Dec. 18, 2016 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:04:22
3534 Patriarchal Apocalypse - Call In Show - December 16th, 2016
Question 1: [1:38] - “Many women with whom I discuss your teachings dissent on the idea of free employment and free wage setting from the employer to the employee. Most women put forth the idea (although they may not phrase it as so) that they are at a biological disadvantage in the workplace. The main force behind this biological disadvantage is that of childbirth, and the amount of time it removes them from the workplace. They fear the situation where they are equal with a male applying for the same job, because they know the employer believes the woman will likely miss more days than the male over time, and will thus favor the equally qualified male. How do I convince women who aren't versed in the teachings of liberty that employers seeking more value from an employee are not sexist, and that the status of free employment/wage setting will not lead to a patriarchal apocalypse?”Question 2: [39:35] - “How do people of diametrically opposed viewpoints agree on an absolute definition when they come from alternate realities and perspectives especially when setting an educational curriculum? My struggle on campus has largely been with the futility of reasoning with professors who believe themselves to be teaching what I suspect is the absolutism of relativism? How would you go about effectively proving that someone's fundamental views are inherently wrong when they believe that yours are inherently wrong? What would that debate look like? “Question 3: [1:18:13] - “Can Western culture be summarized as a tradition of recognizing and weeding out obsolete and often times destructive evolutionary traits? How did evolution shape the human tradition of witch hunting?”Question 4: [1:40:57] - “I don't want to endorse a corrupt system of education. Should I be concerned with going to a public college that I don't agree with politically/morally, if I get the education I need to survive in the free market?”Freedomain Radio is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by signing up for a monthly subscription or making a one time donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
A young gentleman calleth in to the show this Christmas season and wants to know...
Why does the free market give such gifts of evil to women?
Why are they underpaid?
And how can we convince them that the free market is their friend if women feel underpaid according to the economic value that they can provide or according to sexism, patriarchy, misogyny?
Some people would say it's a great question.
And to be honest, I had a little bit of a rant or two.
I think you'll enjoy it.
Now, the second caller goes to college in California, also known as the Left Coast, for its relativism and hysterical rage towards anyone right of Che Guevara.
So, we talked about what it's like to be in college, whether it's worth it, what the pluses are, what the minuses are, and it was enjoyable.
Enjoyable chat.
And the third caller, and this is a topic I don't think we've explored nearly enough on this show, witch hunting.
Enough said.
The last caller wanted to know, should he go to a college and pay tuition and support the college, I suppose?
If he really finds their political and moral stances abhorrible.
Horrible.
Abhorrible?
Abominable and horrible.
I just made a new word.
So thanks so much for listening.
Of course, it's a great, great show.
I think you'll really enjoy it.
And please don't forget, please, please, please don't forget, freedomainradio.com slash donate, fdrurl.com slash Amazon for your shopping needs.
And you can follow me on Twitter at Stefan Molyneux.
Alright, up first today we have Jonah.
Jonah wrote in and said, The majority of women with whom I discuss your teachings dissent on the idea of free employment and free wage setting from the employer to the employee.
Most women put forth the idea...
Although they may not phrase it as I do, that they are at a biological disadvantage in the workplace.
The main force behind this biological disadvantage is that of childbirth and the amount of time it removes from them in the workforce.
They fear the situation that they are equal with a male applying for the same job because they know the employer believes the woman will likely miss more days than the male over time and will thus favor the equally qualified male.
How do I convince women who aren't versed in the teachings of liberty that employers seeking more value from an employee are not sexist, and that the status of free employment slash wage setting will not lead to a patriarchal apocalypse?
Great term.
That's from Jonah.
Patriarchal apocalypse.
Hey, Jenna, how you doing?
Doing well, Stephan.
How are you?
I'm well.
I'm well.
Yeah, you know, it's a crab that there's a need for children in the world and that people quite like them.
It's that line.
It's a pretty good old movie, I guess old now, called Forces of Nature.
And I mentioned this before, but the guy, do you have any kids of your own?
They ask him, no, but I see them everywhere.
I don't know why, it's just funny.
So, yeah, you know, women are going to want to Have children.
And having children, if you want to be a decent mother, having children means Staying home with them.
It means being a mother.
It means breastfeeding.
So, you know, you get nine months of pregnancy, seven or eight minutes of birth, if I remember rightly.
And then, you know, you should be breastfeeding for 18 months to two years or whatever.
And then if you want another baby, then you start getting pregnant after that.
And then you have another baby.
And, you know, here we're talking five or six or seven years.
And that's if you just want to.
And that doesn't even get them to daycare age, right?
So...
You know, basically, I think if you want to be a good parent, you should book on at least a decade, right, to get your youngest into the age of five or six, into some sort of, God help us, educational structure or something like that.
So, yeah, it's tough.
I don't know why that's an apocalypse, though.
I mean, I don't know why that, like, why is that considered to be a bad thing?
I mean, if you're not in the workforce, what do you care what women are getting paid in the workforce?
Oh, that's just something that I fear by some of the mentalities I see coming back at me that they may fear would happen.
I was having this conversation with my girlfriend, and she's the one that brought up this question of the two equally...
They have the same credibility...
Qualified, equally qualified.
Right, right, right.
And that they would favor...
The male, just because he was going to miss more...
And I explained to her what is wrong with...
Or there's nothing wrong with an employer seeking more value from an employee.
That is what they're doing.
You know, they're trying to produce value for society.
If they're picking workers, they want workers that are going to bring the most value to society and to themselves, right?
Right.
And the reality is, though, if the woman wants money...
Then the best thing that she can do is to get married to a competent man.
If she wants kids and she wants a good income, which I assume is sort of similar, then statistically the best thing she can do is to get married to a competent man and to run his household and make his life easier and be a household manager, which is no small feat and it's an important thing to do.
And make sure that he knows that his home is taken care of and be his confidant, his advisor and all of that.
And I mean, he will make a fortune.
You know, two people out of the workforce, they kind of just limp along.
You know, neither of them can commit that much to their work.
They're both busy.
They're both tired.
They're both frustrated.
They just they can't generate that kind of positive energy that just has the Benjamins rolling towards you like that giant ball at the beginning of Indiana Jones.
But if one person now it could be the man, although the woman comes with the flappy feedbacks, if I remember rightly.
So, you know, it's most likely to be the woman, but it can be the man.
But someone got to stay home with the kids if you want kids.
And if that person who's staying home with the kids is a competent household manager, then her husband can make a fortune compared because he's competing up against other men who are split shifting with their wives.
Their wives are working, they're working, they've got daycare, they've got stress, they've got worry, they've got exhaustion, they've got all, it's just a mess, right?
I mean, I've gone through this day a million times, so I won't do it again here, but I saw this a lot and I really, really did not want to get married and have kids seeing how the first fathers that I knew and met in my sort of contemporary circle, the guys who became dads, man, it did not look like a lot of fun.
It was just nothing but juggling and exhaustion and stress and, you know, because their wives were working.
Now, I did see that the wives who weren't working, boy, those guys.
Those guys had it pretty good.
And their wives had it pretty good, too.
So, if the woman wants money, then being a stay-at-home mom doesn't subtract from your income.
It actually adds to your income overall because you've got one person in the family who can really pursue a career and really, really make it happen.
So, you know, that old thing behind every great man is a great woman.
Well, that's very true.
So, if the woman wants money...
She'll probably, I would argue, get more money in the long run by getting married to a competent man and supporting him and running his household and raising his children than she will if she just goes out and works and her husband works and so she'll have a much better quality of life.
Housewives are the happiest women.
Housewives, like statistically, this was a UK poll, but I think it's pretty...
Housewives are incredibly satisfied, incredibly happy.
And of course, feminists don't want you to know that, because it goes against the narrative that you've got to be all things to all people.
But...
So yeah, I mean, if you want money, get married to a good man and run his household.
If you want to have a career, then fine.
Have a career.
That's perfectly fine.
But just recognize that if you try to combine careerhood with motherhood, you're going to kind of suck at both.
And this is true for men and women.
If you are trying to combine fatherhood with a wife who's doing motherhood and a career, It's just not going to work.
It's just going to work.
So, women who don't want kids?
No.
I don't know.
I mean, I don't...
Legally, you can't, of course, ask people...
You can't ask a woman, are you planning on having kids, right?
That's not...
That's not very reasonable.
But...
You know, they can certainly say, you know, they can drop hints, you know, I don't date, I'm not interested in having children, and they can certainly drop those things.
Any employer who accepts that is taking a risk, of course, right?
I mean, and because, you know, a woman's prerogative is to change her mind, and what a woman feels at 25 may be quite different from what her hormones are telling her at 35.
But no, if you want to have a great, comfortable, happy life, then be a housewife and be a mother and support your husband.
And statistically, this is about the richest and the most successful and the happiest that you can possibly be.
And I assume that what the women are after is happiness, and that's where the statistics lead.
Right, and I would agree.
But it seems like after the 22 years of indoctrination machine they go through, they end up thinking that happiness could only be, or at least achievement could only be brought about in the workplace and not necessarily in the home.
What I tried to say to these people that I have this argument with is you're going to go and switch places with that happy housewife or stay-at-home spouse that does get to tend to the kids and gets to have that nurturing role in their life that they're designed to have.
If you're going to switch, you're going to be looking at 40 to 50 hours a week for the next 45 years of your life.
You're going to be looking at less time with your kids.
You're probably looking at college debt.
Why can I not explain to these 22 to 25-year-old women that this role is a good idea for them, as opposed to this mutual mediocrity that all people my age seem to be seeking with this dual working parentship?
Right, right.
Well, of course, if women believe the demonization of men, Then, of course, what woman would want to be dependent on a man who's a patriarch and a misogynist and a whatever, right?
I mean, a cisgendered scum of some kind, right?
So, yeah, I mean, this is how...
This is how women are sort of forced into the marketplace by propaganda.
And they're forced into the marketplace so that the government gets more control over the children and so that they generate tax revenue.
As I've mentioned before in the show, children are a huge cost to society.
And every politician has a huge incentive to postpone the voters from having children.
Because if the voters aren't having children Then the government has to provide fewer services, right?
I mean, they don't have to provide schools or as many.
They don't have to provide as much daycare.
And they don't have to deal with the loss of income for the government that comes when some woman leaves the workforce.
Of course, governments are trying to program women to go into the workforce.
And the one way to do that, of course, is to continually speak about the untrustworthiness.
Of men.
And you see this everywhere.
I remember seeing, I watched the whole thing, but I watched the first few minutes, you know, for cultural reasons of the, I think it was in 2006 or 2008 or something like that, the Sex and the City movie.
And in the Sex and the City movie, Carrie Bradshaw is walking down the street and she sees, this is in the opening few minutes, and she sees this woman, you know, slapping this guy with her purse, screaming, you know, you're married, you son of a bitch, you MF, you're married!
You know, just raging and hateful.
And this is what needs to be programmed, that men are untrustworthy, men are unreliable, you can't depend on them, they're gonna leave you for a younger woman, you know, sort of first wives club kind of stuff.
And that way, Women feel that it's too much of a gamble to be dependent on a man.
It's just, you know, men are too untrustworthy.
You can't depend on men.
And this, of course, has them go into the workforce saying, well, you know, I've got to go and get educated because if I get divorced and I have to go and work, I have to be educated.
And I have to work part-time at least.
I've got to keep my skills up because if I get divorced and I have to go and...
If I get divorced, if I get divorced, if I get divorced.
And...
Just find a man who doesn't suck.
It's the big antidote to it all.
Find a man who loves you, who's trustworthy, who's reliable.
You might have to give up an ab or two.
He may not have a motorcycle.
He may in fact have a dead body, but he is going to be stable and reliable and there for you and there for your children.
And don't be passive.
Like if you want a great marriage, Work to have a great marriage, right?
If you want a man to not leave you, be so fantastic that it would never cross his mind.
And so, this causes a massive waste of social resources.
