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July 25, 2017 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

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3758 Failure At All Costs - Call In Show - July 19th, 2017

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	Hello, everybody.
	Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
	Hope you're doing well. Please don't forget to sign up for our new email subscription list.
	And please, please, please donate at freedomainradio.com slash donate.
	So, four questions tonight.
	And the first question is something that's been on my mind a lot lately.
	It's great when listeners articulate my own inner thoughts.
	The caller wanted to know that a lot of people are sympathizing with Christianity as a means of saving the West from its potential fate.
	Do I find this remotely reasonable or possible?
	It's a great question.
	Second caller, enamored of entrepreneurship, loves the entrepreneurial life.
	I'm not sure that the love is entirely reciprocated for reasons that you'll see in the conversation.
	The third caller, well, he's having trouble finding a girlfriend, and he was fat as a child and remained somewhat fat as an adult, and trying to figure out what is really going on proved to be quite a rabbit hole.
	And a very, very interesting call.
	I think you'll find it most powerful.
	And the fourth caller, and this is a question that a lot of people are asking or thinking about at the moment, what is a nation?
	What does it mean to have a nation, to be a nation?
	What does it mean to be part of a nation?
	Open borders versus national pride versus xenophobia versus patriotism versus survival versus being overrun.
	These are all very interesting questions and I've of course had significant thoughts on these over the years so I share where my thinking is at the moment and why.
	I hope that you enjoy the show.
	I love that I get to do these shows and I really appreciate everyone's kindness and support and here we go.
	Alright, well up for us today we have Jacob.
	Jacob wrote in and said, Given we are, as we can easily observe, in a dying post-Christian era, where do you see the future of ethics coming from in order to maintain a functioning society?
	It is clear atheism is statistically aligned with leftism and all its cancers.
	However, I've noticed many in the new right, alt-right, and general nationalist camps sympathize with Christianity as a means of saving the West.
	Do you find this remotely reasonable and, if so, do you ever consider we advocate for moral-slash-biblical propaganda in order to keep those unable to retain the West without unproven dogma in check?
	Or, is that a means of control but in a positive way?
	Your thoughts? That's from Jacob.
	Hey Jacob, how you doing? My sanity is intact for the moment, so let us hope that it remains that way for the duration of this conversation.
	Well, that's a hallmark greeting I haven't heard before, but...
	See, things are simple for me.
	I'm a simple man with a simple plan.
	I don't have to worry about all of this sort of stuff.
	I don't have to worry about outcomes or strategy or anything like this.
	Should we align with this? Should we do this?
	Should we do that? I only have to worry about what is true and what is false.
	Now... The question is, if there's a lie that will save the world, should you speak it?
	And this was Plato's big question after he saw Socrates put to death by the mob.
	He began to ask himself, well, maybe, just maybe, we need to start telling people lies.
	Because, of course, one of the big challenges of being a thinker and being Alive and aware and all these kinds of good things is the basic reality that there are a lot of really stupid people in the world.
	And I don't mean this as an insult.
	There are short people in the world.
	There are ugly people in the world.
	There are tall people. There are people with lots of hair.
	There's me. And there are just lots of dumb people in the world.
	And so Plato had this question.
	Which was, maybe we just need to tell people a lie.
	It's a noble lie and it's in the cause of goodness, but we need to find a way to keep intelligent people safe from the mob.
	Now, the free market keeps intelligent people safe from dumb people because resources flow to intelligent people and they end up with a sense of power and efficacy and influence in society that is proportional to their intelligence.
	But when you start to get a democracy, Which has always and forever been considered a disaster by the intelligent, of course, because you're outnumbered by idiots.
	So democracy is the lowest common denominator, the shortest time preference is conceivable, taking you for a ride into the void of the end of your civilization.
	So I don't...
	I mean, I understand, you know, philosophers and thinkers have to live in the world and we're outnumbered by people who aren't philosophers who aren't smart and they're so dumb that they don't even know that they're dumb.
	I mean, nothing breeds humility like intelligence and nothing breeds arrogance like idiocy.
	And so, you know, the period people, it's just like this, period, you know?
	If you want free market healthcare, you want people to die in the streets.
	Period. If you don't like the welfare state, you want people to starve to death.
	Period. If you don't like the welfare state, you hate single moms.
	Period. If you have problems with single mothers, you hate women.
	Period. Like, just stupid stuff.
	And, you know, occasionally if I'm having a look at YouTube comments, I'll just, like, occasionally I'll respond to one or two if they've got some interesting things to say.
	But some stuff is just, it's so retarded.
	Like, I wouldn't even know what to type if you paid me.
	Other than, please unplug your keyboard, go to a library and read some books if you know how to read.
	So... I don't have to worry about strategy.
	I don't have to worry about tactics.
	I don't have to worry about who to align yourself with or myself with.
	The only thing I have to figure out is what is true and what is false.
	Now there is of course an issue which is that if you come up with things that are true But are disbelieved by the majority of people.
	What's the value of that truth? Again, I don't have to worry about that either.
	The only thing I have to worry about is making sure that my arguments and my evidence are as good as humanly possible.
	So, you know, I look forward.
	I look forward with great eagerness to the day where I can cross swords with Christians and they're the biggest problem in the world of philosophy.
	I adore Christians these days because they will let me speak my mind and they will engage with me verbally.
	They're not big on shooting people or blowing themselves up at Ariana Grande concerts.
	And they're not big on passing laws that force me to obey their whims.
	And they're not big on publishing hit lists on people that I care about.
	And I don't have any problems with Christians at the moment.
	In fact, I view Christians as worthy allies against larger challenges to the kind of life that both I and Christians want.
	I would rather have a Christian who believes in free will than a leftist determinist atheist on my side.
	Because the leftist determinist atheist will simply stab you in the back for the sake of momentary approval and free stuff.
	And I would rather have people believe in God than believe in the state, the Christian God.
	And because if they believe in the Christian God, it's live and let live.
	If they believe in state, it's live and get jailed.
	So that's sort of my first thought and first response.
	Let me know what you think. Well, you're very well spoken as usual, Mr.
	Molyneux. I had several points that I was hoping you would amuse me with, that perhaps we could hit a few of these points in order to capsulate the entirety of my question.
	If we may. You've got an interesting way of talking there, my friend.
	It sounds like you're reading the script from a Count Chaka audition.
	Just wondering if you noticed that or not.
	I have some odd quirks about me, I will say.
	Even the way in which I speak.
	I speak.
	It's not a problem.
	I just didn't want it to pass unnoticed or unremarked upon.
	It's nothing you have to correct.
	It's just a, it's a, it's an interesting way of communicating.
	But go on.
	I'm very self-aware, actually.
	It's a very good thing. I wanted to see, though it is a boring question, but I had my thoughts that I cannot say I've really heard anybody else discussed.
	The first one is I wanted to see why is atheism so well aligned with leftism?
	It is clear that atheism, obviously, is aligned quite well with leftism and its cancerous traits, postmodernism, and Marxism in all its heights and shades, but it seems to me, from my observations, that Christ is taking his final breaths and shall die out.
	From my observations, it seems to be this way.
	Obviously, things could change.
	Whether that is good or bad, I do not know yet.
	But you and a lot of other individuals have a hypothesis that I would say holds a lot of weight and substance that atheists, they do not derive their ethics, their code of conduct or morality from religion.
	So they now turn to the state.
	And I was wanting to know if you had any other views on why that is other than they need to derive their ethics from somewhere.
	I had my thoughts on this, actually, but I want to see what you may have to divulge.
	That might not be, I guess, what is typically said.
	Is that, again, do you think there's anything else there?
	What fucking ethics do atheists have?
	What standards, what universal standards do they have?
	The fuck are atheist ethics?
	Somebody tell me. I've been an atheist for many decades.
	I've talked to countless atheists outside of objectivists, who are a very, very small subset of atheists as a whole.
	What are atheist ethics?
	This vague live and let live, this vague secularism and vague...
	For the good of everyone as best we can.
	But what the hell do they stand on?
	Can a brother get a thou shalt not steal?
	Can a brother get a thou shalt not kill?
	That people are willing to stand on.
	That they're willing to become discomforted by.
	Atheists is this general self-testicular, massaging, feel-good, everything-ism that adds up to nothing whatsoever.
	Atheism is the crumbling of the West.
	Because, as I've said before, atheists rip down Christian morality, and they damn well should have put up another morality that was absolute.
	Job one if you're driving people out...
	Of a place of shelter is to build them a new place of shelter.
	Otherwise, they're just sitting there in the storm getting their ass lit up by lightning.
	And atheists didn't do any of that.
	Enough with Christian morality, hedonism, government, secularism.
	What the hell do they stand for?
	What the fuck does an atheist stand for?
	I have no idea.
	Other than snooty superiority.
	Do they have property rights?
	Do they have the non-aggression principle?
	Do they have anti-statism?
	Do they have anti-violence?
	Can a brother get an anti-spanking?
	A little bit more in the atheist community to some degree, but that's partly because they don't have to teach their kids hell and all of that.
	But what do they stand for?
	What do they stand for?
	Do they stand against violence?
	Well, if they stood against violence, they would be against the state, and they'd recognize that taxation is theft.
	But they don't do that. So, I don't know what atheists stand for.
	I certainly don't know what leftists stand for other than power, control, free resources, short-time preferences, and wanting to verbally or physically destroy anyone who gets between them and their free stuff.
	But as far as atheists go?
	I mean, you've got prominent atheists taking massive amounts of money from the state.
	You've got prominent atheists who...
	Hate Donald Trump?
	Why? Why?
	Because he's a nationalist?
	Compared to what? Compared to international globalism, which is basically just communism on slow motion?
	Well, not so slow motion anymore.
	What do atheists stand for?
	They stand against God, which makes them useful idiots.
	For people who want to overthrow the West.
	They stand against Christianity, which makes them useful idiots for people who want to overthrow the ethics of Christianity.
	They stand... Christians are for small government.
	Atheists are for big government.
	That's all you need to know.
	And therefore, atheists are far more dangerous than Christians, on average and in general.
	And please, for God's sakes, don't be a stupid atheist and write to me or write underneath this, well, I'm an atheist and I'm into small government.
	Yeah, got it.
	You're just a precious fucking snowflake.
	You're so special, it's wonderful.
	The fact that you can't understand statistical averages and that atheists are many, many, many times more likely to support big government and leftist policies than non-atheists.
	Like, dozens of times more likely.
	The fact that you...
	You know, when people make a generality, and then someone's like, I don't fit into that generality.
	I don't even know what to say.
	I don't even know what to say.
	All you're doing is clucking up the works for people trying to get adult work done.
	You need to go back to the kids' table and stop wasting everyone's time with your stupid emotional defensiveness.
	So... Well, that's nicely worded.
	That's nicely worded. Um...
	I have something that I'm building to here.
	I wanted to give my hypothesis though on why atheism, if I may, aligns so well with leftism.
	So my hypothesis is why back when even going back to the baby boomer generation, religion was usually associated with a sort of Bible Belt republicanism.
	Whether that was Christianity or Mormonism or Catholicism, If you were a Republican, you were religious.
	Generally speaking, that has been my observation.
	I think this is a just thing to say.
	If you were more on the left side of the political spectrum, even a classical liberal type, chances are you were possibly a moderate religious person.
	Thus, you did not take your religion too seriously, nor were you unnecessarily judgmental toward others based on dogmatic doctrine to which you derived your morality.
	Religious households can be oppressive, though obviously things may have changed these days, certainly.
	But even especially to a child in development stages of their lives, in a very fragile time, it seems that they instill this imagery of hell and roaming devils in a child's mind which provokes an unhealthy superstition, let alone denies critical thought.
	So, To wrap this point up, when a child grows into their teen years or adult years, depending upon the experience of their religious upbringing, it is possible they'll shun not only their set religion, but as well as anything politically associated with it.
	That would mean that conservatism is also shunned.
	And if you have not read Ben Shapiro's book, Primetime Propaganda, it's a fairly decent read.
	In reading this book, I felt that many people in Hollywood, even those loudmouth leftist types, were also cast aside from the absolute morality dictated by their set religion and holy books.
	So, what was the cause and effect of that?
	They attacked using TV as their loaded gun in order to push back against what they saw as a cancerous sore religion.
	They may have actually even felt that they were helping liberate other people from this sometimes oppressive belief system.
	So the point I'm getting to is when people claim that religion or Christianity will save us, are they so sure about that and is it so black and white?
	Because from what I can observe, there has been a severe cultural backlash and I just wanted to know if you think this holds any weight to it.
	Yeah, so I think I understand.
	What you're saying is that atheists associated small government with Christianity, and when they threw out Christianity, they threw out small government.
	It's the baby with the bathwater thing, right?
	That is essentially what I'm saying, yes.
	So that means that atheists are retarded.
	Emotionally reactive idiots who can't think their way out of a paper bag or reason from first principles to save not only their life, but the life of their entire fucking civilization.
	Because if you're like, well, that Satanist drives a red car.
	I don't like Satan, therefore I'm never going to drive a red car.
	You know, this guy is a sociopath and he's also really good at using ABC technique as a heart surgeon.
	Therefore, nobody should ever use ABC technique as a heart surgeon because that guy is a sociopath.
	I mean, it's stupid.
	If you're going to reason from first principles, then reason from first principles.
	If reason is better than faith and reason is better than force, then you should be for small government because government is force.
	It's not that complicated.
	But if they're like, well, I just dislike everyone who's Christian and everything that is even remotely or tangentially associated with Christian beliefs.
	Well, gosh, that must be quite something.
	Wow, we should bring back slavery, you might say.
	Because it was Christians who abolished slavery.
	And I dislike everything to do with Christianity, so let's bomb churches and bring back slavery.
	Can't wait for that to be taken out of context.
	Yeah. So, yeah, you could be right.
	Maybe it's just all emotionally reactive bullshit.
	In which case, it just shows you that atheism is an unthought-out, emotionally reactive position that's utilized by leftists to shrink the power of Christianity and grow the power of the state.
	And they're useful axle greases for the rolling livestock-carrying thunderbolts and trains of state power.
	So, yeah, I mean, you could be right, but it just means that they're not rational.
	They're just emotionally immature.
	That's well worded. I did want to add another point to top off this whole thing, if I may.
	So I was scrolling through YouTube, and there's an individual by the name of Brittany Pettibone.
	She does a show with Tara McCarthy on YouTube, and she was talking about this thing called shame culture and how we sort of used to be in that mode of character.
	I actually did a response to her video myself, but in her video, See, she, excuse me, suggested that we used to live in a sort of shame culture and a mix of a guilt culture based on previous ethics or morality.
	People usually use that interchangeably, but there is a difference, of course.
	And now that we dwell amongst this shameless anything-goes culture, we are no longer in some fashion guilted for our sins or even eternal sins, as in our own guilty conscience.
	And the main point that I was marking on is that shame is, in some fashion, is it not a sort of control by sleight of hand or rather manipulation?
	And this goes back again to Ben Shapiro's book.
	But I am curious if that might have been some of the reason why we are in this cultural mess.
	If you continuously shun people, or the black sheep, if you will, is it at least possible you could have a fierce sort of revolution there?
	We should be shunning the living shit out of people.
	I've been arguing this for many, many, many years.
	And people don't like it.
	But look at the left. The left shuns shit out of people.
	The left publishes hate lists.
	The left says, don't associate with Trump supporters.
	The left says, yeah, it's fine if you want to divorce your husband if he's a Trump supporter.
	Yeah, you should disavow and disown and disassociate with people.
	The left shuns like crazy.
	Which would be fine, except they're winning.
	And nobody else is shunning.
	Oh no! We can't take our beliefs so seriously that we would shun people who disagree with us and want us thrown in prison for exercising our free and voluntary conscience.
	So I just, um...
	Yeah, I mean, you have two choices in society.
	You can have social enforcement, which is shunning, which is disassociating from people who are immoral or evil or acting against your interests.
	Jesus! What was the statistic?
	In Washington, D.C., journalists, 96% of them, 96% of them donated to Hillary Clinton.
	And I assume 4% to Gary Johnson just to watch his tongue move and have him not know where Aleppo is.
	So 96%.
	So what that means is that if you're not on the left and you try and get a job in the Washington mainstream media, they will shun the living shit out of you.
	Go try and be a well-known free marketer and try and get a job at Evergreen College.
	You know, I mean, just try.
	They will shun the living shit out of you.
	I think it was in that book that Ben Shapiro was talking about how he wrote a script, a television script for The Good Wife.
