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April 26, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:27:52
Freedomain Livesteam - Ask Me Anything!
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Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you're doing very well.
Thank you for joining me for this lovely super chat this fine evening.
We're going to get started in just a moment.
Just waiting for people to join in and join up and, you know, that way it gives me something to do at the very end when it comes to, you know, trimming off the beginning.
So, let's see here.
I told it to start.
Is it starting?
Yes, it's starting.
All right.
So thanks everyone for joining us.
And let's get some questions going.
So let's see here.
Next Minecraft stream.
Interesting.
Yeah, I...
I'm kind of tempted to do a gaming channel because I don't game as much as I used to.
Well, I used to quite a bit.
But I'll tell you, if there was a way to make new friends by gaming, it would be pretty tempting.
So yes, there is a deep state.
Now, let's get started.
If you want to hit me up with a super chat, that would be fantastic.
I will also watch the regular stream.
If you want to go to freedomainradio.com forward slash donate to help out, that would be enormously appreciated as well.
Thank you for that.
freedomainradio.com forward slash donate.
There's a little information thing on the top right there which you can check out.
So I'm gonna just start with a little bit of a rant and then we will get going with the regular old stuff.
Now here's my little rant.
People are so weirded out at this idea of a free market and it's been a while since I've touched on the econ stuff but I miss it.
So I was on a Twitter rampage the other day, and in it, it was like, well, you gotta have government, otherwise corporations could end up being monopolies.
Such is the power of propaganda that people who claim to be concerned, you see, very, very concerned about monopolies, don't happen to notice that the government is a monopoly.
I shouldn't laugh because it is just propaganda and that's what it's for and that's how it works but this magical answer of well you see there's problems with human corruption you see problems with human corruption and therefore what we need to do is give monopolistic legal violent coercive power to a small group of people because there's problems with human corruption and it's like It's brain-bending.
It's literally brain-bending.
If you're so concerned about monopolies, the government is a monopoly.
So, I just wanted to give a couple of reasons as to why you don't have to worry about monopolies in a free market.
First of all, there's no example in a free market of a monopoly ever.
Like, you're the only one, nothing else, nothing can happen and so on.
So, it doesn't actually exist.
It's a unicorn.
It doesn't actually exist in reality.
There are companies that emerge and have great dominance, of course, right?
And what do those companies do?
They provide some incredibly valuable service and so on, like the Rockefellers who helped develop kerosene rather than using whale blubber.
They actually saved the whales and drove down the cost of kerosene to the point where poor people could read books at night and have all this wonderful education.
And so, yeah.
If you look at the market cap of the top sort of five or six retailers, it's about equivalent to that of Amazon, but Amazon has way fewer employees, so it's just much more efficient.
And so, monopolies don't exist.
Now, there's companies that have significant market presence, you know, Microsoft and so on, but you know, there's still Linux, there's still the Apple system and so on, there's still alternatives out there if you want it.
It's just really convenient for a lot of people to have the same operating system.
It's just kind of the way that it works.
Now, the genius, this peculiar genius of productivity that happens as to why people end up with these very successful companies, there's regression to the mean.
You don't have to worry about it too much.
Like, the state lasts until it collapses, which is usually a huge catastrophe.
But companies where you have, like Jeff Bezos' kids, are not going to be Jeff Bezos, right?
Most likely.
It's just not going to happen because there's regression to the mean.
When you have an outlier, genetics are like this big giant pendulum, right?
You have an outlier, somebody who's super smart, or somebody who's not smart, their kids are going to be closer to the mean, right?
So if you've got, you know, two parents with an IQ of 120, it's more likely that their kids are going to be 110, right?
It's the same thing, right?
Going the other way.
Assuming you've sort of got the white average of 100.
So if you don't like some particular company because it's so successful, just wait a generation.
The next generation is not likely to be as successful.
Certainly that's the case with family fortunes.
So this idea of monopoly is just terrible.
Companies come and go.
Like at the time, Fortune 100 companies from a century ago, like only two or three, are still even in existence, let alone anything else.
And it's interesting, the gas station Esso was forcefully split off from Standard Oil, which is why it's called Esso, like S-O, Standard Oil.
So you don't have to worry about monopolies in a free market, because there's a life cycle to companies, there's a life cycle to their productivity and their genius, so you don't have to worry about it.
Now people say, well, what about a monopoly in a small town?
Like in a small town, there's a grocery store.
It's the only grocery store.
And what about that monopoly?
It's like, well, okay.
I guess people who ask this question have never lived in a small town because the way that it works in a small town is you can't socialize with people, right?
And in a small town of like, I don't know, 300 people or 500 people, everyone knows each other.
So if you start gouging everyone in terms of price...
You're not going to be very popular and no one's going to want to socialize with you and your kids are going to be ostracized so people just don't do it, right?
And of course you can now order groceries in from elsewhere and you can grow your own food and lots of options.
But here's the thing too.
Let's say that groceries are higher, which they would be, in a small town than they're in a large town.
So what?
In a large town, because the demand to live there is so much higher, the real estate is more expensive.
So you save a huge amount of money.
I remember years ago seeing a A house for sale in Timmins for 40,000 Canadian dollars.
I mean, I'm sure you can get them even cheaper, but it's like a functional house.
So it's kind of strange.
You can save half or sometimes even three quarters the price of a house.
It's like, ooh, but your groceries might be a little bit more.
It's like, yeah, you'll find a way to survive.
Plus, of course, you're in the country.
You can just keep a bunch of chickens and get all your eggs.
So there's just lots of options and it doesn't really happen.
Let's say that there is a company that has overwhelming advantage.
Well, that's because people are voting.
It's called dollar democracy.
They vote with their dollars.
Which means that if whenever you buy from Amazon, you're giving Amazon your quote, economic vote to succeed.
And Political parties have no problem gaining an absolute majority, sorry, an absolute majority of political power on a 52, 53, 51% of the vote.
But that's not the way, like that's a real monopoly.
If you have a company that's getting 51% of the income, they're not a monopoly.
And yet a political party can gain total political power to a large degree on 51% of the vote.
So it's much more dictatorial and monopolistic in the state, even if we take out the coercive element, than it is in the free market.
So it's just important.
Now they say, oh, well, companies are going to buy up other companies.
I did a presentation on this years ago, so I'm just touching it really briefly.
If a company, let's say there's five companies that produce widgets in America, and the first company buys the second company.
And everyone's like, hmm.
All right.
Now the first company has debt.
And it also has the costs of integrating.
I mean, if you've ever been involved in this kind of stuff, I used to Part of my entrepreneurial career was tying systems together to gain information to help companies reduce emissions and pollution and so on.
Trying to get disparate computer systems to work together is a godforsaken job for which there is no Rosetta Stone and it's a huge giant mess where you've got to dump text files and process them and go back and forth and it breaks all the time and data formats are weird and compatibility issues are way back even with ADO and DAO back in the day.
Company 1 buys company 2.
Okay, so they've gained market share, but they have huge amount of integration costs and often they will have taken on a lot of debt to buy company 2.
So they're now at a competitive disadvantage in some ways to companies 3, 4, and 5.
Let's say they then go and buy company 3.
Well, of course, as soon as they've bought company 2, company 3's price is going to go up.
Because they say, oh, these guys are going for a monopoly, which means I can charge like crazy.
Company 4's price and integration issues are going to be even higher.
Company 5's price is going to be through the roof.
So it just becomes progressively harder to gain a monopoly as you go around buying more and more companies in the free market.
It just doesn't really work.
And then what happens is you have five different cultures, five different duplicates sometimes of HR.
It might be even five different legal requirements.
If they're in different states, they probably would be, right?
You've got integrating computer systems.
You've got the cost of buying these companies.
It's really tough without government monopoly protection or at least tariff protection or barrier to entry protection to buy up a whole bunch of companies and just have them all function seamlessly really really well.
And of course the other thing too is let's say that you were Buying up a whole lot of delivery companies.
Well, there was a bit of a trough in delivery after the invention of email, but before Amazon and before sort of online delivery, it was kind of tough.
Well, let's say that you invest in a whole bunch of cabs and then along comes Uber and Lyft and like you never know what's going to change to render your investment less valuable.