Now, you're a young guy, and we'll talk about your girlfriend in a second, but you're a young guy, so you haven't seen this yet.
But I'm telling you, at my age, the number of women I know who got really good education...
They're really good educations.
Who aren't using them is too many to count.
It's literally too many to count.
And what a waste.
What a waste.
I mean, you can only produce a certain number of engineers every year.
And if you produce engineers from women engineers who don't end up in the workforce, well, your society is down one engineer.
We've minus one engineer.
How tragic.
What a shame.
So...
I don't know how to explain it other than if you want to be a good parent, you have to parent.
If you want to be a good parent, you have to spend time with your children.
If you want your children to grow up healthy, you want them to bond with you, you want to breastfeed them because that increases IQ points, you want to know their moods, their thoughts, their preferences, you want to have that wonderful intimate relationship you can have with kids because you're their world, you know, when they're growing up.
I mean, nobody's going to look at you As an adult, the same way a child does, except maybe a stalker.
So if you want that relationship, you have to invest in that relationship.
No one gets married and then says, let's move apart, like voluntarily, just for the fun of it, right?
You get married to spend time together and have kids to spend time together.
So yeah, if you have a desire to be a good parent, then be a good parent, right?
I'm Because a lot of women are LARPing as professionals.
Some women do it, and they do a fantastic job, and some women can do that juggle, and some women can focus, like the late Phyllis Schlafly, can raise six wonderful children, be Illinois Mother of the Year, then go be a lawyer, write books, and do shows, and run the Eagle Forum and all that.
And some women can do that, although she didn't do them all at the same time, focused on parenting and then did other things.
And there's other women who, Vanessa Redgrave, a very famous British actress from I guess about a generation ago, a mad Trotskyist, like a Marxist.
And she was always running out to meetings and gave massive amounts of her money to various communist causes.
And her children would be like hanging onto her legs as she's heading out the door to yet another meeting to save the proletariat.
And, you know, the kids are screaming, don't go, mommy, don't go.
We need you here.
We want you here.
And she's like, no, I'm going to make the world a better place.
And they say, can't you just make the world a better place when we're a little older?
And like a lot of Marxists, and she confesses to this as well, like a lot of Marxists, she likes humanity in the abstract, but doesn't particularly like people in the particular.
That's a very, very common thing.
Among people who see these big movements, these big ideas, these big classes or races or whatever, and they can't deal with individuals.
They have an abstract love for these categories without any particular affection for the individuals who compose them, which is why you can want to save the proletariat while stripping away their freedoms and rights.
Sorry, a minor digression, but I think just the facts.
You know, if you want to be a parent...
Be a parent.
Why have children so that other people can raise your children?
What's the point?
They're expensive.
Time-consuming.
They're up late.
They get sick.
They want you to play silly games over and over again.
They want you to watch the same shows over and over again.
Why bother?
Just don't have kids.
Society and economics rewards that perfectly.
Perfectly.
College-educated women who've been in the workforce for about the same time as college-educated men, about the same age, actually earn slightly more than men.
So until women have kids, they're doing fine.
And that continues.
That continues.
Just keep plugging along.
If you want to earn the same as a man, then put in the same amount of work.
That's called equality.
That's called playing on an even playing field.
If you want to earn the same amount of money as a man, like female doctors put in about 500 hours a year less than male doctors.
It's just a fact.
Who should get paid more?
The male doctors.
Because they're working harder, you know?
That's what equality means.
And it's not fair to say, I want to be paid more for less work.
That's exploitive, right?
Marxists should be very upset about that.
But of course they're not, because it helps shred the family.
So, no.
The market will reward them.
If they want to be singleton professional career women, And they don't want to have babies, then the market will recognize that and will reward them accordingly.
If they say that they want to go have babies, then they're going to be off and they may not come back.
Oh, I just saw after my maternity leave, I just thought, ah, forget it, I'm not coming back.
Oh, great.
So now the employer has held your job open and tried to find someone to patch into it for about a year, which is really hard to find, and you've got to train that person, and what if they're better than you and they've got to hold that job for a year, and then you're like, I'm sorry, I'm not coming back, or I'm going to come back for the obligatory couple of months or whatever.
What a mess.
What a mess.
I mean, why?
Just organize your life so that you have a great husband who makes good coin with your support, who can focus on his career and raise your kids.
I mean, and oh, well, you're not going to have your own career.
You do have a career.
It's called being a mom and you'll be very, very well paid for it.
Probably better paid than you would if you had a job in some cubicle.
I wholeheartedly agree.
But it seems like that idea, if you just go back like 30 seconds, is where they start to stumble, is that if you want to be in the same place in your career as a man, you need to work as hard as a man, or at least provide the same amount of value.
And they do.
They feel that they're at this biological disadvantage because they have to make that choice of whether or not they have kids at the guy.
They make the choice to have the kid, but to deal with the pregnancy and the birthing.
Yeah.
What?
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
I'm sorry, man.
I'm sorry.
I just...
I keep hearing about this female empathy.
I really, really keep hearing about this female empathy.
All right.
Fucking biological disadvantage.
Yes, giving birth and breastfeeding and raising a...
It's a biological...
It's a minus!
Okay, ladies, let me ask you something.
Let me ask you something out there.
The fairer sex.
Let's just take that from being paler to being nicer.
The fairer sex.
Let's just...
Let's give you the female empathy challenge out here, shall we?
Now...
Ladies, imagine that there's a man out there, and that man really, really wants to be a stay-at-home dad and has his wife work.
But he's at a biological disadvantage, you see, because...
He can't breastfeed.
So that biological disadvantage drives him out into the workforce, whether he wants to be there or not.
whether he'd give his eye teeth, he'd give his left nut, his right arm to stay home with these wonderful children, but he's got to go out into the workforce and grind away at some thankless job and deal with office politics and being tired and commuting and uncomfortable office chairs and the sitting is the new smoking toll on his health while she's home there tossing the babies in the air and giggling and painting toenails and all this kind of stuff.
So he's out there because he's at a huge biological disadvantage being he does not have the flippy floppy put your head between them and make motorboat noises, feed bags that make it sort of helpful for a woman to stay home and So, have I ever heard a woman say, well, you know, okay, what about all the men who want to stay home with the kids but can't really?
Maybe because men get paid more or maybe because they don't have the breasts or whatever or maybe because, because, because, right?
Or maybe because if you want a bunch of kids, there's not much point having the man stay home because if you want a bunch of kids, the woman's going to have to keep interrupting her career, right?
To be very pregnant, to breastfeed, to recover, or to give birth, or whatever.
So I don't think, like, women are always like, oh, but the woe is me, and I'm at this disadvantage, and it's so terrible for me, and oh, being a woman, to be a woman is to have the blues, says Bette Midler in the Rose, or whatever.
And so, what about women's empathy for all the stuff that men have to go work?
Because they can't stay home, usually.
I can.
I was lucky and worked and planned to do all, but...
Where's the women saying, oh, but, you know, so we have a disadvantaged show, but what about the men who would much rather stay home but can't because they don't have the equipment to give birth to or to feed the babies with the right stuff to grow the baby's brain, right?
The breast milk.
How tragic for men, the men who want to stay home.
So all the women who want to go out into the workforce is terrible.
It's terrible.
It's unjust.
I'm at this biological disadvantage.
I really want to go out into the workforce.
What about the men who really want to stay home?
They have a biological Show empathy for that, show concern, show consideration to understand we're all in the same boat and we don't all get everything we want.
Not only do they get the empathy, they get the goddamn legislation.
You look at the Planned Parenthood, you look at paid maternity leave, you look at the employment system and whatnot, and if you're not meeting ratios that you can bring in minorities with this argument too, that they're at some sort of biological disadvantage because of their melanin level.
It's all building away from this idea that we are our value.
Women have value to children because they have breasts.
Yeah, this idea of equal pay for work of equal value.
What a contemptible, contemptible view of women to have as a feminist to say, well, gosh darn...
These poor little damsels in distress, these frail little flowers, these curvaceous hibisci, they can't possibly go and negotiate for themselves.
So we have to have big daddy government mostly composed of men with policemen and courts and all of that and lawyers and the policemen generally are men and all the men need to swarm around the women and make sure that the women are treated fairly because these frail little flowers can't negotiate for themselves.
I mean, oh my god!
You got to keep these people away from your daughters the way you'd keep succubi away from your newborns.
Ah, young, fresh, innocent blood with a nice side of Chianti and fava beans.
Right?
I mean, that's gross.
I don't want anyone coming to my daughter and saying, well, we need the government to negotiate on your behalf because you can't possibly do it for yourselves.
Can men do it?
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Men can totally negotiate on their behalf.
Can women do it?
No.
You see, we need big, giant guns in the room to make sure women are treated fairly.
Otherwise, women would kind of have to speak up for themselves and negotiate for themselves and...
They can't.
It's like, oh my god, how retrograde can that possibly be in anyone's mind?
That's an insult to the 50s.
I mean, they're getting their shampoo and their cosmetics subsidized at this point.
Have you heard about the pink tax?
Do I want to?
It's the idea that women for typical commodities, and they even bring in cars and whatnot.
Have to typically pay more for the product that would be considered the same value and cost.
And I really can't imagine why women would pay more to smell better than men on average.
I can't really figure that one out.
Well, given that they smell better to begin with, it seems like a little trickier to up it.
Guys pay less for a scented product.
Yeah, they're bringing in legislation just because they have more demand for things.
It's just, it's so, it's upside down.
You're absolutely right.
What a wretched view to have of a woman who has their own moral responsibility.
Well, I mean, but the fact that feminists bleat on about this stuff and women go along with it means that they know that they can't do it.
Right?
I mean, I want to go out there in the marketplace of ideas and grab minds for what I have to say, using the power of my eloquence and charisma and imagination and analogies and training.
I want to do it.
I don't want anyone to be forced to listen to what it is that I do.
I would consider that a very deep insult.
If somebody came to me and said, well, Steph, you know, it's an alright show, but...
We've really got to pass a law that means when people turn on their cars, you're all that they hear.
So this madness, absolute madness, is a confession, right?
The fact that feminists run to the government saying, well, you've got to force employers to pay women more and women go along with it means that they know that they're not worth more.
Because if they were worth more, They would negotiate for that, and they would get that, right?
They would understand that.
Now, because women are worth less in the marketplace as a whole, and it's not just parenthood.
We'll get into that in a second.
But women, again, on average, right?
Women on average are worth less in the marketplace.
And they don't like that.
Because they've got very high sexual market value, particularly when they're young, and they want high economic value as well as high sexual market value because, you know, for a woman to want the best of everything and every contradiction unraveled in her favor, not exactly unknown to female nature.
And, you know, there's corruption on the male side as well.
Military-industrial complex, hello!
But we're just talking about women at the moment.
It's a confession.
It's a pure confession that they know they're not worth that much, but they don't want to admit it to themselves and they don't want to admit it to others.
Because you see, my friend, if women admit that they're not worth as much economically as men on average, do you know what they have to say to men?
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, men, for working so hard, for building this great civilization, for creating offices, for creating...
Air conditioning.
For creating things that I can type on.
Rather than chainsaws I have to use to cut down giant boobab trees and hopefully not impale three other women standing in its shadow.
Thank you for building running water.
Thank you for heating.
Thank you for roofs.
I've never seen a woman putting a roof together in my life.
You know, when I was a kid, there was this game you played on the highway.
You know, what unusual things are you going to see?
You know, like, and one of the rarest was like, I don't know, like a clown in a convertible with balloons in the back, you know, and stuff like that.
Eh, I never saw that one.
But, you know, punch buggy, right?
I know you were a paid punch.
You see a Volkswagen, boom, punch buggy.
I've heard of them.
When I was a kid, just by the by, I have to just discharge these things to get them out of my brain and so that these memories don't go with me to the grave.
But...
When I was a kid, and please somebody tell me in the comments below this, why?
What does this mean?
When I was a kid, I was completely obsessed with checking out the rear view of cars to seeing how many exhausts they have.