	And he was shopping it around and he was getting good feedback from it and he was going to get a deal for it because he's a lawyer, right?
	And what happened was people Googled him and do you remember what they said to him?
	Fuck off, essentially.
	Yeah. No fucking way I'm hiring you.
	You're a conservative.
	You're a free market guy.
	You're a small government guy.
	They shunned the living shit out of the guy.
	So shunning is the way to go.
	Shunning is the way to go.
	They're deplorables, racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobe, nasty, evil, scum, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	What is that? That's sending up flares to get you to shun people.
	On Twitter, I posted a question which was, was there such a thing as a friend zone before the welfare state?
	And some woman, I can't remember who, was responding and saying, well, women just pretended to be sick when people like you came by.
	So what's she doing? She's signaling that women should shun me for my views.
	No eggs for you, heretic.
	And it's like, okay, so shunning.
	Shunning. Great.
	Shun the shit out of people.
	Don't hire leftists.
	Don't do it. And you can find them on the resume.
	Look where they went to school. Look what they took.
	Look whether they passed or not.
	Shun the living shit out of people.
	That's how you win.
	Because the alternative to that is civil war.
	And I think it would be a lot nicer.
	To shun. And look, we understand that if someone's a pedophile, you should shun them.
	You shouldn't give them a guest spot on CNN, maybe, huh?
	If someone is a murderer, should you shun them?
	If you go and hang out with someone and you're a teenager and they're shoplifting the crap out of everything, should you hang around with them?
	What if they offer you illegal drugs?
	Hey, have some heroin. All the cool kids are doing it.
	Should you shun them? Of course you should.
	Of course you should.
	Everyone shuns everyone all the time.
	You know, every time you don't click on, give your internet and banking details up to a Nigerian print scam artist, you're shunning him!
	Shun, shun, shun!
	Shunning is very powerful.
	Shunning is very powerful.
	You know, there are religions in the world where leaving them is a death sentence.
	That's kind of shunny when you think about it.
	And if I remember correctly, those religions aren't doing necessarily too badly.
	So... I've returned back to what I said more than a decade ago.
	Shun, shun, shun.
	And if you're not willing to do it, then you're just not serious about what you believe in.
	Right on, right on.
	There is a second step to this conversation.
	You've got to keep this quick, though, because your questions are kind of long.
	Okay, okay. I do believe that people do still...
	As far as the atheistic standpoint, this is going to get a little unorthodox for a moment, but bear with me.
	I am not convinced, of course, that the herd is ready to live a life of reason and logic in order to obtain a full-running, well-rounded society, so they need a doctrine, something to adhere to.
	I think this is a just thing to say.
	I do not represent these people or an agent for them.
	They're very picky about that.
	You're not hastening this along, so I'm going to urge you once more to drop the caveats and get to the point.
	Unfortunately, this may have to be the end of our conversation, I'm afraid.
	What I was going to was a bit of a whole thing, I'm afraid.
	I suppose we may have gotten all that we need, I guess, from this conversation for now.
	All right. Well, if it's going to be long, I'm going to have to move on because we've got a lot of callers tonight.
	But thank you so much for your call.
	It was a great pleasure. Thank you.
	All right. Up next, we have Chris.
	Chris wrote in and said, I'm starting a business with a friend of mine, and although we have high hopes, I worry about putting in time, effort, and money only for it to flop.
	When do you know it's time to stop?
	How do you know when it's the right time to give up and move on to something else?
	That's from Chris. Hey, Chris.
	Hey. Holy shit. Well, not right when you're starting.
	We had two dates, but I'm thinking of breaking up with her.
	Well, that might be a good sign that it's a good thing to do.
	So you're just starting and you're already thinking about busting it up?
	No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
	I'm not thinking of busting it up right now.
	Okay, I go to your first statement, I'm starting a business, and to your last, how do you know when's the right time to give up and move on to something else?
	Yeah, that's just a worry that's been sitting in my mind.
	I talk to him regularly.
	We have the business.
	It's actually an LLC now.
	We have the bank account.
	We have only sold a couple of things, but we're working on getting a website up and We talk and joke sometimes and think, man, these would be really awesome things to do.
	And we're still just trying to get it off the ground.
	How many hours a week are you putting into it?
	Not very many. Not as much as I would like to.
	Oh, for God's sakes, man. Just give me a number.
	Okay. Probably about five hours a week.
	Oh, boy. Yeah.
	I'm putting five hours a week into my business.
	Doesn't seem to be taking off.
	No, I know why it's not taking off.
	It's because we both work full-time and I'm taking a summer class at a local community college.
	So that doesn't really breed success in a new business.
	Right. So one of the ways that you know you're not serious about it is you're not quitting your job to do it.
	Nothing concentrates your mind like looming disaster and panic.
	So if you really cared about it, if you really wanted to do it, you quit your job and you'd say, okay, I've got three months of savings.
	I have to make this work.
	It's kind of tough to substitute that kind of urgency with mere abstractions.
	Sometimes you just need to let the tiger loose in the study so that your mind becomes rapid and concentrated.
	Okay, that makes sense.
	And why do you need a partner if it's five hours a week?
	How do you mean? Wait, so you're doing five hours a week too?
	Why don't you just do ten hours a week and keep the whole business for yourself?
	It was a joint vision, we'll say.
	It's something that we both wanted.
	We're trying to...
	Make props and costume parts and stuff and sell that because it's both something that we've loved to do, me, for only about a couple years now and him for about 10 to 15 years.
	But you don't love to do it.
	If you love to do it, you'd be doing it for more than five hours a week.
	I don't quite understand.
	Why are you taking a class if you have a business that you want to start?
	Because I want a degree.
	How long is it going to take you to get the degree?
	Probably another three years.
	I just started. Why don't you just start the business?
	I mean, I'm not quite sure I understand what your plan is here.
	If you've got a business that you love and it's got some potential, listen, as soon as you sold one thing, boom, you're in.
	Because that first sale is a little bit of a doozy.
	The second one is tough. But the first sale proves the business model to some degree.
	I remember the very first time I sold a piece of software that I built.
	It was like, woohoo, I can do it.
	And then I'm like, getting my way through to being an entrepreneur as much as humanly possible.
	So if you have a business that you can sell something in, then why would you want to go and get a degree?
	For what? Is the degree going to help you to start your business?
	No! Because if after three years you've spent that time building your business, reading business books, taking online courses if you want, like on your own time kind of thing to figure stuff out or getting a mentor or someone to help you, an incubator or something like that, Well, you've got way more experience in what you want to do in three years of doing the business than you do in listening to some teacher who's not actually a business person telling you how to do it, right? Yeah.
	So why are you doing the class?
	us?
	Why not just start the business?
	Could be a good reason.
	I'm just asking.
	Yeah. I mean, let me give you an example, right?
	Let me give you an example. Let me give you an example, right?
	So I was a software entrepreneur, and I had an opportunity to start a business, and I wanted to do it.
	Now, if I'd have said, well, I'm going to just work at this business a couple of hours a week because I really, really want to go get a computer science degree, what would have happened?
	Well, my business opportunity would have dried up, and who knows what had happened by the time I got a computer science degree, but I learned a hell of a lot more about programming computers while I started doing it when I was 11.
	I learned a hell of a lot more about programming computers...
	By doing it than by studying it.
	And some of the worst people I ever hired were people with one guy with a computer science PhD.
	And he was terrible. So, you know, again, I could be missing something.
	But if you've got something you want to do, fucking do it.
	I mean, what's all this hedging your bets?
	I got a full-time job. I'm going to school.
	It's like... Why?
	Why did you just go all in for this?
	You know, I mean, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, they all dropped out of college to pursue their dreams, and I don't think they'd be worth double if they had that degree.
	Probably be worth very little.
	Yeah, well, yeah, then I guess it just comes down to a confidence problem of I'm not confident in it producing even a livable income right off the bat.
	Well, what do you mean? Nobody produces a livable income right off the bat.
	Do you want to know what my first month's donations were for this show?
	I'm not even going to tell you, but trust me, it wasn't exactly the 700 Club.
	So, yeah, nobody starts off producing income.
	That's why you panic, and that's why you end up producing great work.
	Okay. Well, yeah.
	No, you shut me down faster.
	I'm not trying to shoot you down.
	I'm trying to build you up. Of course you're not going to have confidence doing something you haven't done before.
	Yeah. Of course. I mean, to have confidence in something you haven't done before is to be insane.
	Pretty much. So, of course you're going to have anxiety.
	Of course you're going to be nervous.
	And that's good. That means you're going to work harder.
	It means you're going to dig deeper.
	push faster.
	And that's how you outcompete people who are already successful.
	See, people who are successful get complacent.
	It's something I have to focus on all the time.
	What boundaries am I going to push?
	What new information are you going to get?
	What different direction am I going to take?
	I can't just spend my entire life going, taxation is theft, taxation is theft, taxation is theft.
	I mean, I guess I could, but I'm sure somebody's already doing that for about 10 hours.
	Well, yeah, it's no business, right?
	And unfortunately, I have a wide variety of interests.
	So yeah, we just started this new, a daily argument, right?
	10 minutes or less, and I'm like clocking in, shaving it down at 9 minutes and 59 seconds.
	I get myself that challenge to get a good argument across that's an interesting 10 minutes or less.
	So yeah, try new stuff.
	You know, I wrote my first book in like 8 years or whatever.
	So it's new stuff, and it's going to be interesting, and it may work, and it may not work, and stuff has worked and has not worked.
	But what happens in general?
	Is that people are scared.
	They work very hard.
	They build a business. And then they get lazy and complacent.
	And then other people start a business.
	And because they're panicking and freaked out, they get all that adrenaline, that creativity.
	And they're usually young, pre-family, pre-kids, so they can put more work in and so on.
	And then they elbow aside the more complacent middle-aged people.
	That's the churning cycle of the free market.
	That's the creative destruction of capitalism.
	And so, yeah, the fact that you're scared...
	Well, first of all, fear indicates desire.
	I'm not scared of being rejected as a ballerina because I'm not going to any auditions, right?
	Yeah. And so fear merely indicates the presence of desire.
	So the fact that you're afraid of something is not a reason to avoid it.
	And I'm not talking like tigers and shit like that, but something that's voluntary, right?
	The fact that you're afraid of something is why you should pursue it.
	It's the woman you most want to marry you that you're most afraid is going to say no, right?
	It's the woman you're most attracted to that you're most afraid she's going to say no.
	No. So in that case, fear, anxiety, is an indication of desire.
	So if you're scared of doing this business, that's a good indication that you really care about it and want it to succeed.
	That fear is going to drive you to be very successful.
	And it certainly worked for me early on in the show.
	And now I'm going to get lazy and complacent and someone's going to displace me.
	No, I'm not actually. I'm really working.
	I know that. I know that risk.
	So I'm working hard too. Yeah, I mean, look at IBM, right?
	IBM largely missed the personal computer revolution and had to drop like half their workforce in the 90s or something like that.
	They got kind of lazy. Well, plus they were dragged 13 years of antitrust hearings by the DOJ. That can take a couple of creative minds out of your company here and there.
	So, yeah, I mean, the fact that you're nervous about it is not a reason to avoid it.
	That's a reason to throw yourself full hog into it.
	Okay. So...
	I don't know what to say.
	Just focus more on it if I'm scared that it's not going to work.
	Put more effort into it to make sure that it will.
	Fear can do two things.
	Fear can paralyze you or fear can energize you.
	Fear can paralyze you or fear can energize you.
	Think of it like if you're in a really cold environment, like some just cold as a witch's tit environment, somewhere out on a glacier and so on, and you're really getting cold.
	Well, what that can do is make you say, shit, I better get someplace warm, or it can say, just lie down, just relax, you're feeling warmer.
	Yeah, just kind of locks you up. And then you die, right?
	Yeah. So, fear is something that is an indication of...
	Fear is like potential energy, right?
	There's potential energy, there's kinetic energy.
	So, fear is the potential energy that puts the kinetic energy of ambition into motion.
	Fear is not your enemy.
	If fear overwhelms you to the point of paralysis, then don't pursue something.
	But if fear is like the sweaty, palmed excitement, stage fright, nervousness, excitement...
	Beautiful.
	Beautiful. You need that.
	You want that. That's how you put in a great performance.
	to use that fear to motivate you.
	It's a new outlook.
	Thanks. Yeah, we think of fear as a stop.
	No, fear is a beckoning.
	Fear is a beckoning. Come use the fear.
	You know, why does the lion hunt?
	The lion hunt because he's afraid of getting hungry.
	Right? Yeah. If he wasn't afraid to get hungry, he wouldn't hunt until it was too late.
	Until he was too out of energy to be able to hunt, right?
	Mm-hmm. Now, if you care...
	Maybe this... If you care enough about what you're doing...
	Like, for me, it's easy to care about what I'm doing because there literally is nothing more important that human beings could be engaged in than the promulgation of truth, reason, evidence, and philosophy at the moment.
	Pretty much at every time, but more in particular at the moment.
	So... It's easy for me, I mean, if you can find the passion for what it is that you want to do.
	But if it's just kind of something you fell into, well, but then you probably wouldn't feel that much nervousness about pursuing it, right?
	I assume that you care about what you're doing, the props.
	Yeah, I mean, I've already poured like $300 into equipment right now, and that's kind of where I'm sitting right now, is I just bought all this stuff.
	Like I said, we've sold...
	Maybe two things for a collective profit of, what, 20 bucks?
	And so, yeah, I'm just sitting here right now just thinking, crap, this sucks.
	I want to do more, but at the same time, it's...
	Yeah, it's almost the paralysis of like, I don't want to push all this effort and time into it.
	I don't want to quit my job.
	I don't want to quit taking classes unless I'm sure that something will work.
	Wait, you said you made a profit of $20 after spending $300?
	Yeah, right now. Does that mean a profit of $20 like you made back $320 or you spent $300 and you made $20?
	No. We've made probably about $20, $30 discounting the maybe $5 of material it costs to make.
	Completely discounting the machines.
	Machines haven't even come close to paying.
	You're calling me up for a $280 loss.
	Pretty much. Right.
	What do you think of that?
	I want to do more with it.
	I want to keep pushing it.
	But there's always just this thing biting at the back of my head that's just trying to say it's worthless.
	You wasted this money.
	This was just something that you did on an impulse and it's not a good decision.
	And so... I guess what I wanted to know is if you ever had come to that point and when is it a good time to just say, you know what, this isn't working.
	Sell the machines to somebody or do something else or whether I should, I don't know, hunker down and just keep going with it until it works out.
	I don't know. I don't know that hunker down is much of a business plan.
	Well... I mean, are you trying to sell new stuff?
	I don't know. Are you trying to market? Are you trying to, you know, building something is, you know, there's this old bullshit.
	If you build it, they will come.
	And it's like, this is in a movie that's...
	No, you need to push it up.
	Hang on. This is in a movie that spent millions and millions of dollars on marketing and advertising.
	They didn't just build it, show it in a movie theater, and then people came, right?
	Yeah, yeah. Right now...
	No, I haven't marketed outwards.
	I have access to at least one costume club that I'm a part of right now that I have ideas already sitting in my head that I just need to go and push out.
	Why aren't you pushing things out?
	Why aren't you marketing? Because I don't have the things built right now.
	And I didn't want to show anything off until I had something built.
	Which, like I said, at this point, it just kind of seems like me groveling right now, which is not productive.
	Groveling, you mean asking people to buy stuff?
	No, groveling isn't just kind of complaining, nothing's working out, but I'm not doing anything.
	Right. And what if you stopped doing it?
	Then nothing would happen. No, but I understand that.
	If you don't kick the ball, it doesn't move.
	I get basic physics. But if you just stop doing it, I mean, what's the problem?
	Why bother even trying to do it?
	If it's like you spent $300 and you've made $20 and you're working at it a couple hours a week, I mean, why not just drop it?
	Because it's something I want to do.
	Right. Yeah.
	So then you do it or you don't do it.
	You know, like, you date someone or you don't date someone.
	Yeah. And Yukon has been doing this for a while, is that right?
	He hasn't been selling things for a while, but he has been making stuff for a while.
	He has sold a few things, but never as a business actually.
	How long has he been doing it for? He has been doing it for...
	I don't know. I'm trying to remember here.
	I apologize. Just roughly.
	Is it months or years? It's years.
	It's years he's been working with this stuff.
	And when I first started getting into it...
	Okay, hang on, hang on. So he's been doing this stuff for years, and how much has he sold?