And of course, there's also PR.
If a company gets the reputation of being predatory of being mean of overcharging and so on people just not going to want to buy it.
PR for companies is really really important and the reputation the company has is really important so there's just so many reasons as to why you do not have to worry about a monopoly in a free market and of course if you are so concerned about monopolies Your real concern should be the state because the only way a monopoly can occur or anything close to it is if it's the most efficient company at satisfying customers needs and preferences.
So I just wanted to mention that it's a really strange objection.
It's been overturned so many times by so many different economists.
It's just a really strange objection to still see floating around.
But yeah, whenever people start talking about all of this crap to do with Monopolies, you know, they've just been propagandized which is one thing.
It's one thing to be propagandized It's quite another thing to be propagandized to the point where you have no critical thinking regarding Stuff that you've been handed.
So, all right.
Thank you very much for your indulgence for the opening stuff and let's Keep it moving.
One I forgot last time.
Conservatives won in Alberta.
Yeah, and also in Prince Edward Island.
There was a fairly tragic incident where a Green Party leader, I think canoeing accident with his son, ended up dying in nature.
Conservatives won in Alberta.
He says, funny how we dipped our toes into socialism after 40 years of blue, then voted them right back in.
Yeah, but you got to stop indulging in that.
You know, socialism is like this.
Slutty woman with a dangerous carousel of STDs down at some sleazy motel who's got exactly the physical fetish that turns you on the most.
It's like, you know, you shouldn't.
It's tempting because even if you break up with her, she might go all bunny boiler on you or you may end up with something that makes your penis rot faster than the conscience of a communist.
So.
All right.
Thank you, Thomas.
Thank you, Scott.
Anthony says, can I use you as a business reference?
I'm afraid not.
David.
Let me just zoom in a little bit here.
Oh, the eyes are heading north of 50.
All right.
David Lorenzen says, I sent question July 2018.
Been resending and waiting ever since.
It got arguments against stateless society from alt-right nationalist view.
Please debate.
I'll have a look.
I'll have a look.
Thank you, Tyler.
Thank you, Tyler.
2GunTommy, what are your dreams, Stefan?
You know, it's funny.
I don't know what you're talking about, like my dreams, but I had a dream this morning.
All right, I'm gonna give you a snippet of song.
So when I was in theater school, I had a friend, he's now a pretty well-to-do actor and a great, a really good actor, really good actor and a good singer.
And we did a musical.
And I dreamt that I met this guy again.
And I said, perhaps you can tell me why.
I've had this snippet of a song stuck in my head for like 30 plus years.
And it was about the stock market crash of 1929.
And it was, how did it go?
In the streets of New York, I was young and well.
I rode the market, the market fell.
One day I found myself in hell.
You don't know all, sir, you don't know all.
I probably got a couple of notes there wrong.
It's been like 30 years since I heard the song.
And we talked about that little snippet of song.
I had a dream this morning and well, you know, I mean, I rode the market.
The market fell.
Well, that has a lot to do with the sort of channel, right?
So the channel here is facing some Some stiff opposing currents in terms of recommendations and so on, particularly on YouTube.
And so, yeah, that... As the market fell, well, you know, there was a big... Around Brexit and around Trump, there was a lot of interest, and things were going very well, and even afterwards kept the views up.
But, you know, if you guys can help out, it'd be great.
You know, like, subscribe, share, get the videos out, and all that kind of stuff, so... I don't find myself in hell.
So, it's a bit of a strong ending, but...
I guess looking at the road less traveled, if I'd been an actor or been, stayed as an entrepreneur, it's a strange thing, you know, to spend 15 years building something and then have, like you thought you'd build something on rock, turns out you may have built it on sand, which is the approval of people who don't answer to you or answer to reason in terms of pushback.
So yeah, if you can help out the channel, that would be excellent.
Eleven Almond says, Do you think that there is any chance of there being any kind of afterlife?
Yeah, that's a tough call.
And I mean, the short answer is no, I don't believe that there's any evidence of there being any kind of afterlife, because for there to be an afterlife would imply that consciousness can exist independent of the brain.
In an eternal sense.
And since we don't have memories from before we were born, I don't believe that we will have memories after we were born.
And, uh, let's see here.
Bert Burt says, long form of fecigate and spygate crimes.
I don't know what that means.
Sorry.
Joni Bob says, good afternoon, Stefan.
Have you been paying attention to Carl Benjamin's campaign?
I think he's been running it brilliantly and hope it's enough so that UKIP can get the votes needed for his Election.
So this is Sargon of Akkad, with a two K's, who is a very warm-voiced, mellifluous, FM, deep-throat kind of speaker, and a smart guy, and a nice guy, and a guy, as far as I understand, who's got considerable amount of integrity, and I have not, I'm afraid, been following politics too much at the moment.
So, let's see here.
James Dietrich says, close to one million subs.
Yeah, that's true.
You know, it's funny.
On Twitter, I've been hovering south of 400,000 forever.
And on YouTube, it's like up and down.
And oh, I think they found some bots.
And so I'm not sure they want to send me that million plaque.
But here's the thing.
So with regards to sort of reputation, so naturally, there are groups and people, you know, it's not like I threaten them, right?
It's basically just that Philosophy.
They're threatened by philosophy.
They're threatened by reason and evidence and arguments and all that kind of good stuff.
And so, what do they do?
Well, they, um, you know, they can't answer, right?
And as the old saying, I think misattributed to Socrates goes, when the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.
And so it's not me that they fear.
It's the consequences of rational arguments, which they can't answer.
And so, uh, yeah, they'll just say, oh, he's a terrible guy.
He's a bad guy.
He's got terrible beliefs or whatever it is, you know, and they don't actually quote me.
Uh, they, of course, you know, they'll, oh, oh, he had a guy on his show who had may have said something on all this kind of stuff, right?
This sort of guilt by third degree association or whatever it is.
But here's the thing.
I believe that the common sense of humanity prevails over time.
Especially now, when we can have these kinds of conversations.
The common sense of humanity will prevail over time.
At least that's my opinion today.
Hopefully not tomorrow.
It'll be different.
So I believe that all you really should do, and it's not a small thing to do, but, you know, what you should do is Not sure, is my view stuttering for you?
Anyway, what you should do is you should continue to put forward good reason, good evidence, good arguments in a positive and engaging spirit and it's just persistence and consistency and integrity and the slanders and the lies and the misquotations and the guilt by association tactics and all of that crap I mean, you just leave it behind.
It kind of washes away over time.
I mean, that's the goal.
Of course, that's the hope.
So, yeah, I will definitely continue.
I've got The Truth About Plato.
I think I'll put a preview out maybe tomorrow.
And you should check out my interview with Cassandra Fairbanks about Julian Assange.
I will continue to do all the good and right and useful stuff regarding putting out my good arguments and, you know, people who are like, oh, he's a terrible guy because they heard nonsense about me and like, well, I've got to come and check out this terrible guy.
It's like, well, it's kind of seems kind of reasonable to me.
And so you just keep putting forward the reasonable arguments and hope that people will overcome or bypass the nonsense that's said.
Uh, do videos in support of a political figure count as political agitation?
If so, what's this say read your belief in anarchism?
Train car problem.
Dudes, you gotta type things out.
Feel free to use a few more sentences.
I'm not sure how to follow.
I'm sorry about that.
Oystein McGovern says, hi Steph, two short questions.
Are you familiar with Mark Dyson?
If so, will you do a show with him?
And two, do you plan to visit Ireland?
Ergo brath.
I have seen a couple of Mark Dice's videos over the years.
He seems like an interesting, engaging, energetic guy.
I have not really considered doing a show with him, but I will have a look again.
Do I plan to visit Ireland?
Nothing short-term, but you never know.
All right, so Demolitorian says, so the company in Sweden I work for has now started a training program to bring in 50% Women because men are bad.
Should I be worried or keep up with my plans to start to identify as a black woman in order to keep my job?
Yeah, it's um It's pretty terrible it's pretty terrible So, I mean I've talked about this before but I think it's worth mentioning again That it this all
comes from this fundamental misapprehension, and the misapprehension is that all differences in group outcomes arise from bigotry, prejudice, sexism, racism, you name it, right?