And the more exhausts, the better.
Some cars had one.
Some had two.
There were a few that had four, like, jammed together underneath the license plate.
I don't know if it had something to do with venting or whatever, but I was fascinated by exhausts for years of cars.
I have to check out every car.
OCD. Obsessive car disorder.
Anyway, um...
So, I don't see women building roofs and, oh no, there's a power outage.
Who's going up to the frozen tundra to restore the power?
It's going to be men.
So, women would actually have to thank men.
For what men do, right?
I mean, men historically created labor-saving devices for women before they created life-saving devices for men.
There were washing and drying machines on the market before there were masks to protect men from black lung down in the mines.
Now, again, not all women.
This fantastic studio that I, and it is a gorgeous, gorgeous thing.
It is virtually soundproof.
Can't hear much except me.
It's got noise dampeners on the walls.
It's got this beautiful curved wall behind me so there's no annoying bisected line.
Designed and built entirely by a woman.
And she's...
I've never seen better work.
I mean, it's...
And she was doing it for the first time.
Fantastic.
So this is not a general statement.
It's just...
And I couldn't do it to save my life.
Like, literally, I couldn't.
I'm the kind of guy who's like, if I can put an IKEA table together in less than five tries, winning!
So this is not me.
It's not me.
Oh, no!
The ping pong table didn't come pre-assembled.
Well, kids...
I guess we're not going to be playing ping pong anytime soon.
Oh, I ordered a bike machine and it came in parts.
I'll just climb up and down the stairs for a while and call it a workout.
So it's not me.
It's not my thing, right?
So these are generalities that actually have to say thank you to men.
And it used to be the case that women would say thank you to men.
And it's an old sort of cliche.
It's more modern now.
I thank my wife for everything and what she does to keep this household running, to keep it all, it's fantastic, magnificent, beautiful.
And there's this old sort of cliche that if you don't thank your wife for dinner, that's a big problem.
But does your wife thank you for going out to work and earning the money that lets her buy dinner?
Well, that's hard.
It's hard for women to thank men.
I don't know if it's because of resentment.
I don't know if it's because of hostility.
I don't know because it reveals a feeling of dependence.
I don't know.
But the idea that women would thank men for the benefits of civilization, which to a large degree were built and maintained and structured and staffed and all of that by men.
Do you like flushing your toilet?
Not a lot of women down there working to make it happen, right?
I mean, it's just the way it is.
So I don't know why it became so impossible for women to thank men for what men do.
And it's the kind of thing like, you'll miss us when we're not doing it.
I can guarantee you that.
But this sentimentality and this hostility towards men has created a big problem because men wake up in the morning as disposable work objects for their families.
It's just kind of how we're constituted.
Not all men, but I think it's a pretty common feeling.
And it's the division between women handling the inside of the house, men handling the outside of the house, that kind of stuff, right?
Because weather and machinery and so on.
But what's happened is because men are not only not thanked but scorned.
Oh, you only built the society so you could like oppress us.
Oh, you only built air conditioning so you can see my nipples go bing!
Right?
Sorry, there's a visual for those who are just listening.
You'll never get to unsee that.
But no, there's no, right?
Oh, you only built cars which let us travel further than we could otherwise in high heels because you're just like cruising around and picking us up and all that kind of stuff.
So there is this idea that civilization is oppressive to women.
Yeah, right.
Because in pre-civilization, it's just wonderful for everyone.
So men aren't being thanked.
And this, we're worth less than men.
And rather than saying thank you men for being more economically valuable and creating all of this wonderful stuff and working harder and so on, thank you men, rather than saying that because they're worth economically valuable.
Less than men, which is kind of nature's way of saying who should stay home, along with the aforementioned feedbacks.
But rather than saying to men, thank you for creating the wealth that sustains the society and creating the technology which makes the society so pleasant to live in and so on, they say, ah, patriarchy!
Misogyny!
It's unjust, it's unfair, and we're going to have the government rip money out of men's wallets and hand it to women because men are just horrible.
You only invented hospitals so that we wouldn't die in childbirth so you could save on funeral costs, you oppressors.
laughs It's madness.
And men are giving all these gifts to women and patooey, patooey, patooey.
Men receive hugs from women like Harrison Ford receives lightsabers.
But it is a...
It's a mess.
And like all situations which have swung way too far one way, men are just disengaging.
Oh, if my presence is so oppressive to you, so oppressive to you, if my romantic interest to you is creepy and rapey, and if me going out to work hard to build up a nest egg to help my family grow in peace and security, if that's patriarchal oppression, kachingo, bing bing, I am getting off the train and loitering around on the porn and video game station.
And yeah, that can be sustainable for a while, I suppose, right?
If women who...
You know, you want to see real breastfeeding?
See the majority of women with regards to the state.
Single women and single moms in particular.
That's breastfeeding, except it's blood and the breast is the futures of the unborn.
But, because, you know, all that empathy.
This is how wonderful women are as a whole, particularly single moms and single women.
They're so empathetic that they say, no, no, no, no, we can't go into national debt because that's the children who will have to pay that off.
They're not even born yet.
I can vote.
We can't possibly pass this kind of This kind of economic hole.
We can't pass this on to children.
That would be horrible.
So terrible.
The children have done nothing to deserve it.
Where's the maternal instinct for the unborn?
It no existee!
Gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme!
And then they complain that children don't share.
So, yeah, it is brutal.
And men are checking out.
And at some point, other men not quite so concerned with feminism seem to be checking in, particularly in Europe.
And at some point, women will realize that, you know, a little appreciation could have done quite a lot of good.
A little appreciation could have gone a long way.
Because then when the extremity hits, the government runs out of money or whatever happens, happens.
Women are going to go, men, save us!
And the men will be, sorry honey, little too little, a lot too late.
Is there anything you wanted to add to that?
I thought it was great.
I thought you hit the nail right on the head.
Get your girlfriend to call in next time.
To call in?
I don't think she would.
No, no, no.
No, dude, order her.
I'm just kidding.
Why wouldn't she call in?
Why wouldn't she call in?
Does she not enjoy talking about ideas?
It's beyond that.
I think a little bit about her work and whatnot.
She just wouldn't.
I don't think she'd be comfortable.
Because of her work?
Her work, yeah, where she works.
Oh, she might be identifiable.
We can anonymize her voice.
That's fine.
Maybe.
I'll see if she's up for it.
Yeah, she can tell me if I'm entirely mistaken and set me straight and all that.
It would be delightful.
Judging her record against me, I don't think she'll want to go up against you.
You know what?
My next question could be here.
What?
What do you think?
I have no idea.
How long have you guys been going out?
Oh, it's been on and off, but we'll go about 14 months now.
On and off in 14 months?
No, no, no.
We'll go the last 14 months consistently.
Okay, but how long since you first started dating with the on and off stuff?
Three years.
And why was there a...
We were in a break!
Why was there the off stuff?
We couldn't communicate well.
Just where we were economically.
We didn't have a lot.
Have you heard my fog one noise lately?
Couldn't communicate well.
We were in a difficult place.
Sorry, Skipper.
All I can see is fog.
Whoa, Jonah, your Skype is buzzing at us.
Sorry, I virused it.
If that was his girlfriend, I can understand why they're having communication difficulties.
So, honey, I'd really like to talk about things.
We're having communication problems.
It's a cable or something that's messed up.
Alright, well, let's move on.
Perhaps we'll call him another time and talk about why he's dating his girlfriend.
But anyway, alright.
Should we move on to the next call?
Yeah, let's move on.
Alright, up next is Tom.
Tom wrote in and said, In contrast,
your talk with Duke Pesta in quote-unquote Why Cultural Marxism is Destroying America on teaching absolutism and reforming American education is critical to the survival of Western civilization.
Therefore, how do people of diametrically opposed viewpoints agree on an absolute definition when they come from alternate realities and perspectives, especially when setting an educational curriculum?
My struggle on campus has largely been with the futility of reasoning with professors who believe themselves to be teaching what I suspect is the absolutism of relativism.
How do you go about effectively proving that someone's fundamental views are inherently wrong when they believe that yours are inherently wrong?
What would that debate even look like?
That's from Tom.
Yes, yes.
What are you taking in college?
What are the courses where you see this kind of stuff floating up the most?
Well, I go to UC Berkeley.
The epicenter of where there is no center.
Okay, got it.
Yes, well, I'm a Berkeley College Republican now, so it's kind of, you know, I'm in the minority here.
You're a mole, is what you're telling me.
You are infiltrating the camp of the enemy.
Yeah, no, I don't necessarily believe in preaching to the choir, so I'm here, and all my other friends are as well, but we are definitely a minority.
Right.
Well, as a minority, though, I'm sure you're treated very well by all the people who...
Ah, never mind.
It's too easy.
All right.
All right.
So, no, the absolutism of relativism is really, really fascinating.
And it's something that you can see.
I watched an Esquire piece on Richard Spencer.
And in it, you know, he's trying to do a meeting and there are these people that are screaming at him, you know, racist, KKK, this, that, and the other, right?
Mm-hmm, yeah, I, yeah.
That actually happened here, yeah.
Yeah, and it's, I mean, I bet you if you talk to these guys who are screaming racist and all of this, that they would say, well, you know, reality, there's no such thing as objective reality or objective truth or objective right and wrong.
And it's like, well, then how do you know racism is bad?
How do you know there is such a thing as racism?
Couldn't that just, like, when you give up on objective, on the need for the rigor To objectively define your virtues, then you become hyper-emotional, and hyper-emotional automatically means hypocritical, right?
No such thing as truth, but racism is really, really evil.
There's no such thing as right and wrong, but racism is really, really bad.
Now, what it means is that when you are questioned or criticized, you put out this fog, not you, but when one of these lefties is questioned or criticized, they put out this fog, right?
There's no such thing as right and wrong or truth.
It's all relative, man, right?
But then when they're boiling narcissistic lefty rage, You know, boils over and spills over, then they need a place to vent.
And the only way they can vent is by demonizing the other and pouring all of their confusion and frustration and self-hatred and hatred as a whole into this vessel of the other.
So this is why they themselves can't define what is right or wrong, because that would give them humility and discipline.
It would give them philosophy.
Philosophy, you have to objectively define, oh, you think that's right, you think that's wrong.
Tell me how, tell me why.
This is back to Socrates and the Presocratics as well.
You think, you know what justice is?
Tell me why.
And so all of the confusion and betrayal and cowardice that comes from not wanting to define their own viewpoints, because that would require them to be consistent and have discipline, which is kind of tough for narcissists, right?
They want to be their own rules.
But then when this inevitably boils over and they have to vent their rage and spleen and helplessness and cowardice on other people, then they immediately create these absolutes where, you know, they're perfectly moral, other people are perfectly evil, and vomiting, you know, verbal abuse and torrents of abuse on those people.
is perfectly valid, perfectly fine, and perfectly just.
And as a Republican in California, on campus, I'm sure this doesn't come as a massive shock to you.
Oh, yeah, no, not at all.
I actually used one of your lines from the Duke Pesta video, where I'm like, oh, so, like, are you 100% certain there's no such thing as certainty?
And the room just went quiet.
Like, the mental gymnastics going on in the room is almost audible.
Yeah, because it's a con.
It's a con, and they don't want you, right?
Boy, here's an analogy I haven't used in at least half a decade, but it's really, really important.
The man who makes counterfeit money, counterfeit bills, he knows that they're fake, but he doesn't want you to know that it's fake.
He wants you to look at it as real money.
And that, of course, is hypocrisy, right?
So the people who have this leftist incoherent rage against the other, right, whoever they demonize, everyone on the right, a basket of deplorables and so on.
Well, they know that they have no moral standards.
And they actually, I mean, this is not all lefties, but this is Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals to a T. We have no standards.
You can't corner us with hypocrisy because we've got no consistency, no standards.
We don't care.
Thank you, devil, for the inspiration for this book.
That's actually quite real.
So they know they have no standards, but they want you to think.
That they have standards.