	Like, in terms of what's the dollar value of what he's sold?
	I want to say probably around two grand.
	And how much has he...
	I'm afraid to ask.
	How much has he spent in materials to sell two grand?
	I don't know. I don't know.
	I know one big thing that he sold is a suit of medieval knight armor that he sold to a jouster.
	And that was a lot of money.
	And then... Yes, but how much time and energy and money did he spend to build that suit of armor?
	I do not know. I have not talked to him in depth about how much it took him to build that armor.
	And it's not his job, it's just his hobby, right?
	It was his hobby, and yeah, I guess it...
	Yeah, it is a hobby.
	Not a job right now.
	Do you have anyone in your family who's got any experience in business?
	As in like starting up your own business and stuff like that?
	Mm-hmm. No.
	Is your father around?
	Not at the moment.
	Right. But yes. Have you talked to your father about this?
	Minimally. Why minimally?
	Because I don't think he would approve of it.
	And what's wrong if he doesn't approve of it?
	Maybe he's right.
	He's right in what way?
	In that it's a waste of time?
	Yeah. Well, so far it's been worse than a waste of time because you've lost money, right?
	It's been a waste of money too, yes.
	So what's wrong with your father disapproving of something?
	What's wrong with getting that feedback?
	Do you not trust your father? Do you think that he would steer you wrong?
	Do you think he wouldn't have your best interests at heart?
	Why would you not allow him to review your potential business?
	He wants me to become an engineer.
	This is what he wants me to do.
	And I started engineering classes.
	Like I said, I'm taking some at community college right now during the summer.
	And it's something that I've actually started to enjoy.
	It's not like he's...
	At least I would like to think he's not forcing me to do it against my will.
	It's something I've definitely grown to enjoy.
	But this is...
	Something I've wanted to do for a while.
	And I believe the reason he doesn't want me to do it is because he doesn't think it'll breed success, for lack of a better description.
	Right. And so far, empirically, he would be correct, right?
	Yes. Okay. Yes.
	So if you have been doing actions that would confirm in your father the...
	Non-viability of your pursuit, then for him to say it's not viable is reasonable, right?
	I mean, there's no one who would say, yeah, if you're working five hours a week to lose 280 bucks over a couple of months, that's not a very big business, right?
	That's not a very good business. It's not a smart plan.
	No, it's not a plan at all.
	That's the problem. It's not a plan at all.
	I mean, you haven't, and look, there's no reason why you would, and I didn't know this stuff before I got into business because I was too busy being taught about useless Euclidean geometry rather than how to be an entrepreneur.
	It's taught by women, but no, it's, you know, the questions are, you know, what's the size of the market?
	How much money do you need?
	How many hours a week do you work?
	How are you going to get the product out there?
	What profit margin are you expecting?
	Do you need investors?
	And you would talk to more experienced people in the business.
	You would talk to this guy who's been working in this field for years and made $2,000.
	Well, we don't know if he's made $2,000.
	He may have lost $5,000, right?
	He might have spent a whole bunch of money on materials and only being paid $2,000, right?
	He might have spent $7,000 to make $2,000, right?
	Which is the market's way of saying that this is not a good use of your or nature's resources, right?
	Yes. So, do you know anyone who succeeded in this film?
	In this field, sorry. I know of a couple people that at least do it as a hobby.
	Hang on.
	Is there no one you know of after being floating around this for a while and after your friend floating around this for years?
	Is there no one you know of who's been able to make a living at this?
	There is one person that I know that I know is actually living off of his business as opposed to just using it for money.
	I guess disposable income, for lack of a better term.
	Doing it more of a hobby as opposed to a living.
	So he's living off it.
	Now, how is he living that?
	Is he living like under a bridge or is he living like a reasonable lifestyle?
	He's living in his own house with a wife.
	I don't know if she works or not.
	He owns his own house.
	Yeah, he owns his own house.
	You might want to find out if his wife works or not, but that can cover up a whole lot of economic inefficiencies.
	And can you talk to this person?
	I mean, yeah, I've given a day or so trying to finally get them to talk to me, but yes, I probably could.
	And why wouldn't you? If the one person is successful that you know of, why wouldn't you talk to that person?
	They won't view you as an enemy.
	That was what I was worried about.
	The only way they'll view you as an enemy is if there's only enough business for one person in the world.
	If it's so specialized that only one person can make a living at it, then he's going to view you as an enemy.
	Right? Yeah.
	If there is room for more than one person in the world to do what you're doing, then he will view you as a friend if he's got any brains, right?
	And the reason he'll view you as a friend is that, I mean, when I was in the software field, when competitors came into the field, it was great because they did all this advertising and they went to, as I did, to go to all of these conventions and you give speeches and you man your booth and you have little prizes and you talk to people and so on, right? And what happened was new people would come into the field and they would advertise and they would raise people's awareness that there was in fact a solution.
	I mean, I wasn't building a word processor.
	It was pretty specialized stuff.
	Which was great. Because then people would say, oh wow, this kind of software exists.
	I'm going to do some research. Then they'd find us.
	So we got free referrals from their advertising as they got free referrals from our advertising.
	So it was great. When other people came into the business, it was great.
	It also validated that there was a valid business model, right?
	Yeah, that there was a market.
	So, he'll be happy to talk to you, and the business is creating props and costumes, right?
	Yes. And have you ever looked into how big that business is in the world?
	Like, what's the sum total that is spent in that field?
	No. Why not?
	I never thought of that.
	Probably would be a good idea.
	Right. It's big, right?
	Well, yeah. What I know is what I know locally, so kind of this state and surrounding states.
	And I do know that there's a pretty big market, especially talking to other people.
	I was actually amazed to hear how many people buy parts and just throw them together as opposed to trying to make their own stuff.
	So that's where I got the idea started of, hey, maybe I could make some money off of this.
	I just did a search here and there's an article called How to Become a Professional Prop and Costume Maker.
	Have you ever looked at anything like that?
	No. No, I haven't.
	Right. And what do you think of what we're talking about?
	It sounds like I am ill-equipped At the moment, and that if I do want this to work, I should put in the time, and moreover, especially now, put in the research.
	Oh yeah, listen, I mean, just, I mean, think of, I mean, I know this from my time in the theater, that costumes and props are a big deal.
	Well, I hired them for the short movie that I made, I hired them for...
	A play that I put on that I wrote.
	I had a 19th century play with pistols and sword fights and stuff like that.
	So we needed lots of stuff.
	I had this woman.
	She's still active in the theater world.
	She's just a wonderful thing.
	I needed gardens.
	My play took place in a series of gardens.
	It was an adaptation of Turgendiev's Fathers and Sons.
	It's a great book to read. My play was called Seduction and she did amazing things.
	She actually got entire trees and brought them in on stage and put them on stage.
	And we had this lighting overhead coming through the trees and the tree limbs and so on.
	It was beautiful. I mean, really, it just looked amazing.
	The theater that I'd rented, they had just refinished the floor, and she pulled these trees in on bases, chewed the living crap out of the floor.
	And I spent a pretty sleepless night waiting, like thinking, oh, because the head of the theater was going to come and see the stage.
	And I thought, oh, man, this guy's going to demand that I... Repair the floors that are all chewed up, and it's going to be thousands and thousands of dollars, and I don't have it, and I won't be able to go to school or to college, and I, oh man, it was rough.
	You know, that one, every now and then, you've got to have that one sleepless night.
	And so, yeah, that was a pretty big, it's a pretty big business and a pretty big deal.
	So, you don't know How to get these kinds of things done at the moment, which is one thing.
	But the second thing is that I'm not sure that you don't know how to get these things done.
	You know, people have written free blogs out there on how to become a professional prop and costume maker.
	People who quit their jobs to do this full time have brain dumped on the internet for free on how to do this.
	Yeah. And you haven't even looked it up, right?
	No, no, I haven't looked at a lot.
	So on a one to ten, like just give me a one to ten scale.
	How much do you care about this?
	Like outside of some friend of mine and I might want to do it together or whatever.
	How much do you care one to 10 for being a prop and costume maker?
	Seven. Giving five is neutral.
	5 is neutral? 1 is you really don't care.
	10 is everything in the world.
	Neutral is you don't care.
	So having a 5 scale that goes down to 1.
	5 neutral you don't care down to 1 neutral you don't care.
	Let's just say 1 is 0 is you don't care at all.
	1 is you care a little bit. 10 is like you eat, sleep, and breathe this stuff.
	So on a zero scale to 10, what have you got?
	Six.
	Well, that doesn't make any sense.
	You went from seven on a five scale down to six on a ten scale.
	Now, you said it was seven with five being neutral.
	And now you've gone down only one when the scale has dropped five points.
	Yeah, mathematically that doesn't make sense.
	I'm thinking... Well, good.
	Keep thinking, then don't give me an answer until you finish thinking.
	that's usually helpful.
	Yeah, I think before you open your mouth.
	I'm going to say a four, and can I explain that?
	No. Okay, so you've got a four.
	So, listen. Let me ask you something.
	Okay. So, Chris, how long have you been listening to this show?
	On and off for about a year and a half.
	Right. How long have you been waiting for this call?
	Or how long have you wanted to have this call?
	About two months.
	Right. Now, this is probably the only time we're going to chat, right?
	Probably. And...
	Of all of the things in your life, you brought up this business that you don't really care about that you barely work on, right?
	Yeah. And what that means is you're hoping that I'm going to blast through this non-issue and get to the real issue, which is why I'm spending so much time on this business that's made you 20 bucks and cost you 280, right?
	There's something that's more important.
	You brought this up as what's called a surface issue.
	It's not what you really called in about it.
	Because you don't really care about it that much.
	It doesn't take up much of your time and the dollars involved are not much, right?
	Yeah. So you're hoping that I'm going to not be distracted by the mirage of the surface issue and I'm going to get to what's really going on on the real purpose of your call.
	It's not about this. Okay.
	There's something that the business means to you that is not about the business but rather about something else.
	It either has something to do with your father or it has something to do with your friend.
	I'm going to start with your friend.
	How is your friend encouraging you to get into a business that's costing you money when you're a student and don't have money?
	I assume you don't have hundreds of bucks you can just throw around in this business, right?
	No. No. Tight on cash, definitely.
	So your friend has a lot more experience than you do, Chris, and he's letting you burn up money.
	And he's holding out these hopes that there's some business in it.
	But he's not even told you how much money he's made, how much money he's spent, how many hours he's put in.
	Is he really your friend?
	Does he really have your best interests at heart?
	Is he really helping you make good decisions?
	Or are you just kind of along for the ride because he thinks it's fun and it's better to have two?
	Is he really your friend?
	And so far, this friendship has cost you a lot of time and money.
	Well, okay.
	I guess at this point I'm defending him.
	For one thing, he wants me to finish school.
	He's like, school is priority.
	I know we want to do this business, but you need to finish school.
	That needs to be your top priority, no matter what.
	Does it help you finish school to blow hundreds of dollars on stuff and lose that money and also to spend five hours a week that you could have been studying on this?
	If school is a priority, why are you working with him at all on this?
	It's costing you money and time, which you don't have if you want to do well in school, right?
	Yeah, it's...
	So the problem is, Chris, you don't know how to protect yourself in the world, in my opinion.
	That is not a criticism.
	Okay. Not a criticism at all.
	That you don't know how to evaluate people, you don't know how to evaluate situations and circumstances.
	As yet. You can.
	You can learn that stuff, and it's not that hard, but I think this is a deficiency.
	You don't know how to judge what is beneficial to you versus what other people want.
	So this guy calls up and says, oh, I could use some help doing X, and you're like, sure, but school is a number one priority.
	Well, if school is a number one priority, why is he calling you up to help him with whatever, right?
	Yeah. And what that means is...
	In my opinion, and tell me where I go astray, right?
	And I'm not trying to define your entire personality.
	I'm just talking in this particular circumstance, right?
	So when you were growing up, Chris, did people, did your parents, I assume not your teachers, but did your parents say to you, okay, how is this going to benefit you?
	Let's negotiate to make sure you get what you want as well as everyone else.
	Did you have those kinds of back and forth when you were growing up?
	Only within the past year or so.
	So since you're an adult, you have to say no while you were growing up, right?
	Okay, so how did negotiations work in your family?
	Because they happen all the time. They happen all the time.
	And how did negotiations happen when your preference is conflicted with those of your parents?
	My mom was a dead end, and my dad, if I presented good enough reasoning, if I convinced him pretty much, if I said, you know, this is either why it's of no major detriment if I go and do X activity, or if there's some benefit to it, then he would be okay with me.
	Okay, so what do you mean when you say your mom was a dead end?
	The entire time I've known my mom, it's pretty much when she says, no, you're not going to change your mind no matter what you say.
	She's just stubborn and won't listen.
	Yes. Yes. And how did your father end up negotiating with her?
	Was he able to do something you weren't able to do?
	What do you mean by that?
	Was your father able to negotiate with your mother, but you weren't able to, or were neither of you able to negotiate with your mother?
	He was able to negotiate with her.
	It was usually, she would, like, I would ask them something, and she would say no, and then I'd be bummed from that, and I'd talk to my dad about it, and he's like, well, that doesn't make sense, so how about you go do it, and then I'll talk to your mom.
	Do you know if your father ever talked to your mom saying it's really not healthy to raise a child by denying him his preferences and not negotiating with him, it's going to teach him to crumble under what other people want as an adult?
	Not that I'm aware of.
	Did your mother ever change her behavior of not, or at least admit that it was a problem, and commit to changing her behavior and not negotiating with you?
	Not a lot that I can think of.
	And why is your father less around now than he was before?
	Because, well, right now it's because he's out backpacking.
	He's out doing stuff. He's out vacationing.
	With your mom? Mostly, yeah.
	Backpacking, she doesn't go backpacking with him, but when they went to go visit my grandparents, and they're going to go on a road trip here in a couple months.
	So it's mostly the both of them.
	Right.
	Right.
	So you were able to negotiate with your father but not with your mother?
	For the most part, yes.
	Right. And so your father, why do you think he chose a woman to marry and have children with who he couldn't negotiate?
	Oh, sorry, who would not be able to negotiate with his kids?
	Because they shared a lot of the same ideals and mentalities when it comes to life, I guess you could say.
	Yes, similar thinking, similar ideals.
	Well, one of those ideals is you're stubborn and you bully people, and the other one is you negotiate.
	they don't seem particularly similar to me I well that's why I know they got together and that's why I know they're still happily married but But... Okay, let me ask it a different way.
	Yeah, okay. Did your father have a problem with the fact that your mother wouldn't negotiate with you?
	Not that I ever heard.
	Do you think he should have?
	A couple of, well, yeah, I think that there are a couple of times when he was, you know, visibly annoyed that she would maybe hold on to something visibly annoyed that she would maybe hold on to something for too long.
	Like, you know, her telling me no and then me doing it anyways, she would sometimes hold on to it and morph my brother.
	So just a couple of times over the entire 18-year course of your childhood, just a couple of times, he was bothered by your mother not negotiating with you.
	That I knew of, yes, that I could tell.
	Do you think that he should have been more bothered by your mother not negotiating with you?
	From.
	See, I want to say no, but I don't know if you're trying to get something else.
	Trying to get at something else.
	I want to say no. No, see, now you're trying to please me, right?
	No, no, no. This is good because, you know, you're trying to please your father by doing the engineering.
	You're trying to please your friend by dabbling in this business.
	Now you're trying to please me by giving me the answer that I want.
	I just want the truth. I mean, I'm curious.
	I don't have any particular answer that I need.
	I mean, I'm not like some hypothesis I want to club you over the head with.
	I'm just exploring here, right?
	Okay. I, well...
	Partially probably because it's normal to me, but no, I thought it made sense.
	And even thinking about it now, it makes sense that he would be a little annoyed.
	But I guess eventually things moved on always.
	Never seemed to be any major problems.
	Okay. Okay. Well, I mean, then if you don't have any issues with your father...
	Not having issues with your mother and not negotiating with you, sorry for all the negatives, then you don't see a connection between your lack of preparation as an adult to evaluate things and figure out what's beneficial to you as well as what's beneficial to others.
	Do you not see a connection between your mother not negotiating with you and you not being able to figure out what your own needs are and preferences are in a relationship with your friend about the business?
	No, I'm not seeing a connection.
	Don't get me wrong, there could be, but personally I don't feel like that's the reason.
	Right. Okay. Well, I'm certainly not going to tell you what your experience and your thoughts are.
