lower as well, right?
	And so that is sort of an issue as well.
	And again, this is all...
	When the government is floating around, these things become more the case.
	I wouldn't limit myself necessarily.
	You want to look for a wise and intelligent and virtuous woman and date her.
	That would be my suggestion.
	If you called it and said there's some 46-year-old woman who wants to go out with me, I'd say, hmm...
	It may not be the wisest use of your time, but those would be my sort of perspectives or opinions, if that helps.
	Wait, you said that the state messes around, and I heard you make that point several times.
	Do you think that when the state intervenes and you have all this single motherhood and all that stuff, then Physical appearance becomes more important for men in the sexual market value?
	No, no, no.
	It's for women.
	Physical appearance becomes more important for a man than his resource provision.
	Basically what it does is the welfare state, as I argued in sort of my series on R versus K selection called Gene Wars, G-E-N-E Wars, which people should really, really check out.
	When you get government welfare...
	The most sort of advanced civilizations tend to occur in case-selected environments and then government welfare turns those case-selected environments into our selected environments.
	Massive amounts of resources and when you have extra resources, then you don't have to worry about the man being a good provider.
	You just go for...
	For looks, right?
	The bad boys.
	And so, yeah, the government basically turns Europe into Africa when you get a welfare state and there's just less.
	Or, you know, the Peloponnesian – sorry, not Peloponnesian Isles.
	Any sort of particular tropical area where there's lots of food and so on and you're never really short of resources, the welfare state turns the world into – Polynesian.
	Peloponnesian.
	That's Greek.
	Polynesian islands.
	Thank you, brain, for finally coughing up a hairball of correct speech.
	But yeah, so when you get a welfare state, then women can choose unstable bad boys who are sexy and exciting and unreliable and so on.
	And before, right, that was a big fight for women, which is to cross your legs when the bad boy comes along and to make sure you hold out for the right guy.
	In the reverse, that's sort of the story of Kevin Smith's first movie, Clerks.
	And the welfare state changes all of that because the woman doesn't have to rely upon the man to provide for her because the state will step in and provide that for her.
	In other words, the state will force other men to provide for her if the man she chooses won't provide for her.
	So female virtue collapses.
	The demand for male virtue collapses.
	And we can see that kind of playing out in a wide variety of places across the Western world.
	Mm-hmm.
	I made a point about open-mindedness in younger people in general, not just women.
	And that's something that's very important to me because I feel like I'm surrounded by rationality all over the place.
	So, obviously, I don't want...
	Can I come live where you are?
	Maybe I'm in the wrong place.
	No, I said irrationality.
	Oh, irrationality, okay.
	No, you don't want to live where I am.
	That's a little bit more on a go.
	I withdraw my application.
	I think it's all over the world, though.
	I mean, people are not very rational or philosophical, and they don't make good arguments.
	And when they're exposed to bad arguments and, you know, just race baiting and, you know, gender baiting and all that, They become numb and they really can't think.
	So I don't want that in my relationships and it's very important to me.
	So do you think I have a point by saying that younger people will have more open mind about the stuff I bring up?
	Well, here's the thing.
	I mean, rationality has always been obviously at odds with superstition.
	And in a sort of free market, when there's no big giant welfare state and all of that, then rationality has significant value.
	Because the more rational man, we assume to a large degree, is the man more able to provide resources for his offspring.
	But when the welfare state comes charging along, the demand for male rationality goes down.
	The demand for male risk-taking goes down.
	For entrepreneurship goes down.
	Because a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
	And if a single mom, I talked about this in The Truth About the Welfare Cliff, but if a single mom can get about $65,000 worth of benefits just by pumping out kids and not having a husband and not having a job, well, what does she care whether men are rational or not?
	She gets the money no matter what.
	Now, in an abstract sense, some men need to be rational in order to pay the taxes and it is the majority of taxes are paid by men.
	He needs to be rational to pay the taxes.
	I understand all of that but that's very abstract and doesn't land particularly on anyone other than we abstract thinkers.
	So, the demand for male rationality has collapsed with the growth of the welfare state because to be a provider, you need to be rational.
	Rational doesn't necessarily mean objective or philosophical and so on.
	Rational could be, okay, here's how I best adapt and exploit the irrationalities of the tribe around me.
	If you view irrationalities of the tribe around you as just another resource.
	Like animals you can hunt, or it sounds like bad, like you're hunting your fellow tribal members, but it's just a resource, right?
	I mean, it may be the most rational thing for a man to do to provide resources to his offspring is to become a priest.
	You know, maybe he's really good at talking.
	Maybe he's got a nice, sonorous, kind of James Earl Jones kind of voice, and he's really good at hypnotizing people with timber, and that's the rational thing for him to do.
	So, sort of rational adaptation to the requirement to provide resources to offspring, it's just not valued.
	And so, when women don't value rationality, we get these emails, oh, women are irrational and so on.
	It's like, I think that was not the case, even if we accept it's more the case now, which you could say with the welfare state normal, rationality has kind of fallen out of the wayside because rationality is the tools necessary to deal with Yeah.
	And I think rationality – the demand for rationality from women has definitely diminished and therefore whenever the demand diminishes, in general, so does the supply.
	Yeah.
	And so I think rationality is becoming less valued but that's okay.
	All that means is that there's a giant backlash of demand for rationality coming along, which means that when the government runs out of money and the welfare state runs out of money, then suddenly rationality – you want a short irrationality, but suddenly rationality is going to become a great deal more valuable, and it will be quite surprising how quickly people adapt to that.
	Mm-hmm.
	I think that when rationality is not valued, I think what's more valued is conformity.
	And from my experience, I mean, conformity and non-confrontational behavior is what really is valued today, I mean, in society.
	And I experience it a lot in my life.
	I mean, it's hard to make friends if you really say what you think, especially when you're rational and especially when you care about the truth.
	It feels kind of lonely sometimes, you know, up there when you're not ignorant.
	So...
	That's why I even asked this question.
	There aren't that many women that I can find who will share my common values and all that stuff, so why should I give up these opportunities?
	I mean, okay, we're in a different stage in life.
	Maybe that's something I should just take it on the chin and embrace some of the other benefits.
	When you're looking for a rare fish, throw the net as wide as possible.
	Yeah.
	I mean, throw the net as wide as you can with, you know, an eye towards compatibility in a temporal sense.
	But there are, you know, there are a lot of women who get in contact with us as well who are really complaining about the lack of rational and intelligent men.
	You know, you've probably seen that ponytailed low-T cuck.
	You're an effing white male!
	Yeah.
	Can you give them my phone number?
	That's a quality guy.
	Yeah.
	Do you want to hand out your phone number?
	I will not be a dating agent, but I will tell you, there are just as many frustrated women that email me as frustrated men that email me saying, I can't find anyone rational.
	So, it's not just a male problem, it's an email problem as well.
	I have the public email account.
	It's what happens.
	What can I say?
	Yeah.
	But, Asif, are you saying that you don't...
	You said, you know, if you are honest to people and speak truth to people, you're unlikely to make friends.
	Do you speak honestly and openly on a regular basis?
	Or is that something you kind of shield and hide for fear of being, you know, people not liking you or, you know, the negative fallout that could happen from that?
	I try to avoid because I have a lot of bad experience with, you know, speaking up my mind.
	I just try to keep it in the small talk level and not...
	Not actually say what I think.
	And when I say what I think, people are not impressed.
	They're not impressed with like, oh, you made actually a good eye-opening argument.
	And I am.
	I mean, I think I make good points when I talk about subjects that interest me.
	And sometimes I do.
	Sometimes I do get positive feedback.
	I mean, if I post something on Facebook, then I won't get a lot of likes, but I get a lot of personal messages.
	Not a lot, but I get quite a few...
	You know, personal messages like, oh really, I don't want to talk about this subject out loud, but I really agree with what you had to say about this subject and this subject.
	Well, because you do run into the situation that if you are shielding yourself and not saying what you think in public, you're less likely to find the person in public that you actually want to find who will respond positively to that type of thing.
	And if you're looking for a relationship partner that's going to respond positively and be able to think, and you're shielding yourself, they might look at you and go, oh, here's a guy that's not able to speak openly.
	Honestly, he's shielding himself.
	This isn't what I'm looking for.
	And you might be like, you know, two horses passing in the night.
	Both shielding each other because you don't want to be looked at negatively by the people around you, but at the same time, you're rational people that are just as scared of getting attacked.
	Does that make sense?
	Or another way of putting what Mike's saying is that you put out a whistle that draws the predators, and after about a thousand maulings, a predator will show up with a beautiful woman on his back that you want to marry.
	Yeah, but when the predators attack, it's not a very good experience.
	I mean, it's not enjoyable when people just attack you personally on your opinions and all that stuff.
	So I kind of keep to myself.
	Sometimes I post stuff on Facebook, but...
	You know what's a worse experience, Asif?
	What?
	Not finding someone that you want to spend the rest of your life with and dying alone.
	Yeah, it's true.
	Not to be blunt, but I'll be blunt.
	But also meet people in the real world, right?
	I mean, if there's some group that you think you have some compatibility with, ask them, is there a meetup, right?
	And go meet people in the real world.
	Dealing with people digitally, they're like a different species than people in real life, for the most part.
	If you deal with people digitally, Basically, the Matrix is populated by assholes.
	But real life, people are much nicer.
	And so, I would just suggest, you know, do a little meet the flesh people in the big blue room of reality.
	And you might find that it's a little easier to, you know, get your ideas across and sort of give and take.
	And you never know who they might know.
	They might have a cousin or a sister or a friend or whatever it is, right, who wants they get to know you.
	But I don't know.
	I mean, I know I do a lot of stuff online and That's the nature of my business, but I'm already very happily married.
	I would suggest that you might want to take things a little bit like, well, if I put smoke signals out on Facebook, maybe I'll get the Pokemon of magical positive heartness to come my way.
	Find groups that you have some compatibility.
	I used to go to libertarian meetups.
	I used to go to objectivist meetups.
	It wasn't a big dating thing.
	I certainly wasn't averse to it when I was younger and single.
	Go meet people.
	And you might be really surprised at the kind of positive feedback and positive feedback loop that you get, which you don't get by putting things public on Facebook or Twitter or whatever.
	Yeah.
	It's not like I can't socialize or anything.
	I mean, I do have my social circles and I have friends from work.
	And I find it easy to make friends but not to make, like, deep, you know...
	True friends that you can really share what you think and what you feel about them.
	Yeah.
	So it feels like I'm wearing a mask, you know.
	I'm not really...
	And you can do that and a good way to find a way to drop that mask is simply spend less time online so that you don't have those negative experiences, right?
	You think it's a waste of time?
	No, I didn't say that.
	What I'm saying is that if you keep exposing yourself to attacks by posting things in some sort of public way where people are going to get upset about it and it really bothers you, then you're going to have less open-heartedness when you meet real people.
	So there's a cost.
	There's a cost to rubbing your ideals against the chief grader of the internet.
	In terms of just, you know, happiness, contentedness, social trust, optimism, enthusiasm, I barely do it.
	So that's sort of my suggestion to spend more time with real people, and I think you'll find it easier to be open-hearted.
	Yeah.
	The thing about online people is that they're not very social.
	That's why they're online.
	And I noticed that about myself, and I kind of changed over the last...
	I don't know, several years, but I'm still online.
	Because, you know, I can't bring these subjects up in the real world, so I bring them up on, you know, discussion groups on Facebook and all that stuff.
	I'd caution you against saying you can't.
	You're making a choice not to.
	It's not that you can't.
	Yeah, you're right.
	If you remove the choice from the equation, that's a big tool to leave in your toolkit.
	Yeah.
	Sometimes I do, actually, but it's not a fun experience, and I don't feel good about it later.
	If I have to argue with my family members or friends...
	No, that's because you're looking for agreement.
	God, that's a huge waste of time.
	I'm sorry to be so blunt.
	You bring these topics up and you're looking for people to agree with you, right?
	Or at least some receptivity?
	No.
	No, no, no.
	I mean, if you're bringing up philosophical arguments, if you're bringing up reason, evidence, free market stuff, whatever it's going to be, a leader does not look for agreement.
	And you have to be a leader in this area.
	And we know this empirically.
	You have to be a leader.
	You can't be someone out there with a begging bowl saying, it'd be really nice if people agreed with me.
	No.
	I mean, just think of the first people who thought about ending slavery, right?
	I'd have been part of human society for over 100,000 years, I'm going to assume.
	Well, did they start walking around saying, well, I'm interested in ending slavery.
	I think slavery is an evil institution, evil situation, an evil government program.
	Did they look for agreement?
	Of course not.
	Why?
	Because they were first.
	Right?
	I mean, if you're Lewis and Clark hacking your way through flyover country, you don't sit there and say, well, I'm sure around the next bend of the river is going to be a nice five-star hotel.
	Why?
	Because you're first.
	If there's going to be a five-star hotel, it's because...
	Your great grandkids will build it after you explore the wilderness.
	We're early.
	We're first.
	We're first.
	We can't look for agreement when we're first.
	We can either shut up or we can be leaders.
	So what are we looking for?
	I mean...
	Leaders don't look for...
	Leaders make things.
	Right?
	If there's no hotel...
	In your one-horse town, you don't look for a hotel.
	You don't ask people, where's the hotel?
	You don't say to people, let's meet at the hotel because they're going to say, you're crazy, there's no hotel.
	What do you do if you think there should be a hotel in your town?
	You build the hotel.
	You don't ask for agreement.
	Should I build a hotel?
	People don't care.
	They've got their own lives to live.
	You go and you build your damn hotel and you make it the most beautiful thing You put your heart and soul into it, but you become a leader in the building of the hotel.
	You don't become someone who looks for consensus on whether there should be a hotel.
	You don't look for partners from people who don't share the vision of this hotel.
	You just do whatever it takes to build the hotel.
	You understand?
	You're looking for agreement.
	You're looking for people to accept you.
	You're looking for people to fall in line with your thinking.
	It's way too early for that.
	You must be a leader or shut up about it.
	And I don't mean – that sounds hostile.
	I really don't mean it in that way at all.
	Again, these values, these beliefs, these arguments that we put forward, at least that I put forward in this show, completely and totally optional.
	Completely, you can say, ah, you know that crazy guy on the internet.
	We see this occasionally on YouTube.
	Blah, blah, blah, blah.
	Unseb!
	It's like, okay, I'll try to survive my day, friend.
	If you can't even hear the tiny door of the ant who slams it on his way out, it doesn't exactly shake the rafters of your house.
	But anyway...
	And it's fine.
	I know when people are like, Steph, you've gone too far.
	Steph, this argument is too much.
	Or I can't believe you interviewed Ann Coulter.
	I can't either.
	It was great.
	But this is what they say.