Particularly at the highest levels of intelligence, as I've talked about before, there are fewer women.
Women have, of course, less testosterone, which is related to assertive, if not downright aggression.
Women prefer, on the whole, to work with people rather than things.
And, of course, a lot of the highest paid jobs rely on working with things more than people.
So women are 50% of the population, so they have to be 50% of ha, right?
I mean, if we looked at this regarding childbirth, right, we would say, and this is an extreme example, but just to sort of make the point, if we would look at this with regards to childbirth, we wouldn't say, well, men are 50% of the population, but represent 0% of the childbirths, of the pregnant mothers, of the pregnant parents, and of childbirths.
And therefore, hospitals must be sexist against men.
They must be anti-masculine, right?
They must be bigoted against men because 50% of the population but 0% of the births.
So clearly we look at that and we say, eh, that doesn't make any sense, right?
Because there's biological differences between men and women such that women get pregnant and give birth and men don't, right?
And of course that's not as cut and dried when it comes to intellect and ambition and workaholism and so on, but if you have this belief that the only difference
in group outcomes the only way there can be any difference is the result of prejudice and bigotry well then you've been perfectly sucked into a vortex of ever-escalating state power where you can't solve the problem because here's what happens whenever you get behind and you start propelling a particular group forward so let's say that you get behind and you start saying well women need to be 50 percent of this that and the other i think there's a law out in california 50 percent of board members have to be women or something like that right
Can't solve the problem.
What everybody, you know, on the stream, watching this, listening to this, whatever, you really need to follow, grok, grasp, get, understand all of this, which is this.
That whenever you touch something through the power of the state, you change the behavior of everyone involved.
Of everyone involved.
So the moment you start to say, well, we've got to boost women up the corporate ladder, we've got to get them on the boards, what happens?
Well, you communicate to women two things.
Number one, there's a relentless glass ceiling that you can't get past or is very hard for you to get past.
And number two, we are going to boost you anyway.
Now what that does, of course, is it changes women's behavior.
It changes their ambitions.
So It means that women say, oh, there's this huge glass ceiling.
There's this old boys network.
They all go and play golf and they don't invite me and I can't get ahead.
So then they lose their ambition.
Because it's impossible, right?
I don't have any ambition to be a ballet dancer because I have no flexibility.
I'm over 50.
It's not going to happen, right?
So if you keep telling people there are these huge
institutionalized racism and sexism and you name it you lower their ambitions so in saying that women are underrepresented because of sexism reduces women's incentive to push through that's number one number two which also reduces women's incentives even further or their ambitions or their workaholism or whatever you want to call it what that happens or how that happens is you say well we're going to boost you we're going to boost you now
Imagine, so there used to be a process in sports, I don't know if it's still around anymore, it's called blood boosting.
And what used to happen is if you wanted to cheat and you didn't want to use an illicit substance, what you would do is you would have your blood, I don't know how much, half a pint or a pint or whatever, you'd have your blood taken out of your body, right?
And then before a race, maybe the night before, I don't know exactly when, you would have that blood put back into your body.
So you'd end up with an extra half liter or an extra liter or whatever it was of blood.
Now, of course, your muscles work on oxygen carried by your blood from your lungs to your muscles and all that, so you get this blood boosting, right?
Now, if the athlete knows that this blood boosting is going to occur, it's going to have an effect on his or her behavior, in that he's going to train a little bit less, because he's like, eh, blood boosting has it covered, right?
So whenever you offer people a boost, you lower Their incentive.
If somebody said to you, let's say there's a subject you don't really like, whatever it was, I don't know, vector calculus or something like that.
And I remember, yeah, a friend of mine used to have this joke.
Uh, it was a great name for a Bond villain, vector calculus.
Yes.
I used to know a man named vector calculus, but, um, and somebody said, Hey man, I'm going to, I found a way you're going to hack into the computer.
It's going to boost your score 15%.
But let's say you're not that great at it.
You get a 70, we're going to get you to an 85, but you're not going to end up with an 85 because you know, your score is going to be boosted 15%.
So you're going to study less.
See, whatever you boost, whatever you tell, it changes their behavior.
And this is why you can't solve these problems.
Why the only solution is freedom, freedom, right?
So, um, here's the thing.
Institutions and big businesses are going to fail.
Are going to fail.
And... Entrepreneurship is the way to go.
So... I would say that is the... That is the way.
Go entrepreneurial, because this institutionalized stuff is just gonna get worse and worse.
All right, Alberta voted blue, interesting.
Yeah, yeah.
Does Alberta have a vote of returning to former glory or just staving off inevitable implosion?
Yeah, I was just thinking about this today, because...
I had to fill my car with gas.
It's insane.
The average additional cost of the carbon tax for Canadian families is over $3,000 per year.
I mean, it's horrible.
And you think about this, right?
I mean, forget about the science just for a moment.
Just look at the economics of it, right?
So picture this, right?
You have The government has, of course, you indirectly, but the government has invested how much in research and dissemination of climate change, right?
I don't know.
Tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars, right?
That's what they've invested in this dissemination of climate change, which is the foundational driving justification for these carbon taxes, right?
What's their payoff?
How much are they getting in taxes just here in Canada?
I don't know.
I mean, it's probably their estimates and then we'll sort of see how it shakes out over time.
But how much are they getting as a result of their investment?
And I think you'll find that the answer is It's been a pretty damn tidy investment.
You know, it's worked out really, really well for governments.
They are getting a lot of money, far more than they ever invested in climate change, which they didn't invest anyway, you invested as a taxpayer.
So, if you look at it from an economic standpoint, investing in paranoia pays off in people accepting a tax that otherwise they would have no reason to accept.
No, why would you say, oh, we're going to tax carbon!
You have to demonize carbon in order to tax it.
You have to, quote, dehumanize carbon.
And of course, what I've noticed, and it's been out there, particularly in India and China, there have been massive regrowth and extra growth of, well, green spaces, right?
And forests and grasslands and so on.
To the point where new acreage of green space is about equivalent to the entire Amazon rainforest.
New!
And people are like, well, that's surprising.
It's like, well, no, not if you remember that CO2 is plant food.
It's not that shocking, not that surprising.
So I just wanted to mention that.
Do you have a hope of returning to former glory?
It's a tough call, man.
I mean, it's a tough call.
I don't know.
I don't know how things are going to go.
And I don't...
want to guess because see the moment I say here's how things are going to go I'm going to change my own behavior sort of back to earlier what I was saying right the moment the moment I say well it's going to go good it's going to go well okay then I'll slack up or it's going to go badly then I'll give up so I just have to keep this portal of not knowingness out there in the world so that I remain as motivated as humanly possible.
Someone sorry Demolitorian says I should start playing Elder Scrolls with your daughter.
Is that that's the the online version of Skyrim, right?
Something maybe I don't know.
I'd have to see how how violent it is Nick!
Hey, Nick!
He did a show with me a little while back ago, maybe a couple of months.
He said, Nick, I'm not gonna try and parse those Greek letters.
Nick from Greece.
Got divorced.
I feel amazing.
My son is much happier.
I see him a lot.
He stays close.
I have tears of joy seeing how much support and love and respect I have for my friends.
Thank you.
Well, thank you, Nick.
Now, here's something that's kind of a funny little coincidence here.
It's very interesting.
So, This is somebody calling in from a show giving me an update, right?
And right above this person says, hey Steph, like literally the next message above says, hey Steph, any chance you'll ever do a show where you could let us know how previous callers are doing now?
Very interesting.
I think that's not likely, and I'll sort of tell you why.
So I'd have to go back and choose people, I'd have to still have valid contact information, which I don't usually, and I'd also then have to go back and listen to old shows, and then I'd have to tie people, have to listen to the old shows, then the new shows, and it would be a lot of work for somewhat of an uncertain outcome.
So I do not think that that's particularly likely.
I do not know.
I'm sorry if this is stuttering a little bit on the video.
I'm just looking at my side here.
I assume it's the same on yours.
It stuttered last time and I thought it was because HDR was on.
So I turned that off and it's the same setup I've had before.
So I don't know what's changed.
So I just wanted to apologize because I'm trying to get things right.