	So, yeah, listen, I mean, if the business is costing you time and money while you're in school and you want to stay in school, then I don't think it's a very compatible thing to go that route.
	And I would suggest that if you're interested in this as a business, talk to your friend about how much he spent and how much he's made and how much time he puts in.
	You know, pull out the old spreadsheet.
	You know, if you spend 100 hours and you sell something for $1,000...
	And it's cost you nothing, then you get paid $10 an hour, right?
	And if it costs you $500, then you've been paid $5 an hour.
	So you can figure out these kinds of things.
	To me, if you're not...
	The best things to do in life are the things you do for free anyway.
	And I worked on philosophy for years, not only for free, but when it cost me.
	It cost me in academia, it cost me in friendships, it cost me in romantic relationships to work on philosophy.
	So if you'll do it against the headwind, you'll do it with the wind behind you.
	But I would look into...
	What people have done to get into the field and see if you can get in contact with people and ask them for some advice.
	But I really appreciate the call. I wish you the very best of luck with your schooling and or business endeavors, Chris.
	And thanks so much for your time today.
	Yeah, thanks for the wild trip.
	All right, take care. Bye.
	Right up next we have Buddy.
	Buddy wrote in and said, Since I was a kid, I've been somewhat obsessed with the idea of finding a girlfriend.
	Throughout my teenage years, I had a problem with depression and putting women up on a pedestal and went through years of women taking advantage of me emotionally because of this.
	Now I'm in college, and I've lost a good amount of weight, changed my style, and became much more confident with myself.
	My social skills have increased and I feel I'm much more comfortable around women.
	However, I still have not been in a relationship yet and my depression has turned itself into cynicism and anger.
	I'm not typically an angry guy, but seeing people around me in college act irresponsibly but be much more successful in their relationships makes me feel isolated and jealous.
	I don't consider myself desperate because I still have standards and morals that I don't want to go against, but I feel like this being angry and constantly comparing myself to others is unhealthy.
	What can I do to relieve myself of the anger and frustration I feel as a result of being unsuccessful in my pursuit of a relationship?
	That's from Buddy. Hey Buddy, how you doing?
	Well, I guess I can ask you in general, although I got it pretty specifically with your conversation.
	Well, um, well, it's good to be on, Stefan.
	I've been looking forward to this for a while.
	Um... I guess as of recently, since I've gotten out of school, I've been out of school for about a month and a half now, I landed myself a very, very good paid internship that's raking me in a very decent amount of money.
	I have been feeling a lot better, but as far as my relationships with women goes, it has not been fantastic, I should say.
	I mean, I'm still pretty stagnant, I should say.
	Why do you put women on a pedestal?
	Oh, congratulations on the job, but why do you put women on a pedestal, do you think?
	Um... And what does that even mean, just so you can sort of help me understand?
	Well, when I was younger, I think a lot of it, I grew up in a family that consisted of, like, including extended family of entirely men.
	Like, I had, obviously, I had, I think, combined with both sides of my families, I have a family from New York, which is very large, and I have a family from here in Seattle.
	And combined, I have maybe...
	Seven or eight women out of like the 40 members of my family.
	Maybe that number doesn't make sense, but I have a relatively small number of people in my family.
	So I guess growing up around men really kind of made me feel like I couldn't really relate to women.
	And I didn't really care about that up until my teenage years when I started kind of being sexually interested in women where I felt like I was kind of falling behind.
	You have a mom, right? Yes, I do.
	And she's a very good mother, but she is not very traditionally feminine, I should say.
	Because you send me on this big runaround of having a lot of males in your family not being able to relate to women, but you have a mom.
	So you grew up with a woman in the house, right?
	Oh yeah, of course. But she even admits herself that she feels bad sometimes because she...
	Didn't really teach us how to relate to women.
	I have two younger brothers.
	No! She's a woman! I don't understand.
	What am I not getting here? So let's say she's a non-traditional woman, then she's going to teach you how to relate to a non-traditional woman, but there's still a woman, right?
	Yeah, definitely. I guess my point is, what I'm saying is that I... I mean, I guess I'm the first kid, so that might not have been a priority.
	I mean, she's a good mother in...
	Asides from that point, but I guess as far as relationships, she all just kind of said, oh, well, and she says it to this day when I talk to her about these issues, oh, well, everything will fall into place and all you have to do is just, you just got to wait for the right moment and be yourself.
	And to me, I kind of rolled my eyes at that.
	Wait, so this, would you say, and I assume since you're calling in for this issue, buddy, would you say that this is the biggest issue in your life that you would like to deal with?
	I would say so.
	Not so much because, I mean, even though relationships are important in regards to education and overall happiness, I think that It can take a backseat.
	But I think that the amount of time...
	No, no, no. Sorry. Let's just simplify. So you've got your education sorted out.
	You've got your career going.
	So, you know, work and love, right?
	Those are the two things in life that are very important for happiness, right?
	And so if you've got your work stuff going on and you have been somewhat obsessed, as you say, with the idea of finding a girlfriend for the last, what, five, six, seven years?
	Yeah, since about seventh grade.
	I'm a sophomore in college now.
	Right, okay. So what are we talking, six years?
	Yeah, I would say six or seven.
	And when did your mother first become aware that you might want a girlfriend?
	I don't know.
	I think she always just kind of made the assumption.
	We never really talked about these issues until, I mean, to be honest, until very recently.
	But she would have some idea that a teenage boy would be interested in girls, right?
	Well, I mean, I think she knew that I was interested in women when I was probably around the age of 14, but we never really talked about it, and whenever she would bring it up, I would kind of avoid talking to her about it, because it was kind of an ego thing.
	I didn't want to talk about Getting a girlfriend with my mom, I guess.
	And I kind of recognize that.
	Why? You said she was a good mom.
	Wouldn't she be close? I mean, I don't quite understand.
	I honestly think it's a pride thing.
	It just kind of, you know, I see, I kind of, like I said, I compared myself a lot.
	I saw my friends getting along really well with women and I just kind of felt like, you know, if I'm going to my mom, I'm kind of copping out and that I kind of need to man up and just do it myself and figure things out for myself.
	But maybe your friends were able to get along with women because they talked about it with their mom.
	Yeah, and I recognize that now that I'm older and much wiser than I was at 13.
	Okay. Did your mom pursue the topic with you when she saw that you weren't getting what you wanted?
	I would say kind of yes and no, but for the most part, yes.
	I think she definitely made an attempt to, but I was...
	I mean, initially I was uncomfortable with it, but I think an aspect of the part, the reason I was uncomfortable with it, it was because I thought her advice was not very, didn't mean very much.
	Because it wasn't like, okay, this is what you should do.
	It was like, all you have to do is wait.
	You just have to wait it out and things will go your way eventually.
	And I'm not that type of person.
	So your mom didn't help you?
	I think she tried to, but fundamentally...
	No, no, no. Don't bullshit me, man.
	Come on. Let's be straight, man.
	You're a man. You say you're influenced by men.
	Let's just be straight man-to-man, right?
	If your mom gave you useless, suck-it-up-and-wait advice on the most important issue in your teenage years and the most important issue...
	She's not helping you.
	Right? Right? Yeah, I guess...
	It'll just happen. It's not helping you.
	And it didn't just happen, so she was wrong, right?
	Mm-hmm. Am I wrong?
	I mean, no, you're correct.
	I guess my point is that I don't think she was...
	I think she was trying to help, but she didn't.
	How do you know she was trying to help?
	I mean, I guess I don't...
	I can't say for sure.
	I mean, there's no definite way to...
	I don't think she was trying... Do you know how we know when someone's really trying to help?
	It's a pro tip for you.
	If someone's really trying to help, then when they don't help, they change what they do.
	Well, I mean, even today at the age of, I mean, almost 20, she gives me the same advice as when I was 13.
	And it's I think it's kind of useful because saying just wait, I mean, when somebody responds...
	Okay, so I understand. So she gives terrible advice that doesn't help and she doesn't change what she's doing.
	Like if your car is stuck in the slush, like in the snow, and I push and it doesn't move, and I just say, don't worry, we'll just keep pushing for the next week, am I really trying to help you?
	If it's not working, no, I have to go get a friend, we have to go get a tow truck, we have to go get some salt, we have to get some planks to put under the top, whatever it's going to be.
	I have to change what I'm doing if what I'm doing isn't helping.
	If her advice is like, eh, it's going to happen for you, don't worry about it, does she notice that she was wrong for six or seven years in a row?
	I mean, I... I would say she doesn't think she's wrong because, like I said, it's that advice where there's no moving on from that.
	You know, it's like saying just wait and then you say, well, it hasn't worked for the past six or seven years.
	Well, that's because you just have to wait.
	It's kind of like an end-all be-all, you know what I mean?
	So she doesn't really want to help you.
	If your friends have gotten girlfriends when then they're early to mid-teens, And you haven't, seven years later, just waiting is terrible advice.
	So why is she giving you this terrible non-advice?
	I'm not sure. I mean, and I know this probably isn't very good response to that kind of question, but I would say I don't think she's trying to undermine me.
	I just think the advice is just fundamental.
	No, I think it's even worse than that.
	Frankly. I mean, just from the outside.
	Mm-hmm. Trying to undermine you would be interested in something, even if it was negative.
	Yeah. What if she just doesn't care?
	What if she just doesn't want to know?
	What if, I mean, mom, I'm having trouble meeting girls.
	It'll happen. It'll happen.
	Don't worry. Just wait. This goes on year after year after year.
	Nothing changes? Yeah. Where the hell is her?
	I want to find a way to get my son or help my son get the thing that he really wants.
	Yeah, for sure.
	And one thing I will say is that we've talked...
	I mean, at least recently, we've talked more in depth about it to kind of clarify what we both want.
	And I... You and your mom?
	Yes, yes. And I've talked to my dad about it, too.
	And me and my dad have actually grown a lot closer over the years.
	And... What I have said in the past...
	I guess when I talk to my mom about this, when I bring that up, I consider myself a pretty conservative guy.
	I'm not really into the idea of hookups or something that's not...
	Okay, no, no. We're going off in some other direction now.
	So what about your father? Did your father sort of...
	I mean, he got a woman, right?
	And so where was your desire for a girlfriend on the priority list of your father?
	My dad actually...
	I think my dad kind of showed more interest in me being successful.
	At least he vocalized it a little bit more, but I think he was kind of uncomfortable with the idea of talking about that.
	So he kind of made jokes.
	All through my teens, he'd be like, so Rich, have you found a girlfriend yet?
	And I don't think it was malicious, but it definitely...
	What do you mean you don't have one?
	It sounds kind of mean to me.
	You know, it's like if you really want a girlfriend and you're not having any luck, it's like, hey, have you found a girlfriend yet?
	I mean, that seems kind of douchey to me.
	I'm just being frank with you.
	I'm not, you know, judging.
	I'm just telling you what I think.
	Well, I think it came from more of a place of him being uncomfortable about talking about that stuff.
	So what? What is it...
	Well, I couldn't change the kid's diaper because I find that uncomfortable, so they got a horrible rash and died.
	Well, it's okay, because you're uncomfortable, so you don't have to do it.
	Well, I couldn't go to war, Your Honor, because I find war uncomfortable.
	I don't know what discomfort has to do with anything.
	I mean...
	Yeah, and I guess what surprises me the most about this is that my parents both have a master's degree in psychology.
	Oh, you didn't say that.
	Oh, no. I feel as though I've just embarrassed myself.
	No, no, no, no. Listen, I have huge amounts of sympathy.
	But why would they be uncomfortable with helping you to get a date, or helping you to talk about how to get a date, or helping you up your game, or whatever, right?
	Mm-hmm. I mean, like I said earlier, I think it was pretty 50-50 up until recently, and now that I've been a little bit...
	What was 50-50? Kind of why they didn't help me.
	I think one part it was maybe they didn't care, and on another part I think I didn't allow them for when they did, in a way.
	Kind of going back to the whole pride.
	Well, you know, if you've had a couple of years, if your father mocking you not having a girlfriend, yes, you might be a little bit wary if he shows interest.
	Of course, right? Mm-hmm.
	Yeah, that does make sense now that you put it that way.
	I guess my point is that I don't think they have bad intentions, but I guess that doesn't matter.
	Did I say anything about bad intentions?
	No, but I guess I thought it was implied.
	So you're having a conversation with something implied rather than anything I'm saying?
	No, I hear what you're saying.
	I'm just trying to process it in a way that...
	No, you're trying to defend your parents and avoid the topic.
	See? Discomfort equals avoidance.
	I wonder where you might have learned that from.
	Oh, you're a lot better at this stuff than I am.
	Well, that's alright. Listen, and it's just because I'm on the outside.
	You know, for my stuff, I need outside eyes as well, right?
	So, you know, it's just easier when you're on the outside, right?
	Yeah, for sure. How long and how much were you overweight?
	I was actually fairly overweight.
	I think I would say, well, I'm still overweight, but nowhere to the degree I was even a year ago.
	I would say from the age, probably from fifth grade to now.
	So overweight, probably about six years.
	Why were you overweight?
	Why? I think it was a mix because food is actually a hobby for me.
	I worked in a kitchen for two and a half years, but beforehand, food has always been kind of a comfort thing.
	I mean, I have a big family from the East Coast, so we never get together unless there's a huge plate of something sweet or salty in front of us.
	And I think I just kind of learned to associate food.
	Why did your parents allow you to become overweight?
	Well, I think both of my parents are overweight as well.
	And my dad actually, when I was in sixth grade, my dad pointed out that I was overweight, but he did it in a way that was not very optimal.
	What did he do? I mean, I don't want to get into a huge story, but to make a long story short, he basically put me on a scale and said, like, this is not normal for a kid your age and you need to do something about it.
	And I remember it kind of started a fight with my entire family.
	Not my mom, but my grandma, my mom's mom lives with us, and I remember her.
	She still holds anger towards my dad for that reason.
	When she thinks about that, I hardly remember that day, but when she thinks about it, she gets displeased.
	Why was she angry at your father for pointing out that you were overweight?
	I don't think she was angry at him for pointing out for me being overweight.
	I think it was in the way he did it.
	It was more in a way of like, you're an idiot, you need to fix this, rather than, hey, I've noticed that you've been gaining a lot of weight recently, and I think you should do this to...
	But your parents are responsible for the food you eat, right?
	Yes. So if they put food that is unhealthy in front of you...
	Isn't it their fault that you're overweight to some degree?
	I would say to some degree.
	It wasn't so much the food that we ate, it was how much I ate.
	So when I was a kid, I would always think that you would have to eat until you were 100% full.
	You have to stop eating before you're full because it takes a while for your stomach to fill, right?
	And for the hormones to be released until you're full.
	Oh yeah, but that was part of my problem.
	It wasn't so much what we ate, it was how much I ate.
	Yeah, but your parents are responsible for controlling your portions.
	Your children are overweight.
	It's the fault of the parents.
	100%. Parents control the environment.
	Parents control the food. Parents control the urgency of exercise and so on.
	If kids are overweight, 100% the fault of the parents.
	Mm-hmm. Now, being overweight makes it hard to get a girlfriend.
	Did you have any friends who were overweight or fat who got girlfriends?
	I don't know.
	I mean, I'm trying to think of friends that I had who were overweight, but I mean, I would go out on a limb and say, yeah, most of my friends who had girlfriends were tall, skinny guys.
	Right. So, one of the fucking things that your mom could have said, buddy, is we have to change the diet in the family because you're too fat to get a girlfriend.
	You need to lose weight.
	We've got to get a nutritionist.
	You've got to get a gym membership.
	We've all got to go exercise.
	We've got a family emergency.
	Son unable to get girlfriend.
	End of the line. No eggs.
	No continuity. See, you know, the funny thing is, is that I had actually brought that up with her a few times when, rarely when we talked about this, when I was like, in high school, I said, Mom, the reason girls don't like me is because I'm overweight.
	And she said, Oh, no, that doesn't matter.
	There's guys who are fatter and uglier than you who get girlfriends all the time.
	Wait, she's saying she doesn't matter?
	She said that she said it matters, but it doesn't matter nearly as much as you think it does.
	Was your father always overweight?
	No, actually.
	My dad... Interesting.
	So when your parents got together, your father wasn't fat.
	Isn't that interesting?
	She did not choose a fat man.
	Mm-hmm. Do you see what I'm saying?
	I do see what you're saying.
	Yeah, it was funny, actually.
	I don't... I don't know if this matters, but going off their personalities, my dad was kind of like a college rugby star and my mom was really, really quiet and kind of stuck to her books.