	And I'm like, you should not be here then.
	This is not for you.
	You don't want to build a hotel?
	That's fine.
	Don't be on the team to build the hotel.
	I've got no problem with that.
	If you don't want to argue for truth and reason and evidence, that's totally fine.
	If you don't want to argue for the free market, you don't have to.
	None of this stuff should be compulsory, for heaven's sake.
	The moment it becomes compulsory, it's nothing.
	It vanishes.
	It's gone, like mist.
	The dawn mist by noon, gone.
	Ghosts after an exorcism, gone.
	So, nobody has to do any of this.
	Everybody should be perfectly free to walk away at any time.
	I am.
	Hell, I could wake up tomorrow and say, eh, 10 years.
	4,000 shows.
	Come on, man.
	I'm going to become a mime!
	Finally!
	I'm just doing this, you know?
	I'm only trying to be an actress so I can break into waitering.
	So I could wake up tomorrow.
	And Mike could.
	And every single one of my listeners could wake up tomorrow and say, not for me.
	Done with it.
	And I could go from close to 500,000 to zero.
	And we're all free to be in this or not be in this.
	But there's a way to be in this.
	That is satisfying and there's a way to be in this that is frustrating as hell.
	And I think the way that you're in it is frustrating as hell.
	You're lonely.
	You're stifled.
	You're silent.
	We've got another guy calling in, hopefully either this show or the next show, which is a common, you know, you're in college and some professor is battling some nonsense and everyone's like, oh yeah, that's so smart, man.
	You're totally correct.
	And this guy's like, I can't take it.
	Can't take it.
	Must fight back.
	Too scared of bad grades.
	Must fight.
	That's no way to be in philosophy.
	And so, if you want to build a hotel, you don't just sort of randomly knock on people's doors and ask if they want to invest $5,000 in you building a hotel.
	I mean, that's just not how things work in the world.
	If you want to be into philosophy...
	Just be a leader.
	Be in charge.
	Don't seek consensus.
	Don't seek to build a tribe.
	I mean, you just have to be in charge.
	And I know that that's a very abstract thing, and that's different things for different people.
	But if you're going to be in it, don't compromise.
	Don't waste your time with people who can't think.
	You've just got to be in it.
	It's like being a monk.
	You're a monk or you're not a monk.
	And if you're not a monk, don't be half a monk.
	It's just annoying for everyone.
	So that's sort of my suggestion that if you are somebody who's really bothered by people disagreeing with you or scorning you or rejecting you, then remember, you're free to walk away from the army of philosophy anytime you want.
	If it's not working for you, if it's frustrating for you, if you don't want to go the distance, then don't.
	It is frustrating.
	People argue with me when I point out the logical fallacies.
	I do it very simple.
	I keep it simple and they still don't listen.
	And it's very frustrating.
	And all they care about is if you're nice.
	It's how nice you are when you make these arguments.
	They don't even listen to the arguments themselves.
	It's not what you say, it's how you say it.
	Yeah, it's how you say it.
	I actually had a...
	Never mind.
	But yeah, you get that a lot.
	It's about how you say it, it's about the way you present things, and they don't really care about whether the stuff you say is logic and sound.
	I mean, that's all I cared about when I got into philosophy, when I was exposed to your show, when I was introduced to atheism, when I learned all the...
	Every time I learn new stuff, all I care about is whether it's true or not.
	I don't care about the...
	The way it's been presented to me all that much.
	So it is frustrating.
	But if we drop the analogies, I mean, what does building the hotel mean?
	I mean, in the real world, do I make a YouTube channel?
	Do I... I don't know.
	What do I do?
	I know what you did.
	Yeah, well, that's not a bad thing to do either.
	It's not like we're overburdened with people at the front here, so feel free to join anytime you want.
	All right, I'm going to move on to the next caller, but I really appreciate the call, and I certainly wish you the very best of luck.
	Keep us posted, if you like, about how things go, and it was a great, great question.
	Thank you.
	Thank you for the show.
	Thank you.
	Alright, up next we have a couple, Kevin and McKenna.
	They wrote in and said, That's from Kevin and McKenna.
	Oh, hey guys.
	How are you doing tonight?
	Good.
	How are you doing, Steph?
	I'm well.
	I'm well.
	Thank you.
	So she's fighting you a little bit there?
	She's a normal baby.
	She's very stubborn, like her parents.
	Yeah.
	So yeah, the tiny mirror aspect of being a parent, you know, this behavior that I do too really bothers me when I can't negotiate with you because it's too much like being myself.
	No, I get that.
	Yeah, you'll get a kid just like you, you know?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, yeah, that's right.
	Chip off the old block.
	Oh yeah, no, my daughter is really, really good at debating.
	She's like, hey dad, remember this thing you said seven months ago when we were doing that thing and now it's directly relevant?
	It's like, you can't even remember where you left your crayon from this morning?
	Yeah, it's remarkable.
	But why do you think she's fighting so much?
	Well, like I said, she's definitely a screamer, but I would say that within the range of normal, our baby likes to do her own thing.
	I think she just likes to be constantly busy and moving and exploring and doing things like that.
	So anytime that she's restricted by us and not her choice, then she gets frustrated.
	And how would you say your bond is with her?
	I mean, I'm home with her all day, every day, and we do everything together.
	I'm down on her level playing with her all day and doing whatever she's interested in.
	So I feel like we have a good relationship.
	How is your credibility with her?
	I know this is an odd question, because playing with your kids is great.
	Right.
	I was teaching...
	I was not...
	I was trying to teach my daughter volleyball recently.
	And I'm pretty good at volleyball.
	I mean, I'm a pretty sporty guy.
	I'm pretty good at volleyball.
	And I'm trying to explain to her, you know, basically the two ways of hitting, right?
	The volley and the bump.
	And she's like, no, no, Dad, I understand.
	Like, nope.
	No, you don't.
	I said, okay, how long have I been playing volleyball?
	Long pause.
	A while.
	Years and years.
	I started playing volleyball a bit of my mid-teens, so it's been 35 years or whatever.
	And I said, where did mommy and daddy meet?
	At volleyball.
	How long have you been playing volleyball?
	10 minutes.
	And so I had to say, so do you think I have something of value to offer you here?
	In terms of learning how to play?
	Fine.
	And so I taught her a serve, you know, hold it, the underhand serve, and then she did a fantastic serve, at which point I did a big daddy dance.
	Daddy was right.
	No, that's just gasoline on the fire.
	But I said, okay, so, you know, you didn't want to be taught something.
	I taught you something.
	Do you find it useful?
	Yes.
	And to her credit, right?
	Yes.
	Yes, I did.
	And she doesn't like to be taught things.
	She likes to figure them out for herself, which I understand.
	I taught myself computers, computer programming, podcasting, and so on, right?
	And so, entrepreneurship.
	I didn't go to business school.
	I didn't go to computer science school.
	I ended up running a technical company in the software field.
	So, I understand all of that.
	You teach yourself stuff.
	But you can save a lot of time and also...
	You learn bad habits and then you have to undo them to get better habits if you don't take instruction early on.
	So I am her play companion.
	I am somebody we sit down and have chats and play games together and so on.
	But there are times where I need to remind her the empirical fact that I know one heck of a lot more than she does.
	In other words, that I have some authority that I need to remind her of.
	That she needs to understand.
	Does that make any sense?
	I mean, how would you do that with a 14-month-old?
	I mean, obviously I can't talk to her and sit her down.
	Well, how are her language skills?
	She can say mama and dada.
	So good so far.
	Yeah.
	She's doing better than a lot of people on the left.
	Right.
	All right.
	All right.
	So, I mean...
	Anything else?
	Has she got any other, like, object things?
	Or does she understand, like, drawings and so on?
	Not the best.
	I mean, she's starting to understand more.
	But I don't know if she's very consistent at this point.
	But she can hear and process a lot more than she can say, right?
	Right.
	Whenever you learn a language, you can...
	Usually process a lot more that you hear than you could say, right?
	Right.
	Is that her?
	Yes.
	She does sound like really rebellious.
	Yeah, definitely.
	I think you need, not really a podcast, you need a priest.
	Right.
	Absolutely.
	So with regards to authority, do you have firmness, right?
	I mean, when you say no, Is it firm?
	Is it sort of consistent?
	Is it something...
	She doesn't look up scared, but maybe a little startled, like there's a change in tone.
	Yes, she definitely turns to me.
	She knows that no means shaking your head, and she knows what no means, that you need to stop doing whatever you're doing.
	I'm her.
	I'm her.
	How do you tell me no?
	I mean, her name is Lily, so I would say...
	It feels funny saying it to you because you're an adult, but I would say, Lily, no, we don't do that, or you need to stop doing that, you know.
	I have a serious...
	No, no, come on.
	No, really, you don't do it that way.
	Come on.
	Come on, really.
	Do you give her candy and bunnies when you tell her no that way, too?
	No.
	I have a more serious tone, and I... Okay, give me the serious tone.
	I want to hear this.
	All right, here I am, reaching for a plug.
	Lily, no, that's unsafe.
	You need to stop doing that.
	You know, I don't know.
	Okay, that's...
	Wait, husband, help me out here.
	Is this how she does it?
	Maybe a little bit more forcefully than that.
	Okay, a little bit, but you're not saying a lot, right?
	Well, I mean, if you're talking about reaching for a plug, then we're running over there and grabbing it.
	No, no, but that's physical size.
	I'm talking about just having authority.
	I would say my wife is a peaceful parent and authoritative.
	So, more authoritative than she sounds in this particular conversation, is that what you're saying?
	I'll give her more credit, yeah.
	When the baby's reaching for a plug or something, then yeah, she'll...
	She'll definitely, you know, her voice gets a little louder than that.
	Because you want to be friends.
	But, of course, you do have to, I mean, the kids do have to know who's in charge, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, she needs to know who's in charge.
	Yeah.
	And by in charge, it doesn't mean the boss, and it doesn't mean a bully or anything like that.
	But, you know, she's 14 months old.
	As the old phrase goes, she don't know shit from Shanola, right?
	And so as far as that goes, the authority thing is important.
	And the authority thing doesn't mean you yell at her.
	It doesn't mean that you bully her.
	It doesn't mean that she can never have a say.
	All of these things, right?
	Now, at that age, I found that a drawing could be very helpful, right?
	So let's say, how is she with tooth brushing?
	She likes to play with it.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So bad, is what you said.
	Yeah, not the best.
	We can speed this along anytime you want, people.
	We don't get the concept.
	Right.
	Now, when I was a kid, this is what I was told about tooth brushing.
	I was told, like, little, little.
	So I was told that when you eat sugar, That it sits on your teeth.
	And if you go to bed without brushing your teeth, then little fairies come along and they scoop up the sugar and they dance on your teeth.
	And their feet make little holes and sometimes will crack your teeth.
	And that's why you have to go to the dentist and get them drilled if you don't brush your teeth.
	Well, that's scary.
	I wouldn't want that to happen to me.
	Well, so I brush my teeth.
	And I remember when I was five years old, I very, very clearly remember this.
	We had this big box with Lego.
	Now, you know, I don't know if you guys grew up poor or not, but when you're a poor kid, you have like the most ridiculously – maybe this is why I hate multiculturalism sometimes, but I had the most ridiculously diverse Lego bits that you could possibly imagine because we never bought – I had no idea where all this stuff came from.
	We never bought any Lego because we were broke.
	But I had Lego, and it was probably just, you know, people were moving, or kids got too old for it, and they just, you know, here's a big bag of Lego, and, like, half the pieces didn't fit, different sizes, different consistencies.
	Some of them were, like, the rubbery things, and some of them were, like, the hard plastic things, and I was, like, half a window, and some bits had chewed at the end.
	Like, it was just this big, big box of random Lego.
	A multicultural mosaic, almost literally, you could say.
	And, you know, you may do, and all that.
	But I remember...
	Sitting in that box playing with my Lego.
	And I used to do this thing like most kids did, which is like, you know, mom would say, brush your teeth.
	And I'd say, oh, I brushed my teeth.
	Smell your breath.
	Let me smell your breath, right?
	And so I'd get this thing where I'd like rub the toothpaste on my teeth.
	It's like, aha, now, you know, like I'm getting away with something, right?
	And I remember five years old, I'm sitting in this Lego box.
	And I was looking at a piece of Lego that had like the chew box on it.
	And I suddenly thought, wait a minute.
	They're my teeth!
	I mean, if I get away with not brushing them, who ends up at the dentist?
	Look, Mom, I managed to fool you!
	Oh, I get drilled now?
	That's drilled?
	That's bad.
	So, there is that sort of...
	So, the story was told, and I don't know if the story really took, but I did sort of find that when it came to communicating with kids, diagrams can be really helpful, right?
	So you can draw a picture of somebody with nice teeth, and then you can draw a picture of somebody who's got teeth falling out of their mouth and whatever, right?
	And you say, who's prettier, right?
	And you can probably point towards the even teeth.
	Ah, and then you can sort of draw a picture of a tooth, and you can talk as it is.
	It's not fairies that dance on your teeth, but it's...
	Bugs that eat the sugar and then eat a little too deep and crack the enamel or whatever goes on, right?
	Bacteria, right?
	And nobody wants bugs in their mouth, right?
	So I'm not saying you sort of do anything horrifying, but you can draw things out in a way that can communicate to kids even in a relatively pre-verbal phase.
	So that they sort of understand.
	And, you know, you can say, I believe I've had this speech, something like this, you know, Daddy is the tooth guardian.
	My job is to protect your teeth.
	I am, and you draw yourself a picture with a, you know, instead of a sword, you've got a giant toothbrush, you know.
	Instead of a shield, you've got like a big floss packet or something like that.
	You can just draw these things and, you know, and tell her, you know, your teeth, all your teeth belong to us, right?
	Your teeth belong to me.
	I am the guardian of your teeth.
	You're not the guardian of your teeth.
	You're not the protector of your teeth because you're little, but I am the protector of your teeth.
	It is my job, you know, and I've said this a million times, like it's my job to deliver my daughter to adulthood in a healthy and functional state.
	hope, but it's my job to do.
	And to do that, I need to do things that she doesn't like.
	And this is nothing, I said, it's nothing to do with you.
	The things I have to do that I don't like in order to maintain health and all this other kind of stuff.
	Sometimes you have to do stuff that you don't like or not do stuff that you do like.
	But I think the authority thing is really important.
	And I think the studies have pretty much shown that kids, when they have structure and know clearly what the expectation is and view their parents as friendly authority figures, that they tend to be the most receptive.
	Because it seems to me, right?
	I mean, this is just off the top of your conversation, sorry, your email that you sent to us and what we're talking about now.
	But kids want you to be fun and all of that.
	But there are times where you do need to really assert your authority.
	And again, it's not a scaring, it's not a bullying thing.