Yeah, zero drop frames.
It's a high bitrate and What can I do?
What can I tell you?
I'm sorry about the stutter.
I'll just have to ignore it because it bothers me.
All right.
Amy Ernest says, are you at all related to Peter Molyneux?
I am not to my knowledge.
That's the video game developer.
I did Fable and other kinds of stuff.
Knew that I don't know.
Jason Edward says, I have been watching your show for a long while now.
All I can say is that no one has the answers for everyone, but you focus people into the light.
Agreed, thank you.
Mysterium Legosi says, my channel is mainly about fragrances.
What cologne do you wear?
Also, you should check out a movie on YouTube Red called Bodied.
It was written by a Canadian battle rapper.
I usually don't wear cologne.
Anthony says, will you please have a call and show attempt with me?
Possibly, just send me an email.
Ah!
Hello!
That's very interesting.
So this is a message from...
a lady and or gentleman with whom I had a conversation about their life in the amateur adult porn industry a call back ago so you should check that out and they say have you heard about the new controversial Rammstein music video Deutschland it's a detailed history of visual history of Germany and about wanting to be patriotic and loving where you come from but finding it extremely conflicting because of the history you know it's funny I don't
I don't have a lot of chance to consume other people's stuff.
I'll maybe watch a show before bed, if I can get something like 20 minutes or whatever, and I don't usually have a chance to dip into other people's stuff.
So that's tricky.
All right.
Forwellian Rhapsody says, I created this bit of poetry.
Knowledge maintains the flesh and transforms the material until fear is but a dream and smiles of youth are adverts above a perfect skyscraper.
That's nice.
Knowledge maintains the flesh, true, and transforms the material until fear is but a dream.
Transforms how?
That's the challenge, right?
And smiles of youth are adverts above a perfect skyscraper.
I guess that's a teenage boner.
I don't know.
I like it.
I like it.
I would continue to work with it and make sure that you communicate some idea that has a evocative conclusion.
It's usually important.
Taylor Adolph says, hey staff, thanks for your great work.
Is this a good time to start a new business?
I'm always afraid of starting before the coming recession.
Well, if there's a coming recession, then the odds of you keeping your existing job are low anyway.
I mean, unless you're locked into some government contract.
So, and even then you can have layoffs and so on from the government.
So I think in general, yeah, it's a good time to start a new business because the skills that you develop by being your own boss, anybody with half a brain who's in the business world, like let's say your business succeeds.
Well, great.
If your business fails, then the experience that you've gained through that whole process is so helpful and so important that it will make you a much more marketable employee in the long run.
So yes, I think so.
BL Perock says, can Candace Owens win the election for President of the United States in 2024?
I would say that she's on the right trajectory, in the right direction, and with the right momentum.
So I would say That it's certainly possible.
But of course, if you get a Trump dynasty with Donald Jr.
or so on running for office, that would be a challenge.
But she's gonna stick around.
And I have a lot of respect for her.
I mean, she's got a lot of courage.
She's got a lot of dedication.
She's got a lot of passion.
And she's smart as a whip.
So I think, you know, she is very, very impressive.
Woman and I would not want to put any particular cap on her potential.
So I think you know keep an eye on follower on Twitter and so on and you'll always find it interesting to see what she has to say.
Now, Matthew says, have you witnessed the recent unraveling of Owen Benjamin?
I'm sorry, I have not kept up with Dear Owen's show, and I would hesitate to characterize it that way because I don't know.
This is your word, not mine, so I would have to say no to that, but thank you for your support.
Eight Inch Vince says, does going to an Ivy League school still mean anything?
Should I go for, say, political science if I have the GI Bill?
Thanks, my brother from another.
Well, it does, right?
I mean, so Ivy League schools, there's like an afterglow of prior achievement that can last sometimes for a generation or even more.
And the way that Ivy Leagues mean something is Ivy Leagues used to signal something to do with independent thought, capacity to rationally process information according to somewhat objective standards.
But what does an Ivy League school mean now?
Well an Ivy League school now means that you have been well programmed into leftist indoctrination land and most rational entrepreneurs would look pretty askance at that kind of degree so it's going to channel you towards lefty approval organizations so I don't know.
It's tough.
And, you know, this is the interesting thing, right?
So, the GI Bill, so you've got the taxpayers, the unborn, the debt-ridden fetuses are going to pay for your, quote, education, and because it's free, you're like, eh, I don't want a hat, right?
I mean, me, I'm like, I'm a coupon guy.
I'm a coupon guy.
Big-time confession here.
I mean, I've been a coupon guy because I grew up poor, right?
So this really matters.
Like, I remember when I was in University, there used to be these two-for-one coupons for, you know, the Subway sandwich shop.
These would be two-for-one coupons.
So if you go and get, you'd go and get the maximum calorie sub and you'd laden it down with absolutely everything.
You'd get two of those, you'd keep them in the fridge and you got four meals, right?
Because you cut them in half and you got six inch sections, right?
You got lunch, dinner, lunch, dinner.
And so for what was back then like four or five bucks, I could get Four meals out of it and I used to go and find the newspapers and just get every conceivable coupon because sometimes they would be like for a month you could get these coupons and you could live like a king I mean that was because you know it's good stuff you know my humble opinion I mean there's this fresh veggies and great cheese and and all of that it's good tasting stuff so
I'm sort of a coupon guy, but it changes your behaviors, right?
So even now, I get a coupon and I'm like, well, we're going here because, you know, I get a peculiar thrill out of paying less than $10 for a meal for two.
I just love it.
Coupons change your behavior.
And here you got kind of a coupon, right?
You got the GI Bill, which is going to subsidize your education.
But rather than saying what is available to me for free or subsidized, just ask what you would do if you had to pay for it yourself.
That's the important thing to me.
I mean, whether you go to one sandwich shop or another is not hugely important, but if you get, if you say, well, I get this free education, so I'm going to go and take it.
Well, it's not free.
Is it going to be tough for you in the future when people, if you complain about the national debt, if you took free stuff from the government, you know, maybe, maybe.
Is it going to be very costly for you to go into this leftist indoctrination hellscape?
And of course from your avatar it looks like you're white and that means that you're gonna be programmed with a lot of self-hatred and hatred for your culture and so on.
So is it really free?
I don't know.
If you care about political science you can become knowledgeable, more knowledgeable, about political science by reading and listening to shows.
Then you'll get in school, I believe.
School is... universities are not original.
I mean, what was the last great theory of ethics to come out of universities?
I mean, John Rawls' theory of justice?
Was that the 70s, 80s?
So, no, it's... they're not... they're not fertile centers of creativity and they don't like to challenge themselves and they're You know, I said this on Twitter the other day, modern education is mostly just a justification or justifications of hatred.
It's all about legitimizing hatred.
That's all it is, right?
So, I think it's going to be very costly and it wouldn't be my choice for sure.
All right, Michael Brown says, how did boomers develop a complete inability to be self-reflective and instead effortlessly perform cartwheels of gymnastic self-justification?
That is a very, very nice sentence, my friend.
I really, uh, that's a delightfully strung together set of syllables.
So, it's a good question.
The boomers were the first generation in human history to be subject to the delusion of infinite resources.
And I mean boomers sort of in the West, whites in particular, coming from Europe and so on, right?
So if you're a pygmy in a jungle, you don't really think you're gonna run out of jungle, you don't really think you're gonna run out of food.
I mean, they're incredibly violent groups, the pygmies in general, like they'll hit each other on the head and try and kill each other over minor disagreements, incredibly violent.
But they don't think that they're about to run out of food anytime Soon.
What tends to get primitive populations in the tropics is, you know, war, there's of course disease, but usually it's not starvation, right?
Starvation is kind of a Siberian slash European East Asian white phenomenon, right?
So learning how to manage scarce resources is pretty important.
Now, with central banking, You are creating a sense of tropical abundance in a European culture.
In a scarcity mindset, you are creating a sense of tropical abundance.
Like you can just print money, you can borrow money, you can future load your money by selling bonds and so on.
You get the money now and it's paid for.
I think in Nova Scotia, they have bonds that are over 70 years.
I mean, completely mad.
But if you don't have to weigh It's called the Warfare Welfare State, right?