	So the fact that they got together, I mean, I think it's really cool, but at the same time, it's kind of surprising.
	Okay, I don't want to get off on this stuff because that's just a distraction.
	Was your mother overweight when she married your father?
	Uh, no, she was not.
	Ah, isn't that interesting?
	So neither of them choose a fat person to date, get engaged to, and get married to, but they tell you, as a fat boy, oh, it's just gonna happen.
	Mm-hmm. Yeah, and that's kind of what my perspective was.
	But she's a good mom, right?
	I would say so outside of this, yes.
	Outside of this?
	Outside of this situation?
	Outside of feeding you to the point where you have health issues and can't get a girlfriend?
	You mean outside of that?
	Thank you.
	Outside of lying to you about the sexual market value of obesity?
	Outside of putting off necessary family reforms to make you healthier and more attractive because she doesn't want to bother with it because she feels uncomfortable.
	You mean other than all of that stuff?
	She was a good mom.
	Well, now that I kind of put the pieces together, I mean, I guess a good mom in the sense where she would always provide.
	Like, there was never – we never felt a lack of, like – I mean, as – Never felt a lack?
	You understand that's the problem, right?
	She provided too much food.
	Mm-hmm. Why did she fatten you up?
	I don't, like I said, I can't, I don't know if I can determine that.
	I mean, I don't know if there was, like I said, I don't think there's any motive behind it.
	Oh, come on. Oh, come on.
	Are you saying that there's no motive behind fattening a child up?
	It's just random. It's just accidental.
	She has no causality in her behavior, no motive whatsoever.
	Man, tonight's show is like parental defendobots.
	Robots defending parents.
	Yeah, this is kind of hard to be pretty...
	I guess I find it hard to be critical of them, I should say.
	Why? They're human beings.
	Do you think they don't make mistakes? Oh, no, of course.
	I think they make mistakes and I think they own up to them when they need to.
	I mean, maybe not in this case. Now it's the hero back and defending again.
	When did they gain weight?
	You said your parents gained weight, right?
	Yeah, I would say, I mean, ever since I was a kid, I mean, I think they've both, since they've had kids, I think they've both been moderately overweight.
	Not to the point where they have health issues, but I would say, like, They're both moderately overweight since they've had kids.
	What would your teenage life have been like if you'd had washboard abs?
	Probably a lot more.
	There would probably have been a lot more confidence going around, at least in regards to myself.
	Were you able to participate in sports much?
	Yeah, actually, I was on the rugby team for three years, and I stopped doing that because I actually wanted to pursue music more, and I did.
	But, I mean, rugby was something I was passionate about, and I was actually very good at, but I had to choose between rugby and doing music very committed, and I chose music because I was much better at that.
	Well, and I guess, did the rugby help you with your weight?
	I would say a little bit, but...
	What the hell were you being fed that doing regular rugby didn't help you with...
	Were you being fed ball bearings?
	What were you being fed?
	Oh... Yeah, but I, yeah, are you asking me what I was fed?
	No, it's a rhetorical question.
	It's just that rugby is a pretty intense game.
	I played when I was younger and a lot of running.
	And to have it not have an effect on your weight seems surprising.
	It's also one of those sorts where you can kind of get away with being a fat guy in some cases.
	Oh, sure, yeah, no, I understand.
	Yeah, especially being a quarterback.
	They don't call him the fridge because he's tiny.
	For sure, yeah.
	Do you think the depression when you were a teenager was related to being overweight?
	I would say it definitely did.
	I mean, not so much being overweight.
	But I think the depression, being overweight kind of made women not be very interested in me, which kind of made my self-value plummet pretty far.
	Sure. And do you want to know why you put women on a pedestal?
	I could guess, but I'm here for a reason.
	Because you felt deficient.
	Because you were deficient. Because you were fat.
	Mm-hmm. So because you come in with a negative called fat, you try to slim down through excess praise, so to speak.
	Because you feel deficient, you feel like you have to praise women.
	Put them up on a pedestal because you're coming with all that extra weight.
	Right? Yes.
	Like the fat girls who are funny.
	Yes. You come with a deficiency, so you have to make up for it somehow, and you did that through praise, which only reveals insecurity.
	If you have high sexual market value, you don't have to praise everyone.
	You don't have to praise women. You don't have to try and bribe them with flattery, so they'll pay attention to you, because nobody believes that flattery anyway, and all it does is show insecurity.
	Yeah. Yeah. And it was actually pretty funny because I was voted class clown for...
	Oh sure, yes. I understand.
	And do you understand that you put your mom on a pedestal too, right?
	Mm-hmm. Don't like to criticize, right?
	You've given your mom an enormous amount of praise in this conversation.
	She may have some wonderful qualities, but some of the stuff we're talking about is not wonderful.
	Yes. So the question is, why did your mother not tell you don't put women up on a pedestal?
	I will say I think she kind of wanted me to at times.
	Of course she did.
	Of course she did.
	And why did she want you?
	Women on a pedestal.
	Maybe it's because...
	Maybe it's because I didn't have a lot of...
	She really, really didn't like this kind of...
	Especially when I went to college.
	I mean, I know this doesn't tie back, but she doesn't like that kind of...
	You know the stereotypical guy behavior?
	Like, oh man, she...
	Man, I'd really like to get with her.
	She really, really doesn't like that behavior, so I think she tried to steer me away from that, but I kind of ended up making me scared of women.
	Wait, wait, wait. So she's an overweight woman who doesn't like the fact that men judge attractiveness?
	Yeah, she would say...
	She's a woman who let herself go, who went from being an attractive, slender woman to an overweight woman, and now she's got a big problem with men judging attractiveness, right?
	Yes. Do you think Melania Trump has a big problem with men judging attractiveness?
	Probably not. I'm gonna go with a no on that, Batman.
	Yeah, she let herself go, she got overweight, and now she's all like, well, you should judge a woman by what's inside.
	It's like, well, what's inside seems to be a lot of veal parmesan.
	Sorry, sorry, I have somebody with me right now, so I'm kind of trying not to laugh at what you said there.
	Okay, I'm going to break it down for you, buddy.
	As I see it. Dump everything that is not relevant to you.
	When a woman sees a fat man, she sees a dysfunctional mom.
	She sees a mom who's not invested in her son's romantic success.
	She sees a selfish mom.
	She sees a narcissistic...
	I'm not saying this about your mom. I'm just saying what I think women see.
	Right? She sees a selfish mom.
	She sees a mom that's not fundamentally interested in her son's success.
	She sees a difficult mother-in-law.
	Do you understand? A difficult, negative, dysfunctional mother-in-law.
	She sees fat children of her own who go over to the grandmoms and get fed up.
	She sees a son who doesn't know how to stand up to his mom, which means that if the mom has a problem with her, the son, her husband, is going to side with his mom against her, right?
	There's no boundaries, no judgment, no criticisms, no rationality, no reality in the relationship.
	Or little. And so...
	you didn't want to be fat as a teenager, right?
	You never wanted to be fat.
	You didn't wake up in the morning and say, well, I could go and be a lean, mean, running machine, or I could be a pear-shaped fat guy, right?
	Fat signals...
	Significant dysfunction in the family.
	A child being fed up by a mother, a father not intervening, the family not dealing with the problem, and now fat genes.
	There are certain genes that get switched on when you get overweight and they can pass themselves to your children.
	So the woman looks at you and sees...
	Domineering mom, absent father, dysfunctional family situation, and I'm going to have fat kids if I'm with this guy.
	Oh, and by the way, he's not going to live that long either.
	Oh, and he's going to have erectile dysfunction problems because of obesity.
	Oh, and he's going to have trouble cleaning himself because of obesity, and he's going to smell.
	Whatever, right? This is what people think.
	Obesity is gross!
	For obvious biological reasons.
	And it signals significant dysfunction, in my view, within the family structure.
	Now, I don't care how funny you are and how much praise you can wedge up a woman's cleavage, there's not enough of that in the world to make a confident, self-assertive woman want to step into that quagmire.
	And she's going to talk to you and she's going to ask you, as women do, about your family.
	If a woman's interested in you, she's going to ask about your family.
	And if you are ignorant, if you lie, if you avoid, if you misdirect, if you fog, if you make excuses, do you know what you're saying?
	I'm owned by mommy.
	I'm gonna do whatever mommy says.
	Father not standing up for me, mommy ruling the roost.
	Wanna get married?
	And what she... Women are going to test themselves if they've got a brain, right?
	They're going to look and they're going to test themselves and say, okay, what's my relationship going to be like with this guy's mom?
	Because women know the dark hearts of women, just as men know the dark hearts of men.
	And there's good stuff to women and there's good stuff to men, but there's dark stuff there too, right?
	We know that from the Milgram experiment.
	Some guy in a white lab coat tells you to kill people, 90% of people will just do it, right?
	Right? And so a woman is going to be scanning.
	And she's going to say, if I go over for meals at this guy's house, I'm going to get fat too.
	And if I say anything about this family being fat, they're going to hate me for years.
	And if my boyfriend tries to lose weight, he's going to be probably undermined by his family.
	For some reason, your family is invested in your romantic failure.
	I don't know why, but the evidence to me seems pretty clear.
	What's going on? They feed you to the point where you get fat, they don't tell you to lose weight, and they say, oh, don't worry, romance is just going to happen year after year after year after year, and it doesn't happen, and they don't change their tune.
	They don't want you to date!
	They don't want you to have a girlfriend!
	If they did, buddy, it would be job one to do everything that was necessary to get you a girlfriend.
	And it's not that complicated.
	Lose weight. Exercise.
	Number one, that's what everyone should be doing.
	Even if your parents don't want to do it.
	They could say, hey, you know, we had our kids, we're married, we let ourselves go, we got kind of flabby, but you are a young man, this is what you need to do.
	But they're not doing it.
	Why? Why? It's not that complicated to figure out how to raise your sexual market value, right?
	They don't. They got you fat, they made you fat, they kept you fat, and they told you, fat guys get girlfriends, they told you that year after year when it just didn't happen.
	That's the empirical evidence.
	I don't care about intentions.
	I don't care about words.
	I don't judge people. I don't care what they say.
	It's like judging a government program by its mission statement.
	I don't care. I care about empiricism.
	I care about the facts.
	How are your parents helping you succeed romantically?
	That is a very important job for parents.
	And this was well known throughout most of human history.
	That young people aren't very good at picking dates.
	So what do your parents do?
	Well, they take you to church and they introduce you to a nice girl and they'll suggest you do X, Y, and Z and they'll talk to you about things and they make sure that you are successful in the market of romance.
	They'll make you fat and tell you to wait.
	Something that's Kind of going off of that, I think what you're saying is pretty correct.
	I'm just kind of stepping back and kind of take it in.
	Now that I realize it, I've kind of teased my mom about this, but whenever we're in public and she sees kind of an unconventionally attractive girl, if she sees a girl who may be kind of short and overweight and she kind of has glasses or she's reading a book, she'll always say, like, Man, that's the type of girl I could see you dating, and I've always kind of been confused about that, but now that you kind of bring this up, I'm not really surprised.
	Why do you think she would say that stuff?
	Because I think she...
	I mean, she said it before.
	She's like, oh, all the girls you've ever been into are just like me.
	And to an extent, I think she's right.
	I mean, I've always... What? What?
	All the girls... Wait, your mom said...
	Oh, man. Okay, sorry.
	I just have to shit Freud out of my armpit here.
	Your mom said to you, all the girls you've been interested in are just like me.
	Yeah. Like, there was a girl that I was kind of...
	No, no, no.
	I don't want details yet. When did she say this?
	Um, I think she's brought it up a few times since I was in, like, high school.
	Is it true, do you think?
	I hate to say it, but I think she is right to an extent.
	Why? I'm sorry.
	I'm sorry. I should not be laughing.
	I'm just... No, I don't blame you at all.
	Sometimes this show, I think I've got a handle on it, on these conversations, and suddenly it's just like...
	Have you ever seen that movie, The Untouchables, where Robert De Niro takes out a baseball bat and clubs some guy to death at a table?
	Sometimes conversations are kind of like that in this show, and I'm just trying to pick my brain fragments off the floor and try and reassemble them in a coherent fashion.
	Okay. Okay. Okay.
	So... She says that all the women you've ever been interested in are just like her, and you say that that's kind of true, and in what way is that true?
	Well, I've not, I've never really been, and this is even when I was a kid, I've never really been into kind of the, like you know how the cheerleader, like the blonde ditzy cheerleader is kind of always put up on the pedestal as the most attractive girl.
	Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, why does the blonde cheerleader have to be ditzy?
	Well, I think it's just a stereotype, really.
	It's like that. No, wait, wait.
	No, that's your mom, baby.
	I was half talking to you, half talking to your balls, and then your mom came in and threw in the word ditzy.
	Why does the blonde cheerleader have to be ditzy?
	I guess she doesn't.
	So she's physically attractive.
	She's athletic. She's disciplined.
	She's hardworking. She's committed.
	She's bendy. Right?
	Why does she also have to be ditzy?
	I think that's probably just a trait I've associated with that kind of group of people.
	And have you associated that trait with that group of people as the result of empirical evidence or the result of prejudice coming from, say, proximate boobs?
	Definitely prejudiced.
	Okay, so where did the prejudice come from that attractive people are ditzy?
	Well, I mean, I think attractive is kind of subjective.
	That was the point I was getting at.
	No, it's not. No, it's not.
	No, no, no. People always say that, but it's not.
	They've done studies.
	Attractiveness is the same all over the world.
	It's very clear, and it all has to do with genetic fitness and evenness of features, regularity, and so on, right?
	It's not subjective at all.
	I mean, you never open up Cosmo and there's a woman who's like modeling a bikini and you say, well, Jesus, I have no idea why they chose her.
	There's no ad that Sadiq Khan won't ban on the London subway beach-ready body where you say, well, that doesn't look beach-ready to me.
	It's like, yeah, that looks pretty beach-ready to me.
	I don't care if that's photoshopped or if that's a human being or some sort of Japanese sex robot.
	It definitely can understand why that person ended up in the ad.
	You ever go past a Le Cenza or Le Vie en Rose and say, I have no idea...
	Why those girls' pictures or these women's pictures in the lingerie are in the window.
	That makes sense. They're completely subjective.
	It's not subjective at all.
	It's not subjective at all.
	Now we're getting to the core of the propaganda, right?
	Right?
	For you.
	Mm-hmm.
	They're ditzy and it's all subjective anyway.
	You go to the hot or not composite image that merges all the faces that people rate very high.
	And you'll see the beauty standards are very objective and universal.
	Not even particularly cultural.
	Have you ever looked at a K-pop band or a Japanese girl band and said, I have no idea why they chose those women.
	I guess maybe that's attractive to a Japanese guy, but I just don't see it, right?
	Admittedly, I have, but I get what you're saying.
	Bare naked ladies, yes, but, right?
	There's no guy in an ad in Men's Health magazine where you say, I don't know, makes no sense why that guy's there, right?
	I've got the kind of abs that make ticks seasick, right?
	I mean, you know why they're there.
	So, and you know, I'm an attractive guy.
	When I was younger, I was a solid nine.
	And I'm not ditzy.
	So this idea of attractiveness equals ditzy.
	Come on. Sting's gorgeous.
	Horrible socialist. But Sting's gorgeous.
	And he was a schoolteacher, well-educated, right?
	Yeah. So, you know.
	Go on. Well, I think it's funny now that I think about it, because my brother, he's three years younger than me, and he has always been very skinny.
	On that kind of 1-10 scale, I would give myself a solid 5 or 6, and I would give him, honestly, an 8.
	He's a really good-looking guy.
	He's skinny. He's really into drama.
	And it's funny because he's made a lot of Friends with the kind of quote-unquote popular kids.
	And my mom hates them.
	Then I've talked to her about it.
	She kind of immediately makes this assumption.
	My brother had a girlfriend who was this really, really cute Asian girl.
	And my mom had never met her.
	And right off the bat, she said, I don't like...
	There's something about her. She just seems pretentious to me.
	Was it your mom who said that attractiveness is subjective?
	Yes. Why do you think she said that to you?
	Probably to steer me from the truth that fat guys really aren't on the top of the chain as far as attractiveness goes.
	To prevent you from panicking and to prevent you from implementing the kind of change that would have raised your sexual market value.
	Let's say that you...
	Lose even more weight, you become even more physically attractive, and you get a girlfriend, and your girlfriend is listening to this show.