	It's just a certainty thing, right?
	Like, this is not a choice, right?
	You give kids too many choices, they think they're in charge, and then everything's kind of upside down.
	Yeah, I think that's a pretty good transition into kind of what...
	I was really wanting to ask in my email is that specifically, I want my daughter to internalize the non-aggression principle, right?
	But for all intents and purposes, I'm her authority, which means I get to use force on her, correct?
	Well, how do you get to use force on her?
	Well, I mean, you were just talking about how I need to assert my authority, and sometimes I'm going to Want her to do things that are different than the things that she's going to want to do, which is totally intuitive.
	I guess nobody would say that it's unusual that a parent is going to make a different decision than a child is going to make.
	However, if we end up going with my decision instead of my daughter's decision, then am I not using force on her?
	Well, force is pretty specific, right?
	I mean, are you initiating the use of force against her?
	Well, if she's reaching for a plug and you pull her hand back, that is not the initiation of the use of force, right?
	Any more than if, let's just say, some blind guy with headphones on is about to wander into traffic and I hold him back, I'm not going to be charged with assault, right?
	I mean, this is not...
	The guy is going to say, oh, thank you.
	I must have missed that one.
	I don't know how I got to be so old.
	So if you are doing something that prevents someone from getting hurt, then that's not the initiation of the use of force.
	So my concern with that explanation is just that it could be expounded in a lot of ways.
	That we would probably agree are wrong.
	Like for example...
	So let's say...
	Let's say that you would probably argue that a parent who is beating their child is treating their child as a moral agent.
	But what if hypothetically an abusive parent were to try to make the case that my daughter is not a moral agent and I'm trying to...
	No, no.
	Sorry.
	No, no, no.
	Too complicated, man.
	Beating your child is a violation of the non-aggression principle because you're now initiating the use of force.
	Okay, so how can I differentiate then that beating my child is a violation of the non-aggression principle but protecting her from getting harmed by going and touching a plug is not a violation of the non-aggression principle?
	If there's a single philosophy that we can...
	No, no, no.
	Hang on.
	So if you are beating your child, you are aiming to inflict a huge amount of pain and suffering and fear and terror on your child, right?
	If you hold your child's hand back from touching a plug, you are doing the exact opposite.
	You're not aiming to inflict pain on your child.
	You're aiming to prevent the infliction of pain, i.e.
	an electrical shock, on your child.
	And you're not hurting your child to hold their hand back from the plug.
	Right?
	I mean, you don't hit your child's hand with a hammer.
	No.
	It's not funny, right?
	But you are merely – you may pick your child up.
	You may move them.
	You may restrain their hand.
	But that doesn't hurt the child.
	Whereas a beating is specifically designed to inflict pain and fear and physical harm on the child.
	So you're not violating the non-aggression principle if you restrain your child.
	If your child is crawling – your baby is crawling towards some fall, the edge of the deck or some stairs or whatever, then you pick the child up and you engage them in some other thing.
	You're not harming the child.
	You're not hurting the child.
	You're not inflicting pain and fear.
	There may be momentary frustration but that's all right.
	I mean if being frustrated was a violation of the non-aggression principle, I'd throw all the people who didn't donate to this show in general.
	So it's not even on the same continuum.
	So if we were to try to sum this up as sort of a universal philosophy that we can apply to all of parenting, then anything that I do which might involve some kind of physical use of, I'm bigger than my daughter and therefore I can restrain her,
	if it is to prevent Yeah, I mean, if you're not inflicting harm and you are preventing her from being hurt, then that has the same relationship to a random stabbing as surgery does, right?
	We're both involved, cutting people with a knife, but, you know...
	So then as far as, like, holding her down to change her bum or, you know...
	Restraining her while I'm rocking her to sleep instead of letting her flail around or get out of my arms.
	How would that compare with the non-aggression principle and not being aggressive with our children or using force?
	Well, she doesn't like being changed, right?
	Right.
	Okay, and I'm sure you have.
	This is more, you know, and it's funny because I sort of have to remind myself that listeners don't know this and maybe you do.
	But, you know, I'm half talking to you and half talking to the world.
	So when I ask you these questions, it's not because I think you've never thought of it.
	It's just because I want to explicate this to people who aren't even parents or who may never have thought of this, right?
	Right.
	But kids don't like usually being changed.
	Is there anything that you can do to make being changed more entertaining, more enjoyable, more fun, so there's something she can look forward to?
	Well, I mean, for me, it was the finger walk, right, from the toes to the neck, right?
	Itsy-bitsy, whatever you're going to sing, whatever you're going to coo, and whatever's going to make it fun for you, you know, bend down, rub noses, belly blows, or, you know, belly, you know, that kind of stuff, whatever you can do to make it more enjoyable will usually reduce resistance.
	Right.
	And I mean, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
	I tickle her tummy or I give her a toy or whatever.
	And sometimes it works and other times she just doesn't want anything to do with it.
	She wants to be free to play.
	Got it.
	And so there are times when you may have to physically restrain her.
	For two reasons.
	One, of course, she needs to have her diaper changed, otherwise she can get a rash, she can get an infection, she can get whatever UTIs.
	I mean, things can be difficult and unpleasant in ways that she can't possibly understand, right?
	Right.
	Because, you know, the whole point of changing the diaper is before these things occur, right?
	Right.
	So that's, you know, so that's important.
	So you need to change her for those reasons.
	And, of course, when she's on the change table, you need to restrain her so she doesn't fall off the change table, which is...
	Double plus ungood, right?
	Right.
	So my question would be this.
	When she gets older, and...
	Yeah.
	Macho man Randy Savage or whatever, right?
	I mean you're just making sure that she can be changed, right?
	And yeah, there are times when she's kicking and there are times maybe she's got gas.
	Maybe she's bloated.
	Maybe she's whatever, right?
	Maybe she's got a headache.
	Who knows, right?
	Right.
	But there will be times where you have to change the diaper and maybe there's other ways you can do it.
	Like you can stand her in the bathtub or whatever it is, right?
	I mean, there's things that you can maybe do to mix it up if she's really frustrated.
	But there are going to be times where she's going to be kicking and upset, but you need to change her diaper, and you need to not get a rash and not fall off.
	Now, let's say she's 20 and she sees a video of this.
	Is she going to say, you bastards?
	No.
	She's going to say, that's a handful.
	I'd like to apologize if I thought it was at all my fault.
	As an adult, this is my guide to this, but as an adult, if she were to say, you totally should not have changed me, it would have been much better if I'd got a rash.
	Or, you should not have restrained me on top of the change table.
	It would have been much better if, with a relatively soft skull, I'd fallen five feet.
	Right?
	Right.
	She wouldn't say that, right?
	She'd say, well, you know, obviously thanks for, A, preventing me from getting rashes, and B, preventing me from braining myself on the floor.
	Right.
	So, permission after the fact...
	It's as fine as permission before the fact, particularly if permission before the fact is impossible.
	You've probably heard these stories of like, you're hanging from a flagpole, you're kicking a window because you don't want to fall to the death, but then you're breaking into somebody's apartment.
	It's like, yes you are, but they're going to give you permission after the fact.
	They're not going to say, you broke my window, you bastard, you should have fallen to your death.
	I mean, come on.
	I mean, so if as an adult, she would have no problem with what you're doing.
	And I think about this with fat kids.
	With fat kids because, you know, addiction to sugar, addiction to fat and all this other stuff, processed food, it's, you know, it's really – and especially the sugar thing.
	It seems to be quite an addiction.
	I did an interview with Dr.
	Robert Lustig years ago, which is probably – I read one of his articles probably still.
	So it's a big deal, the sugar stuff, right?
	And so I can't imagine that some, you know, 14-year-old girl or boy for that matter – Who's like 40 pounds overweight, looks back at her parents and says, I'm really glad you gave me all that candy.
	I'm really glad that I might have lifelong health issues.
	I'm really glad that I have all these fat cells that I can't get rid of now forever.
	I'm really, really glad that I have bad teeth.
	I'm really glad that I can't do sports.
	I'm really glad that people think I'm unattractive because I'm fat.
	Right?
	I mean, fat kids have every right to look at their parents and say, it was your job to deliver me to adulthood in a healthy way, as a healthy person.
	They have a huge right to be royally pissed at their parents.
	Because, you know...
	Whereas, of course, when those kids were kids, you know, and it takes, you know, and the addiction grows and all that kind of stuff, but...
	When those kids were kids, they would have been angry at their parents for not giving them sugar, and then when they get to be teenagers, they're probably angry at their parents for having given them sugar.
	So think of her as an adult, looking back, will she be okay with what you did?
	Yeah, ever since you did a call-in show recently where Somebody was bringing up some interesting ethical questions, and I remember you talking about the example of hanging from the flagpole and breaking into the apartment, or I think the main example on the call was about if you're getting attacked by a bear, is it a violation of the non-aggression principle to jump a fence into somebody's yard?
	And then you brought up that point about how if you get permission after the fact, then it's okay.
	And so that was kind of one of the reasons why I even sent this email is because I've been trying to decide how do I map the non-aggression principle in the sense of What amount of force, if we can call it force, is appropriate for me to use on my daughter as she gets older?
	And how do we map universally the fact that the force, I guess, that I can use on her decreases over...
	Well, give me a...
	I've not had any occasion to use force with my daughter.
	I mean, again, the odd restraint...
	I have that in mind when I'm making parenting decisions.
	Right, right.
	Yeah.
	Can you give me sort of a scenario?
	I mean, I haven't had any occasion to use my size or my strength with regards to my daughter since she was a baby.
	Right?
	Again, this sort of makes sure she doesn't roll off the table and if she's reaching for something that's not good, then – and that can be as simple as like a glass or something, then restrained.
	But – so can you give me a scenario wherein you think that you might be tempted to or might want – Like you already mentioned, she's on the changing table.
	She's trying to roll off the changing table.
	Oh, no, no.
	Older then, right?
	When she's older.
	You said you had a sort of concern about when she gets old.
	Well, I mean, you've also mentioned on several occasions that a child's personality is mostly determined by age five.
	And a rather significant portion of that time period, my daughter still can't have a conversation.
	And so I can't exactly negotiate with her.
	Oh, no, no, no.
	That'll change.
	No, that'll change.
	That'll change.
	I mean kids can start negotiating from sort of 18 months and sometimes even before that depending if you want to draw stuff.
	But yeah, you won't be sort of pitched in physical battles with your five-year-old.
	I mean that – I don't think that's going to happen.
	Okay, so, you know, probably this is just my inexperience, then, because our daughter is still as young as she is, but I'm just trying to think, how can I internalize with her the non-aggression principle as much as possible during this time period when we're still not quite at the point where I can even really try to negotiate with her, which means often, you know, if I'm trying to give her a bottle and she doesn't want to take it, but I know that she needs to take the bottle so that she can sleep well, then, you know, maybe there's some mild restraint in there.
	Like you said, I'm not, you know, violent or anything, but, you know, the odd restraint...
	At the age that she's currently at, it seems like it's necessary, but I'm trying to do that.
	The main question was, how do I make the case that that is not a violation of the non-aggression principle?
	Well, how often does it happen that you want to feed your daughter so she won't wake up at night hungry?
	Oh, I mean every night and before naps.
	Oh, so every night you want to feed her, and before naps you want to feed her, and she doesn't want to eat sometimes?
	Oh, you're saying how often does she resist it?
	Yeah.
	Oh, I know kids have to eat every day.
	I understand that.
	So, let's say every six weeks when you roll out the feed trough of gravel and broken glass, how often does she write?
	No, I get it.
	So, how often do you think, well, she needs to eat, otherwise she's going to wake up at night or whatever?
	I don't know.
	How often do you think she would, like, just resist what we were trying to do?
	Like, taking a bath, changing a diaper, feeding her?
	Well, hang on.
	No, no, we're doing lots of different things here.
	Let's just go on the food thing first.
	Uh...
	I mean, as far as bottles go, maybe every other day, she's pretty good with bottles.
	I mean, it's more of solid foods that she just, most of the time, doesn't want anything with.
	But as bottles go, she's pretty good about taking them as long as she's not retired, which is understandable.
	Is she breastfeeding?
	She was.
	She's no longer.
	I'm pregnant with her second, so we're not doing that anymore.
	Right.
	Chick-a-bow-bow.
	All right.
	I'd say good job if you get pregnant with a toddler.
	That's good for you.
	Too much energy to do balls.
	Yeah, I know.
	That's good.
	Ah, young folk.
	Anyway, if she doesn't want the bottle, is it because she's not hungry or is it because she may be frustrated about something else?
	I mean, if she's not hungry, then...
	You know, she shouldn't really need to eat, right?
	That's sort of the whole definition of not being hungry, right?
	Right.
	Usually, it would be overtired, which, I mean, at that point, you know, it stinks that we didn't do it earlier, but she still has to eat, or she will wake up in the middle of the night hungry.
	Oh, so if she's off her schedule?
	Right.
	Yeah, yeah, okay, now I understand that.
	Now, the schedule thing, just for those who aren't parents, you know, I'm half German, And so I like things to be on time.
	I like there to be a schedule.
	There shall be no deviations from the train tracks of our day.
	And so we're going to Poland, like it or not.
	So people who aren't parents, you know, parenting looks really chaotic with toddlers and babies in particular, but they need their schedule, right?
	They need to know when their naps are.
	They need to know when they feed.
	Now, occasionally you'll be out.
	You'll be with friends and something will happen and the traffic will be bad and you're way off schedule, right?
	And then you pay for it for days and you bitterly rue the time.
	Oh, yeah, we were having fun then.
	Now it's 4 o'clock in the morning.
	We're going to sleep.
	So we all have those temptations.
	Like, you know, when my daughter and I stay up to watch a meteor shower, it's like, man, this is a perfect time.
	I'm never going to get this time back.
	It's the best thing ever.
	And then it's like three days later, you're not tired still?
	Come on, 5 o'clock in the morning.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Oh, yeah.
	That was really fun having those meteors.
	Ooh, nine meteors.
	Ooh, that was well worth it for me.
	Yeah.
	So the schedule thing, that's just...
	You pay, you know, you pay the price, right?
	I mean, if you go off schedule, you know, kids need to be, it's like down to the millisecond.
	Like, kids' internal clocks, they're like these anal retentive, but everybody, you know, Swiss watches, you know, it's got to be this time.
	And so if you're on a schedule...
	Really, though, we're not eating at this specific time, then, like, it's all over.
	Oh, yeah, it's toast, right?
	You're doomed.
	You're absolutely doomed.
	So...
	That's, you know, if you take your kid off schedule, you just got to deal with the consequences, and it sure as hell isn't her fault, right?
	Right.