In the same way the counterfeiter knows that his money is fake but wants you to believe that it's true.
And this silence that occurs is really, really fascinating.
Really fascinating because it is when the con is up.
Right?
So if the counterfeiter goes into a store that he's regularly been passing off his counterfeit bills, you know, and the guy's never figured out who it is and you can't ban everyone...
And he's just about to buy whatever he's buying with his counterfeit money and the shopkeeper looks up and says, oh, this is so great.
You know, you're a long-term customer, value your business.
I just got this fantastic foolproof new counterfeit detection machine.
Look at it.
You wave your money over there and it immediately and 100% tell you whether it's real or not.
What do you think?
What's the guy going to think?
What's he going to say?
Oh, the shopkeeper?
Yeah, what's the counterfeiter going to say?
In the face of this fantastic 100% counterfeit detection machine.
Oh, well, isn't he going to be just scrambling to just try to preserve himself?
Oh, I left my wallet in my car.
I'll be back.
Ah, yes, yes, yes.
Right?
The con is up.
He don't want to play no more because he can't get away with the con.
And that's philosophy.
Philosophy is the counterfeit detection machine.
And when you hand back the counterfeiter his own counterfeit money, he's not that pleased.
He wants to exchange his fake money for your real money.
He doesn't want to get his own fake money back.
He wants to get rid of it.
That's the self-hatred and the contempt of the leftists.
They just want to vent it.
They want to get rid of it.
They want it coming back.
And so when people are used to pulling this kind of crap, and I've had so many of these conversations, fortunately not with you today, but so many of these conversations in the show, right, where people come at me hard with nonsense, right?
And I'll sort of patiently ask them about it, and they may get more and more frustrated, but it's healthy for them, of course, right?
But There is, in the left, this feeling of like, oh, this guy's got a counterfeit detection machine.
Maybe we'll go find other victims for our nonsense.
I've done nothing to answer your question whatsoever.
I'm just playing with syllables, and I appreciate your indulgence.
No, it's absolutely okay.
This question kind of spawned for me.
We just finished up finals this week.
First semester is done.
I was taking this class.
It was an introduction class basically for the rest of my four years here.
I'm a freshman here.
Basically, we were given these exam questions.
They gave us the 12 questions.
Three of them were going to be on the test to prepare accordingly.
And there's this one question where we were asked, based on just the reading in the lecture, not anything outside of the curriculum for this particular class, we had to morally justify why all student debt should be forgiven.
Which I don't believe in at all.
That debt is just slavery and the state is just, you know, just giving out just a bunch of debt just for students to be slaves.
I do see that as well, but I don't necessarily believe it should be given scot-free.
Well, my answer to that would be that certainly debt that you take on voluntarily must be less slavery than that you take on involuntarily.
Yeah, which is my argument, yes.
Yeah, so clearly there should be no such thing as the national debt.
Because the national debt is going to have to be paid off by people who aren't even born yet.
So if you choose to go to school and choose to adopt that kind of debt level or the debt load, clearly you have a choice in the matter, whereas the unborn who have to pay for the national debt and all the unfunded liabilities of Western governments, they haven't even been born yet.
So if debt is really bad, we should not focus on student debt.
we should focus on eliminating the national debt and making sure that governments never ever deficit finance again, which would mean some sort of limited currency, private currency, bitcoin currency, gold-based currency or whatever.
That should be the focus.
But of course it isn't, right?
Because they don't want that.
They don't want the principle to be followed.
They just want to have free stuff, right?
Like all toddlers. - Oh yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, and my question regarding Scott Adams is actually funny.
I was walking through Haas, which is the main business school here, and out of the corner of my eye, I see a picture of Scott Adams.
I'm like, wait, what?
And it flashes away.
Then I just looked it up.
Scott Adams actually got his MBA at Haas from Berkeley.
I was like, what?
No, this is absolutely crazy.
Well, it was a smidge or two ago, but yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
No, it was really interesting just to see that because the election was literally going on right then.
And I was like, oh, wow, this is incredible.
Yeah, well, anyways, so basically with the election of Trump, my main reason is as a right-wing thinker on a very left-wing campus is, okay, we now have Trump.
We're now the target party.
Everyone kind of laughed us off beforehand.
But now people are just waiting for Trump maybe to slip up something and just put all the moral blame on us for supporting him.
Which will be a problem for us, certainly.
And all of us expect that day to come at least once.
Do you mean like some Trump supporters are going to go nuts and then all Trump supporters are going to get blamed?
Well, let's just say this is what they believe, is that Trump is going to put together this massive military operation to deport all of the illegals in the country.
And basically, they're just going to put all the blame on us for supporting him and electing him to be the presidency.
Like, that's what they believe of us.
And that's kind of where the diametrically opposed viewpoints kind of come in.
And they don't see, of course, the massive military force that is currently occupying America that forces everyone to pay for illegal immigration through taxation, right?
They don't see that at all, of course, right?
No, no.
I mean, yeah, it's kind of what you choose to believe, right?
Yeah, lots of countries don't even have an IRS. Yeah, lots of countries don't even have An IRS. I think that's...
What's it?
Sticks and Blicks and Dixonhammer or 666 was saying something about...
Sticks, Hecks and Hammer.
Yeah, yeah.
I listen to that guy a lot, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Now, shirtless.
Anyway, it's cool.
He was just saying that I think there's some country in Eastern Europe, all you do is submit your taxes electronically and you're done.
Yeah.
That sounds like a much better, much smoother system.
Right.
So, yeah, they think that there's going to be some giant deportation force that is going to, you know, rip children from their mother's breasts and all that kind of stuff.
Yeah, no, I've really noticed that because, of course, leftists are so concerned with family integrity that they're utterly opposed to gynocentric court systems that rip children away from their fathers.
They're very much opposed to all of the indoctrination that women get, making them hostile towards men because that destabilizes families.
Leftists are so into family integrity that, you know, it's a long way to go down the list of what's harming the family, particularly the welfare state, right?
What's harming the family is so many giant government programs that the lefties love that then when it comes to deportation, they're like, no, the family, it must be kept together.
It's like, oh, I see the family that reliably votes for Democrats.
That must be kept together, but only so the votes can be maintained for the Democrats.
Nothing else matters.
You can shred up all the families you want.
It's fine when you shred up families to produce single moms who are going to vote Democrat because you get votes for Democrats.
But, you see, if you deport Democrat voters or potential Democrat voters who get amnesty dangled in front of them, suddenly, my family integrity, it's all going to be kept together.
It's like, oh my God, you people are so fucking transparent.
It's ridiculous.
Oh, yeah.
No, I mean, there's more undocumented students on this campus than, I believe, college Republicans.
We can say illegal.
Yeah, or illegal.
It's okay.
It's okay.
We can say illegal.
Because technically, I think that is the fact.
I guess it's just groupthink when you come to California.
You've got the reflex lefty filter.
As a club, we've certainly been subjected to a lot, especially with the election.
It's actually rather funny to watch the scramble after the election the administration did.
Were you there The night of?
What were you doing the night of the election?
On the night of the election, as a BCR group, there's about 60 of us maybe in a small room in an empty building while the rest of campus watched from a mega blow-up scream in Sproul Plaza, which is like the scene of all protests.
You know, highly magnified lefty tears, I gotta think are better.
You like a big giant screen of lefty sadness?
Oh my god.
I can see that, yeah.
Well, after we knew he was going to win, that Fox had already called Wisconsin.
So we're kind of moving in.
We're waiting for CNN. I mean, CNN just takes forever.
Because if CNN were to announce it, we knew we were in the clear.
But after a while, we got a little bored with just hanging around, waiting for them with 99% reporting.
And we walked out on Sprout Plaza, and we're just kind of, you know, like chanting Trump and USA and stuff like that.
And everyone was just kind of, you know, dejected.
Like, they knew.
They knew it themselves.
They just kind of stood there and watched and waited without any avail.
And then there's eventually a group of people that were definitely not students here that came and we kind of scurried off.
Because, you know, like we can be vocal, but, you know, you have to wait for the right moments.
Because otherwise, they're going to try to intimidate you in a lot of ways.
And about an hour after CNN called the election, there's mass rioting everywhere from Berkeley to Oakland.
And they were just walking down the streets and chanting, not my president.
Meanwhile, I think I was at KFC with my friends and we were just, you know, getting ready to retire for the night.
Just really happy.
Oh, I see.
You were eating at a restaurant that originated in the Deep South, weren't you?
Fried chicken.
I get it.
I get the code!
That was certainly not intentional, but yeah, no.
That's exactly what happens.
You see, it doesn't have to be intentional.
It's unconscious.
You see, I know you better than you know yourself.
Sorry, I can't do the lefty character too long.
It makes me want to throw up in my own nose.
Oh, no.
It's absolutely crazy.
Then...
In the day after, I had my writing class, and half the class was Latina, just didn't even show up.
There's so many students the next day that just didn't show up to classes at all.
We're paying thousands of dollars per class, and no one wants to show up.
And my teacher was like, you know, my gut just dropped and everything like that, just like the whole feels campaign.
And then in this one class I was telling you about earlier, My teacher said he was some type of officer and he needed to be deployed to help out with the riots and protests for the election.
It was like the emotional officer or something like that.
And I was just sitting there.
I was wearing my Breitbart hat.
And...
Yeah, no, no.
I said Captain Feels.
It's like the worst porn star ever.
Captain Feels with his oven mitts and fur gloves.
Yeah, no, the unapologetically American hat.
And I was just sitting there, just like...
I do babysitting and spirit cooking.
Yeah, no, but they asked us at the beginning of the class to write down all our emotions and what we were thinking of.
I'm like...
Sure.
Yeah, no, it was finally about time for middle America.
Wait, how do you spell?
Woo-hoo!
Yeah, I know.
The first time I was like, I couldn't be happier.
I said I woke up and there's no nuclear explosions or anything like that.
So, so far the day is pretty good.
That's basically what happened.
Anyways, just kind of returning back to my main question.
Let me give you my thoughts on how to approach this kind of stuff.
Sure.
There are people who are asleep unwillingly.
And there are people who are asleep willingly.
And we've all had this, right?
Where you sort of settle down for a nap and someone wakes you because they think you have something important to do, but you don't.
It's just kind of annoying, right?
You're annoyed to be woken up.
And what you want to do is you want to go back to sleep again, right?
Finish your nap.
Now, there are other people, you know, you got a big job interview and you got to get there and you slept in, but your roommate comes and wakes you up and you're like, oh, thank you, thank you, thank you for waking me up, right?
Now, it is that attitude that happens in the moment of clarification that to me is the real fork in the road.
Is somebody worthy of investing time?
Because there are so many blind and bad people in this world who will engage you to drain you.
They will attempt to get you engaged and involved in a debate in order to drain you of your will to live like a vampire sucking down your last micro leader, right?
But there are other people who will be very excited about this.
So the moment in the room where you said, is it absolutely true that there's no such thing as absolute truth?
Everybody had a moment where they got shaken awake.
Shaken awake.
Boom.
And that moment where the matrix shivers and shimmers.
The black cat reappears.
That moment of startle where a blinding beam cracks through the programming.
A hand reaches through the flowing green numbers and letters.
Slaps you upside the head with a wet fish.
How do people react?
Well, if they're annoyed, then it's like, oh, I want to keep sleeping and you woke me up for no reason.
Okay, well, that's what they're telling you.
I would waste no time on those people.
On the other hand, if there's someone in the room who's like, wow, that's obvious.
It's an obvious contradiction and no one's ever mentioned it before.
Why?
Right at the moment, It's very obvious, right?
No such thing as absolute truth.
Is that an absolute truth?
It's so obvious.
And it's been around in philosophy forever, right?
It's such an obvious contradiction.
Do people say?
That's obvious.
It invalidates the position I've been told is valid for years.
And no one has ever mentioned this very short, very succinct antithesis to my thesis before.
That's a moment of potential weight.
Now, some people are excited by that.
They're excited.