	She's strong, she's confident, she's very perceptive, and she's very intelligent.
	She sits down for lunch with your mom.
	How's that going to go? I think it would depend on the girl.
	I mean, it depends what type of girl, I should say.
	Oh, my God. You still don't get it.
	What is a strong, attractive, confident person that your mama's really liked that you know of?
	Herself.
	No.
	Try again.
	As far as women, I really can't think of it.
	Other than, like, family, I really can't think of anyone.
	And her friends. Wait, her friends are strong, confident, attractive people?
	Yes. No.
	Sorry, I'm just gonna...
	Because you've given me so much fog already and so many parental excuses.
	Are you saying...
	That your mom's friends are strong, confident, attractive women who have a lot in common with your mom.
	I can think of maybe one, but no.
	Other than that, no. Okay, so you've got to stop bullshitting me, man.
	I know you're not trying to.
	I'm not sort of holding you personally liable and dangling you over a lake of fire, although the thought has crossed my mind.
	But personality is destiny.
	Insecure, Sun-SMV-destroying women aren't attractive or appealing to strong, confident, healthy women.
	A strong, confident, healthy woman would spend about two minutes with your mom and, well, I don't know.
	See, she wants to keep strong, confident women away from you because, why?
	They're a threat. Okay, now we're getting to someone.
	What's the threat to you? I think she's kind of scared of the fact that she might not be the primary female figure in my life one day.
	And that's a whole other tangent, but that's kind of where I'm going with.
	What I'm going with, I should say.
	So you're like the hobbled slave, right?
	Like they used to cut the Achilles tendons of slaves so they couldn't run away?
	So you're like the fat hobbled, low sexual market value slave to female vanity and neediness, right?
	Yeah, and I can kind of give a theory on why that is, but I don't want to...
	Please do. Well, my mom grew up in a household...
	She grew up in northern New York, and she grew up really impoverished.
	Like, my grandpa was a really, really deadbeat.
	Like, he was not very...
	He wasn't abusive.
	He just kind of was, I would say, neglectful.
	He provided, but he was kind of rude to my grandma, and my grandma...
	I always had to work to provide for them, so my mom raised her three siblings pretty much.
	She's the oldest of four.
	She raised her siblings completely by herself, with little to no help.
	Other than my grandma coming home from work and providing food, my mom pretty much raised three kids near her age by herself.
	And I think, especially since I've been to college, she's kind of had issues with me not being under that umbrella.
	I'm sorry, I'm lost.
	Why is your mom crippling your sexual market value because her father was not wealthy?
	No, I think it's because she has always been a mother and the idea of not being able to mother her own son is kind of scary to her.
	Like when I went off to college, she would want to talk to me like every six hours and I got in an argument with her and she said, Well, I raised you for 18 years, and you can't even bother to call me every day.
	And I was like, well, I want to talk to you, but at the same time, I just think it's a situation where she's uncomfortable with the idea of her not being...
	Wait, hang on, hang on.
	Where is your father in all of this?
	Where's your father not saying, okay, honey, honey, back off a little.
	Give the boy some room.
	The whole point of parenting is to let them loose in the world to make their own way.
	What the hell are you doing hanging off to him like some woman who's addicted to a sailor going on a voyage?
	I mean, where's your dad in all of this?
	Why is he not standing between devouring mom and son?
	That's actually a massive problem in my family right now, Steph.
	My dad has tried to do that, and he has tried to step in between, and when he does, and when I do the same for him, when she goes after him in arguments, she kind of throws her hands up and says, oh, well, you guys are just teaming up on me.
	So? So she says you guys are teaming up on me, so what?
	Is that the end of the conversation and everyone backs down?
	What are you kidding me? No, because we try and go...
	I guess she kind of victimizes herself.
	You think? Boy, never heard of a woman doing that before.
	First time for everything in this and other worlds.
	So she plays the victim.
	So what? Like, for example, last week they got...
	Actually, it's funny enough because...
	My dad is a very, very passive guy.
	My mom and dad, in the way they deal with their anger, are very different.
	My dad kind of sits and let things build up and explodes, and my mom is very instant.
	And my dad kind of called her out for being really impatient and irritable.
	And I said, actually, our whole family kind of said, like, we're not trying to go after you.
	She started screaming and crying and shut herself in her room?
	Yeah. I have an urge to ask how old she is, but if she's over two, I don't think it really matters.
	She's very, very sensitive to criticism, is that right?
	Your mom is very, very sensitive to criticism, but when she walks around the mall, she says that you should be dating the fat, ugly girls.
	Yes. Because she's very, very sensitive to being criticized, you see.
	And you know what scares me more than anything, Steph?
	Is that I brought up that I was going on this show and she told me she wanted to listen to it.
	Hmm. Well, if she's going to listen to it, I will say this to her, that I don't think that you served your son very well by letting him get fat and telling him to just wait it out, and it doesn't work. It didn't work for you, and it didn't work for your husband, because you all met when you were slender.
	And it is okay that people have criticisms of you.
	It might even be healthy.
	It might be for the better.
	And your kids are going to grow up And the purpose of being a parent is not to have your kids wedded and bonded and welded to you until the end of time.
	The purpose of being a parent is to train them to get along with their peers because they're going to form families with a peer or somebody roughly in their own age group, not with parents.
	You. And I don't know if there's a sort of cliché that emotionally distant or unavailable husbands have some women latch on to a son in particular and, you know, put their claws in and hold on to them like grim death and so on.
	But that's unfair. You know, your children should not suffer for the deficiencies in your marriage.
	And it's not right.
	To say to your son when you see fat, ugly girls that those are the kinds of girls you should be dating.
	That's kind of cruel.
	You understand that.
	That's not going to help build up his confidence.
	It was wrong to let him get fat.
	It was wrong to not make it a primary mission of the family to help him get what he wanted.
	What he wanted was a girlfriend.
	He wasn't saying he wanted to Have one night stands with a succession of tramps.
	I mean, he wanted a girlfriend, which is a perfectly fine thing for a teenager to have.
	And it should have been job one within the family to help him achieve that.
	And... I think that self-criticism as a parent is very important.
	It can be painful, of course. Nobody likes to think that they've done something wrong.
	And particularly when that something wrong has been avoided in terms of being called out for a long time, it kind of accumulates.
	And you think there's a mass. It's like so much bad stuff is back behind that giant wall that it's going to wipe away and wash away the family.
	But I think you'll find that if you listen to criticism and talk about it reasonably and listen to what people have to say, that it is not actually as bad as you think it's going to be.
	You know, people think if they're very sensitive to criticism, they think, well, if I accept criticism, people will lose respect for me.
	Like if I admit fault, people will lose respect for me.
	It's not the case. I mean, I've admitted fault and changed my perspective on a variety of things in this show.
	And yeah, of course, there are a few people who try to use it against me, but who cares about them?
	The important thing to know is that people will actually gain respect for you if you admit fault and if you accept that you were not perfect and did things wrong, even things that were egregiously wrong.
	If you work to correct it, your son would have been happier if he had been not fat when he was a teenager.
	And that had a lot to do with you, your parenting and your husband and your extended family and your cooking and your encouragement to exercise and so on.
	And it's not fair.
	To deny that, because that's the reality.
	You know, if you want to say, your son maybe is dodging your calls a bit, if you want to say, well, I raised you for 18 years, you owe me a phone call, then what you're saying is you were in charge of raising him.
	And thus, if things went wrong for him, like being overweight and not getting a girlfriend, Well, you've already taken ownership for the first 18 years of his life and you use that as kind of a tactic to get him to call you.
	Well, guess what?
	You've just taken ownership of 18 years.
	I raised you. Okay, so then you're responsible for his environment and his life when he was a child.
	And things were not perfect.
	Things never are, right?
	And things need to be talked about and things need to be sorted out.
	And this, you know, screaming and running and hiding in rooms, I mean, that's not...
	It's not going to work. It's not going to work and it's not going to succeed in anything that you want.
	I mean, it might buy you a squelching of criticism in the moment, but it's going to alienate people and have them really freak out from that.
	So, yeah, that's the stuff that I would say if I had the chance.
	So, is there anything else you wanted to mention?
	I do have a bunch more callers.
	Yeah, just kind of a concluding question.
	I guess where...
	Do I go from here as an individual?
	I know I'm shaped by my parents, obviously, but what do I do as far as improving on myself and what I want and what I want to achieve?
	Well, I'm a big fan of personal therapy, and I'm a big fan of exercise, and I'm a big fan of eating responsibly.
	I generally do it.
	I certainly have my moments, but...
	So, you know, if you're in school, if you're in college, you might be able to get access to a therapist through the college situation, right?
	But yeah, exercise, eat well, and try to avoid triggering stressors, right?
	You have to figure out what is it that makes you overeat?
	What is it that makes you, you said food was comfort.
	What is it that makes you turn to food as a comfort?
	And then the first thing you can do is diminish those situations, I think.
	That are going to trigger the stress response that drives you to overeat.
	Just like gritting your teeth and forcing yourself not to eat.
	I mean, that'll work for a little bit, but as you know, most people who lose weight end up gaining more weight.
	And I lost 20 or 30 pounds about eight years ago, and I've kept it off.
	But you just have to change everything, and you have to figure out your trigger points for overeating.
	And then you just have to say, okay, well, I'm not going to do that.
	I don't eat chocolate. I don't eat chips.
	I don't eat cookies. I don't eat candy.
	Maybe you nibble here and there on dark chocolate that looks square once in a while.
	But You just have to figure out your triggers and commit to reducing the stressors that lead you to overeat.
	And you just have to say, you know, like, I can't have this stuff.
	Like, I just can't. I can't have it in the house.
	I can't have it around. And for a while, I may have to not be in situations where that stuff is going to be shoveled into me, right?
	Like, I mean, if you've got a family gathering and everyone's like, oh, you've got to eat.
	Oh, what's the matter? Why don't you finish your food?
	Why don't you finish your plate? You blah, blah, blah, right?
	That's not helpful, right? That's like being an alcoholic and trying to quit and then, hey, why don't you have a drink?
	Have a drink. Have some fun.
	Loosen up. It's really, really tough to say no to stuff people are pushing in your face.
	So those would be my suggestions.
	Well, thank you very much, Steph.
	I apologize if I was difficult at any point.
	It's just a lot to take in.
	You have absolutely nothing to apologize for, buddy.
	I appreciate the conversation and your honesty and I hope it was helpful.
	It was very helpful. Thank you.
	Alright, thanks, man. Alright, up next we have Scott.
	Scott wrote in and said, A common culture or a common language.
	In this sense, the nation is a kind of extended tribe.
	But in contrast, America is unique in its definition of nation.
	We broke from the country, which we shared a common race, a common language, and a common system of justice.
	And we defined our new nation in terms of unique shared values, experiences, and our desire for independence, freedoms, and the pursuit of our own happiness.
	In current discussions of nations and borders, there is a drive for erasing national sovereignty and forcing cultural incompatible peoples to live in the same space.
	In contrast, under the American Constitution, the individual states are granted states' rights so that they can exercise different policies and approaches to solving diverse economic and social problems.
	Shouldn't people who share common beliefs and culture be allowed to attempt to define nations or sovereign states around primary identities?
	A nation for Christians, another for Muslims, one for objectivists, another for socialists, and yet another for welfare state capitalists.
	Should Ireland be reunited?
	Doesn't Israel have a right to exist primarily for the Jews?
	Why can't Germany be just for Germans?
	That's from Scott. Hi Scott, how you doing?
	I'm doing fine, Stefan.
	Listen, just a correction to a misapprehension about the founding of America.
	America was founded as a specifically Protestant white Christian nation.
	It was not anyone who likes America is an American.
	It was very clear.
	And they were very clear that it should be white Protestants from particular sections of England sometimes, that those are the only people who should come in to the country.
	So America was founded with the idea of a clear ethnostate.
	And I just really sort of wanted to point that out.
	And for the vast majority of American history, it was white people from Europe, and particularly from Western Europe, and particularly from England, that America drew its immigrants from.
	Hmm. That's not the way that I've understood it or the way that I've characterized it, of course.
	Yeah, you know, you had Reed Ann Coulter and other people about this kind of stuff, but it was very clear.
	And they said, listen, I mean, if you have to be a Christian self-governing peoples and the republic can't possibly work if you're not.
	Well, I'm not quite sure where exactly to take this then, because I was kind of starting off with the idea that America was founded on some basic ideals of the rights of man and the right to be able to live your life and pursue your own happiness and that sort of thing.
	Right. Well, no, then they wouldn't have needed a giant Immigration Reform Act in 1965 to shift immigration from Europe to the Third World.
	I mean, that was a... It was a very specific point.
	And of course, from 1925 until 1965, there was almost no immigration into America.
	The gates were up. And because they said, listen, we've had a whole lot of immigration and we need to take a pause, as is being discussed at the moment in America, which seems to be a good idea, take a pause for a couple of generations to see what is going to happen.
	You know, one of the funny things has happened, I mentioned this before on the show, immigration assimilation has become much harder because of the internet, because...
	It used to be in the past, if you left Lebanon or Somalia or whatever, like way back in the day to come to America, I mean, there'd be a little bit of a community, but eventually you'd end up trying to assimilate because you'd just lose contact with your homeland, right?
	Letters were slow, newspapers were slow, and so on.
	But, you know, if you're ISIS and you want to start radicalizing people in America, well, the internet's just a click away and you can make all of that stuff happen.
	It's very sort of, there's a direct conduit to where you came from, to where you are, and that has made assimilation Much more challenging.
	The technology has enabled conversations like this, but it's also enabled conversations, you know, arguably slightly less fruitful that can happen.
	So I think the nation state used to have a border and there used to be a slowness and distance and inefficiency in communication that meant hard to get information from the old world, hard to get information from the old country, so you kind of ended up having to adapt to the new.
	But now the gates are open for perpetual information flow and cultural programming and reinforcement from the old country, and that has made assimilation much less likely.
	Well, yeah, but I've been studying objectivism for about five years now, and I think one of the things that impressed me about Ayn Rand was her support for the United States Constitution.
	And its approach to governance based on ideals of man and enlightenment ideals.
	And I've found that very appealing because it goes back to my old socialist days when we were fighting for some internationalist vision.
	Of, you know, what the world should be like and how it should be run and how it would be harmonious if, you know, we'd all live under the same set of rules and all had our rights protected universally.
	So it's been a little difficult for me to deal with this concept of nationhood based on ethnicity and I've been in a lot of conversations with some right-wingers in Europe and others in the States, just trying to get a sense of what it means to be an American or what it means to be a German.
	Sorry to interrupt you, but as far as ethnicity goes, until people stop screaming racism, the drive for ethnically homogenous states is never going to stop.
	You could say that there's causality to it and so on, But even if we say there's no direct causality for ethnostates, as long as people keep screaming racism at everyone, well, in particular white people, as long as people keep screaming racism at white people, there's going to be an urge for a white ethnostate.
	It's inevitable. You can pretend otherwise, but it's not going to happen because white people get tired of being called racist all the time, and the only way to avoid being called racist is to pursue a white ethnostate.
	So the people who scream racism at white people all the time and then complain that there's movements towards an ethnostate within white people are being ridiculous.
	I mean, I understand it's all a manipulation and a game and it's all bullshit, but anybody with even a basic sense of causality says you can only scream insults at people based on ethnicity for a while before they say, oh, white people are so evil, okay, well, we're gonna go somewhere else.
	Oh, white people are so oppressive, well, let us stop oppressing you.
	Oh, white people are so terrible, We're going to stop bothering you.
	And if ethnic mixing means white people get called racist all the time, then what is the benefit of ethnic mixing for white people?
	White people pay more taxes, and outside of the Japanese, East Asians, right?
	White people pay more taxes, minorities collect more.
	White people want smaller government, most ethnicities want larger government.
	And What is the benefit?
	Particularly when low IQ populations move into high IQ countries, those low IQ populations are going to fail in the long run in general.
	There'll be specific exceptions, but the low IQ populations are going to fail in the long run and in general.
	And then what happens? White people get called racist for things that are completely beyond white people's control, as in racial differences in IQ. So what's the benefit?
	You know, we sell a white person the benefit Of having low IQ third worlders move in.
	What's the benefit? Taxes will go up.
	Cultural conflicts will go up.
	And you get called a racist all the time.
	And free speech gets crippled.
	Yay! Sell me on the benefit.
	It's hard to come up with it.
	Now, it's not fundamentally about...
	Ethnicity, it's about IQ, right?