	So, you know, I wouldn't say that you, I mean, not that you are, but you don't get to sort of jam a fire hose of milk down her throat if she's off schedule.
	It's like, yeah, we all decided to stay up and watch the media shower.
	Right.
	So now, I'm going to be famous 5 at 1 o'clock in the morning.
	So that's, but you know that.
	I mean, you know if you're off schedule, that's just how things are going to go.
	And, you know, kids generally, and it's a compliment, right?
	Kids want to stay up later.
	Why?
	Because you guys are fun.
	Right.
	More fun than a darkroom waiting to fall asleep.
	Exactly.
	It's a compliment.
	I mean if you're on a first date and the woman or the man want to go within 15 minutes or they get that fake emergency, it's the hospital who's actually my friend named Candy.
	So you want them to want to stay with you and it's the same thing.
	Parents do get frustrated that their kids don't want to go to bed but it's kind of like a compliment to being up and hanging out with your parents.
	It's more fun than bed.
	So kids are usually going to want to push the envelope of staying up later.
	But you just have to say, it's my job to deliver a non-tired child tomorrow.
	Tomorrow is, you know, I've got to deliver you tomorrow rested because we'll all be happy.
	So, I mean, I guess the main reason I wanted to ask the question is because I feel bad when I have to constrain her.
	I feel like being a bad parent, even when it's to save her from falling off the changing table.
	She's hungry.
	For me, that's why I wanted to ask the question.
	Yeah, I will say this, that even with keeping her on the change table and stuff, there's things you can do.
	But listen, if you guys have, and it sounds to me that you do, and I really appreciate that, if you have the right intentions and you have the right values, I think you can loosen up and trust what you're doing.
	Right.
	Right?
	Kids smell weakness.
	They smell contradiction.
	They smell doubt.
	And they, like termites getting into the basement of a house, they will go in there and chew up the wood of your very soul and spit it out to make a temple of their own free actions.
	I'm sorry, that metaphor completely got away from me.
	But no, I mean, you guys just trust yourself.
	I mean, if you're preventing your child from plunging to their concussion demise, don't feel bad about it.
	And you have the right intentions.
	You have the right philosophical approach.
	You have the right understanding.
	And I would say that if you have those intentions and you have those values, you can relax and trust yourself.
	You're not going to go crazy and start knee-dropping your kid.
	Just trust that – let your sort of instincts go free.
	Let them – I'm not saying you're not enjoying things but just trust that what you're going to do is going to be fine.
	You don't have any aggressive impulses towards your daughter.
	You don't have any hostility.
	You have frustration, of course, like all parents do, and that happens in every relationship.
	Except Mike's never been frustrated with me once.
	But for the most part, it's parent to child.
	But I would say that relax and enjoy it.
	You know that you have your daughter's best interest at heart.
	You know that you're not going to do anything to bully her or to scare her or to physically hurt her just because you're jerks, right?
	I mean, you're not going to do that.
	So trust what it is that you're going to do.
	It's going to be in the best intentions with your child.
	In all of my relationships, I will occasionally get snappy, frustrated, and crabby.
	And it's rare, but it happens.
	And I mean, you've heard it happen with listeners, I'm sure too.
	And I just, I know that my goal and my heart and my values and my mind and my approach to the world, that is all in the right place.
	And I just trust what I'm doing.
	We're trying to be peaceful parents.
	My wife doesn't work.
	And we don't spank her.
	Don't put it that way.
	Don't.
	Seriously.
	She works.
	No, not really.
	She doesn't.
	She works.
	I work all day to take care of our child.
	All day.
	As a stay-at-home dad, if somebody said to me, oh, staff doesn't work at all.
	It's like...
	Anyway, she does.
	Yeah, 24-7 job.
	Yeah.
	Literally.
	Yeah.
	I'm not sure how much time you have left for us.
	She's got a pager that goes like this.
	Anyway, sorry.
	Exactly.
	If you could give us just a little bit of information on timeouts, this was maybe part of the question as well, is that I think you've referred to timeouts at least somewhat in some of your phone calls as using force, and that it wouldn't be, or at least it would fit into one of those things that would lower your child's IQ. Yeah, it's not great.
	I mean, it's baby jail, right?
	Yeah.
	What kind of data do you have to support that?
	I mean, obviously, there's tons of data about spanking, which you cite often.
	I mean, the great thing about having principles is data.
	We don't need no stinking data.
	But if there are options, right?
	Like, so, I mean, I don't know if you have, but there's a Joe, Joe Frost, a super nanny, right?
	There's a woman who goes and does these shows.
	I've watched a bunch of them.
	And, you know, when you've got a family that's really in chaos, when you've got kids just acting out and just hitting each other and so on, she's a big fan of sort of the timeout thing as a direct behavior modification, literally, so it seems like nobody loses an eyeball at least for the next 20 minutes, right?
	And so in those situations where families seem to have gone really off the rails, I can sort of understand how that would be an emergency sort of measure.
	But I've never done a timeout myself.
	My daughter will give them to me.
	Because now that I've turned 50, she's just like, Dad, you can sit on that stair for almost an hour.
	That's really a long time.
	But...
	I've not done a timeout with her.
	I've not done a punishment with her.
	Now, I'm honest with her.
	If I'm upset with her and she says, let's play, I'm like, I don't want to play right now.
	Here's why.
	This happened.
	We haven't talked about it yet.
	Let's get it sorted out.
	You will sit down and talk about it.
	Then when I feel better, we'll go play.
	I'm honest with her in that things like actions have consequences.
	And if she's done something that is bothering me and she doesn't want to talk about it, it's like, I'm not playing with her because I'm punishing her.
	I don't feel like playing.
	Of course, right?
	You stub your toe, you don't feel like doing the do-si-do.
	And so there are sort of honest consequences and I don't pretend to sort of feel or be other than how I'm feeling or being.
	But...
	Time-outs.
	I mean, it certainly is an exercise of power.
	And what does it teach the child?
	Well, it teaches the child that you disapprove of something and you're bigger.
	How does that help them internalize anything other than a fear of the time-out?
	There's no value transfer there.
	So if we're not using time-outs, then you said that there's consequences to actions.
	I mean, what sorts of I don't know, I don't want to use the word punishments because you said that you don't have a proof of punishments, but I don't know, what sorts of confiscation of toys or I don't know, what would you do in place of...
	No, I don't do that either.
	I don't do that either.
	You know, again, it's hard to explain, but can you imagine giving each other timeouts?
	And again, I know I was just saying parent-child authority and so on, but you would have conversations.
	And so if the child is too young to have the conversations, mere negative consequences is a form of conditioning that you would apply to a dog, right?
	And, you know, we shouldn't treat our children like dogs.
	And so until she has the capacity to have conversations about things, and those conversations can be mimed.
	They can be done with puppets.
	They can be done with drawings.
	It doesn't require a lot of abstract language processing.
	But just have conversations.
	You know, if you find the right way to communicate something, kids get it, in my experience.
	Like if you say...
	Let's say that you have a kid who fidgets when you're trying to have a conversation.
	That's really – and again, I know you've got a 14-month-old, so it seems a long way down the road, but it will come quicker than you think, I imagine, or I know.
	So if you have a kid who's really fidgety when you're trying to have a conversation, that's bothersome, right?
	I feel boring.
	You know, I'm trying to chat with someone and they're, you know, stretching and craning their neck and playing with things on the table and then, you know, trying to push a pee into their ear or whatever.
	It's like, you know, come on.
	I mean, we're trying to have a conversation here.
	A little distracting.
	So then you can say, you know, well, if I picked up my – like you were trying to tell me something really important that happened to you or a dream that you had and I picked up my phone and started looking at my messages, would that bother you?
	Well, yeah.
	Okay.
	Well, that's how it is for me.
	And, you know, be vulnerable.
	Be honest.
	I feel like I'm boring you.
	And if I am boring you, let me know.
	We'll talk about something else.
	But I don't want to feel that I'm boring you if you're not telling me.
	You owe me the truth because I was telling you the truth about things.
	So you owe me the truth because I think that's fair, right?
	And, you know, like if I lend you $5, you got to pay me five bucks back at some point.
	And if I lend you my honesty, you owe me back your honesty in return.
	I think that's fair.
	And so I think just having those kinds of conversations, but the most important thing, as you guys know, is just you model the behavior, right?
	If you model the behavior, then that's what your child will do.
	If you want your child to learn how to apologize, then you must apologize to your child when you feel you've done something untoward, which we all do.
	We all do.
	And if you want your child to not be aggressive, then don't be aggressive.
	And again, I don't count holding her down while you change her diaper to be any kind of aggression, any more than an emergency tracheotomy is a beheading.
	I just keep working at the negotiation.
	Keep modeling the consistent behavior.
	I am so relieved that this stuff works because, man, I'd have had a whole lot of apologizing to do otherwise.
	Before I became a parent, this is how it's going to work.
	It's going to totally work this way.
	Like all the people who think my wife and I are going to get divorced.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	You guys have your lives and I'll have mine.
	But it really does work.
	It really, really does work.
	I don't think you should be in a position of having to dole out punishments if there's behavior that is really repetitive and troublesome.
	Of course, you need to look inwards at what you're modeling.
	You need to look at your conversations.
	You need to look at your expectations.
	I mean, if you're expecting moral behavior before she's able to understand moral concepts, then, of course, that's like getting mad at her for not knowing how to spell...
	Paleosaurus, right?
	Whatever it is, right?
	So you check your expectations, check the behavior you've modeled, have conversations, and try and find a right way to get that click of empathy where the child is able to put themselves in your shoes and see their own behavior from outside themselves, which is really, really essential and one of the most important things.
	You know, the implantation of the empathetic third eye into the mind of a child.
	I think they're pretty natural that way, but it doesn't hurt to help it along from time to time.
	But I think...
	That process is really important.
	And if that process comes along, then you shouldn't need to punish, I think.
	So, for example, say your daughter lies to you about something and you catch her in the lie and obviously you sit down and talk to her about it and she apologizes.
	I mean, is that all that happens or is there other consequences?
	You think you're ever going to lie to your kids?
	Well, I mean, it's going to happen, but in their best interest.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	In their best interest.
	Not always.
	Right.
	Not always.
	But I mean, where does it go from there?
	Does your child get any other...
	Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, right?
	Right.
	First of all, your daughter is going to lie to you.
	Right.
	Just as you as husband and wife will occasionally lie to each other.
	White lies, you know, but nothing bad.
	My wife looks great while pregnant.
	Oh, thanks.
	It's like a third boob.
	Right.
	With a really weird nipple.
	Anyway, I won't necessarily go you on my particular anime drawings.
	But anyway, so she is going to lie to you.
	And that's natural.
	And it would be kind of weird if she didn't.
	I'm not going to say necessarily it's healthy, but it's not unhealthy.
	You know, she's going to lie to you.
	And that's inevitable.
	And if you've got a history of telling the truth, then, which you will, of course, right?
	Then when she starts lying to you, it means she's verbally adept.
	And if you have a history of telling the truth, then you can say, well, How are we going to do things in this family?
	Because if you have...
	Like, if it's okay for you to lie to me, then it's okay for me to lie to you, right?
	It's okay for me to say, we're going to a theme park.
	And then I drive you to the dentist.
	Right.
	Right?
	It's okay for me to say, I'm buying you a tablet.
	And then buy you a toothbrush.
	It's okay for me to say, this is candy.
	Right?
	When it's medicine.
	Right?
	And would you like that?
	And of course she's going to say no.
	And I say, ah, okay.
	So now we're getting somewhere.
	So you don't want me to lie to you.
	Well, why?
	Well, it'll make me sad, make me angry, make me upset, make me not trust you and so on.
	Aha!
	Now we're getting somewhere, right?
	Because all you have to do, and this is a basic Kantian argument, right?
	Act as if the...
	The essence of your behavior were to become a universal rule for everyone, right?
	It's the categorical imperative to some degree.
	And so you just say, well, are we going to be a family where we can lie to each other or are we going to be a family where we tell the truth to each other?
	Because if you want to choose the lying thing, I'm not going to choose the truth thing, right?
	Because you can't say lying is good just for you.
	Lying must be good for everyone.
	If it's a good thing to do.
	You can't just have one rule for you.
	And, you know, she'll have a sibling by this point, right?
	So you'll say, well, how would it be if I gave a cookie to your sister and gave a piece of broccoli to you?
	No fair, right?
	No, it's unfair.
	It's like, yeah, okay, it's unfair.
	It's unfair to have one rule for you and the opposite rule for everyone.
	If only you can lie, that's like only your sister getting a cookie.
	And so, you know, and this, you know, kids really, they get this stuff very, very quickly and very well.
	They certainly will understand that if you have the right to lie to them, their lives are going to be pretty unstable and untrustworthy.
	They'll never know.
	Are we going to a theme park?
	Or are we going to grandmother's house of smelly peppermints?
	I don't know, whatever, right?
	Right.
	So they'll never know, and they'll never be able to figure out what's coming next.
	Let me cook you your...
	What's your favorite meal?
	Chocolate pizza.
	Here's your fattuccine Alfredo with shrimp.
	Anyway, so...
	When she lies to you, you say, well, how are we going to do this?
	Are we going to be a family that lies to each other?
	Because if you want to do the lying thing, we can certainly give it a try.
	But I can guarantee you, you won't like it.
	And she'll get...
	That doesn't mean that she'll never lie again or anything, but you just keep chipping away on this stuff.
	But that's what you want to get.
	That lying...
	It hurts others in the same way that other people would hurt her.
	That's internalizing the value.
	Taking away her toys doesn't teach her anything other than big people get mad at you if you break their rules.
	Then what she'll do is try and figure out not that she should never break the rules but try and figure out how to break the rules so she won't get caught because the only problem you see is getting caught and then she'll end up Working for big European banks in senior positions and things will go very badly.
	I did a Deutsche Bank presentation which people should check out.
	Just take her behavior and universalize it.
	And if she doesn't like the consequences, which she won't, then say, okay, well then are we going to be a family that tells the truth?
	And you have to get her, not get her, but when she voluntarily acknowledges and comes to that conclusion, Yes, we will be a family that tells the truth.
	And then you can say, you've heard daddy lie or you've heard mommy lie.
	You know, when that kids you don't like want something and you say, oh, you know, we're busy or whatever, right?
	I mean, there's little lies that you say that don't really big problems.
	They're little white lies.
	You can explain all that, right?
	Right.
	You know, somebody works really hard to make a meal for you, like maybe grandma works really hard to make a meal for you, and you don't really love it, you don't like it at all, and say, it's all right, it's good.
	You know, but you don't say, I hate it.
	You know what I mean?
	There's little things you can say that are just like...
	Social lubricants that, you know, these are all things.
	So, you know, being honest about your limitations in terms of truth commitment and all of that, I think really helps.