They're happy that you woke them up.
They're curious.
They're excited.
They're smart a lot of times.
Now, those people, yes, put in the resources because they will...
Pay off in spades with you, with the future, with spreading things to others and teach them this kind of stuff.
The moment of wakefulness defines almost everything.
Now, this doesn't mean I got to put these caveats in because, you know, I'm dealing with the muggles sometimes.
It doesn't mean that nobody ever changes and it's just that moment and it's determinism and so on.
But in a short life where philosophy is challenging enough...
We don't want to add to our burdens by chasing after people who are only running away to draw us away from the truth and draw us away from effectiveness, right?
You lure the philosopher into the woods, I'll continue to propagandize the crowd, right?
So I would say look at that moment of wakefulness.
Keep speaking your truth and ignore most people who are merely annoyed to be momentarily woken up and can't wait to get back to sleep again.
And focus on the person whose eyes begin to dance when the hand reaches through the numbers.
Yeah.
I mean, this question started rising up for me when I was reading the student newspaper, and Trump had just won the election.
And this op-ed piece was explaining this guy.
He came from a self-described conservative area, right?
And he came here and he said he found truth, he found this, he found that.
But he was just kind of trying to calm the other students on campus who've never even seen a conservative area or household.
But he was kind of like saying, oh, we're living in this bubble and stuff.
But I'm like, I'm on the side of you guys and we have to fight racism and the misogyny and that and that.
I was just interested to find out what really makes people want to switch.
When they say they have personal values or morality or virtues or anything along those lines, what makes people want to change those over time?
Is it just like effective speakers or experience?
No.
No, if it was the effective speakers, then...
I mean, necessary, but not sufficient.
If it was the effective speakers, then we'd be kind of screwed, because there aren't that many around.
But no, I don't think that's it.
I think what it is, is a dim sense of one's own potential.
If you believe, and we'll just...
Whether it's right or wrong doesn't really matter right now, but if you believe...
That you can't really achieve very much, that you're not very smart, that you don't really want to work very hard, that it's not really going to pay off for you, then the free market versus government subsidies is not very appealing.
Why?
Because we're mammals.
We want the most resources.
And I won't even say with the least amount of effort at the moment, but let's just say we want the most resources.
And if you're not that smart, or if you just don't have any confidence that you're smart or can achieve things or can work hard or whatever, and, you know, to Doug Douglas Adams, sorry, to Scott Adams' point, wrong comedian.
To Scott Adams' point, it kind of doesn't matter whether it's real or not.
If you believe that you're not competent, you're not.
Because you won't take the steps to be competent, you won't.
So, if you believe deep down that you're going to get more resources from the government than from the free market, then you're going to be more pro-government.
And you're going to view the free market as an enemy.
Because you have ideological this?
No.
Because you're gonna get more money from the government than the free market, right?
A single mom with two kids in the US has to start making $65,000 a year in the free market to match what she's getting in free stuff from the government, right?
Now, it's really hard when you have two kids to go out and get a job that pays $65,000, particularly if you haven't had the foresight to marry a guy who's gonna stick around And have two kids with you and be a provider.
So she goes and has the two kids because that gives her more resources than she could probably command in the free market, at least in the short run.
And I've heard this.
And I was at a...
taking my daughter to a playground and mentioned this before.
I was listening to these two women.
I mean, they...
It sounded like it was speaking another language.
All the acronyms of the government agencies that we're using.
Well, if you do this and you can apply to that, then they'll give you an extra $600 a month.
But you can get this thing for a dental credit over here under this plan with this acronym.
And then these guys will give you, you know, whatever subsidized daycare.
And you can put it all together.
And I've got a package which gets me this amount of money.
But I had to go here and I had to apply here.
And you can't have your man living with.
They were just going through all of this.
It was like watching some...
Magic card trick.
The cards are a blur.
All of their resource-seeking.
Completely amoral, of course, and no sense that the guy pushing his daughter in the swing is the guy who's going to fund all his parasitism.
But it is that they're just doing the calculation.
And they're saying, look, I can get the equivalent of $3,000 a month With my two kids, as long as there's no guy around.
And I do this, this, and this.
I don't remember the number exactly, but it's something like that.
And if they want to go and get $3,000 a month in after-tax income in Canada by working for somebody else, well, that's challenging and complicated, and they don't get to sit there in a park on a sunny day watching their kids play and discussing how further to prey upon the body politic.
But there are people who...
Have a sense of what they can do in the free market.
They have a sense that they can get more resources from the free market than they can from the government.
Now, in the short run, yes, they might get a little bit more from the government, or they might even get a lot more from the government.
But people who are smart know that once you get on the government treadmill, sure, you might get $3,000 a month, but in 10 years, you're probably still only going to be getting $3,000 a month.
But if you go in the free market, maybe you'll start at $1,500 a month or $2,000 a month, but in 10 years, you might be making $10,000 a month.
And so those people are going to be very interested in the free market because it's going to get them more resources.
Now, I'm not saying it's only about this, but I think that's an instinctual level that people come at it on, which is why when you get lower, like the welfare state is bad enough in high IQ populations, but at least in high IQ populations, It's more valuable to go into the free market for the majority of people than it is to be on welfare.
But when we start to get low IQ populations coming in, whether that's cultural or genetic doesn't really matter right now, you get a whole different decision matrix because lower IQ populations will get more out of the government than they will out of the free market, which is why they often will tend to vote for the left.
I mean, it's not that complicated.
It's, you know, they may not be smart, but they're cunning and they know, you know, which way the wind blows.
Yeah, all very interesting stuff.
Yeah, I mean, it's just kind of like this whole idea that I feel like a lot of people believe they're getting the metaphorical red pills.
Like, when they come here...
You know, they feel like they're getting the truth about class, race, gender, all things like that.
Meanwhile, I feel like, you know, just listening to your show and many others like it, I feel like I'm getting the red pill.
So how do people like us talk?
Or do we just kind of separate and kind of go off into our own group things, which I don't think is a great idea either.
So, yeah.
Well, like in any...
You know, if you ever end, I mean, learning how to sell is very, very important.
And I spent a lot of years before I did this show in a sales and or sales support capacity.
And when it comes to selling, there are people who are going to buy very quickly and they're very rare.
And there are people who are never going to buy and they're quite common.
And there are people who will buy if you use the right approach and if you're patient and if you keep reminding them of the values and so on.
And so, learning how to sort people into the three categories, the yes, the no's, and the maybes.
Well, the yes is you don't, you know, they can be your friends and all that, but it's not part of evangelizing.
You're not a missionary if you go down the street to the church that already worships your denomination, right?
And the no's, you can't, why bother, right?
They're never going to say yes, right?
And the maybes are the way you want to focus.
And the way you focus on the maybes is you look for their curiosity, right?
So, when people say there's no such thing as absolute truth, they're putting out a signal that says, are you stupid like me?
Because if someone says, yeah, that's so true, there is no such thing as absolute truth, it's like, ah, good.
IQs flock together.
Birds of a feather flock together.
And again, it doesn't mean that everyone who believes that is dumb, but if they hear the counter-argument and they wake up and they're thankful that they've woken up, fantastic.
But...
Focus on the maybes.
Focus on the people who are excited and let them come to you.
Let them come to you.
You can't go around chasing everyone.
You look desperate, you look needy, and you look like a stalker.
It is a weak position to be in pursuit of people.
It is a strong position to speak the truth and be open to questions.
I surely agree with that.
And, you know, it's been, you know, difficult being on a campus like this and, you know, especially seeing the professors that you see, which many of them are really passionate about what they teach.
And I wouldn't want to think that any of them are, you know, you know, lying to us about anything, you know, like their own self-conscious.
And, you know, I just believe many believe that it's their own spin.
I mean, like all the reading I had to do for this one class was all Trotsky, Marx and I actually went to go see the professor once.
I walked into his Why are you there?
Excuse me?
Why am I here?
I have actually plenty of reasons.
I'm an athlete, so...
I'm actually doing pretty well.
And there's actually some excellent people here that are on campus that, you know, I'm only saying, you know, like certain people.
But this campus, I definitely do believe, is actually starting to turn around a little bit, like I can see here.
It's kind of hard for other people to see it, but there is some changes in the water.
But I'm here for a lot of other reasons.
Sorry, you're there because it's free?
Huh?
You're there because you don't have to pay to be there, right?
Well, no, I have to pay a little bit to come here, but I have extraordinary opportunities that are already starting to line up for when I should be finishing.
You mean in sports?
In sports?
Well, not only just in sports, but also academically as well.
I'm pretty good at networking.
I've been meeting some really excellent people that really want to start showcasing the college Republicans and stuff like that and how smart and talented we are.
It's kind of a problem for a school, right?
If it's a business, if it's only marketing to 50% of the country.
I mean, there's new people coming that are starting to be like, yeah, no, the way this has been run has actually been pretty poorly and there's going to need to be some things changing.
Because this was the center for the free speech movement back in the 60s.
When CNN comes to campus to talk to the Republicans and see how our free speech is being silenced by the campus that was proclaiming that it was the center for the movement of free speech, the hypocrisy is ripe.
But it's Hispanic, right?
You're talking about the undocumented and so on.
I mean, I know it's not exclusively, but I mean, it's a significantly increased population since, what is it, Reagan legalized 3 million illegal immigrants, which has now grown to 10 million.
And if you've read Jason Richwine about Hispanics, and if you haven't, you should, then, and I'll leave it at that, right?
You can go and research Jason Richwine.
He's been on the show a couple of times.
But there's a reason why it's going the way it's going.
And mere arguments won't solve it.
Yeah.
I mean, I kind of came here to expose myself to some of that too.
Actually, the editor-in-chief of Breitbart, Alex Marlow, was a Berkeley graduate himself.
You just get really good at being on your feet and being kind of this sort of contrarian, kind of being the extra person in the room to kind of say, well, here's another perspective.
And I just think the ability to talk and argue.
Just in one semester of being here, I've greatly improved in that.
Many of these professors want you to speak, too.
They want to hear it because many of them haven't themselves heard it.
There's actually a big move for some of the people on campus to want to hear from Trump supporters.
Why did he support this guy?
We really don't know.
There's a lot of that going on as well.
This is a cultural revolution with the election of Trump and everything like that.
It's kind of a paradigm shift.
And there is change coming.
I'm not saying that Berkeley's going to suddenly turn red.
No, that's not going to happen anytime soon.
But there is change coming.
I'm actually very excited to be here for that and to actually be on this campus during the Trump presidency.
All right.
Yeah, and many of us are going to have to defend a lot of his positions, but we've done an excellent job of doing that so far.
Besides some people that just don't want to hear your arguments at all, my friends have gotten Pushed around, punched.
We had a cardboard cutout of Trump that was ripped up on Sproul Plaza.
One of my friends was maced.
We definitely stand strong here, but as a group, we stick together.
We're best friends.
I'm actually meeting them right after the show concludes.
For the final semester.
So, I mean, we're just really excited as a group and couldn't be happier with the election results.
And we just wanted, as a group going forward, like, you know, how are we defending these groups?
Like, how are we going to, you know, defend ourselves and defend Trump, defend the new administration and defend our values to people that just can't see what we see?
So that was kind of the basis of my question.
So, yeah.
All right.
Well, I'm glad we had a chance to talk about it.
I hope that it's helpful.
And thanks so much for calling in.
It was most enjoyable.
Well, thank you very much, Stefan.
Thanks, Michael, too.
It's been a pleasure.
And maybe I'll come call back sometime soon.
I'm actually taking a class on Trump next semester from Berkeley, so I'd be willing to share about that.
All right.
Let us know what you get.
And have yourself a Merry Christmas.
All right.
Thanks, Stefan.
Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas, Michael.
Take care.
Alright, up next is Juan.
Juan wrote in and said, Can Western culture be summarized as a tradition of recognizing in weeding out obsolete and oftentimes destructive evolutionary traits?
How did evolution shape the human tradition of witch hunting?
That's from Juan.