	So if you look at the East Asians, generally, they're not very politically active.
	They come and they earn higher incomes than white people in white countries because they have on average higher IQs.
	They do have in-group preferences and so on, but they tend not to enforce it through the state.
	They tend to enforce it through self-segregation in Chinatowns or other particular enclaves of that particular ethnicity.
	So it's not fundamentally about ethnicity, it's fundamentally about IQ, but because IQ is not equally distributed among ethnicities on average, It ends up being about that.
	So I don't know what the benefit is for a lot of white people for all of this ethnic mixing.
	The benefit would remain potential, I think, if people weren't continually screaming racism at white people.
	But given that that just seems to be the modern witch hunt is finding...
	Russian connections for Trump and racism among white people, then I think white people are inevitably going to keep saying, well, if the only way that I can get away from this very high taxation and the only way that I can end up with a small government is to have a white ethnostate,
	and if the only way I can get away from being put behind in my own country is because of affirmative action, and if the only way That I can avoid the endless charges of racism is to have a white ethnostate.
	There's going to be a movement towards that.
	And people think, well, this is some kind of foreign thing.
	No, look at Eastern Europe. Look at Eastern Europe.
	I mean, look at Poland. There is a state that is almost uniformly white and Christian, and they can have their parades, and they don't have terrorist attacks, and nobody's screaming racism at them all.
	I guess the EU is, but who cares?
	I mean, it is...
	Going to work that way if people keep screaming racism.
	And I don't know whether people can stop screaming racism all the time.
	Like, I don't know if it's just become this weird pathological addiction.
	I mean, it's so profitable. You scream racism at white people and the government will go and strip resources from white people and give them to other people, to other groups.
	And it's not objective in any way.
	I mean, the Japanese is a wildly concentrated ethnostate.
	There's almost no non-Japanese.
	I mean, even the Koreans in Japan are not accepted and they look virtually identical in many ways.
	I hope that's not racist.
	But if you look at a place like Japan, nobody's screaming racism at them because they only took like 46 refugees last year and 45 the year before that or something like that because they say, no, we can't take refugees because...
	We have to worry about the safety of our own citizens because they're a high IQ country.
	And also, race realism is very much accepted in Japan and it's very openly discussed.
	So they're under no illusions about what's going to happen if they bring in hordes of sub-Saharan blacks into Japan.
	I mean, they're under no illusions as to what's going to happen over the long run.
	And because that discussion is largely suppressed in the West, well...
	The Europeans, of course, for many decades have been screaming that the Americans, it's so violent, and it's so violent because of guns.
	It's nothing to do with ethnic composition.
	It's nothing to do with the fact that blacks are 12% of the population, young black males are like 3% of the population, and young black males commit almost 50% of America's murders.
	For reasons we went into the truth about crime, we talked about this.
	And so Europe has said to America, well, you see, the problem is you have guns.
	It's got nothing to do with ethnic compositions.
	So now we're going to get rid of our guns and we're going to import millions of sub-Saharan blacks.
	Like, I'm sorry. I wish it were different.
	I wish, you know, don't shoot the messenger.
	I wish things, I desperately wish things were different, but they're not.
	And so Europe is going to find out over time the price of not processing basic facts about reality.
	So I don't want anything other than voluntary association.
	If people self-segregate, I don't care.
	I understand it. It's fine.
	If the Somalis want to live among Somalians and so on, I'm not going to move in there and people got to move over here.
	I don't want to hurt people around.
	I think we should exist in a state of freedom.
	And I do think that without the welfare state, without massive amounts of money being thrown at migrants and refugees and fake refugees and all of that, I think people will come for freedom.
	And The smart people are welcome from wherever they come.
	Now, if there is this regression to the mean issue, where the smart Hispanics will have children who are less smart, which does seem to be statistically the case, and you can look up Dr.
	Jason Richwine's thesis for more on that, which, by the way, one of his thesis advisors was Charles Murray, who does seem to have no problems with mass immigration from Mexico, even though he was an advisor.
	Principal advisor on Jason Richwine's thesis that Hispanics have lower IQs than the average in Western countries.
	So, I don't like a government that's going to do anything to do with ethnicity.
	There should be a separation of state and church.
	There should be a separation of state and speech.
	There should be a separation of state and economics.
	And the derma should be a separation of the state and race and gender.
	The state should not be able to pass any preferential legislation regarding gender or race or anything like that because it just turns into endless massive infighting and it inflames the very wounds that we're all trying to heal.
	So we all have to find, we're all mixed up now, right?
	We all have to find some way to get along.
	And the only way that we can do it, in my opinion, without things escalating to really difficult levels, the only way we can do it is to say that we have equality before the law, true equality before the law now.
	And that means no welfare state and that means no affirmative action, none of this manipulation, none of this you've got to move here and you can't move there and all of this mixing stuff.
	We have to have a separation. Of state and race, and we have to have a separation of state and gender.
	No gender preferential legislation.
	Equality before the law should damn well mean equality before the law.
	And I don't know whether we're going to achieve that voluntarily or peacefully, or whether it's going to be, as it took hundreds of years of religious warfare in Europe to get the separation of church and state finally pounded into everyone's heads.
	I don't know if it's going to be a hundred years of conflict before separation of State and race is achieved.
	I hope that we can do it peacefully and voluntarily, but I increasingly have my doubts.
	Well, that's kind of where my dilemma is, because I don't see the ethno-state as being something that's viable moving forward into the future.
	I mean, I'm familiar with all the socialist, communist propaganda about nationalism being reactionary and jingoistic and chauvinistic and warmongering and fascist and all that other stuff, but And I'd prefer also to see the fight stay within the bounds of individualism versus collectivism.
	I'd like all nation states to become individualist, but I just don't see that happening.
	I see you having some very strong ethnostates or religious states, and on the other hand, I don't see the West— That as being a viable option anymore.
	States have to be organized around ideas or ideals of some sort.
	Just so that we can continue to exist.
	Most states aren't, right? No, most states aren't.
	And that's why I kind of held out America as being different from the other states in terms of their definition of nationhood.
	But it is the West, primarily the boomers, who have invited in this trouble.
	And the ethnic tensions that are growing within the West are merely the shadow cast by the greed of those who want something for nothing.
	When you want something for nothing, you put a giant welfare state in, you put old age pensions in, you put socialized healthcare in, you put all of this stuff in, and you refuse to pay for it.
	Now, once you have all of these goodies, you have this great treasure.
	And because we have said to ourselves, the government is an agency of virtue, of personal virtue, the government is not at best a necessary evil to protect us from the daggers of the evil, from the violence of the incompetent and the brutal.
	No, no, no. The government is a positive agency of good.
	It is great for educating our children.
	It is great for helping the poor.
	It is great for helping the sick.
	It is the Florence Nightingale of social institutions.
	It does nothing but good.
	Power doesn't corrupt. There is no danger in giving this amount of power and this amount of control into the hands of the elites.
	Let's let it rip.
	Giant Leviathan state is the way to go.
	That's how we achieve virtue in society.
	You make the state a benevolent institution that makes everything wonderful and everything great.
	And it's my little ponies and...
	Butterflies and peonies flying through the air, and it's all wonderful because we have drugged herself with the supposed benevolence of the state.
	And so we then don't like the state to see, we don't like to see the state do anything violent.
	We don't like to see the state do anything violent.
	I mean, except maybe to our enemies and so on.
	And so the fact that the state is an agency of force, we have to bury and ignore and pretend it's not the case because we've asked it to do so many wonderful, good and noble things.
	And so what's happened is people no longer want to see the coercive nature of the state.
	That's why it's hidden. That's why it's buried.
	That's why it's not reported on.
	And so the idea that Europe might use the coercive power of the state to turn back the migrant boats, people don't want to see it.
	Because they don't want to see the nature of the institution that they have entrusted the future virtues of their society to.
	They don't want to see the nature of the institution that they've indebted their children to sustain and grow.
	They don't want to see the nature of the institution that they've entrusted to educate their children and take care of their elderly and the sick.
	They don't want to see the guns the state has because it puts a lie to the virtue and benevolence of the state and shows the addiction of free stuff that is at the driving heart of why people want the state to do so much.
	They want the state to do stuff because they don't have the credit to borrow, but the government sure as hell does.
	They can't counterfeit and print money, but the government sure as hell can.
	And so you create this giant treasure of state goodies, of state money, and you simultaneously forbid the state from defending your borders.
	Well, for God's sakes!
	If you put a giant hole in the wall of the bank vault with a big sign on the gold vault saying, help yourself!
	What the hell do you think is going to happen?
	People are going to come in and say, well, there's no boundary around the bank and I'm told to come and help myself.
	And you see these websites, these pamphlets to the migrants.
	You say this, you do this, you apply here, and that's how you get your welfare.
	So we carved a big giant hole in the bank.
	The vault is wide open to the sky, wide open to the street, and we've got people saying, go this way, free gold, go this way, free gold, here's how you get it.
	And we think the problem, it's with the people getting the free gold?
	No! The problem is, there's gold, and there's no war.
	So people are going to come in, and they're going to take it.
	Of course they will. It's perfectly legal for them to do so.
	They're not breaking any laws in terms of the refugee stuff, and it's de facto legal if not de jure.
	De facto means it's legal in practice, though it's illegal in theory.
	Legal in practice to wander across the border in America and go to a sanctuary city and get welfare and get your kids educated and have all the taxpayers pay for your Kids to be educated in some African clicking language, which apparently is a constitutional right these days.
	So it's...
	I don't blame the migrants.
	Of course the migrants are going to do what they're going to do.
	Of course they are. If the teacher posts the exam online before the exam happens and hands out the URL saying, go check out Go check out the exam.
	Before the exam. And then people go, are they cheating?
	No! They're saving themselves a whole lot of effort by going to get the exam questions.
	And if the exam questions and the answers are all there, well, that makes it quite a bit easier.
	You know, when I did my master's, I had to translate from French to English.
	And I was allowed to bring a dictionary in.
	Do you know how many people came in with no dictionaries?
	Zero. You can bring a dictionary in.
	You don't have to hide it. It's perfectly fine.
	Nobody complains about you bringing a dictionary in.
	It's translation. Now, if you couldn't bring a dictionary in, that would have been a whole lot more study now, wouldn't it?
	But you could bring a dictionary in.
	And so, it's the shadow.
	The migrant stuff, this is all because of the greed of the boomers and, to a smaller degree, some of the generation that came after it.
	It's the greed of the boomers. We turned away from all the traditional virtues that made the West strong.
	Individual responsibility, private property, respect for contracts, small government, equality before the law, private charity.
	We turned away from all of that.
	The West has been dead for a hundred years.
	It's still twitching. But this is why there's no electricity that can bring this back to life the way that it was.
	We must push forward.
	There's no circling back.
	And I can understand why people get a little fucking sick and tired of the West.
	I know I do.
	Jesus fucking Christ. World War I. World War II. Cold War.
	Migrant crisis. Jesus Christ!
	We do some great stuff, don't get me wrong, but can we stop royally and interplanetarily fucking things up just for a generation or so?
	That'd be really fucking cool.
	To have some situation where there's not 10 million young men killed in the trenches and 20 million ex-soldiers and civilians killed from the Spanish flu 1918 to 1919.
	Can we not have a giant clusterfrag Of a boom followed by a bust.
	Massive people jumping off buildings because the stock market is crashing.
	And then 13 years of a mind-numbing, grinding depression leading to the joys and glories of World War II. Yes!
	I'm going to take 40 million dead for no particular purpose.
	We're going to fight socialism and then import socialism.
	We're going to teen up with Russia and then we're going to become Russia even after the Soviet Empire is dead.
	We're going to be more Soviet than they were.
	Oh, then we get a Cold War.
	Oh, wasn't that tasty. Then we get massive terrorist attacks.
	Then we start funding all the lunatics in the Middle East.
	Then we go invading Middle Eastern countries.
	Then we go bombing. 100,000 bombs under Obama into Muslim countries.
	Just bomb the shit out of these people.
	And now a migrant crisis.
	Massive debts, unfunded liabilities.
	Fucking Christ, West!
	Sort your shit out!
	Get back to your goddamn roots!
	Property, responsibility, small government, private charity, virtue, reason, empiricism, facts.
	Stop lying to yourself.
	Stop being greedy. Stop destroying yourself after you have desperate thirst for the unearned at all times.
	Getting a little fucking sick of all of this useless, stupid, Self-mutilating harikari all the time.
	Yeah, it's great.
	I like electricity.
	Don't get me wrong. The internet's pretty cool.
	But it would be pretty nice as well if you stopped fucking things up all the time in entirely predictable and entirely catastrophic ways.
	But who's going to...
	Let's say that we have this ideal...
	I get all weirded out about this, because here we are talking about how much the West has corrupted itself, and yet we're pushing for smaller government, we're pushing for respect for individualism, we're pushing for private property rights, so forth and so on. In the end, somebody's got to protect those rights.
	The police, the army, Courts, the system of justice, lawmakers, and then it gets the cycle all started all over again.
	Well, this is why I'm a voluntarist.
	The government will never in a sustained manner protect your rights.
	Power corrupts.
	Now, I think that there's something that can be done to shrink government.
	I'm a big fan of a lot of what Donald Trump has done, and certainly compared to Hillary, the man is a complete godsend.
	But he buys us some time to promote voluntary, peaceful community solutions to what we automatically think of as the province of state power.
	Is there such a thing as intelligent patriotism, the idea that you can support your nation, however you define it, and do it intelligently?
	No, no, no. Sorry to interrupt. Patriotism used to mean I'm patriotic to wherever the government isn't.
	That's what patriotism used to mean.
	Why did you love America? Because the government was nowhere around.
	You loved the country. You loved freedom.
	You loved the absence of the state.
	You loved the absence of government power.
	Why did people risk this god-awful journey that I talked about recently?
	Six weeks in a boat, half the people dying, people throwing pregnant women overboard because they can't give birth in any kind of safe way, children dying from lack of food.
	Why did they risk that to get over to the new world?
	Because there was no government there in any fundamental way.
	And if there was a government in the town that was barely there and you didn't like that, you could go out to the frontier and take your self-defense into your own hands.
	That's what people loved about America.
	Not the American government, not the flag, but the complete absence of those things from just about everyone's life.
	We can't even conceive of what it was like.
	When the most the government could do was tax you a little bit on your liquor and that's about it.
	So, patriotism used to mean, I love where the government isn't.
	And now, patriotism has something to do with obeying the government.
	Are you fucking kidding me?
	It's the exact opposite of what patriotism was supposed to be.
	I love freedom. It's like saying, you love the woman, you lock in your basement.
	No, if you love that, love requires voluntarism.
	Patriotism, respect, a love of country, requires voluntarism.
	You can't love someone with a gun to your head.
	You can't love the state.
	You fear the state.
	The state has power.
	The state has violence. The state has control.
	The state dominates. The state subjugates.
	The state indebts and manipulates and propagandizes and controls.
	You can't love that. You can love the absence of that.
	Patriotism used to mean, hey, no government?
	Excellent. But then the government started training everyone and now patriotism means love of the government?
	Are you kidding me?
	For the revolutionaries in...
	America?
	They didn't say, fundamentally, we just don't like the British government.
	They didn't like government.
	Didn't matter where it was.
	They didn't put a new king on the crown.
	They didn't say, well, as long as the king's local, I'm fine with it.
	They didn't want any government at all.
	And there were some debates even in that direction.
	So the idea that we love the nation, and that means we love the government, is completely insane.
	The nation is what is voluntary.
	Not what is enforced, not what is coercive.
	That's like saying people unjustly thrown in prison are a club.
	They're just, you know, a bunch of guys hanging out together.
	They're like those shadow stripes with the sunlight on their sunken, sallow, tuberculic chests.
	It's like calling people drafted into the army a team.
	Just decided to wander around in a Vietnamese jungle with massive amounts of weaponry pointed at them and tripwires all over the place to blow off their legs.
	You know, they're just having a vacation.
	They're tourists. They're touring.
	Touring. No.
	It's like calling the victim of a mugging stabbing.
	Somebody who just decided to have elective surgery.
	So, we can love the nation, but the nation is what is voluntary.
	Wherever it's coercive, we must withdraw our love.
	Maybe there's respect. Maybe there's fear.
	Maybe there's a certain amount of it's a necessary evil.
	You know, like appendicitis.
	I don't want to get cut up, but it beats the alternatives kind of thing.
	But you don't love appendicitis.
	You don't love surgery.