	You know, it's not as simple as never ever bear a falsehood.
	Never bear a falsehood.
	You know, things are a little bit more complicated and kids usually appreciate that.
	Because when we paint things as too simplistic to kids, they're suspicious because they probably have seen us tell a non-perfect, perfectly honest statement at some point.
	And they get more interested when it's complicated.
	So having a conversation with, I mean, to the age, once they start able to talk, you're able to apply that principle, and is that enough?
	I mean, does it work?
	Do they stop flying at least for a time?
	You know, do they get that...
	No, it works.
	Not okay?
	Okay.
	It works.
	You know, it works like you're a plane at 20,000 feet and you say, okay, it's time to land.
	It doesn't mean you immediately rocket down to the ground.
	Right.
	But it works in that eventually you end up landing.
	Right.
	You're guiding it, right?
	And that works since the time that they're able to talk?
	That you're able to sit down and talk with them about what's going on?
	Once they can understand the abstractions, then they're morally responsible.
	And once they can empathize, then they're responsible for that too.
	It's not zero to 100 overnight, but they sort of increase a little every day over time.
	But you'll be amazed.
	You'll be amazed.
	Because you have the bond, because you have the breastfeeding, because you have peaceful parenting...
	Um, maybe with a tiny little bit more authority based on, well, you'll have to listen back and imagine your daughter's getting stern tones.
	It's like, oh, these stern tones come with milk and cookies.
	How lovely.
	But, um, I know it's tough to do right with me on a podcast.
	I get that, right?
	It is.
	But, um, no, it'll, um, I can't, I mean, I'm just telling you my experience.
	Right.
	That, um, kids, um, if they know, like if they genuinely know that you love them, And they genuinely know that you have their best interest at heart and you may sort of explain all of these things.
	Then they trust you.
	Right.
	Doesn't mean there's never conflict.
	There is, of course, right?
	I mean, you want there to be conflict because you want them to fight for what they want.
	You don't want them to be pushovers.
	You don't want them to be like, oh, well, someone bigger than me or someone in authority said this.
	Okay, right?
	I mean, you want them to fight for what they want.
	And I appreciate the kids want to do that and they should.
	Right.
	So be ready to engage in You know, mini-Socratic debates just about everything under the sun.
	And that's what you do.
	But certainly, in my experience, it works beautifully.
	Well, you either need to write a book on parenting, or I need to have you on speed dial so that when my daughter lies to me, I can just call you up and be like, you know, Steph, what did you say I was supposed to say to my daughter again?
	You know what?
	I'll tell you what.
	When your daughter lies to you, have her call me up.
	No, I mean, seriously, when she lies, you've got a little while to go, but when she lies, call back.
	And I will, you know, and I have a draft of a book on parenting, and I'm – it's on the list.
	I was going to tell you it's on the list.
	Too busy parenting to write the parenting book.
	After the election.
	In the States, once we get, what does the Milo call them?
	Once we get daddy in.
	I guess, right?
	Well, after the election, things, you know, the world will be perfect, so.
	Right.
	Nothing else for me.
	Just kidding.
	All right.
	I'm going to move on to the next caller, but was this helpful for you guys more or less?
	Yeah.
	Absolutely.
	Thank you very much, Steph.
	And thank you, Michael.
	Thank you.
	Very welcome.
	We're all mourning the loss of the internet.
	Yeah, no kidding.
	From yes we can to no you can't, I can.
	Anyway.
	Alright, up next we have Max.
	Max wrote in and said, I'm having a sales problem and the product is myself.
	I'm a freelancer with a rare and valuable skill set in a tough field, and 2016 has seen a reversal of many of the gains I've made.
	12 years in and I'm no longer certain of my business relationships and feel my market value has evaporated.
	Now mostly sidelined, except for a handful of accounts, I'm working as a courier to pay the bills.
	I fear I've been the indispensable sidekick to creative directors who don't have my level of technical expertise but who have big personalities and can sell.
	I don't want to be overshadowed.
	How can I sell as an introvert?
	Also, marketing departments seem to be increasingly female-dominated.
	Could own group preference in hiring be a factor?
	Have I made myself untouchable in some way to mostly female industry gatekeepers since I keep it professional, check my politics at the door, and eschew the social justice virtue signaling stinking up my industry?
	How do I know when the market is spoken and I should pack it in?
	What do I do when I can't get reliable feedback or straightforward answers about where I stand?
	That's from Max.
	Matt, how are you doing?
	Hey, Steph.
	Max!
	Max!
	Sorry, sorry.
	Because, you know, Matt is a great name for an introvert.
	You know, like a doormat.
	But Max is a great name for an extrovert.
	So I just went from one side of the spectrum to the other completely.
	Fair enough.
	Well, I'm doing well.
	I'm a little nervous.
	This is my first time calling in, although I've been listening for years.
	So it's a surreal experience for me, but I'm happy to finally have the chance to speak to you.
	I appreciate that.
	I appreciate that.
	So...
	I mean, we're talking real abstractions here, and I get that you don't probably want to get into a lot of details, but...
	I mean, things kind of fell hard if you're couriering, right?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	It certainly seems that way.
	Right.
	Right.
	Was it a sudden...
	Like, off a cliff?
	Or was it a sort of softer landing?
	Or how did that...
	No.
	Suddenly off a cliff.
	And I've been...
	It seems that since the beginning of this year, things have been incredibly slow and it's been hard to get straight answers from anyone.
	Last year I was incredibly busy.
	I was traveling, working abroad a lot.
	And then this year it's kind of like once the work season, it never quite took off.
	And things seem to be picking up somewhat, but it's only with a handful of very loyal accounts.
	But for the most part, this year has been very slow.
	Do you know if you've been trolled at all?
	I've been trying to find that out.
	I've had a few conversations with a few people who have been kind enough to share a few tidbits of information with me.
	They've kind of said, well, Yeah, you know, they've had a lot of stop and start with certain projects.
	No one has said anything specific, but I have had a couple of interactions with people who are in the marketing departments with companies that I work with who definitely are giving me the feeling that I'm being trolled or undermined in some way.
	And the strangest thing is that this is one of my biggest accounts.
	I was over there recently And I was having a conversation with some of the guys in one of the departments that I work with, and they were telling me how busy they've been.
	And then the person who's one of the gatekeepers who's directly responsible for bookings walked past me and gave me a very curt greeting, didn't say anything more.
	And every time I talked to her, she tells me, oh, things are so slow, but we're keeping you in mind.
	And We'll make sure that if anything comes up that you're a good fit for, we'll give you a call.
	And that's been going on the entire year.
	And the busiest period of the year has already come and gone.
	Things typically would be slowing down now.
	So I'm definitely getting the impression that this person is holding something against me in some way, but I don't feel...
	Comfortable enough having a conversation with her directly.
	So I've gone to other people who work in her department and they get very nervous, very prickly whenever I bring up the subject and try to dodge and change the subject as quickly as they can.
	So something's going on and I just can't quite put my finger on it.
	Yeah, I mean, it may be something specific or it may be something more general, right?
	I mean, Scott Adams has talked about when he was, I think it was at Pacific Bell, a couple of other companies, I can't remember exactly which companies it was, but he talked about hitting the diversity ceiling, right?
	Where there's basically just the word came down.
	It's like, don't promote any more white males.
	Exactly.
	And that's what makes it even funnier in a way of sort of a gallows sense of humor about it.
	But I'm biracial myself, so there's a time when I would think to myself, okay, even if I completely sucked at my job, which I don't, that I have a certain degree of untouchability, but apparently not, because at the end of the day, I do still have the dangly bits after all.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	And those are challenges, right?
	I mean, the white male privilege is you can't complain if you're discriminated against.
	Ooh!
	I believe that's not really the very good definition of privileged.
	Absolutely.
	When it comes to selling, well, so first of all, do you still like your career, your profession?
	Very much.
	I love it.
	I think...
	It has taken me all over the world.
	It has enabled me to meet all kinds of interesting people and just see different ways of approaching life.
	And it's also exposed me to different kinds of people doing different things.
	And I love the process of it because it's very technical, but it's also creative.
	I'll just say what it is.
	I'm a cinematographer.
	I've worked in Hollywood.
	I've worked in television.
	I've worked in commercials.
	And also documentaries as well.
	So it's amazing because I'm the kind of person who has a thirst for knowledge.
	And I'm able to go into a situation not really knowing that much beforehand about who I'm going to be working with and what kinds of things I'll be doing.
	And I always walk away with just this more knowledge, more information that I can take to the next job.
	And I feel challenged and I feel invigorated because you're constantly fighting daylight.
	You're fighting...
	The ambient noise in the production.
	You're fighting various creative challenges trying to get the job done.
	And so I feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment at the end of every day.
	And I worry, I guess, about that being undermined by what's going on in the business side of things.
	So lately, it's been hard for me to pick up a camera.
	It's been hard for me to feel excited about what I'm doing at all.
	Because I just see...
	What's going on politically in my industry and what's going on in terms of the business interactions I'm having with people.
	And I feel very blocked.
	So I think my incitement level about it has gone down somewhat.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I mean, it's a funny thing with careers.
	It's a funny thing because when I was younger, I always thought the careers were a sort of more or less – a jagged but more or less steady upward trajectory.
	You get more responsibility.
	You get more money.
	You get more authority.
	You maybe get more stress or whatever.
	But careers – I mean I've heard from a lot of people that – we all know this about sort of middle class that incomes have stagnated for like decades and so on that – You get your first job and you make some coin and then you buy some stuff and then you get big medium raise, medium raise.
	Maybe you get to sort of one and a half or one and three quarters or maybe even double your sort of starting out thing.
	And then it just kind of stops.
	It just kind of trundles along.
	And that is a tough situation.
	Because after you sort of climb this mountain that's supposed to go on until you retire, you're supposed to retire at the top of your career.
	So you think this mountain goes up forever, but it doesn't.
	It just kind of goes up and then plateaus and then goes down a little bit and then you fall and pick yourself up and it just kind of trundles along.
	I've heard this from a number of people about careers.
	In the tech sector, I think it's a big problem because people take their I think we're good to go.
	Diminishing demand for homegrown talent.
	And so this idea that you're supposed to climb the mountain until you retire, it's like, well, you kind of get halfway up a hill and then it just turns into a boggy plateau with dips and falls.
	And it just doesn't seem to have for a lot of people the kind of arc that they expected careers to have.
	Does that make any sense?
	That makes perfect sense.
	And there's one thing that comes up for me hearing you say that that I wanted to add.
	My trajectory was a little bit different because when I started off, I did my undergrad in this field, I did grad school in this field, and when I started working professionally in the industry, the very first project I worked on won an Oscar.
	I was just a camera operator and I did some of the assistant editorial at the time, but Right out of the gate, I had all of these skills and I had all of this knowledge that the other guys working on the crew did not yet have.
	They had the money, but they brought me on board because they needed the expertise.
	And they go off and the movie wins an Oscar.
	And that was quite a few years ago now.
	Sorry to interrupt, but it's what...
	Oh, gosh.
	Oh, you know this.
	Sorry.
	The guy who directed Citizen Kane?
	Oh, yeah, yeah.
	Orson Welles.
	You know, the guy who did the Martian radio thing?
	Yep, Orson Welles.
	Orson Welles, thank you.
	I think in Oscar Wilde.
	No, no, no.
	Orson Welles, you know, I mean, his most famous movie was at the beginning, and then he said, he had this famous line about his career.
	He says, I started at the top and worked my way down.
	Right.
	That's exactly how I've been feeling.
	There have been blips...
	It's like transpotting, you know, a blips and an otherwise downward trajectory.
	And I've had a lot of great experiences along the way, but here I am.
	I'm 34, and I'm not exactly sure where to go from here.
	So it's very much like that.
	Yeah.
	So do you know if there's any drive for diversity or any drive for a feminist, a social justice warrior is hitting your Thank you.
	Field or your profession has been hit by any of this stuff over the last little while, by which I mean the trolling may not be you personally, but it may be just your gender and race as a whole.
	Yep, absolutely.
	It has.
	I think that my field is definitely one of the hardest hits, although it kind of goes to the second part of my question.
	What I've noticed is that most of these gatekeepers are Millennial white females.
	And they will get into production companies.
	They dominate the marketing departments.
	They're making all the key marketing decisions, at least with many of my accounts.
	And they will just hire people who look like them, think like them, act like them.
	And before you know it, there's no diversity.
	Yet they'll continue to talk about how Important it is to have diversity in production departments and diversity on set and diversity in various projects, but they don't practice what they preach because they're certainly… No, of course, no.
	Diversity is about jobs for your friends and your favorite… I mean, it's not, right?
	It's about making sure that meritocracy doesn't ruin us.
	It's nepotism.
	Yeah, exactly.
	So I do see a lot of that, and it's extremely frustrating for me because I sort of...
	Is that picture of the Huffington Post board?
	Right, yeah.
	See that?
	I mean, it's like one cook chick photocopied all the way around the table.
	Yeah, I did see that, and my first thought was, yeah, that looks like every marketing department I've ever worked with.
	That's basically all it is.
	It's incredibly frustrating because they do tend to get wrapped up in their own petty politics and their virtue signaling.
	Meanwhile, I'm trying to get an answer about how many cameras they want to shoot with and what their lighting strategy is and all of that kind of stuff.
	It gets in the way and interferes with me being able to do my job effectively because I have to waste time playing politics with them.
	I'm not there for that.
	I like to Focus on the task at hand and check the politics at the door.
	Get the job done.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, look, I mean, if the social justice warriors are taking over the industry then, and I mean, you can either Gamergate style, right, try to organize some sort of pushback or some sort of fight back.
	I mean, what are the alternatives, right?
	I mean, you can find something else to do, which I guess is kind of what you've What you've done.
	And you can wait until the social justice warriors destroy the business, right?
	Which they will.
	Which they will.
	Anytime you promote people not based on merit, the quality of things just begins to decline.
	I mean, I can't even think of the last movie that I was really excited to go and see.
	I thought it was really cool that it was coming out.
	And a lot of these...
	Social justice warrior movies are tanking hard and sort of like what's – when this lefty, baity stuff takes over, like the NFL. The NFL has got – it's cratering in terms of viewership.
	At some point, people like in the business world will realize that it's easier to fight this stuff and better to fight – not easier necessarily, but it's better to fight this stuff than it is to give into it and cross your fingers.
	I don't think people are quite there yet and I don't think that – I think they still think that a lot of the people who get it in this stuff have good intentions and they're giving them the moral high ground and so on.
	I think that that hopefully at some point will change.
	But if you can organize a way to fight this social justice warrior stuff that may be occurring in your industry, that might be a worthwhile thing to do but it will – it can be a grim and ugly battle.
	But if not – It is going to be increasingly difficult to find work.