Hello, Juan.
How are you doing?
Hello, Stefan.
Nice to be here.
Thank you.
That's an interesting question, and I don't mean that in any kind of snarky way, but that is an interesting question.
What brings us to the topic of witch hunting?
Okay, so I'm sure whenever you think about witch hunting, you're thinking about, like, you know, how the witch is being burned.
So what I'm seeing is seeing the elections, you know, how basically you see a lot of people primarily from the left just calling people out, saying, hey, you're wrong.
Virtual signaling, basically, right?
So the reason why this is interesting to me is because I'm always trying, you know, me coming from an Eastern background, I'm really interested in finding what is really the deep driving force of the Western culture.
And then I just wanted to run some ideas by you.
And the idea is that what I realized, the most valuable thing that came out of the Renaissance was The Age of Enlightenment isn't necessarily scientific findings or reasoning or rationalism because even the Japanese and Chinese can do that, science, right?
But the thing is, the most interesting thing is rather a much higher cognitive understanding of the natural human vices, right?
And then the Western culture is very good at accepting of that human vice and then the guarding of it are woven into the cultural narrative, right?
So basically you don't need to Kind of indoctrinate your children with some nine-page long thesis of why you should be like this.
Basically, you say, hey, it is not nice to prejudge people, and that is just not the way we do things, right?
So one such advice that interests me the most is the witch hunting, right?
So basically from that, we have the innocent until proven guilty, right?
And then so...
I keep hearing that talked about so many times at your show.
Basically, a lot of people just...
A lot of the claims that say, Trump did this, Trump did that.
Basically, it's just baseless accusations.
At this age, there's a very old tradition of innocent until proven guilty, which is pretty much thrown out of the window.
In that regard, I call it witch hunting.
Call it what you want.
Witch hunting is practiced universally, right?
And then innocent until proven guilty is distinctly Western.
So the innocent until proven guilty clearly recognized the fact that the negative stigma that clearly associates with the Dude, you've got to boil it down.
I don't know what the hell we're going here.
Give me a question, because you keep saying innocent until proven guilty in witch hunting.
Are you saying they're opposites, that witch hunting is the presumption of guilt, and you just say she's a witch and burn her, versus the presumption of innocence?
Okay, so yes, witch hunting is basically presumption of guilt.
Okay.
Yes.
All right, so what you're saying is that, is there an advantage to the presumption of guilt?
Yes, evolutionary speaking.
Well, sure.
Yeah, I mean, it would have to be, otherwise it wouldn't be so prevalent.
The presumption of innocence is quite new.
And it comes out of empiricism and it comes out of, to some degree, out of science.
Although, of course, it was around before sort of modern science.
And the presumption of guilt is efficient.
And if you have a tyrannical structure, the presumption of guilt is very powerful.
So if you look at the witch trials, Of Salem, there was, of course, a presumption of guilt.
If you look at the Stalin trials in the 1930s, you know, one of the reasons why Russia did so badly in the Second World War, and in the First, but in particular in the Second World War, was because Stalin decapitated a lot of his military leaders, I mean, I guess sometimes figuratively and sometimes literally, by accusing them of crimes against the state or crimes against counter-revolutionaries or whatever, and Solzhenitsyn talks about this in the Gulag Apikalago, that he's, you know, being beaten up, and then they just say, well, what's your crime?
What are you accused of?
And he says this, and they say, 10 years!
They just hand this sentence out.
There's no...
There is something wonderful and beautiful and powerful about the protections that are still quite common in a lot of modern law.
And if you contrast this to what goes on with these sexual assault tribunals on campuses where a young man's life can be ruined, where his lawyer is allowed to be there but is not allowed to participate, he's not allowed to cross-examine his witness.
witness I was reading a story the other day about a woman I think a woman or two who accused a guy of inappropriate sexual behavior and he tried to ask her questions and she ran out of the room crying and that's like well that's it and you know the victim impact statement is read and it is it's absolutely terrible but the burden of proof is is entirely misaligned so so but there is efficiency if you were running a tyrannical regime then you don't want to get to the bottom of things
You just want to create public displays of horror so that people stay in line, right?
Public executions.
And this used to be a very common thing in the West up until 17th and sometimes even the 18th century.
You would have public displays of beheadings, guillotinings, hangings being drawn and quartered, which is where you get horses.
You tie a horse's bridle to each one of your limbs and then you drive the four horses off in opposite directions and you literally get torn apart.
And people would sort of bring their kids and their popcorn equivalent and cheer and drink their honey mead and all that.
And so, yeah, if you want to terrify the population into subservience, then you want to give them the impression that there is no protection in the law, that the law is there simply to punish whoever the rule appoints that, that it is a system of torture and not a system of truth.
And it's very, very efficient for keeping The rulers in charge in a primitive society.
If you want a more advanced society, then, you know, very anxious people tend not to be very productive.
And if people are living in fear, it's one of the reasons why communism and dictatorships fail and fall.
It's not just the price calculation problem.
They don't know where to allocate resources without the price determined in a free market, but there's also just anxious people aren't very productive.
And so if you want your tax livestock to be very productive, they need to believe, and there needs to be some reasonable evidence 'cause they're not dumb usually if they're productive.
They need to believe and see that the law has some objectivity to it, That there is protections under the law.
That it is not a sort of Stalin-esque or witch-hunting kind of giant club used to grind someone into dust that the ruler is displeased with or just to serve as an example for others of what might happen if they step out of line.
So if you want to stay poor but in power, then the presumption of guilt is a very powerful way of achieving that.
If you want to be...
Wealthier and in power than the presumption of innocence does a lot to help you achieve that.
Okay.
So in a way, witch hunting was actually a driving force to phase it out.
Well, yeah, because the countries that become more free and more rational and have a free market in particular, well, they tend to become wealthier.
I mean, there's a reason why a tiny island like England ended up Ruling a third of the entire planet.
You know, the sun never sets on the British Empire, as I think Queen Victoria had pointed out.
And that's because England, along with the Netherlands, was one of the first countries to develop a relatively free market.
And that was what gave them the...
Wealth to spread in the way that they did, to grow and spread in the way that they did.
So sure, I mean, traumatized population, they're pretty good at fighting, but they don't have very sophisticated weapons.
A more free population is less likely to want to go and fight, but they're going to have much more sophisticated weapons.
So, you know, traumatized idiots can rush at you with scimitars, but if you have drones, because you have a more free population, you have a little bit of an edge.
Right.
So...
Now, the phasing out of that, okay, so beating that presumption of guilt out of the people, did that happen intentionally, or was it just something natural that just happened?
Is that a valid question to ask?
I don't know that there's any particularly clear answer, but I will say this, that there was a general idea that the rule of law should extend to include those in power.
Now, if you're wielding the law but you're not subject to the law, then the presumption of guilt does you no harm, right?
Because you're only ever at the trigger end of the gun of the law, never at the receiving end, right?
So when the king is above the law, when the nobles are above the law, then their immediate motive is the presumption of guilt.
However, when the law begins to reach its smoky fingertips up to the top levels of power...
And, you know, Christine Lagarde is currently going through a trial for corruption.
And, you know, she's one of the most powerful and accomplished women in France.
And when law begins to be universalized, when it begins to affect on the receiving end the lives of the...
Excuse me.
I was fighting that for like a minute.
Sorry.
When the law begins to...
Rise above mere secular and political power, well then the nobles who are now on the receiving end of the law very much want the presumption of innocence, right?
Because when you're using the law as a weapon against your enemies, the presumption of guilt is really great.
When the law turns around and is used against you, then the presumption of innocence is really great.
But it's pretty obviously corrupt to say the presumption of innocence should only apply to rich people or powerful people or politically connected people or whatever.
And so it has to become a more...
A general approach to law.
Oh, okay.
So, in a way, it's not pure coincidence.
Okay.
So, I remember a couple of shows ago, you did a show on the doubling down, right?
So, that has its evolutionary traits.
So, I'd just like to say how you would see the...
So, you have the doubling down from those who are ruled, and then you have the witch hunt from those who are ruling, and how the two...
Shaped each other throughout evolution.
Basically, the psychology to project onto other person what is deeply inside yourself, like that kind of psychological phenomenon, how did that come about?
Well, it gives you the capacity for aggression without the overhead of self-reflection, of learning about yourself, of understanding yourself.
And aggression is very powerful and is very successful.
I mean, look at Genghis Khan, you know, spread his seed like some sort of, you know, giant avalanche of sneezing on an infinite dandelion spread his seed throughout a lot of the world.
And so that kind of aggression is very, very powerful.
And...
If you can believe that other people are just bad and blankly evil and you are perfectly virtuous, then you get to uncork your aggression without the inhibition of thinking you might be unjust.
You might be unjust.
You might be doing the wrong thing.
How do you know for sure?
The presumption of innocence is also that caution and humility of, well, we could be wrong.
You can watch the movie Twelve Angry Men for more of this, and the argument is that, well, it may look like the person is completely guilty, but...
Let's find out for sure.
Let's have the humility to say, we don't know for sure, but we'd like to know with some kind of certainty so that we can sleep peacefully and you have a conscience, right?
And therefore, because you have a conscience, you can project yourself to be on the receiving end of law.
And you can say, well, if I was on the receiving end of this legal case, I would want the presumption of innocence.
And so let us grant the presumption of innocence because I can project myself into that other person's viewpoint, into that other person's thoughts.
And the right, actually, I think in America and in other places, I think as well, the right seems to have pretty much a monopoly on empathy at the moment.
And whether that comes from the right's Christianity or whether it comes from the fact that they tend to come from more stable two-parent homes, which is also related to their Christianity, I don't know.
But the right has the empathy at the moment, which is giving them their great power.
And the left, of course, has their rage, their hostility.
And, you know, Milo has this great...
He's got a great podcast, Milo Yiannopoulos.
And he just did one, you know, sore throat and a cold, whatever he struggled through.
And it was great.
I mean, Milo ill is better than most people, stone healthy.
But he was talking about reporters.
And he was saying that...
One of the things that's happened in his experience with reporters and is happening as a whole, and I'm paraphrasing here, but you can check out his podcast.
It's available at Breitbart.
And he was saying that in the past, reporters would say something.
I think he was called a white nationalist or something like that.
And he'd say, you know, these reporters, they say this, they don't really seem to have any concern about how it's going to affect your life, your family, your friendships, your career, everything.
They just say it.
And when it's said by a bunch of people, the average person says, well, I mean, they wouldn't.
They wouldn't just say it out of nothing.
You know, where there's smoke, there's fire.
There must be something about this accusation against this person.
There's something.
They couldn't just make it up.
But the fascinating thing now, I think, is that people are kind of understanding, well, sometimes, yes.
Sometimes, yes, they will.
I mean, you can follow Mike Cernovich on Twitter, and you should, and go to dangerandplay.com.
But Mike is, you know, the stuff that's written about Mike, I mean, I know the guy.
It's not true.
And it's not even close to true.
There's no evidence for it.
You know, he quotes articles and says, well, you say this about me.
Where's your evidence?
I've never said this.
I've never been this.
I've never been affiliated.
Nothing.
Or, oh, Tucker Carlson and Kurt, oh, God, Mike, I filed, what the heck was his name?
We were just talking about this earlier today.
Should I type it up?
Tucker Carlson, who is great, by the way.
Ah, Kurt Eichenwald.
E-I-C-H-E-N-W-A-L-D. Kurt Eichenwald.
It's epic.
You just go to YouTube and watch it.
The Tucker Carlson I'm quizzical and confused face is usually the presage to a very bad couple of minutes for people.
And he's a senior editor, I think, at Newsweek, this Kurt Eichenwald.
And he had made claims that Trump had been in a mental institution, I think, in the early 90s or something like that.
And so he comes on Tucker Carlson's show, which is fast becoming a favorite around the world and for good reason.
And Tucker Carlson just keeps asking him, well, do you have any proof?
Or is it true that, you know, that Trump was in some mental institution in the 90s?