	It's like a necessary evil.
	And you love your surgeon because he does the least possible.
	You don't go in to get a corn removed and have the guy saw off your leg at the knee and say, good job!
	I don't have any more corn.
	I have a headache. You've just been beheaded, Saudi Arabia style.
	Hey, look, no more headache.
	Well, that's just a little bit more than you wanted.
	You love the surgeon who does the least possible.
	Like, I've got this scar on my neck, right?
	First surgeon I talked to, a Canadian guy said, oh yeah, we've got to open up your whole jaw.
	It's like you're going to have a whole second shark mouth on the side of your head.
	These guys are fantastic.
	They went in low. As they get older, it's going to fold.
	It's going to just be a pan out of the neck fold.
	They went in. I love them.
	Fantastic. Fantastic. Surgery Center of Oklahoma.
	Check them out. If you need anything, talk to them first.
	Just do it. But they were like, oh yeah, we can go in low.
	We can get the lump out.
	It's going to be nice and easy. And they did a fantastic job.
	Nothing's come back. I'm on a four-year checkup.
	Just recently, nothing's come back.
	And it's very subtle. Some people are, oh, I didn't even notice.
	They'd have noticed the other one.
	Hey, what was the horrible sword fight you win that peeled back half your head?
	So, I love the guy at the Surgery Center for Oklahoma because they did the least possible thing that they could do.
	I love the absence of surgery, so to speak, not the presence of surgery.
	We love what is voluntary.
	We obey what is coercive.
	We love what is voluntary. So to love of country is a love of freedom.
	The idea that that means love of state is the ridiculous government school indoctrination Stockholm syndrome that passes for modern education.
	Steph, there is no frontier anymore.
	There's no Place to go where there is no government.
	I mean, I'm not going to live in Antarctica.
	I know that, but there's the internet.
	The internet is the new frontier.
	Why do you think I'm here? The internet is the boundary-pushing new frontier.
	You know, would you rather have, would you rather try and get a newspaper going in revolutionary America, or would you rather have the internet now?
	I get to talk to way more people now than I could have in the past.
	I got millions of listeners.
	We get 15 million views and downloads.
	Got a book coming out next month.
	The Art of the Argument. Look for it.
	It's going to be fantastic. Cultural force, changing things.
	Moving the needle. So don't talk to me about no frontier.
	There are more opportunities for human communication now than have ever existed ever in human history.
	We have it so good, my mouth waters at the possibilities, and I've achieved a hell of a lot.
	My mouth still waters at the possibilities to come.
	Still, you've got to live someplace.
	You've got to have a piece of property, a place you can control to call your own to say, this is where I rule.
	This is my spot, my place.
	What's your point? Well, my point is that the state is inevitable.
	And that the best that we can hope for is a minimal state.
	So why the hell should I talk to you if you've given up?
	Ugh. No, seriously.
	I mean, I don't mean to be rude or anything like, well, we've got no hope and there's no possibility and there's just a cycle of history.
	We're going to get ground under.
	Okay, well, so, you know, my basic point is snap the fuck out of it.
	You need to push the values just as you're doing.
	You need to push the values.
	Your choice being what?
	Surrender and let evil take over.
	Surrender and let evil take over, as many people, I'm sure, are willing to do.
	As you're willing to do. Enjoy yourself.
	No, no. Maybe you have a different meaning to the word inevitable than I do, but I think mine's fairly textbook.
	No, I'm saying that even in the best scenario, where you have a government that's respectful of individual rights and property and small government.
	No, you can't have that for long.
	I know you can't because the state in the end has to provide some basic functions, the police, the army and the justice courts.
	Why does the state have to provide some basic functions in the future?
	We've always had slavery.
	We'll always have slavery.
	We've never flown.
	You can't ever have an airplane.
	There's no way to talk to people thousands of miles apart.
	Oh look, we have telephones.
	And now the internet. There's no way to bypass the gatekeepers of popular culture.
	Well, okay, no, except for the internet and except for all the alternative stuff that's going on in the world.
	There's no way to get the truth.
	Oh, no, if you've got courage and commitment and you're willing to do the research, you can get the truth out there in delicate ways that blow people's minds and open them up to new possibilities.
	Are we going to win? I don't know.
	But you're not helping with that kind of attitude, I'll tell you that much.
	Well, yeah, but I mean, if I'm walking down the street one day and somebody comes and clubs me and takes my wallet...
	You know, I want that man thrown into prison.
	I don't want to say, oh, well, gee, now I have to figure out a way to go get personal revenge.
	Hang on, how many times have you been mugged in your life?
	Well, me personally, not at all.
	Zero! How much are you paying your taxes every year, my friend?
	Well, that's a lot. But it could be argued that the reason I'm paying all those taxes, and I'm not making this argument for...
	Everyone's so scared of the muggers, but the IRS apparently is just fine.
	It's easy to point to examples in our current situation where government's gone out of control, where it's totally corrupt and not responsive to respecting individuals.
	I can't envision Maybe that's my problem.
	I can't envision a totally voluntary society where everybody just kind of peaceably goes about their business and nobody commits any major crimes.
	Jesus Christ. Look up the definition of false dichotomy in the mirror, please, my friend.
	Where on earth has anyone who said a voluntary society is the ideal?
	Where on earth have they ever said everyone will get along perfectly and there'll never be any crime?
	But that's my whole point, is that you have to have some form of state.
	Why? Just to provide those protections.
	Oh, is it because people do bad things?
	People do bad things.
	Right. So do you want people doing bad things...
	In a voluntary situation where you can have your own self-defense, where you can have your own private police force, where you can have whatever you want, where you can have a moat if you want.
	Do you want people doing bad things privately or do you want people doing bad things with the power of the state?
	Well, that's a big problem.
	It's not really a big problem.
	I don't know how to limit the power of the state.
	You can't have a state in the long run.
	Look, either the majority of people are good and the minority of people are bad, in which case the bad people will gravitate to the state and use it to enforce their will on the good people, right?
	Which I think is generally the situation.
	Or the majority of people are bad and only a minority of people are good, in which case you can't have a state because the bad people will always vote to increase the power of the state over the good people and extinguish them, right?
	I mean, I know it's a tough thing to conceive of.
	I understand this. I hate to say it's kind of like an intelligence test.
	It's kind of like an intelligence test.
	Can you conceive of something that is entirely principle-based?
	Or are you going to be drawn back to the comfort of existing answers?
	The state that is the smallest, we had this experiment.
	This experiment has run its course, right?
	The state that started the smallest, the American government, is now the largest.
	That should give anyone pause.
	The state that started the very smallest with the express intention of being the very smallest government is now the very largest government with the most powerful and destructive weaponry the world has ever seen.
	And the most intrusive and invasive surveillance technology the world has ever seen.
	Constantly spying on its own population.
	Constantly threatening people with the power of asset forfeiture.
	Now there's a ruling that says the police can use asset forfeiture To seize property from people who live in states where absolute forfeiture is banned.
	With the power to jail you, pretty much it will, because everyone commits, as the saying goes, or the studies go, three felonies or so a day.
	From the very smallest government, we now have the very largest government with the most intrusive and powerful technology.
	It's not the most dictatorial government, trust me.
	I understand, like, real dictatorships exist in the world.
	But it certainly is the largest, most powerful, and has the capacity for the most destruction.
	The American government and has exercised that power of destruction significantly over the past couple of decades.
	Since the post-Second World War, there have been, according to some estimates, tens of millions of deaths as a result of American imperialism and meddling in foreign elections and overthrowing dictatorships and invading and whatever, right?
	Subsidizing rebels and whatever they want to call it, right?
	So, I've got these two books and I stand by them.
	I know I haven't talked about it much lately.
	Been a little distracted.
	Been just a little distracted.
	But... It's always in my mind.
	It's always on my mind. And the two books are...
	Practical Anarchy.
	And Everyday Anarchy. Everyday Anarchy you should read first.
	And then Practical Anarchy for how things could conceivably work.
	I... Disavow nothing.
	I stand by everything.
	Freedomainradio.com slash free.
	You don't even have to pay.
	The books about freedom are free.
	It's a long-term project.
	Peaceful parenting. Race.
	Realism. Reality.
	Truth. Science. Understanding.
	Objectivity. Philosophy. Arguments.
	Debates. All the stuff that I continue to work on.
	Self-knowledge. The only freedom is freedom from illusion.
	If you gain freedom from illusion, everything else follows.
	So I know it's a tough one.
	It's a tough one. And we wish to say, we wish to have the magic.
	It's like people who say, well, where did the universe come from?
	Well, we just, it has to be God.
	Why? Well, because I feel weird if it's not.
	It's a feeling that you're fighting.
	It's not a rational argument, right?
	You feel uncomfortable imagining a society not run by a state.
	And that's because you have a fantasy that the state can be controlled, that the state can be kept within the bounds of the Constitution.
	It can't. It can't.
	I just can't see a volunteerist society as being realistic.
	I mean, this sounds very utopian.
	It's not an argument. Look, you have an emotional cognitive dissonance going on at the moment, which is why you're just saying out words that aren't arguments.
	You're trying to ward off the specter.
	Of sustainable freedom and a voluntary society.
	You're trying to ward off the specter.
	It makes you uneasy. So you're just spraying out words that have no intellectual content because you're uneasy.
	I mean, I'm not saying this to insult you.
	I'm just accurately describing what's happening.
	Utopia, unrealistic, impractical.
	These words have no intellectual content whatsoever.
	It's just like a magic spell you're casting because you think there's a demon called freedom approaching you that's going to rip out your guts or something, right?
	One of the reasons I left socialism behind is because it struck me increasingly as being utopian.
	I mean, we weren't dealing in facts.
	Wait, wait, wait. So the fact that socialism requires a massive coercive apparatus was not the problem?
	The fact that it violates persons and property on a regular basis by initiating the use of force against usually legally disarmed citizens, the fact that it's a giant mafia of coercion, that didn't bother you?
	You just stuck this label called utopian on it and wandered off?
	It didn't bother me in my 20s.
	It bothered me a lot later on in life as I started to consider the issues.
	Okay, so it's not that it's utopian or unrealistic.
	It's bloody violent.
	Yes, it is. Okay, so the violence is the state violence being the issue.
	Hey, I'll take my chances against the muggers.
	It's just not much I can do about the tax collectors.
	So I guess the question isn't whether globalism or internationalism is...
	It's ethnic or idealistic or whatnot.
	It's just the state. The state is not something that's moral that we can support.
	In the long run, the only way we're going to flourish as a species is through stateless societies, in my belief.
	Now, it's a multi-generational project.
	It's been moved up a smidge recently for reasons I've gone into a million times in the show, but I stand by that as much as I did When I first wrote the books, the reason being that nobody can disprove the arguments.
	And I've now had these arguments for many, many, many, many years.
	And at some point, you have to stop doubting and you have to start accepting.
	You know, when hundreds of people have taken great runs at your arguments and they have sustained themselves, sorry, we've gone a little bit beyond the theoretical and now we're more towards the established.
	And it is a great challenge to even think about.
	But if you look at the immigration problems, the immigration problems at the moment Are not because of a lack of government.
	The immigration problems that are occurring are because of the state.
	Because the state is paying people to come to the country.
	The state is paying people to come to the country.
	If somebody from...
	Well, that's true. I was reading something the other day about plans that the UN had made over 15 years ago to start moving migrants from Yeah, I've heard that argument as well.
	I haven't researched it myself.
	Yeah, I started looking into it recently.
	But that's only possible because of the welfare state.
	It's not the UN that's making that possible.
	It's the welfare state that's making that possible.
	And there have been Many, many intellectuals and moralists who have argued ferociously against the welfare state as immoral and impractical and disastrous.
	And so it's not, the UN document didn't make it happen.
	Because without the welfare state, it wouldn't be happening.
	I guarantee you, without the welfare state, it would not be happening.
	If in a free society, people won't give these people jobs, they won't rent them houses, there will be no place for them to live and they'll get kicked out.
	By the security agencies.
	There is no possibility of this happening because the UN wrote a document.
	The UN can write whatever the hell it wants, but it takes the welfare state to make it happen, which is why I don't care that much about the UN document.
	It's not like if you get them to rewrite the UN document, that's going to change the massive incentives of the welfare state.
	It's not! People are very clear.
	Why are they coming from peaceful countries in Africa and the Middle East?
	Because they get more money than they can possibly dream of without having to lift a finger.
	And they're fulfilling some of the commandments of their religion to go and have kids in a new country and transform it to the way they want it, right?
	So, the UN document is not the cause of these things.
	The cause of these things is the greed of Westerners for the unowned benefits of the welfare state.
	And if we can't pry Westerners off the unearned benefit of the welfare state and we can't fundamentally reform it and make it voluntary and make it charitable, then it doesn't matter what the UN writes or what anybody writes or does.
	If we can't get people to stop with their greed for the unearned, people will keep coming.
	And they will keep coming, and they will keep coming.
	And it will not stop.
	There are over 200 million people on the move in the world at the moment.
	Largely from the third world, largely trying to get into Europe.
	We either give up the welfare state voluntarily, or it collapses when we're surrounded by people who are going to be really, really pissed off and have nothing to lose when it collapses.
	And we're not, of course, we're not helping people with this massive government redistribution anyway.
	We're entrapping people.
	It's not there to help people.
	It's there to buy votes and entrap people.
	So here's an example.
	This is from Zero Hedge. Guess what happens in states where food stamp recipients have to work?
	This came out just yesterday.
	See, leftists are constantly reminding us of the merits of welfare.
	They tell us that without the help of taxpayer-funded handouts, millions of Americans will starve or be left homeless.
	Some crazy stuff.
	Alabama, in 2017, said able-bodied adults without children, just in just 13 counties, they either had to find a job or participate in work training as a condition for continuing to receive supplemental nutrition assistance program benefits, these SNAP benefits, right? So, in these 13 counties, there were 5,538 recipients of these SNAP benefits.
	On January the 1st.
	A couple of months later, how many do you think there were?
	5,538 when they started.
	Give me a guess.
	I have no idea.
	It went down to 831.
	It's an 85% drop.
	85% drop.
	Yep. When all you had to do was get a job or at least get some work training.
	Boom! We don't need it.
	Well, fine! Thank you.
	Turns out when you give people free stuff, they'll take it.
	Doesn't mean they need it.
	It just means they'll take it.
	Right? But, I mean, this has been known for a long time.
	It's just that the propaganda is such that the welfarists don't want to...
	Listen to that stuff. They prefer the power of having people being dependent upon them.
	Sure, sure. And, you know, we just have to keep telling the truth.
	Expose the evil for what it is.
	You're getting people addicted to free stuff more damaging in some ways than even heroin.
	Sorry, you were going to say? No, I was just...
	I'm still struggling with the stateless society idea.
	I mean, we're just so far away from that.
	I just don't... I don't have a practical plan, or at least maybe you do.
	I haven't read your books yet.
	But I just don't see a practical plan for getting there within my lifetime or even those of my children.
	And so? So I'm not quite sure what I'm advocating for.
	Am I advocating for a Trump or am I saying, no, I want an ideal person.
	I won't settle for anybody less than the ideal candidate.
	It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Is it true or not?
	Is it valid or not? Is it moral or not?
	It's right back to where I started.
	How long does it take? How exactly do we get there?
	Doesn't matter. I mean, there are other people who may have to take up that particular banner.
	I have arguments and perspectives as to how I think we're going to get there.
	But how do we get there and how long is it going to take and how is it going to unfold?
	You know, it starts with you, right?
	Sure. If you don't think...
	That we can ever get there, then you're going to be in the way of us getting there.
	And if you accept it and advocate for it, and other people accept it and advocate for it, we're much closer.
	And if enough people do it, then we're close enough to actually have it happen, right?
	That's all it is. That's all it is.
	So it's up to you. If you say, it can't be done, Then it makes it much less likely that it can be done.
	If you say it can be done, it makes it that much more likely that it can be done.
	And you only have responsibility to your own conscience and what is true and what is right and what is virtuous.
	And your courage in speaking that out.
	You have no control over other people's thoughts.
	You have no control over what's going to happen in the future.
	You only have control over your own willingness to pursue truth and your own courage in promulgating it.
	That's all you have. And that's enough if enough of us do it.
	Thanks, Steph. Thank you very much.
	And thanks everyone so much for calling in.
	A great pleasure to chat with you as always.
	I hope that you will go to freedomainradio.com slash donate to help us out.
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	Thanks everyone so much. Have a wonderful, wonderful week.

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