So during the Vietnam War is when you have Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society, right?
This is all the beginning of the giant welfare state programs.
And listen, people remind me of this, and it's a very, very good point to remember, that it was this quote greatest generation that voted in the first round of people who put forward the big socialist welfare state.
It's the greatest generation.
I mean, there was a post-Second World War period where you got old age pensions and then the welfare state, you know, if you get the kids born in the late 40s, you know, 20 years later it's the late 60s, by the late 60s you already have the welfare state in place.
So it's the greatest generation.
The boomers kind of grew up in this mindset.
So they grew up in great security.
Back in the 50s, you know, people say, oh, well, there was really, really high Income taxes, like 90%.
It's like, yeah, but nobody paid any of that stuff.
I mean, they all, everybody avoided it and escaped it and invested too, right?
Nobody paid 90%.
Come on.
It's like that.
It was 95% under the Beatles, right?
I remember that song.
The tax man, that's one for you, 19 for me.
And they just buggered off, right?
They just left, like Queen, like David Bowie, like Bono, right?
I mean, just, oh yeah, it's really great, gotta have all these taxes, gotta forgive all this third world debt, but I don't want to pay the high taxes that this whole system requires, so I'm going to bugger off to some other country.
set everything up so that I don't have to pay my taxes.
So in the 50s there was incredible job security and there was I mean no mass immigration from the third world, the borders were secure, there was in fact under Eisenhower called Operation Wetback there was rounding up and deporting of I think well north of a hundred or two hundred thousand illegal immigrants.
And so, yeah, wages were stable and strong.
And you had a pretty nice set of suburbs, right?
I mean, this is back in the day when one income earner could afford three or four or five kids and two cars sometimes and a nice house in the suburbs and very secure.
And so, and this, of course, was the time when poverty was being solved in America, like 1% decline in the poverty rate every year, right?
So government was running out of poor people and poor people vote for a bigger government.
So if you want a big government, you've got to stop the outflow of poor people on the welfare state being a sticky roach motel to get people trapped in the welfare state is perfect for plugging the exodus of poor people that is the foundation of your political power.
So, self-justification, lack of self-reflection, when you can wage war, right?
It always used to be guns or butter, guns or butter, right?
If you have a lot of guns, you can't have a lot of butter.
If you have a lot of butter, you can't have a lot of guns.
The military-industrial versus the consumer market was always the problem in the past, but With the decoupling of the gold standard in the 70s, early 70s under Nixon with, I mean, it happened under FDR as well.
So you could just print and borrow and make up whatever you wanted as far as finances went.
So why would you need self-reflection when you have the illusion of infinite resources?
You don't walk around saying, oh man, where is my next breath of air gonna come from?
I need air this evening.
Man, I gotta make sure I'm at some place where I can get air.
I can't forget about the air stuff.
If I'm out of air, man, that's terrible.
You don't function like that as a person.
It's not your mindset.
Why?
Because air is basically infinite, right?
I mean, we don't usually think.
about where our next breaths are going to come from.
We just do it, right?
We just don't think about it.
So you don't have a lot of self-reflection about the availability of air and it's the same thing with the boomers and with money.
When you have the sense of infinite resources then the only reason that someone would be denied those resources is because of vicious meanness.
And this is where the rage comes from, like from the left, right?
Because they genuinely believe that resources are infinite.
So, like when you say to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 94 trillion dollars is quite a lot to pay for a Green New Deal, it doesn't sit in that mindset.
It doesn't sit, when you talk about, like, Elizabeth Warren now has a plan where she's gonna forgive, what, 600 million or north of that worth of college debt and so on, it's like, eh, 600 million, if money is just this, if oxygen, right, like, if oxygen is everywhere, which it kinda is, right, oxygen is everywhere, Why would you want to deny someone oxygen?
Because you hate them and you want them to die, right?
You strangle someone, right?
There's your gift.
If you strangle someone, they're gonna die, right?
And you're denying them their natural right to the infinite resource called air, called oxygen, right?
And so if you deep down, and it's tough for those of us who kind of understand this, I put out something on Twitter the other day, says here's a four-letter intelligence test.
Free!
Right?
As soon as somebody starts saying something is free, they're dumb or propagandized or both.
I mean just they don't, like not worth talking to because they're no sense of reality, right?
So air is free and air is infinite as far as it goes for breathing.
So why would you want to deny someone air?
You must really hate someone.
You must really hate someone if you want to deny them air of all things.
How monstrous!
And so if resources are like air Why would you not want to give someone air?
How horrible a human being would you have to be to give someone air?
And so if healthcare is like air, and if welfare money is like air, and if college education is like air, just give people what they need.
Let them have their air, for heaven's sakes.
What kind of monster would withhold air from another human being?
And I know it's weird.
It's a weird mindset to be in.
But it makes life pretty easy.
It's stupid and incredibly destructive.
But it makes life pretty easy.
Because you just have to yell at people who are withholding all of these infinite resources from people and call them racists and sexists and bigots and blah blah blah blah blah, right?
It's like when Angela Merkel in Germany invited a million people in from the third world or more or whatever or Middle East She's like, well, we can do this!
Together we can do this!
Like, it's just a matter of wanting to.
It's just a matter of, well, let's just knuckle down and do it, right?
But there's never any... I mean, this is the art of politics, right?
This is why politics desperately needs this infinite geyser of magic money.
Because the moment a politician says, well, okay, so we can, let's say, Angela Merkel says, okay, we can invite these million people in plus from the Middle East, right?
But here's what we're gonna have to cut back on, and here's how much your taxes are gonna have to be raised.
It's like, no.
Money is like oxygen.
If there are a million people who need to breathe and it costs you nothing to let them breathe, why would you want to withhold air from them?
You're killing them, right?
I mean, literally, this is how this mindset works.
You don't worry about oxygen.
You view attempts to deprive other people of oxygen as murderous intent.
You're not self-reflective about oxygen.
You don't hoard it.
You don't worry about it being around later.
You don't worry about running out.
So just think, put yourself in the mindset of people who genuinely believe that money is like air.
That resources are like air.
It's infinite.
It's available.
It should be given to everyone.
It's free.
And the only reason you'd want to withhold it is because you hate people and want them to die, right?
If you get into that mindset, back to the original question from Michael Brown, from beyond, how did boomers develop a complete inability to be self-reflective and instead effortlessly perform cartwheels of gymnastic self-justification?
Because They were never asked to make any hard choices.
I don't mean individually in their life, but in politics.
You can have the welfare warfare state.
You can have Medicare.
You can have Medicaid.
You can have old age pensions.
You can have SNAP.
You can have additional spending on government education.
You can have roads.
The roads are still being paid off from the 1950s and the 1960s, even under Eisenhower.
You can have all of this stuff.
Don't worry about paying for it.
It's all kicked the can down the road.
So why would you have to make tough choices?
You don't sit there and say, well, I better breathe less.
I gotta slow down.
I can't exercise.
If I exercise, I'm gonna run out of oxygen.
Like if you're on a spaceship, you'd have to really manage your air, right?
But you don't, right?
Because it's infinite.
It's free.
And if you understand that mindset, I'm not like it's a little, it's crazy.
It's an insane mindset without a doubt.
Right.
But.
Or think of it like sunlight.
Well, even sunlight is less common than oxygen because it's cloudy, right?
But if you're on the beach, right?
If you said, I should be the... Like, we've got to limit the amount of sun that falls on other people.
We've got to put them in the shade.
We've got to make them cool.
We've got to make them cold.
They can't get a tan, right?
What does it matter if sunlight lands on someone else?
It doesn't make any sense.
You enjoy your own sunlight.
He's not taking yours, you're not taking his.
Sunlight is effectively infinite as far as that goes.
So why would you want to deny sunlight to people?
Because you're mean, right?
You hate them.
If you get this infinite resources mentality, then the left makes perfect sense, right?
I mean, it makes perfect sense.
And also for the left, the resources just exist.
And, you know, you just jack up taxes on rich people.
Well, the resources are still going to be there.
You know, if taxes go to 90%, That doesn't change the availability of oxygen.
It's just an infinite resource.
It doesn't change the availability of sunlight.