And he's like, he won't answer the question.
But he keeps interrupting and saying, well, you're not letting me answer the question.
He's like, but you're not answering.
And it's really, really fascinating.
And he never actually does get around to saying definitively.
He says, well, sometimes the universe doesn't provide you a simple yes or no.
And it's like, I'm not asking the universe, I'm asking you in particular.
And he seems to have quite a meltdown after that, this Kurt Fellow on...
On Twitter, I think he accused someone of sending him a strobe light when they know he's an epileptic and considered a dissault, and his wife tweeted that they were going to the police, and it just got, I guess, pretty Pretty wild, pretty quickly.
And I don't know.
It doesn't seem at all true to me.
But there is this, you know, people I think are waking up to the fact that, yeah, you know, sometimes, I'm not talking about any specific instances, but sometimes it seems pretty clear that stuff just gets made up out of nothing whatsoever.
And it's tough.
You know, in America, you know, everyone sort of, Trump was going to sort of look at the libel laws.
It's tough.
In America, if you're a public figure and someone says something clearly bad and false about you, in order to win damages, you have to prove that the person who said these terrible things about you was acting with malice.
I don't know how you prove that.
What the hell does that mean?
Your state of mind shouldn't matter.
I mean, maybe it matters to the degree, right?
I mean, state of mind matters with murder, but it's not like you get off if you're right.
So you actually, if somebody says, I don't know, so-and-so is a rapist or whatever, and it's not true, well, you have to prove that it was done with malice, whatever that means.
And of course, given that reporters know this, they don't keep any records of any malice they may have had.
Right.
You don't write in emails, I feel malice towards this person, so I'm going to say this.
They know the law, right?
Well, it's hard.
Sorry, go ahead.
I was going to say, if it's hard to prove, then that's what lawyers are used for, right?
So if it's too easy to prove, then there's no need for lawyers.
Right, right, right.
Yeah, well, but it's also, I mean, the media, lawyers and the media and so on have a lot of power.
And so it is, you know, it's very hard to punch back against lies that are spoken.
And someone, person A, B, C, I find it hard to punch back against these...
Kinds of lies.
And so, this empathy is really important.
I mean, this is one of the fundamental arguments between the left and the right, is the left says, well, empathy means giving poor people money.
And the right says, well, empathy really means, like, that's vote buying and that's getting them dependent upon you is not good for them in the long run.
Empathy really means giving them freedom and opportunity and help, but not getting them dependent upon government money.
And of course that's true.
Of course that's what real empathy means.
And the left, the way they argue, the way they debate, this hysteria, this hostility, this coldness.
I mean, I don't know if you followed this truly staggering story.
I'm just going to make sure I don't get the names wrong.
But there was this woman who wrote a tweet, an incredibly coarse tweet.
And I don't think she...
She was basically saying something about...
It was a vile tweet, this left-wing journalist about Ivanka Trump and Julia Ioffe, I-O-F-F-E. She wrote, either Trump is effing his daughter or he's shirking nepotism laws, which is worse?
Jesus.
I mean, that...
What an astonishing thing to say.
Well, I mean, what a horrifying and astonishing thing to say.
Now, Politico, which is where she worked, and there is also, in the Richard Spencer theme, there's a picture of her with Richard Spencer, but anyway.
Politico, where she worked, fired her, you know, because it is, I mean, obviously pretty gross.
Do you know who hired her?
I do not.
I do not.
The Atlantic hired her after...
I don't know if it was after or whatever, but she's hired.
Now that's...
I mean, what kind of person do you have to be to say something like that publicly?
I mean, where is the empathy in the left?
And the whole thing about, you know, the basket of deplorables, half of Trump supporters are racist and sexist and misogynist and all that.
And, you know, just this is endless attacks on everyone and their character and the destruction of income.
I mean, this is all horrible, horrible personality traits.
And there's no empathy in any of this.
So there is a war between the empaths and the others, whatever you want to call them.
There's a bunch of different terms you could use, but there is this battle that's going on.
And given that nobody knows how to create empathy in someone after they're an adult, empathy is one of these...
It's a very complicated thing to develop empathy.
It's sort of like 13 parts of the brain have to develop in the right sequence and they have to sort of work together.
And it is a very challenging thing to develop empathy.
And I think the default position is not necessarily that way inclined for human beings.
So again, this sort of question of presumption of innocence.
Well, the presumption of innocence is, well, there, but by the grace of God, go I. That I can, you know, now Stalin was never going to be subject to one of his own tribunals, right?
I mean, Trotsky was, you know, hacked to death with an ice pick in Mexico under Stalin's orders, I believe.
But that was never going to happen to Stalin, right?
So Stalin didn't have to worry about the presumption of innocence because he was never going to face one of his own courts, right?
But doubling down, it's a perfectly valid strategy if it works, right?
I mean, that's sort of a tautology, but...
It is a perfectly valid strategy if it works.
And it is a terrible strategy if it doesn't work.
And doubling down has worked in the past for the mainstream media, but I don't think it's going to work anymore.
But, you know, as Sun Tzu says, never interrupt your enemy when he's making mistakes.
So I encourage them to continue to do what they're doing.
All right, we're going to move on to the last caller.
Thank you so much for your call.
I found it interesting.
I thought it was going to be more witchy, but that's all right.
Son of a witch.
Oh, right up next is Jason.
Jason wrote in and said, I don't want to endorse a corrupt system of education.
Should I be concerned with going to a public college that I don't agree with politically slash morally if I get the education I need to survive in the free market?
That's from Jason.
Well, so is your question public versus non-public college?
Or is it the topic?
What is the major, what is the sort of center?
How will we know if your question is answered?
That's a good question.
I guess I can rephrase it a little bit.
Should I be concerned with going to a public school that I don't agree with politically or morally?
Yes.
Yes, of course.
You're giving them money, you are supporting what it is that they do, and you are risking infection.
There's no hazmat suit strong enough, particularly for younger people, to make sure that no Infection occurs from a propaganda and dogma and you will be surrounded by people of course who will most likely have swallowed all the blue pills they can get their hands on without the resulting 12-day bonus and you will also be subject to the rule and the power of professors who may very well be petty enough to punish you for original thinking.
So you may be putting yourself into a very negative and expensive situation.
Right.
No, that sums out pretty much how I feel, especially going through a macroeconomics course here.
Oh, economics.
In particular, there are studies that show that people who take economics end up dumber about economics after they graduate.
I mean, it's a negative thing.
I did take philosophy.
Now I had this one fantastic professor who taught me all, this woman taught me all about Aristotle and indulged me into the extra credit, not even extra credit, just voluntary.
I was like writing all these extra papers to try and figure out what essence meant and how to argue for it and all of that.
And she was great, gracious and passionate and a fantastic teacher.
And maybe there's like one or two others, but most of them were terrible.
And I learned very, very little.
Very little in college.
The few things I obsessively returned to, because I've got to get my money's worth, but I learned very, very little in college.
And I went to three different colleges.
I went to Glendon, which is part of York University.
I guess four, if you count the National Theatre School.
And then I went to McGill, and then I went to did a...
I've got a graduate degree at University of Toronto, which is now a truly special snowflake hell, according to our good friend Lauren Southern, who's been posting stuff about what's going on there.
But it was not worth it for me.
It was not worth it for me.
I have learned, I'm telling you this very frankly, like when we have a great guest on, and most of the guests are great, I have a great guest on.
I learned more in that conversation and in my preparation for that conversation than I sometimes learned in an entire course at university.
And it wasn't even so much that I didn't learn much.
It's the stuff that I learned that wasn't true.
That was the big problem.
I left university having, you know, white knuckled and split fingernail hung on to reality against some pretty impressive crosswinds in my experience.
I would be careful.
Now, if you are someone who has a lot of confidence, then if you don't go to college, it's fascinating, right?
I mean, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, they started, I think, but didn't finish the college courses they were taking.
So, if you have a great deal of confidence, then not going to college...
Is actually kind of cool, because people say, well, you didn't go to college, got a lot of confidence.
You must be really, really good.
And so I think be quite interested.
And, you know, that's a funny thing, you know, I get all these messages, like people say, oh, Steph, you should go and teach philosophy at a university.
It's like, no, you should go back to being a tadpole and swim around in the Precambrian Ocean.
It's like, why would I want to go back in time when I do it this way?
So it's a major purchase.
It's one of the biggest decisions you're ever going to make.
You know, it's probably, think of it like buying a house that you don't move into for four years.
And it's the biggest purchase you're going to make in your life, at this point in your life.
And you've really got to figure out the ROI. What are the return on investment?
We've got a whole presentation called The Truth About College Debt, which you should check out.
But you are going to be...
The quality of education has declined considerably.
College is still coasting on the reputation they had a couple of generations ago, when only the very smartest people went to college.
And a lot of people are being scooped up and going to college now.
They've kind of become factories for printing giant coupons of Federal Reserve money from the government rather than elite places where the very smartest get to hone their skills to their very highest degree.
It's not that way anymore.
The reputation of colleges is taking a little while to catch up.
It's starting to now.
You know, and the early caller was saying that there are a bunch of students who want to say, well, we want our student debt forgiven.
Well, that is clearly saying that the student debt is a bad investment.
And the more you see this clamoring for the forgiving of student debt, the more people are confessing, if not outright stating, that college is a bad investment.
College is a bad investment.
If it paid off 10 to 1, who would care about the debt being reduced, right?
I mean, you can pay it off with your lunch money.
So you've got over $1 trillion in outstanding student loan debt.
I mean, how the hell is that going to get paid off, right?
So at some point, especially in the arts, this whole...
Ponzi scheme is gonna come falling apart and you don't want to be in recipient...
I don't think you want to be the recipient of a degree when the scam has been more revealed, just how low the standards have gone and just how indoctrinated the students are and how little you're being prepared for the rigorous and results-based needs that the free market has, right?
The free market doesn't care about how you feel.
The free market cares, can you make me another widget?
In less than it cost me to pay you.
And considerably less too because there's a lot of overhead other than your salary.
And this girlification of the universe that seems to be going on at the moment that hits school pretty hard.
There is something very masculine about the free market and the denigration of masculinity and the decay of the free market generally go hand in hand because the free market is not about your feels.
The free market is about facts and productivity and real things.
Unless someone has to cry in queue for a movie, and maybe it's about your feels.
But it's still about whether you can produce the crying in a movie that's believable.
So I would be careful, I would be skeptical, and I would definitely draw up a big chart of all the opportunity costs, right?
Like if you go and get a job and study something on the side...
You will end up with a lot more money and you may very well end up with a lot more knowledge, a lot more practical knowledge, not more valuable knowledge by studying people you respect rather than rolling the dice that the people who teach you are going to be really committed to your intellectual growth and competence.
Right.
That's a really good point.
Now, if, like you said before, like, you know, right out at the end, if the...
If the university I'm going to currently can prepare me for the free market, I believe that the university I go to currently can do that.
I'm sorry to interrupt you, but can it prepare you for the free market better than the free market can?
Probably not.
Well, that's an important thing, right?
Right.
That is a very important thing.
I mean, look, I'm someone who...
I hate to spend money, man.
I really do.
I'm like, I need a crowbar to get my wallet open sometimes.
And I use voice dictation for writing.
And I need sometimes if I want to go to a cafe or something, I need it on the road.
And I have a little computer, but it's kind of old and it doesn't quite keep up with my thinking.
So I've got to wait for the...
Dictation software to catch up with what I'm doing.
And I use Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which is a fantastic product, and everyone should go and at least give it a try.
30-day money-back guarantee.
I'd get a penny if you buy it, but you should just buy it because it's a fantastic product.
I'd have been using it for years and years.
I've written all my books from FDR onwards, from Free Domain Radio onwards on that product, and it's fantastic beyond words.
But anyway, so, you know, I needed a faster computer so that I could go and write if I'm not at home, and I could...
The computer could keep up with what I'm thinking because I hate to sort of dictate something and it's not the fault of the software, it's just an old processor.