	Now, of course, there is non-social justice warrior media that is out there that you could start to work with.
	So my question is, have you sort of networked with people whose values you share?
	Or are you just kind of firing your resume over a wall hoping it lands somewhere fertile?
	For the most part, at least for most of this year, I've been trying to sort of figure out what was going on locally in my own industry and sort of diagnosed the problem.
	Then I started firing resumes, like, you know, using Trebuchet to lob them over the castle walls, getting nowhere.
	Yeah.
	If the social justice warriors are in there, you know, you're wasting your time.
	Right.
	Exactly.
	And they actually probably, well, maybe they enjoy you wasting your time.
	I don't know.
	But...
	The guy whose name pops into mind is Mike Srinovich.
	I don't know if you know anything about him.
	I'm very familiar with him.
	He's executive producer on a movie about the men's rights movement called The Red Pill.
	He's making a movie about free speech, which I think is coming out imminently, and he's working on other stuff.
	He's a one-man media machine and all of that, and his goal, of course, is to create a media empire and Gosh darn it.
	I can't see what's in the way.
	So people – I mean this is just someone who comes to mind who I'm sure would appreciate a good cinematographer or would know people who would.
	So if in the mainstream area of your business, of your profession – The social justice warriors are taking over.
	Then, okay, the ship is sinking.
	So what do you do?
	Well, you get a boat.
	You get a life raft.
	You get something else, right?
	Yeah, exactly.
	And so if I were in your position, I would start finding people whose vision excited me and just start – Don't even just send a resume because when you send a resume, that's old school stuff.
	When you send a resume, what you're doing is you're saying to someone, here are all my skills.
	It would be great if you could find some way to use me.
	No, no.
	People are very busy these days and internet stuff and alternative media stuff is really, really lean and mean.
	And so what you want to do, in my opinion, is find someone.
	Maybe it's Mike.
	Maybe it's someone else.
	But find someone who's got a project that you're excited about and find out everything you can about that project and then phone people up, right?
	I mean you sort of say, well, how do you sell yourself?
	Well, you phone people up.
	Listen, when I was in the business world, when people would call me up and say, listen, I read your website end to end.
	I'm really excited about what you're doing.
	I love the idea of making the environment a cleaner place and helping people control emissions and All the stuff that can advance the groundwater and air and soil and all that.
	And, you know, so they get the mission, they get the goal, they get the big picture.
	That's already interesting to me, as opposed to the people who sort of sit across from me, hand me their resume and say, so?
	You know, because then it's like, okay, I've got to figure out this Rubik's Cube now.
	So, you want to find people you're excited to work with and who are doing projects that You're passionate about.
	So you talk about an Oscar.
	Oscar, it's nice obviously, but it's a stamp of approval from the majority and therefore is almost certain to be wrong, at least in terms of values.
	Nothing that would be really original and surprising to people would get an Oscar these days.
	So find people whose work is really exciting to you and Call them up.
	Find some way to contact them and express your enthusiasm and your excitement.
	If they like you and then if it's not you that they could use in the moment for whatever reason, they might know someone else.
	We've had lots of messages from people who've met through this show who now have great business relationships because at least they share me.
	I mean at least they share the values that we're talking about here which means that they're much more likely to get along in business.
	It means they're much more likely to handshake deals and much more likely to resolve disputes with reason and evidence.
	So this could be a hub of a lot of sort of professionals finding – I mean people got married through the show.
	Kids have been born through the show.
	Relationships have started, business relationships, personal relationships, romantic relationships, friendships and so on.
	It's a big hub and we've got a message board.
	There are tons of ways to contact people.
	So you could look at who in the alternative media is doing projects that would be really exciting to you.
	And the great thing about the alternative media is we don't have a lot of stored capital to waste on ideological kerfuffle.
	See, mainstream media, they've developed a lot of Savings, credibility, reach, you know, back from when they were better, right?
	And you know what?
	What lefties do is they find someone who stored up a lot of grain and then, like rats, they go in, right?
	And it's okay for a while because it stored grain, right?
	I like the way that – how is society surviving?
	Well, because of computers and the internet and sort of other advances.
	But another reason why society is surviving these days is because the boomers – God bless their predatory little hearts.
	They accumulated a lot of savings, right?
	They've got houses that have gone up a lot in value.
	They're the richest generation that's ever lived.
	And so, yeah, their houses are big enough that their kids can continue to live there.
	And their savings enough that they can pay for these ridiculously hyperinflated tuition fees and all of this kind of crap, right?
	And so, since the 20th century, particularly the post-Second World War period, a huge amount of capital I don't just mean sort of economic capital but sort of social capital, credibility capital was accumulated and as the bank robber famously is supposed to have said when he said, well, why do you rob banks?
	He's like, well, that's where the money is.
	Why do social justice warriors move into these particular areas?
	Why do the lefties move into these areas?
	Because that's where the capital is, which means that they have the excess capital to afford all this nonsense until they can't.
	The government has the capacity to afford the welfare state and the welfare welfare state until it can't.
	And so I think that whenever the social justice warriors move in, that is the peak of that industry's or that area's capital of any kind and they're just going to start eating away at it.
	until uh it's done yeah piranhas and a think piranhas and a cow in the amazon right right uh why are they eating that well that's where the cow is so you know when the social justice warriors move in in my humble opinion that's a great sign to move out i mean unless you unless you can find some way to sort of battle them as sort of the game of gay community did and all of that but um that's a good sign because that's an industry in decline you know You know, Charles C. Johnson has been on the show and you should check out his website at gotnews.com.
	But, you know, he's made a career to some degree out of shorting social justice warrior organizations, right?
	When social justice warriors move in, you short the stock.
	I think he famously did it with Twitter.
	That's right.
	And so, you know, that's when the industry is in decline.
	I mean, if they won't hire a guy whose first film helped – he helped to win an Oscar – Come on.
	They're not interested in profits.
	They're interested in using up the accumulated capital of more competent people so they can virtue signal and destroy the entire industry.
	And that's what's going to happen to the mainstream media.
	That is what is going to happen to the mainstream media.
	It looks like this big monolith right now, but I know exactly what's going on in the basement.
	I know exactly what's going on at the foundations.
	I know exactly what's going on at the Supporting beams.
	You can't see it from the outside, but you know exactly what's going on ideologically on the inside.
	And it's going to be like...
	It's just...
	It's going to collapse, and it's going to be shockingly sudden.
	And what's going to happen is when people make that connection and say, okay, well, the lefties moved in.
	You know, they had 10 or 15 years, and then the whole thing got toasted.
	The whole thing was destroyed.
	Well, okay.
	So then...
	When the lefties want to move into your industry or whatever, right?
	Then hopefully people will be aware of that.
	But they won't see – the great thing about the alternative media is it's not concentrated.
	There's not enough of a store of grain to attract the mice.
	It's all siloed all different places and it's nimble and it moves around and so on, right?
	And plus, if the social justice warriors can hire the people they like, well, sure as hell, so can the alternative media.
	We can hire anybody who we like as well.
	And that's a pretty good way to keep those kinds of people away.
	So, you know, they're burrowing in, they're burrowing in, they're termiting the foundations, and they're exploiting all of the existing capital that was built up over generations, just like the government does, because suicides are the same coin.
	Mm-hmm.
	And then when they're done, it'll all fall apart.
	They'll try moving on to the next thing.
	And with any luck, there won't be a next thing, which will be enormously beneficial to them because then they'll actually have to face the market.
	And they'll actually have to produce value rather than virtue signaling and get real jobs.
	And everybody will be healthier and better off thereby.
	So that would be my suggestion on how to approach this.
	Find people.
	You really care about what they're doing.
	You respect who they are.
	And I think it'll be a lot easier.
	Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
	I completely agree with that.
	And it brings up one question from me.
	So we were talking a moment ago about firing resumes.
	And I've always kind of been aware that who has the time to look at something like that?
	So I do have a fantastic website.
	But again, it's just the lack of feedback that I'm getting, even from people who are aware of my politics and my approach to the world.
	And my passion for philosophy and say, okay, well, whether they agree or not, they still appreciate the quality of my work and appreciate working with me.
	And, you know, that's a very, very small number that I'm thankful for.
	But just in general, it's so hard to get a sense, I think, from anyone these days about how they actually feel about your work.
	It's hard to get any real criticism.
	Do you have any...
	Thoughts about that, because I know that you've written numerous books, you're a creative person yourself, so I'm sure that you've experienced this to some degree.
	You mean indifference to what I do?
	Indifference to what you...
	Yeah, exactly.
	Oh, hell yeah.
	Just giving someone a manuscript or showing someone a screenplay or...
	I do that as well, but also just photographic work and having people say, yeah, that's good, and then walk off, which is...
	Yes, but you see – no, but you don't understand.
	Once the social justice warriors get in, the Dunning-Kruger effect takes over and they can't recognize quality work.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Exactly.
	No, seriously.
	Think of this.
	Excuse me while I contort myself into octopus shape to pat myself on the back.
	But I say this not to praise myself but to just give you some perspective and hopefully give you some hope and positivity.
	I am a very prominent public intellectual now.
	Mm-hmm.
	I have an enormous reach across the world in shaping and changing the mindset of people.
	We've done more than a quarter of a billion views and downloads of heavily concentrated philosophy, heavily concentrated philosophy and not like three-minute summaries of Nietzsche, which are cool and I guess are viewed by people who forgot to read the which are cool and I guess are viewed by people who forgot to read the book But my books are downloaded 150,000 times a month.
	Now, I was around intellectuals.
	I was around people who wanted to be movers and shakers.
	In the world of ideas, right?
	I was around academics and professors and so on.
	Did anyone ever recognize what I was capable of?
	Nope.
	What my potential was?
	Probably not.
	No?
	No.
	No, not a bit.
	I remember my teacher in Aristotle, a fine lady, was rather bemused that I wrote extra essays to try and figure some of this stuff out.
	But nobody ever said, you've really got something.
	You should really work to get a bigger venue for this.
	I remember, oh gosh, new story alert, new story alert.
	I remember being at a dinner party and there was a woman from A couple of people, in fact, from a pretty hip television station in Toronto.
	And I was...
	I was really making them laugh and I was really making them think.
	I'm generally pretty reliable as far as producing and providing quality.
	Maybe I was a little bit even more on that night.
	But I had them stitches.
	I had them crying.
	I had wine coming out their nose with laughter.
	They were like, wow, what a conversationalist.
	This is the most amazing stuff I've ever heard because they didn't know anything about the kind of ideas that I was into.
	I never really heard anything like that or whatever, right?
	And, you know, part of me thought these guys would go and say, go back to their television station and say, you know, I just met this guy.
	Like, what a thought-provoking guy.
	What a great conversationalist.
	What an interesting guy to communicate with.
	I think we should bring him in for a test.
	Now, I wasn't sitting there staring at the phone, but I thought, well, geez, you know?
	Yeah.
	It wouldn't be beyond the realm of possibility, and it certainly would be.
	And wouldn't they have been sensible to do it?
	Yeah, one would think.
	I mean, wouldn't they have been sensible to do it?
	Mm-hmm.
	But of course they didn't.
	So yeah, in theater school with my writing, I met a writing teacher there and I had other writing teachers and with academics and professors and all the people I've worked with and all the people I had exposure to through the art world.
	Like nobody ever said, wow, you really got something, right?
	But I really do.
	I really have got something very, very important, very, very powerful.
	Might be Might be world saving or at least West saving.
	I know for sure I moved the needle on Brexit and not a small amount.
	What's going to happen with the US elections?
	We'll see.
	And this is not sort of how I majorly measure things, but it's not a bad way to get a sense of what's going on.
	It's easy to do back in the napkin calculations.
	That hundreds and hundreds of thousands of children are not being hit because I turned the on switch on the mic.
	And, I mean, we get so many messages of like, this is, this show saved my life.
	This show has clarified things.
	This show has organized my thinking.
	This show has removed my Confusion.
	This show has ended my anxiety.
	This show has ended my paranoias.
	This show has brought me to love.
	This show has helped me to fix my marriage.
	This show has given me a better relationship with my children.
	So many times we hear, my son introduced me to your show, and I thought it was going to be problematic.
	And it's like, this is fantastic.
	I could spend all day posting these messages.
	But I see.
	Mike sees.
	We see.
	Yeah.
	I'm telling you all of this is not to sort of toot my own horn.
	These are, you know, as Clark Kent said in the original Superman, it's not really bragging if you could do it.
	And the reason I'm saying this is that nobody recognized my quality until it just damn well went out and did it for myself.
	I knew, I knew I had all of this in me from when I was very young.
	Ah, if I could but speak to the world!
	What great good I could do if there was a way to have me murmur and whisper and yawp and cackle and yodel And karaoke my way into the ear canals of the planet, what great good I could do.
	Now, I thought this was going to be a strength because I was young and I was naive and I did not understand the corruption of the world as I do now.
	Why was I not offered anything until I had to go and carve it out from the bloody wilderness myself using my teeth as an axe?
	Because the world is run by bad people.
	And universities in general are run by not great people, to put it as nicely as possible.
	And the art world is run by not great people.
	And the art world, of course, I mean, particularly movies, right?
	They've gone international.
	Now, movies make, of course, a lot of money internationally, which means that they have to not offend any culture in the world.
	Which is why everything's become so predictable.
	You know, like...
	Ben Affleck needs to make – his movies need to make money all over the place.
	That's how he gets his movies made.
	We'll make it up internationally, which is why he's on Bill Maher doing what he does, right?
	It's not – this is follow the money, right?
	Right, right.
	So the goal, of course, of low-quality people is to replicate that low-quality mindset in you, right?
	Low-quality mindset is like a virus.
	It spreads, right?
	Right.
	And so the industry at the moment, because it has become low quality, and I think the movie industry has become low quality, like the music industry in a lot of ways.
	Where the hell is the new Bohemian Rhapsody?
	Where the hell is the new song where you just go like, wow?
	Okay, some nights, a little bit, but the goal is, because they can't recognize quality, the goal is to have you think that you don't have quality.
	Right.
	That's how the low-quality mindset reproduces itself.
	It's a gene set, probably.
	And so, to fight that, you have to, at some point, and now you're in your 30s, right, you have to recognize that the old way of doing things, the old way you send out resumes, you get interviews, you get jobs, you do a great job, you get referred onwards, you get a new job, that's dead.
	It's dead and gone and has been for a long time.
	It's not about quality anymore.
	Or, to put it another way, it's about money making, which it always has been, but the quality of the population has diminished.
	Education is worse.
	IQ is down.
	And so, when you're trying to bring information to low quality people, it doesn't do you any good to have high quality people deliver it.
	High quality people will only screw it up with Nuance and irony and complications and whatever, right?
	Or even simple crystal clear arguments that upset people because it's alarming, right?