If taxes go to 90% on the rich, right?
And it's the same thing with jobs and factories and roads and sewage and like, it doesn't matter.
It's just there.
Like air.
So yeah, I mean, it's a stupid perspective, but it's really, really common.
And this is why, of course, you have this weird situation in the world.
It's crazy.
Situation in the world where nobody ever talks about paying off the debt.
No one.
No one ever, like, no politician ever says, oh man, we have really run up a lot of debt here, people.
We got to start cutting back savagely to pay off this debt.
People don't want to hear the truth.
I mean, I did this April 1st.
Why I was wrong about running for office, right?
Can you imagine if that speech was given?
Yeah, we have no money, and we've got a privatized banking, we've got a privatized currency, and we're either going to repudiate these debts or we're going to pay them off or something, but, you know, you're going to have to pay double your taxes for half your services for the rest of your lives.
People are like, I don't want to hear that!
And this... People say, well, what's the root of the crisis in the West?
The root of the crisis in the West is very simple.
It's that people are railing against reality.
People are railing against math.
People are railing against physics.
People are railing against biodiversity.
People are railing against the truth.
When you become hysterical about the truth, your civilization, such as it is, can't survive.
And you say, well, should or shouldn't, it doesn't matter.
You can't.
If you are allergic to truth, if you are hysterical about being brought some simple facts, you can't, you can't make it, you can't survive.
So I hope that makes some sense.
All right.
What have we got here?
Okay, sorry.
Zoe says, hey Stefan, thanks for all that you do.
I'm 23 and just got married.
My husband is high IQ and we hope to have kids soon.
We both love your show.
Thank you for everything.
P.S.
Love your Twitter.
Let me just zoom in here.
I'm always curious what people look like.
Ah, what a delightful looking young lady.
Thank you so much.
I appreciate that.
Congratulations on getting married.
I had a real tussle last night on Twitter with some antinatalists, like the people who are like, oh, life is suffering.
Children add nothing.
We have a higher purpose than just breed like bacteria.
Right?
I mean...
Yeah, it's just garbage.
Bullshit.
It's embarrassing.
All the people who are like, well, I'm alive, I love being alive, and I'm alive because of the sacrifices and investment of my parents, but I'll be damned if I will pay it forward and bring life to anyone else.
I mean, you have the ability to rub naughty bits together in a great shower of pleasure and create human consciousness out of the leftover vomit of exploded stars.
Come on, that's not a bad way to spend eight or nine minutes.
I mean, it's an incredible thing!
You can make life!
You can make thought out of sex!
It's astonishing.
The ideas are there, arguments are there, beliefs are there that otherwise would never be there.
And all of the joy and pleasure or whatever bizarre satisfaction these people take out of life, you're just denying to anybody else.
It's like if you have a friend and everyone exchanges gifts, you know, and it's not particularly economically productive, but it's nice.
You know, Christmas you exchange gifts, birthdays you exchange gifts and so on, right?
And everyone gives you gifts and then you don't give anyone a gift back.
Kind of a jerk, right?
Because you're receiving without giving.
You could say to people, listen, I'm never going to give you a gift back.
So if you want to give me a gift, fine, but I'm never, I don't reciprocate gifts.
People can make that decision.
But I wonder, you know, it's almost like a cheat.
This thought just struck me.
Like, I wonder if, if you're this, like, I don't want to have kids.
I don't want to give birth.
I don't want to create life out of nothing.
I wonder if your parents would have bothered having you if they had known that you were the end of the line.
3 billion years of evolution, fight, struggle, death, decay, birth, pain, death, disease, predation, unbroken line of genetics, 3 billion years back.
Ends with you.
Why?
Why does it end with you?
Because having children might interfere with your hedonistic, selfish lifestyle?
Well, here's the thing.
The abandonment of responsibility is fun when you're young, you know, when you're pretty and you're healthy and nothing aches and all that.
But the second half of your life, people aren't going to really want that much to do with you, right?
Because the younger people don't want to hang around with like that old joke.
I don't know who it was.
Was it Eddie Murphy?
You don't want to be that guy in the club who's like, huh?
You know, it's just too old, getting kind of grizzled.
You don't want to be that guy in the club.
Everyone thinks that they're like you're a reject bouncer or something.
But when you get older, in the 40s and 50s and so on, you get kind of creaky.
And, you know, you're not going to be dating people who are as pretty as you were when you were 25.
And you're going to have to start to shift, particularly if you're a woman.
You can check out my podcast video here too, Sexual Resources, The Most Honest Modern Woman.
Where I basically mock her for straddling a Nazgul, which is the guy she has to have sex with.
It really tips.
It really tips.
And then the second half of your life, you need resources.
You need help.
And people aren't just going to walk up and love you.
You know, because when you're young, they'll walk up and want to have sex with you.
Or maybe you've got something you can offer them, some status or something like that.
But when you get older, you know, You gotta have built-in relationships because new relationships are kind of tough to find.
You get into your 50s and everyone's usually got a family, they got kids, they got grandkids on the way maybe.
They don't have a lot of time for your lonely single life story about a funny video you watched and what your cat did with a flower yesterday.
And it's a really, mine is a pretty sad and Lonely and kind of pitiful second half to your life.
All the fun and attention that you get when you're young and cool and hip and limber, it all just fades away and you've got to build for the second half of your life.
You've got to build for the second half of your life.
It's a long time.
We live a long time these days.
Get pretty long in the damn tooth these days.
We live a long time.
And you can't just, you know, make it to 40.
You still got another 40 to 50 years to go, man.
It's a long time.
I mean, I hope to make it into my eighties, maybe more.
You know, cancer probably helped me be healthier.
Like I almost eat no sugar and exercise even more and all of that.
So, yeah, you gotta plan for that second half.
Like you're 70, you've retired, what the hell are you gonna do?
Take up squash.
Who's gonna wanna hang out with you when you're 70?
Or 75?
Or 80?
I used to drive past this old age retirement home to see people sitting out there.
Nobody comes to visit.
Nobody comes to see them.
Just sitting there waiting.
Like sand in an hourglass, just passively waiting for the ticket to blow up and the heart to stop.
Ended.
You know, whereas if you're 70 and you've had kids, you've got grandkids, you've got a built-in community, you've got a tribe, you've got people who care about you, people who are going to give you resources, people you've invested in.
You've bonded together in tribal reciprocity.
It's a horrible life.
It's a horrible life.
If you can't build that kind of community.
Maybe you can do it in other ways, other than kids, I don't know, but... Congratulations, Zoe, that's great.
Anonymous says I'm dropping out of college.
What should I tell employers about my unfinished degree when I apply for jobs?
I have pertinent skills Just tell them that you wanted to work You weren't learning as much as you wanted in school.
You wanted to be efficient and you can offer them This is what I would say I would say this almost exactly I would say so why did you drop out of college?
It's like so that I could charge less as an employee Because if I finished my college, I'd have had a couple of years of deferred income.
I'd have extra debt.
And I looked at it and I said, okay, if I got two more years of college, it's going to cost me whatever it's going to be.
I mean, in terms of deferred income and what you spend, it's like $40,000 a year or more, right?
So you say, let's say it was $40,000 a year.
See, I got two years left.
That's $80,000 right there in both debt and in deferred income.
And so I said, okay, do I want to spend $80,000 for the knowledge that I'm going to accumulate over the next two years?
Well, if I do, okay, great, you know, for two years to be a doctor and, you know, then go be a doctor, right?
You make it back, right?
But I said, if I did a rational calculation, said, is it worth it for me?
And by that, I mean, is it worth it to my future employer?
Because if I have given up $80,000 worth of income, To get that education, someone's going to have to make up for that.
And so I thought, well, can I actually sell two more years of school to a potential employer?
And the answer is no, I can't, right?
So let's say that I work for you for 10 years, but I deferred $80,000 and spent, you know, deferred and spent $80,000 for two years.
I work for you for 10 years.
The rational thing, give or take, is for me to charge you an extra $8,000 a year to pay for that $80,000 for the extra two years of schooling that I got.
Now, if I'm a doctor or a lawyer, I need those two years of schooling, that makes sense, right?