And So I went out and I look and I look and it's ridiculous.
Like, I mean, I can buy this.
But I'm looking and I'm looking and I'm like, oh, I finally found one.
You know, it's on sale and it's, you know, it's slightly dented.
You know, it's an open box item and I guess I can jury rig the power cords together with the old telephone cables and something like, sold!
Right?
So I'm just someone who...
It is easier for a camel, it is easier for a rich man to go through the eye of a needle sometimes than to pull a dollar out through my wallet, which is completely insane, but that's just the way it is, what happens when you grow up dirt poor.
And I'm working on it, I'm working on it.
Except for the studio, for FDR, I will spend anything.
But yeah, look at these things very skeptically.
It's not just the money you're paying to go, it's the money you're not earning, and the skills you're not earning, the contacts you're not developing.
By not being in the free market.
Oh, yeah, Mike, you want to mention?
Oh, the lights.
I'm like a character out of A Long Day's Journey Into Night with the lights.
You have to turn off the lights if you're at Steph's place.
If you leave a light on, it's like sometimes Steph followed behind me, it seemed, to catch the lights that they were left on.
You know what I have to do?
You ever see those horses?
They have those blinders like on each side.
So that they don't get distracted by things jumping on either side of the road.
I need those blinders when I walk down the street because I can't even tell you guys how many households have exterior lights on when there's absolutely no need to have those exterior lights on, you know?
It's 12.30 in the morning.
Everyone's asleep.
Why is your exterior light on?
But you're not legally allowed, as I found out, to go and turn it off with them.
Anyway, yeah.
With a BB gun!
It would be passive-aggressive if I just turn on all the lights at Steph's place.
You wouldn't believe how many candles it takes in the studio to get this kind of look.
That's why I have to shorten the show sometimes, because I'm out of air.
So yeah, be skeptical.
I mean, certainly don't pay to be indoctrinated and don't pay to avoid the free market.
And, you know, you could really make the case...
Look, I've made this case before, so I'll keep it very brief.
But if there's a piece of paper you need to do what you want to do, you need to be an engineer, then, you know, you've got to jump through the hoops and do what you're going to do.
If there's any way for you to do what you want to do without having to go through college, of course you should go and do it, in my opinion, because...
You're going to get more experience, more context.
Four years of being in the market versus not being in the market shows up 40 years later.
Does that make any sense?
Kind of.
Can you go through that?
So, let's say, if you go to college and you're paying, I don't know, what is it?
30 grand a year for college these days?
20 grand a year for college these days all in?
Well, maybe not at a public college.
Let's say, you know, 15, 20.
Let's just say 20 grand, right?
If you go to college for four years, it's 80 grand minimum.
But you could have got a job maybe at 30, 40 grand.
So you put all that together, 100 grand, and you're starting to talk about like 180 grand.
That's a lot of money.
If you went to college and you, if you don't go to college and you get yourself a job at 30 or 40k a year, then you're $90,000 to $120,000 richer.
Instead of being $80,000 in the hole, you're $120,000 richer maybe when you come out of college.
I mean, minus taxes and all that, but whatever, right?
And that money you can use to start your own business rather than coming out and being in debt and having to go to work for someone else just to pay off your debt.
Now, if you use that money to start your own business and it succeeds, then, you know, 10 years down the road, you're going to be making almost infinitely more than you did otherwise.
Because let's say your business, you've got to save up, I don't know, 30 grand.
To start your business.
Well, let's say you've saved that 30 grand by working rather than going to college.
You start it right away.
But if you come out of college, 80 grand in debt, you've got to work for, I don't know, how long does it take for you to pay off 80 grand in debt, right?
I mean, it could be, yeah, five years, six years, seven years.
Then you've got to save the 30 grand.
And you don't have a lot of job flexibility.
You can't take a lot of risks when you've got a big, giant, crushing debt.
Hanging over your head.
So then you've got to save up the money to start your business and that might take you another couple of years.
Now then you're starting to think, ah, you know, I want to get married.
I want to have kids.
I don't know if I really want to be an entrepreneur right now because I kind of need the stability and so on, right?
So in one case, you know, you might be pulling half a mil or a mil a year in your own business after 10 years.
And in another one, you may never have even started that business.
Or if you have, you're just kind of starting it as maybe you're thinking of becoming a father, which is going to slow you down.
That's what I mean when I say these trajectories They widen over time in some circumstances.
It's not just like, well, you know, eventually you'll catch up if you go to college.
I mean, the beginning of things is everything.
I agree.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, actually.
Now, like you were saying about the piece of paper, what I plan on doing with either computer science or business doesn't really have much to do with that piece of paper, but will that ever help ever, just by having a degree with bachelors on it, fancy letters and stuff like that?
Well, that's the wrong question to ask, right?
Because will it help?
Sure.
Yeah, I mean, if you have the choice of snapping your fingers and having a degree or not having a degree, sure, snap your fingers and have a degree.
Right.
The question is, does it help compared to what?
Does it help compared to what?
Now, you spend four years, you get a degree.
Okay, let's say you get a degree in computer science.
That's going to open a few doors for sure.
But as an employee.
Now, let's say instead of walking in saying, well, I've got no real world experience, but I've got this piece of paper that says I studied a bunch of code in the lab, right?
And wrote a bunch of code in the lab.
You go and build a bunch of mobile apps, and you go and build a bunch of websites, and you go build a bunch of cool stuff, you go and build some virtual reality stuff or whatever, and then you go and say, here's my portfolio of stuff that I built for the free market, and here's how many people bought it, and here's how many I sold, and here's my downloads, and here's whatever, whatever, right?
Here's my ad revenue if it's an embedded ad app or whatever, right?
So, compared to what?
Yeah, of course it's going to help, but is it going to help relative to you going out and building a bunch of software?
Like, I only took one course in computers in my life, and it was scratching the punch cards.
I mean, it was terrible.
And I was working in computers as an R&D programmer, building systems which sold for like a million dollars at times.
I mean, I worked very hard to build up my skills, because I started coding when I was like 12, and I bought my first computer.
And I would go into the lab, the computer lab, like the upstairs from the math class.
I would go in on Saturdays.
And I remember begging my mom, because you couldn't be there without an adult, begging my mom to come in so I could go and code all day with my friends.
And to her credit, she did once or twice, which was nice, in Border Magazine, which was very big-hearted of her in hindsight.
And that was the real thing.
Did I need to go to college to learn how to code?
No, I was coding since I was in my early teens.
And then when it came to time to sit down and code, you just will your way through it.
You just willpower your way through it.
You know, as I said before, I remember having to open a database record, read it, change it, write it back again.
And first time I tried to do that, it took me nine hours.
Because I'd mostly done graphics programming before, and it wasn't because there was no type ahead.
You couldn't really look anything up.
The internet was too primitive, so I just had to try and try and figure it all out.
And so I remember taking the transition to ASP programming, then ASP.NET programming, and I actually wrote an entire interface with some friends which read all of the properties of our Windows Forms database and reproduced them on the web, including like drop-downs and double-click for entering calendar dates and all this kind of stuff.
So this, I think, is important.
And also, I wouldn't assume, of course, that computer science is the way to even go these days.
I mean, what was I just reading about in Disney?
A bunch of people are being forced to train They're replacements, right?
These H-1B visa programs.
I think that might take a bit of a hit, that program under Trump and for some damn good reasons.
But, you know, there's a massive influx of people coming in from India and other places that it's really, really tough to compete with them because, you know, they're kind of chained to their job, right?
They can't really negotiate.
Because they're used to a much poorer country, they'll take lower salaries, and it's, I don't know.
But if you're an entrepreneur, you know, if you're going out and creating value that you've proven you can create in the free market, that gives you something special.
Because nobody cares about the degree, fundamentally.
They care about, can you produce a widget for far less than it costs me to pay you to produce the widget?
Now, if you understand the business world, and you can't do that, you cannot understand the business world as an employee.
You can't do it.
If you have tried your own thing, success or failure, it doesn't usually matter.
In fact, the failure can be more instructive than the successes.
Because the failures teach you what not to do, whereas the success is hard to replicate.
And so I would say that anyone who's a really competent hirer, like an employer, and I've interviewed, I don't know, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people and hired dozens and dozens and dozens of people over my years as an entrepreneur...
And the piece of paper was okay, and if it was there and if it wasn't there, I didn't particularly care.
I looked for passion, I looked for wisdom, and I looked for somebody who understood business.
Because tech people a lot of times, and I've done this myself, you know, they get their heads stuck up their own ass without remembering whether or not what they're working on is going to make money for their employer.
And I wanted people, I didn't care if it had been a paper route, like I wanted people who knew how to provide value, who understood what it was like from the employer's standpoint, because those people, you barely even need to manage them, which freed me up to do cool stuff like sell software, and work on marketing stuff, and market penetration stuff, and R&D for the next generation of the software.
Yeah.
If you've been out of the marketplace, at least for me, you came across my desk and you say, if I had two candidates, right?
And I remember a guy coming in, his name was David, had impeccable credentials, but just kind of sat there like a lump and was pretty passive.
Another guy had never taken a computer science course in his life, but he opened up his laptop and showed me all the cool stuff he coded.
It's like, boom, you're the guy I want, you know, and then I can teach you more about the business stuff.
But he'd already coded a bunch of stuff and sold it.
So that to me was like, okay, you know, I don't care about your recipe if I can actually taste...
I had a whole chat with VoxDay about that kind of stuff, but I don't think that there's any better training for the free market than the free market.
Awesome.
That's pretty clear for me.
All right.
And the kind of people and the kind of institutions that say, well, we'll never hire anyone without a computer science degree from this and this place, you have to ask yourself.
Do you even want to work there?
Because they may not be the most creative people in the world.
There's nothing more frustrating than working for an organization that spends 90% of its time covering its ass.
Well, you can't blame me if the employee didn't work out.
He had a great degree.
It's like, I don't care about blame.
Just, you know, can you hire people who are great?
And if people say, well, you have to have these degrees or you have to have this credential, they're just covering their ass.
It means that they can't judge people, so they've got to judge paper.
That's a good point.
Do you mind if I ask a follow-up question?
Sure.
No, I'm sure I don't.
I don't mind.
Right, right.
I 100% agree with you, but if I do end up needing that piece of paper, how do you feel about the public-private I don't know what to call that.
You know, going to a private school versus a public school, would there be any difference in education?
I don't know.
Honestly, I couldn't judge that.
I mean, you'd need to look up each individual case.
My understanding is that private schools still have to follow the same curriculum in many ways.
So, but you'd need to look that up and, you know, maybe there are good public schools and bad private schools.
And I don't know that the private is always better, but that would be something to look up individually.
It may be different by each.
You know, there are certain, like, MIT for engineering and stuff like that, and Harvard for windbaggery and pomposity, like, and all the California universities for rampant soul-sucking sewage-laced socialism, right?
They all have their different specialties in what they produce, so that would be a very individual decision.
I wouldn't want to generalize it.
Yeah, and also just thinking about the opportunity clause, like you were saying before, that would probably set me back with the whole thing you were talking about before.
Well, and, you know, find the teacher, right?
If you get a great teacher, then it's worth paying for, I think.
Even if you don't take the whole thing, right?
Just get a great teacher.
And maybe the teacher, maybe the professor has got a bunch of lectures online.
You can go and look at those lectures.
You know, we see this a lot.
We want to book an academic.
We haven't much lately, but when we did book a lot of academics, we'd look at them.
Do their courses, do their classes show up online?
We see them interacting and teaching and so on.
And, you know, if somebody's really inspiring to you, that might be worth going in.
Maybe not for the whole thing, but just for that part.
Great point.
Thanks a lot.
No, you really answered my question pretty thoroughly.
Good.
Well, I'm glad you called in because that's a big, big question for a lot of people.
And I think we beat the bushes and got all the useful quails to flutter into the sky.
So thanks, everyone, so much.
I really, really appreciate your support, your kindness, your generosity.
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