	It is a mark of intelligence to be able to entertain ideas without emotionally yapping all over them.
	So all of that, the industry, in most industries, they've dumbed down.
	They have dumbed down.
	I mean, just grit your teeth and And watch the news.
	God, yes.
	News on TV. Watch your average comedy.
	Watch a TV show.
	Actually, some TV I wouldn't say.
	I think there's a lot cooler stuff going on in TV than there is in movies these days, but not on the mainstream channels.
	Yeah, I'm a grid.
	Yeah, I gritted my teeth and watched five minutes of Mike and Molly.
	I'm like, ooh, my.
	And nothing in particular.
	It's just, you know, it's not my thing.
	And so the quality now is to be found in the alternatives to everything that is.
	It's in the opposition.
	It's in the undermining.
	There's nothing edgy in the mainstream anymore.
	Mm-hmm.
	Nothing.
	And actually, I don't mean sort of like punky or anything like that, but just innovative, just different, startling.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	Exciting.
	A feeling that you have not seen or heard it before.
	And so many cliches.
	So many cliches.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And that feeling of been there, seen that, done that.
	Less intelligent people have a capacity for repetition that drives more intelligent people insane.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	And I think that's the source of a lot of my boredom with a lot of the projects I end up working on because it's just, you know, I look at the script, it's the same old thing, or it's, you know, it's permutations on things I've seen before, right down to the camera work and the lighting.
	It's boring.
	It's dull.
	Stoner guy gets the girl.
	Yeah.
	Exactly.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, Vox Day and I did a show on cliches and all the stuff that is so predictable.
	Yeah, it was a great show.
	So you've got to find people outside of this decaying, giant, failing battle star of the mainstream.
	I mean, you've got to because the mainstream is resolutely against finding quality because it has to sell to low-quality people and low-quality people don't want anything that's going to startle them.
	Yeah.
	You know, like stoner comedies.
	We want to get drunk!
	We want to get stoned!
	Dear God.
	Where was Hamlet's spliff?
	Right?
	Yeah.
	But this is all because, you know, they're low-quality people, low-rent people, people wasting their lives, and they want to believe that there's something cool that About treating the rare gift of existence like star garbage that needs to be flushed as quickly as possible.
	So find people who are doing something to elevate and startle and challenge complacency and laziness and idiocy.
	I don't think you're going to find much of that in the mainstream.
	And then I think things will happen.
	That makes perfect sense.
	If you want to be edgy, be a conservative these days.
	Milos is the same thing.
	He's always saying that the new punk rock is to be conservative these days.
	I completely agree with him.
	Absolutely.
	I'm so heavily immersed in a lot of his content and yours and other people as well.
	It's interesting to me to hear myself saying this now because I have a lot of internal conversations all the time.
	It's like this cacophony of noise going on inside my head, even while I'm working.
	But I haven't really asked myself, why haven't I really reached out to more people whose work I respect, whose work excites me or challenges me?
	And I think a lot of it is just the sort of, at least for me, spending a period of time feeling like I'm doing great work and Being rejected by, you know, now what I know to be low-quality people, it's easy to talk yourself out of it.
	I mean, you know, it's like even my own parents don't even really...
	I can tell them about a commercial that I shot that'll be airing on a specific date, and they may see it and say, oh, that's nice, and then change the topic.
	So I had to fight through a lot of that.
	You know, even when I was young, but I always knew that I saw things differently.
	I had something inside of me that I wanted to get out and share with the world.
	And that's why I've been doing what I've been doing for so long.
	Well, this is the first time that I've ever really felt frustrated by even blocked and not being able to speak or get my own work out there.
	Just being the technician rather than the visionary.
	Just being the technician and making sure that it looks perfect.
	But listen, I'll tell you this.
	It was great that I was blocked.
	If I had been given what I thought was my just dessert when I was younger, let's say I had become a professor or let's say I had gotten a TV show or something when I was younger, well, I wouldn't be doing this.
	I wouldn't have this freedom.
	I wouldn't have this possibility.
	I wouldn't have this potential.
	I wouldn't have this capacity for clarity.
	I would be concerned about a hierarchy and I would be concerned about particular regulations that don't apply to the internet.
	I would be concerned about advertisers.
	And I would be subject to concentrated retaliations, right?
	I mean this entire group that keeps trying to get Rush Limbaugh off the air by targeting his advertisers and stuff like that.
	I don't have any of that.
	Right.
	Right.
	I've seen that happen to people.
	I've seen that happen.
	That's a good point.
	So maybe this is a great opportunity for you.
	And maybe if you had had what you wanted, you wouldn't have what you could get to.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	That's very possible.
	So yeah.
	Find the people whose work inspires you.
	And if you can't find anyone, sit down and write something yourself.
	Or sit down and get something going yourself.
	When all else fails, individuation, entrepreneurship, and mad energy is the only thing that will save us.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	All right.
	Mike, did you want to chime in, yes or no?
	I know we're mulling back and forth.
	There's certainly quite a bit I could say.
	As someone who has received many of the, like, here's my resume, can you find something for me to do type emails, which I don't have time to read and I don't have time to go through.
	And I appreciate the sentiment and thought behind them, but...
	If people want to contribute, I don't want to say, you know, if you want to work for us, kind of thing.
	But I certainly have heard Milo say, good God, I need help.
	I've heard Mike Cernovich say, good God, I need help, and finding good help is hard to find.
	It's like, oh, I can relate to that.
	I know with me, what I appreciate is not so much a resume or even a request for a phone call to talk about stuff, because there's lots of people that are passionate about certain things, but I Life is busy.
	Yes.
	I'm someone that...
	You need someone to lighten the load, not here's another thing to do.
	Yeah, I mean, oddly enough, this is what I did that led to me working for Steph in addition to our friendship.
	But I produced something of value and I said, here you go.
	And Steph was like, oh, thanks, that's great.
	And then we talked about it more and we started working together.
	I think that's probably the best way to get your foot in the door anywhere.
	Research...
	Research the people that you want to get in with and figure out what they need that they might not even know that they need yet.
	And don't email and ask, hey, would you like this?
	Don't do that.
	Or what you need.
	Yeah, or don't ask what you need because if I have to tell you what I need or if Milo's got to tell you what he needs or other people got to tell you what you need more often than not...
	You know, everyone in a position of prominence of anything has had to deal with so many people that are like, oh yeah, I want to do this, that just completely flake out and do nothing.
	So, I'm someone that, I want to see something of quality in my inbox.
	You know, like, if people want to do something for the show, I want to see something really cool that I didn't think of in the inbox with, okay, here's a taste, there's more, this is...
	You know, you can have more for X, you know?
	You can reach me here.
	Nice and basic, nice and simple.
	To me, that's the easiest way to get in a place is realize, oh, you know, I'm so in the box, I didn't realize that this would be an amazing growth opportunity and we could do something here.
	We could produce this type of content.
	Or, you know...
	That outside perspective, seek something useful, mixed with unique talents and abilities to produce value for someone, and go, here it is.
	If you want more, let me know, and this is the price that I'm starting with, and we can work from there.
	To me, that's beautiful.
	It couldn't be better.
	I don't want a phone call.
	I don't want a resume.
	I don't want anything like that, because I'm a busy guy.
	I don't have time, and I assume there's many other people in the exact same kind of position as that.
	Yeah.
	So show me the money.
	Show me the value.
	I want to see the cool stuff that you can do in unique ways that's beneficial to me.
	And hey, there's always cool opportunities to work together if people can produce value because there's a shortage of people walking around on two legs that are capable of doing just that and being proactive.
	Lots of people that can produce, I made a cool widget that someone held my hand and walked me through.
	Well, that's great.
	But certainly in the realm of alternative media, people that are go-getters that go, oh, let me try and carve out my own niche and find my own opportunity, that's a skill set that is in short supply and is incredibly valuable.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Exactly.
	And I think on some level, I've always been aware of that.
	I mean, for instance, a month and a half ago, a colleague of mine and I shot three athletic commercials on spec, spent thousands of our own dollars to shoot them.
	But the thing of it was, even though we produce great material, we weren't putting it in front of people who recognize quality.
	This goes to what you were saying before, Steph.
	So do that and present it to people who are looking for quality and do recognize quality and probably will get different results.
	I think that's something I can work with.
	Well, the easiest way to find people that are going to recognize quality are people that are directly facing market signals on a daily basis.
	If you go to a think tank or something which is relying on a check from some billionaire that comes in quarterly, they're not so much market-facing.
	Right.
	Whereas if you're, you know, going to someone who's subscription-based or they sell a product specific, you know, they realize, hey, no one's buying the product this month.
	Hey, no one's buying the widget.
	They're going to have a lot more understanding of what value looks like because, you know, they've got to meet their obligations on a monthly basis as opposed to waiting for that quarterly check.
	That's right.
	Yep.
	Yep.
	Absolutely.
	Alright, then we're going to move on to the next caller, but we really appreciate the call, and let us know how it goes, alright?
	I certainly will, yeah.
	Thanks a lot, Steph, and you too, Mike.
	Alright, up next we have Derek.
	Derek wrote in and said, I think Donald Trump would be a better president, but suggests we should vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton on economic grounds.
	The elite, central banks, socialists, and regulating interventionalist busybodies have pushed the global fiat financial system to a point beyond repair.
	There is little that Donald Trump or anyone else can do at this point to unwind the mess.
	The president doesn't have the power to make needed effective change, nor would the vested interests allow it if he did.
	Additionally, Hillary's policies will accelerate the collapse, so maybe we can get through it faster.
	Shouldn't we let history record the failure under Hillary instead of during the term of a quote-unquote businessman?
	If not, it will be seen as a failure of capitalism, even though its cause is absence.
	Hello, Derek.
	How are you doing?
	Hi, Stefan.
	Great.
	Yeah, I mean, I understand this, and I'll, you know, I mean, I'm sure Mike will have something to add as well, but I've made this case in the past.
	I remember way back in the day, the worst is better kind of thing, like give the government the money so they can run up more debt, so they can go bankrupt more quickly, so we get on to the next thing.
	That was sort of an early article that I put out, freedomain.blogspot.com.
	And I also made the case, I think it was in 2008, that if Ron Paul got into power and tried to implement his goals, then...
	Public sector unions would revolt.
	There'd be blood in the streets and everyone would say, ah, this is what happens when you get a libertarian president and all this kind of stuff and nobody would really understand the causes.
	So, I mean, I want to sort of acknowledge and everyone remember that I'm perfectly aware of arguments that I've made in the past and I'm not pretending that I didn't so people can go, ah, I fully understand all of that.
	But I don't think it is the case with Trump for sort of two fundamental reasons.
	No one is going to get real upset if taxes get simplified, regulations get cut and so on.
	What Ron Paul wanted to do was much more radical than what Trump wants to do.
	And the idea of controlling immigration Of diminishing immigration to America.
	America has taken in a ridiculous number of immigrants and immigrants from cultures that have never really tried to live together before.
	This is important.
	You take 100,000 Somalis and you airlift them to Minnesota.
	Well, you're really trying something new.
	And just over the last couple of decades, over 42 million immigrants into America, the majority of which is like a significant majority of which are coming from really, really, really different cultures and really different religions and really different backgrounds and methods of social organization and no real history in the Western traditions.
	So that is a massive experiment.
	Which has never, to my knowledge, right, it's never been tried, certainly not to this degree, it's never been tried in the history of humanity to try and jam this many Cultures and ethnicities and races and religions into sort of one place and have them all kind of jammed together through the welfare state and this, that and the other.
	I mean it is a huge amount of risk that is being taken on.
	Of course, there are a lot of people who say, well, it's going to work out really, really well.
	Really well.
	And there are other people who say it's going to work out really, really badly.
	Like, Civil War badly.
	Because the other thing too is the cultures who came to America before, like 19th century, they came without a welfare state, without Medicare, without Medicaid, without pensions, without like – you could go on and on the list of things, right?
	So they came because they wanted to roll up their sleeves and work hard in a free market.
	That could accommodate them.
	And even then, a third of the people from Europe who came over to America went back home, didn't like it, didn't work out for them, right?
	And that's a lot more compatibility than a lot of these other ethnicities and cultures that are coming to America and who are disproportionately using the welfare state, which means that they're not exactly there for the economic opportunities or the freedoms or whatever, right?
	I mean, maybe they are, and then they just get sucked under into the welfare state, quackmire, who knows, right?
	But there is this massive experiment that That is going on.
	And where this experiment has been tried in the past with even more compatible cultures, I'm thinking of Northern and Southern Ireland.
	You can think of Yugoslavia.
	You can think of the Balkans.
	You can think of a wide variety of places.
	You can think of various tribes trying to get along together in Africa, generally the same races.
	I mean, the Protestants and the Catholics, oh yeah, Irish and British to a large degree, but, you know, still white.
	Still Christian.
	And they blow each other up.
	As I said before in the show, as a kid, they would say, watch out for all of these grocery bags or unattended backpacks and bust-offs.
	Blow your head right off, kid!
	So we don't have any magic source that has disparate tribes managing to get along well together.
	Whatever integration means, I mean, nobody even can really describe what does integration mean.
	What does it mean to integrate?
	Does that mean that the people from the Middle East who go to France become just like French people?
	What does that mean?
	Nobody even knows.
	I don't even know what the hell people mean when they say integrate other than it's a magic word which means there won't be fighting in the streets.
	How is this going to work?
	Nobody knows.
	Nobody knows.
	It's a massive experiment.
	Of course, if you're going to try this kind of experiment, you try small doses first, right?
	You try little doses.
	You'd say, okay, well, for a couple of generations in, we'll take 50,000 people and we'll see how it works out after maybe 90 years.
	How's it working out with the Amish?
	Have they integrated?
	Not really.
	There are still places in Pennsylvania where they still speak German.
	How are the French integrating?
	Into Canada.
	Well, no way.
	Still speaking French, right?
	What does it mean?
	Nobody knows.
	Nobody knows.
	And so there's this big, giant, massive experiment that's going on in the West, which in most other situations and circumstances has resulted in staggering disaster.
	And people just want to keep hitting the gas on it.
	I mean, people on the left, right?
	They just want to import people who are going to vote for them.
	It's nothing to do with multiculturalism.
	They want all the cultures that vote Democrat to come into America, right?
	And for Trump to say, whoa, Nellie, you know, I may be paraphrasing a little here, but to say, you know, why don't we do what America did about 100 years ago, like in the 1920s, and just put a massive pause on immigration for half a century.
	I don't know if he's talking about half a century, but that's what happened.
	Basically, from early mid-1920s until the mid-1960s, immigration really, really slowed to a trickle in America.
	And it was, in many ways, some of the most prosperous times in America.
	Obviously, outside of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression and so on.