But I don't think I should charge you $8,000 a year extra as an employee because I wanted those two extra years of school.
In other words, those two extra years of school are not going to deliver $80,000 worth of value to a potential employer.
What will, and this is sort of part of my calculation, what will give you real value Is being able to pay me less.
Because I didn't finish school.
And I'll get on the job training.
That's one of the reasons you pay me less.
I get on the job training.
Because I love to learn.
I love this industry.
I love to learn.
So I will work like crazy at this job, at this business, in this field.
You'll pay me less.
I'll learn on the job.
And instead of spending $80,000 and charging you $8,000 extra a year, I'm going to make you money.
I'm going to save me money.
And I'm pretty sure if you're a good businessman or a woman, that's exactly the kind of employee that you want.
So that would be my way of selling it.
So, all right.
Ah, message deleted.
Thank you very much.
Wilke, what are your thoughts about Faith Goldie being banned from Facebook and Instagram for wrongthink?
I don't like this banning stuff.
I really don't.
I wouldn't approve of anyone, friend or foe, being banned for wrongthink.
I don't.
I don't like it at all.
I think it's a very bad precedent.
I think it's very bad all around.
All right.
Tim Van White Swinkle.
White Swinkle?
Stefan Molyneux, what happens when we die?
Well, apparently our brain stays alive for a little while, which is kind of interesting.
But, uh, well, precious little.
I mean, we returned to the same inanimate non-stuff that we were when we started or before we started.
So, um, get your, get your living in now, cause nothing happens after the credits.
Hacksandot says, I don't know what, what is the currency?
Okay.
Let me look this up.
Cause I'm curious.
What is that currency?
H-U-F.
Ah, it's the Hungarian footprint.
Forint?
Hungarian forint.
Wow, I'm really sorry about your relationship to the Canadian dollar.
That's quite tragic.
All right, check out Liberty Minecraft, a libertarian server with regular Minecraft plus basic libertarian rules, private property, and a non-fiat currency.
Very interesting experiment and lots of fun.
Thank you, I will.
Uh, Joni Balona says, Stefan, yes, philosophy is great, but can it help me beat Sword Saint Isshin Ashina?
Is that a video game reference?
Um, good luck.
JustaGuy says, I'm in the military, have four years left on my commitment.
Was a pilot, but got disqualified, only to prove boss was singling me out.
Should I finish commitment or find a way to get out now?
I really can't answer that question for you.
If there's a way for you to honorably get out, and I remember doing shows back in the day, gosh this is quite some time ago, about people who helped those in the military get out.
If there's an honorable way for you to get out and you don't want to be there, free will man, free will.
Oh, okay.
Anthony says, what's your take on Antifa and the medical industry?
I'm not sure how those are combined, sorry.
Part.
Morality of porn.
Is all porn immoral to consume, even drawn porn or erotic fiction which involves no one?
Where is the objective moral line drawn on porn?
If it flies with the NAP is it all okay?
It's an interesting question.
Erotic fiction?
I mean, there's many major works of Western literature that have been classified as just such.
I mean, Lady Chatterley's Lover, there is a story of O, which is I think more, say, masochistic.
There's the Marquis de Sade's creepy, nasty writing.
So certainly nobody is harmed in the writing of erotic fiction.
Drawn porn does not Harvest the early trauma of people who have often been brutalized as children and so on so I certainly think that If it engages your imagination more it probably is better It certainly harms fewer if any people and it probably is better as a whole if that makes any sense so that would be my suggestion Factor Nonverba says, we take air for granted until there is no air and then we realize how bad off we are in the moment.
Yet we often ignore how we put ourselves in a situation where air could run out in the first place through our complacency.
Very true.
Andrew Willis says, Homeschooling.
I agree with stopping the brainwashing of kids.
But is keeping them at home and not interacting with other kids a type of safe space?
The schoolyard can be hard at times, but life can be hard too.
Thoughts.
So, I mean, this is an interesting question.
Do you allow your kids to be traumatized because there are bad people in the world, right?
In other words, is it bad to keep bad people away from your kids because they may have to deal with bad people in the future at some point, right?
Well, my sort of answer to that is
Somewhat simple which is you follow the non-aggression principle and you don't allow toxic people around your kids You don't I mean you wouldn't force-feed them dirt in order to strengthen their immune system Even though there is some evidence that that would be the case and you don't you don't sort of lose them in the woods and Give them that experience of finding their way back as you know, that's kind of terrifying for kids, right?
So I mean If you keep your kids at home in homeschool, it's not like they don't interact with other kids.
They just interact with other kids that you choose.
I mean, you choose your wife and you spend time with your wife, right?
But you don't just go on dates with random people.
Because that would be kind of crazy, right?
So you don't allow, like you don't just, you know, blindly swipe on Tinder and then just go out with people if you're married because you want to spend time with your wife.
It's the same thing with your kids, right?
You don't just put them under the control of random people and random other kids and so on.
So the schoolyard can be hard at times, but life can be hard too.
Well, the whole point, of course, is to have them not end up in situations where their adult life is like a goddamn schoolyard, right?
The only time they're going to end up, heaven help it, and God forbid, but the only time they're going to end up in a schoolyard situation is if they end up in prison, right?
Where an institution determines who they spend time with.
So no, you don't traumatize your kids, you don't put them around dysfunctional people, because you don't want them in their adult life spending time with dysfunctional people either, right?
So you don't want them to get used to that, so.
NVK says, Hello, Stefan.
I just wanted to say thank you.
Your videos have been extremely helpful to me, especially in terms of personal growth, my marriage and dealing with family.
Thank you.
A Surinamese fan.
That is very kind.
I appreciate that.
Butterfly Cyclist says, thank you.
Oh, three exclamation marks.
I will take that.
And thank you very much.
Okay.
I've got to, I got a listener call in about 15 minutes.
So, um, I just want to kind of go through the last ones here.
Do you believe in poor atheists?
If so, why?
I know some poor atheists, or at least I did, so yes.
What is your opinion on recent developments on charter cities of free society?
So charter cities of free society, I don't know if you're talking about seasteading, that a government just I think pillaged and tried to arrest some people who were seasteading, so that's not Super great.
So, I don't know, Charter Cities and Free Society.
Sorry, I'm not up to speed on that.
Matthew Weber says, I have guilt for distancing myself from my mom, but she was very abusive to me as a child, similar to your childhood.
Do you feel guilty for cutting the relationship with your mom?
Any advice for me?
God, no.
Oh my God, no.
In fact, I would feel guilty for continuing that relationship.
I couldn't be married, I couldn't be a good father if... I mean, no.
God.
No, no.
To me it would have been a terrible, terrible decision to continue that.
It would have been wretched.
It would be me having no self-respect, no self-interest, and simply obeying the whims and preferences of a crazy person who did great evil in her life.
Why would I want to be enslaved into an immoral army?
Because of the narcissistic needs of a crazy person.
That's not a way to be individuated, or have pride in yourself, or have security, or have strength.
No!
Oh God, no!
You're gonna feel... I'm sorry, I mean, I know this sounds startling, perhaps, to some people, but... Heaven's the market right now.
No, I wish I had done it sooner.
I mean, it's been 20 years, I wish it had been 40.
I mean, my 20s and early 30s would have been much better if I didn't have this skinny bag of poison containerville in my life.
So now, but here's the key thing, right?
So it's, you say, I have guilt for distancing myself from my mom, but she was very abusive to me as a child.
I don't know, obviously, what happened.
You said it's similar to my childhood.
And for that, I'm incredibly sorry.
And I have massive amounts of sympathy for you, Matthew.
But here's the thing.
It's not primarily because she was abusive to you as a child that you don't see her.
It was not primarily because my mother was abusive to me as a child that I don't see her.
It's because she continues to deny and blame as an adult.
Right?
That is the primary reason.
If your mother had gone to therapy, had learned some great things, had revelations, had wrestled with her demons, had apologized, had made amends, had, right?
It's not that the abuse dominoes inevitably.
But the abuse as a child can't see, right?
It's what they do now that is the key.
And it's what they're going to do in the future.
Right?
Which is why I sat down with my mother on multiple occasions and talked to her about My childhood and gave her every conceivable opportunity to apologize, to acknowledge wrong.
Didn't remember anything.
It never happened.
And I could see she was eyeing me like, am I going to get away with this?
Is he going to let me?
Hmm.
No, I didn't.
Never happened.
Right?
You always get those sidelong glances of like, is my bullshit landing?
Is it, is it being accepted?
Am I going to get away with this con?
No.
We are not here to serve the needs of evildoers, my friend.
We are not here to serve the needs of evildoers.
We are here to serve truth.
We are here to serve virtue.
We are here to serve integrity.
And we are here to serve courage.
People who beat up on children are contemptible, cowardly scum.
And maybe there's redemption.
in such malodorous behavior.
I've never seen it.
I've heard vague tell of it.
Never witnessed it.
Never had a chance to cross-examine someone who makes such a claim.
But I want you to think of this.
This helped me.
I thought if I saw Someone beating up someone in a wheelchair, an adult, right?
An adult beating up another adult in a wheelchair.
I thought, what would I think of that person?
I think, oh, they were contemptuous and horrible and ghastly and immoral and right?
But you understand, beating up on someone in a wheelchair, who's an adult, is far better, far more moral, so to speak, than beating up on a child, your child.
Because an adult who's in a wheelchair can call the cops.
An adult in a wheelchair can press charges and still live independently of you, or of the assaulter.
They have money, they have their own place, they have the protection of the law, they have independence, they have security.
So it's evil, of course, to beat up on someone in a wheelchair.
But it's still far better than beating up on a child.
Who has no independence, who has no money, who has no resources, who can rarely, if ever, productively press the law against to restrain the fists of a parent.
Now, oddly enough, it's one of these strange coincidences that I can understand why people think something, the simulation is going on, right?
Check out essentialphilosophy.com, but shortly after I had this revelation, Would I be friends with someone who regularly beat up people in wheelchairs?
Come on.
You wouldn't be friends with someone like that.
He's like, hey, let's go punch some people in wheelchairs.
You want to come?
I'm a great friend.
I mean, you wouldn't be friends with someone like that.
What if the person in the wheelchair is you?
And what if it's you as a child, which is worse than beating up someone in a wheelchair?
You wouldn't be friends with someone like that.
So after I had this revelation, It was very strange.
I was walking down a city street and I saw a guy threatening a woman in a wheelchair.
I was... Never saw it before.
Never saw it since.
One time.
I was journaling about all of this when I was in therapy.
I did like 15, 20 hours of journaling.
A week when I... I come out from journaling and it wasn't that same day.
It was like a day or two later.
I see a guy leaning over menacing a woman in a wheelchair.
So I walked up and I said, listen, you got to back off, man.
This is wrong.
This is not right.
You can't do this.
You can't do this.
And he was grumbling.
He got a little ferocious, but I'm not a small guy.
I'm like just under six feet.
Buck 90 plus and, you know, I work out and so I'm not, you know, I'm not like a big physically intimidating guy, but, you know, I'm fairly solidly built, I guess you could say, and I don't mind eyeballing people who are being aggressive.
So I went up and I talked to him.
I didn't get so aggressive that he felt, you know, chest-thumpingly the need to respond in an escalating fashion, but I just walked up and told him.
That he has to back off.
And this is not, you can't, you can't do this.
Right.
So he did, he backed off and the woman was very, very grateful.
And then she drifted me.
So I said, are you hungry?
And I took her to McDonald's and got her something to eat.
And then she was pressing me for more and more money.
And I gave her everything that I had.
And she said, can you meet me tomorrow for more money?
And it's like, come on lady.
I mean, come on, come on, but just think of that.
Would you be friends with a man who beat up a woman in a wheelchair?
Who has much more independence than you as a child ever did.
Would you feel guilty?
Let's say you have a friend, you think he's a little sketchy but he's kind of funny and it turns out that he beats up people in wheelchairs.
Would you feel guilty for not seeing that person?
Ah, you know.
He needs me, right?
I mean, I told the story of the guy who almost attacked me on the bike, right?
Throwing his bike around and I was not friends with him.
And he called me like the next summer.
He's like, oh, you still have a football of mine.
Let's get together.
It's like, yeah, I'll drop the phone, mail it, leave it outside.
You can get it if you want.
Did I feel bad for breaking off a friendship with a guy who had a really violent streak?
It turns out it wasn't so bad earlier, but man, after he hit puberty, it's like, oh man, No, I feel guilty.
It's the guy who ended up dying.
This is the story, just for those who don't know it, like I was biking back from a park that we'd gone night biking in.
There's a rock on the sidewalk, I swerve, he almost crashes into me, he says, I cut him off, I said he was tailgating.
I said he was driving too close to me, he wouldn't accept it.
And I wouldn't back down.
Because I knew I was right.
I got a swerve.
I don't want to drive into a rock and flying over my handlebars.
So if he's tailgating me, he's too close.
So anyway, he got more and more angry to the point where he starts screaming.
And I'm like, I get on my bike and I pedal like bad out of hell home.
I'm going down the stairs.
I'm fumbling with my keys.
Like I'm at a horror movie.
The guy's coming charging after me on his bike.
I get in and close the door.
He comes crashing against it, smashing it.
I go up, I see from his balcony down there, he's throwing his bike around, screaming at the top of his lungs.
Crazy guy.
Nuts.
And this is the guy not six or seven years later.
He died.
He died tailgating.
Strange story, man.
He wouldn't accept that he was tailgating me.
And he ended up running into the back of a truck.
I believe he was beheaded.
He was so close to the truck.
Truck stopped.
Strange man.
Not admitting fault is a desperately bad thing for so many people.
So yeah, don't feel bad.
Don't feel bad.
It wasn't your fault.
It wasn't your fault.
All right, sorry, one or two more.
To see the farm is to leave the farm.
What does this mean?
Where I live in the US, leaving the farm is not allowed.
To see the farm is to leave the farm.
Well, if you see the state for what it is, an agency of coercion, then you recognize that the country is not defined by the government, but it's defined in defiance of the government, right?
All that is voluntary is worth defending in the country.
The government is coercive, so you leave the farm.
Like, you no longer accept that the country is defined by the state.
Tippy Bear says, do you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?
Mmm.
What is that I heard Jack Pasobic the other day when people are asking him about stress, he says, give it over to the Lord?
Yeah, I can see the value in that.
It's not a theological argument, but it's tempting.
Sigmund Floyd says, why would a real atheist be poor?
It makes no sense if this life is all there is.
Get what you can while you can, otherwise you're a fraud.
I know I'd be rich if I were an atheist.
Wouldn't care about brownie points.
The Lucid Truth says, would you consider being on my YouTube channel?
Libertarian interview format.
Shoot me an email.
Give me your vital statistics, number of subs, and all that kind of stuff.
And I will check it out.
All right.
I should close this down.
Look, I really appreciate that.
It's wonderful to have everyone drop by on a weeknight.
A real great pleasure to chat with you.
Sorry about the stuttering.
I will work on it.
I tried another program, but it never was able to... I couldn't click the live button, so... But I'll sort it out.
I'm sorry hearing all these tech issues, but...
Thanks everyone so much for listening and for watching.
It's such a great pleasure to be part of this philosophical conversation.
It's a real joy.
Please don't forget to check out... I've got a great book called The Art of the Argument.
You can get it at theartoftheargument.com.
Another book called Essential Philosophy, which you can get at essentialphilosophy.com.
Essential Philosophy is free.
The Art of the Argument is a couple bucks, but well, well worth it, I do believe.
Don't forget please to help out the show free domain radio.com forward slash donate and like subscribe and share the videos It's pretty important because the organic growth that was driving the channel For a long time is gone and it may in fact never return so I can only do so much there is Going to have to be some stuff that comes out of you which is You know, I mean, of course, you know, they want to make it, oh, you shared a Stefan Molyneux video, that's her, right?
But, you know, we have to fight past that kind of stuff and just, you know, do what's right in terms of sharing good ideas.
And the more people who share me, the more people will see that I'm a very reasonable and positive fellow who loves humanity and wants the very best for everyone.
So thanks everyone.
Freedomainradio.com forward slash donate.
I hope, I hope, I hope you have a wonderful week.
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