	But if you look at standard living, 1925 to 1965, it was a massive, massive increase even with the Depression and the Dust Bowl and the War, Second World War and all of that.
	It was still, still amazing, and particularly for blacks, huge increases in income, entrance into the professions and stability of marriage and so on.
	So people, I don't think people really understand just what a staggeringly huge and risky Risky, risky, risky, risky experiment this is.
	And the people who say, oh, it's fine.
	You know, all we have to do is stop white people from being racist and prejudiced and everything.
	It'd be perfect.
	Really?
	Really?
	That must be why all the tribes in Africa get along so well.
	So, this giant experiment Needs to be evaluated.
	And to evaluate it, you need to – everyone says, oh, it's all going to work out well.
	It's like, well, you know, why don't we slow it down for a little and find out?
	Because, you know, if it doesn't work out, that's it.
	If it doesn't work out, that's it for Western civilization as we know it.
	And, you know, call me crazy.
	Call me patriarchal.
	Call me lost in the past.
	I have quite an affinity and praise and respect, affection, devotion, and love for Western civilization.
	So don't mess with it.
	And you don't have to mess with it.
	It's not necessary to mess with it.
	Immigration is a displacement, right?
	Because immigrants come in, have lots of kids, take lots of welfare, which means that Whites get taxed more, which means whites have fewer kids.
	It's not America plus immigration.
	It's America plus immigration minus Americans.
	And the statistics are very clear on that, and even more clear in Europe.
	So, for Donald Trump to say, let's take a pause on immigration, or whatever he wants to do with immigration, or let's enforce existing immigration laws, that's not...
	Saying enforce the law is not a revolutionary statement.
	You know, saying let's replace the czar with Lenin, okay, that's a revolutionary, literally a revolutionary statement.
	But saying let's enforce the existing law and there is no innate right for everyone in the world who wants to come and live in America to come and live in America.
	The Constitution applies to Americans.
	Not to foreigners.
	And to people on American soil, but not to foreigners.
	So, if Hillary Clinton gets in, she of course wants, he's talked about, she wants open borders, basically.
	Which is one of these weird phrases that is a complete oxymoron.
	If it's open, it's not a border.
	Open borders, it's a concept, it's complete, it's like a square circle.
	It's a concept that makes absolutely no sense.
	A border, by definition, is where one country ends, another country begins, there's barriers to crossing.
	Open means, okay, no borders.
	And now, Steph, let me just add in, too, because the WikiLeaks speeches dropped today, some of Hillary Clinton's speeches that she gave to Wall Street.
	And she talked about having a public position and a private position.
	And in those, it documents that she is outright for open borders.
	That's not even just, you know, well, looking at the evidence of everything that you're saying and the positions that you're taking, I can tell that you're for open borders.
	She's outright said.
	She said that.
	I read that tonight.
	Yeah.
	I read that before the show.
	That stuff was dropping.
	So open borders.
	And she wants to massively increase immigration, particularly from the third world, 550% more Syrian migrants and all of this.
	So what was that?
	Jesus, Mike.
	Sorry to put you on the spot.
	You hit this great picture you shared with me earlier today.
	Libertarian.
	Oh, my favorite meme.
	Yeah, I have it somewhere.
	Let me pull it up.
	Okay.
	Yeah, I'll filler space filler filler until Mike pulls it up.
	It's got a very smiling, happy guy wearing a button that says, I didn't vote.
	Not a statist.
	He's a very happy, smiling white guy with a don't tread on me flag behind him.
	And there is a large swath of migrants behind him.
	And the caption is, Oh, good.
	More people I can convince about the validity of the libertarian philosophy.
	Thank goodness I didn't vote for Trump.
	Right.
	Source country IQ, as I say, you need to look this stuff up.
	It's very, very important and very, very real.
	And I know I did the truth.
	Hang on.
	Sorry.
	I know I did the truth about voting and all of that, and the arguments there are for a high IQ society.
	And if a high IQ society gets replaced by a lower IQ society, again, whether it's cultural, whether it's environmental, whether it's genetic, doesn't particularly matter.
	Still nobody knows how to change it.
	So that's a different argument.
	And so if Hillary gets in and she opens the borders and millions and millions more people pour in from the third world or wherever to America...
	What then?
	I don't disagree with everything you said.
	Actually, I almost didn't want to call in after listening to Michael's wonderful rant the other day about voting for Trump.
	It actually got me to register for the first time since 1984.
	He's a Democrat, I hope.
	You don't have to declare.
	I'm voting from overseas.
	You don't have to declare.
	And so I agree with all of what you said.
	I certainly think he would do a much better job than the current path we're on.
	However, that said, I went up and I read Trump's economic vision, his tax plan, his speech from the Economic Club of New York.
	Nothing in it that he said will stop the other great war that's going on.
	Not just the immigration war, but the fiat currency war that I see is probably at least as destructive as the immigration war.
	I could quote you a lot of statistics because this is what I do and study on what's happening with the world's finances right now and the horrible shape it's in.
	I just listened to your Deutsche Bank podcast also.
	It's actually, I think, worse than how you presented it.
	And so I see a collapse that is inevitable, if not imminent, although I think it's probably imminent also, because signs show it's about to happen.
	Corporate bond defaults are already higher than they were in 2008.
	And a whole bunch of other stats that I'm not going to bore you with unless you want me to.
	And so I see, you know, something happening that is probably bigger than the Great Depression on the horizon.
	I have memories from my grandfather, who was one of the most admirable men I've ever known.
	I'm sorry to interrupt you, but let me just ask you this basic question.
	Of course there's going to be a big crash, right?
	No question.
	Mathematically, it's...
	Yep, it's math.
	There was a big crash in Germany called the Second World War, and they recovered, because you have a high IQ population.
	Tokyo was firebombed.
	Hiroshima and Nagasaki destroyed by nuclear weapons.
	In Japan, the end of the Second World War.
	And they survived.
	High IQ population.
	So do you want, when the crash hits in America, a high IQ population or a low IQ population?
	Of course I want a high IQ population.
	Do you want it to be like Japan after the Second World War or like Iraq after the invasion?
	Obvious answer to that question.
	I want a high IQ population.
	Not sure we have one as it is, but I want a high IQ population.
	Well, it's higher than it would be otherwise if immigration is controlled.
	Well, you know, if the economy crashes and, like you said, they self-deport themselves because there isn't money in the government to get rid of them, then won't that achieve the same thing?
	Well, no, because...
	If the economy crashes, there may be a certain amount of self-deportation, even under Hillary, of the illegal immigrants.
	But there are 42 million legal immigrants that have come in over the past few decades.
	But Trump's not going to be...
	They're not going to self-deport.
	But it's not going to be any different.
	Trump's not going to be kicking them out either.
	Okay, I get that.
	But he's not going to be...
	He's not an open borders guy.
	So he's not going to be throwing the gates even wider.
	No, but I'm saying if they're going to self-deport under Trump because of his policies, they will also self-deport because of the collapsed economy.
	Is that not true?
	Are people self-deporting from Venezuela?
	You're missing what I'm saying.
	Forget about the illegal immigrants.
	If Hillary opens up more gates for legal immigration, which as far as I understand it, she wants to because they're all going to vote.
	Look, if there's a self-deportation of illegal immigrants...
	And some reports have come out at the moment that one of the reasons why Obama doesn't want to enforce deportations is because they're trying to figure out ways or trying to get ways that the illegal immigrants can vote.
	So if there's a bunch of self-deportations from illegal immigrants, well, that's a potential, right?
	Then they don't have the big, we'll give you amnesty, we'll give you citizenship that they can dangle, that the Democrats can dangle in front of the illegal immigrants to get their vote.
	So they're going to want to import even more people who are going to vote Democrat.
	So it's not about the illegal immigrants.
	It's the illegal immigrants.
	If Donald Trump slows or I know as some people, Ann Coulter who was just on the show I think has talked about a 10-year moratorium on immigration.
	Like just stop.
	Stop.
	Stop.
	We can't take any more.
	The roads are 2 o'clock.
	The schools are 2 o'clock.
	There's too many different languages.
	There's too many people on welfare.
	There's too many people.
	We don't know how they're going to fit in in the long run.
	We can't afford it.
	We're $20 trillion in debt and every – so many of the immigrants come in, cost huge amounts of money, especially if they have lots of kids.
	So if there's a pause or a moratorium or even a slowdown in immigration under Trump, then that's a very different scenario than the gates thrown wide under Hillary.
	Okay.
	So, let me tell you the story about my grandfather that caused me to write this.
	He...
	During the Reagan election period, I was telling him the merits of Reagan, and his view was that he lived through the Great Depression.
	He sold my grandmother's wedding ring to buy toys for my dad, that kind of thing.
	And he would never...
	Vote for a Republican because his view was that either the Republicans were the instigators of the cause of the Depression or the Democrats were the saviors.
	You know, despite the fact, you know, he was a working man, a machinist, a railroad engineer, an oil derrick worker.
	You know, that's his viewpoint.
	He wasn't an intellectual that would look into the issues.
	Why are we talking about your grandfather's viewpoint?
	Just tell me why, because I don't understand it at all.
	Sure.
	Because when the crash comes, and I think it is a win, and Donald Trump cannot stop it because he doesn't have the power, and I'm not even sure he has the understanding of vision, but let's say he could get people around him that do.
	He seems to be good at that.
	But the crash will come.
	Lots of people's lives will be destroyed.
	Get it.
	Tell me why we're talking about your grandfather's perspective, please.
	The legacy of the cause of this will then be those capitalists, those businessmen.
	And thus, for entire generations in the future, we will still be trampled with, oh, the capitalists and the businessmen Right.
	And that is exactly what a low IQ population is going to think.
	So we should not have as low an IQ population.
	Oh, so we should just give up then.
	So a low IQ population when the disaster hits is going to what?
	Blame Hillary?
	And like Donald Trump, come on, man.
	The only chance we have is for a higher IQ population to understand the true causes of all of this stuff, which is why I'm out here doing the work that I do to give better information.
	Is this going to reach people with an IQ of 75 or 80?
	No, of course not.
	But it's going to hit enough people out there and there's still enough smart people out there.
	But if we continue to replace smart people with less smart people, well, it doesn't matter who's in power.
	Doesn't matter who's in power.
	The cry will still just be for more government, more government, more government.
	And the thing is, too, like your grandfather who said, well, I wouldn't vote for a Republican.
	Well, what the hell does Donald Trump have to do with Republicanism?
	Well, he's doing that with Republicanism.
	I mean, no, the Republicans hate the guy.
	It's been a hostile takeover of the party.
	With the Republicans.
	The Republicans hate the guy.
	I said businessmen and capitalism is what it will be blamed on, not Republicans.
	No, no, no.
	But earlier you said that your grandmother said I won't vote for a Republican.
	Well, you know, it's funny because the Republicans are all saying that Donald Trump is not a real Republican and people are like, well, exactly.
	That's why we love him.
	Sorry, Mike.
	You wanted to say a thing or two?
	I could say quite a bit.
	Just back to the initial point about, you know, you don't want the libertarian in office when, you know, the proverbial nonsense hits the fan because then libertarianism will be skewed and blamed for it.
	Well, that would apply to Gary Johnson, but it doesn't apply to Donald Trump.
	That was an argument against smearing the brand of libertarianism, of which Donald Trump is most certainly not a libertarian.
	And as Steph was saying, you know, the Republicans have spent an awful long time saying he's not a true conservative.
	He's not a real Republican.
	So, I mean, you can even say that he wouldn't even smear Republicanism if things hit the fan while he was in charge.
	Well, I agree.
	That's why I think he's going to be smearing capitalism and businessmen.
	But capitalism and businessmen are always going to get smeared by the left and always going to get smeared by low IQ populations.
	The question is, when stuff does happen, when the fiat currency train hits the wall, what's going to spring up out of that?
	If you have massive amounts of low IQ people, you're probably going to go towards more socialism.
	You're going to get a communist set up.
	That will be the direction.
	Venezuela just ran out of money, and it's not like free market thinking is springing up out of Venezuela.
	Same thing with Somalia.
	Every anarchist has had to hear for years, well, Somalia doesn't have a government.
	Do you want society to be like Somalia?
	Well, Somalia has an average IQ of 68.
	You're not going to get a free society springing up out of an IQ 68 population.
	Venezuela has the average IQ of 84, and that's some old information.
	And given that anyone in Venezuela could see the way things were going for quite a while, I imagine it was quite a bit lower when things hit the fan.
	So, you know, IQ, what, 80 in Venezuela?
	Whoever stayed around, certainly the less intelligent people stuck around, and the more intelligent people that had options got out of Dodge.
	So what's going to spring up out of there?
	You got people eating dogs on the street.
	Do you want people eating dogs on the streets of the United States when things hit the fan because the fiat currency situation collapses?
	Or would you like people that maybe have a higher average IQ that can look and say, well, all that government spending and all that big government policies and regulation, that sure didn't work.
	Maybe we can go the other direction instead.
	You're going to get the people on the socialist side of things.
	You're going to get the low IQ people that want the resources that voting patterns show.
	We're going to historically vote for more government and more goodies and that type of stuff.
	They're always going to blame capitalism.
	They're always going to blame someone other than themselves.
	It's a complete abdication of personal responsibility.
	That's not going to change if Hillary Clinton is in office.
	If Hillary Clinton's in office, when stuff happens, these people are still going to blame the free market.
	It's going to be the big banks that are evil and bad, and we need more regulation, so let's just go straight communism.
	Total Globalist Open Border Society.
	Okay.
	I agree.
	Alright.
	Thanks very much.
	Appreciate it.
	Nobly spoken, and I appreciate the call and the conversation and the question.
	It is a very interesting question.
	Who do we want to be?
	And I made the case.
	People only remember the guy in charge of the Titanic when it goes down.
	But I think it's not too late to turn it around.
	But I think demographics, as I've talked about incessantly for the last two years or more, demographics is really, really key to this.
	And it's the only thing that matters at this point because of IQ. Well, it's not just IQ. It's that culture as well.
	But, I mean, it's certainly IQ is...
	The reason I talk so much about this stuff, the IQ in particular, is because nobody else...
	Well, very few other people do.
	Sure.
	And it is really, really important.
	So...
	So thanks very much for your call.
	I appreciate it.
	I really appreciate you bringing this up because what you say does completely apply to Gary Johnson and people thinking of voting for Gary Johnson.
	You know, if you don't want libertarianism to take a giant hit when shit hits the fan, you don't want Gary Johnson in office.
	And, you know, the odds of Gary Johnson getting in are practically zero, but that's just something that...
	He's cratering at the moment.
	Well, that's not surprising.
	Thanks very much, and thanks very much for everyone for calling in tonight.
	Always a great pleasure to chat with you all.
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