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July 13, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
43:10
Anarchy: Frequently Asked Questions
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Hello, it's Stephan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
I hope that you're doing well on this 11th of June, 2007.
I thought that I would do an FAQ, Frequently Asked Questions, for Free Domain Radio, for anarcho-capitalism, the philosophy that we talk about here, just so I can point people towards a central resource rather than having to answer all the cavalcades of queries individually.
So, here we go.
Here's some information about Free Domain Radio and The philosophy that we work with here.
What is Freedomain Radio?
Well, maybe you're starting with this video and have no clue, in which case we can talk about that.
Freedomain Radio is a philosophical conversation based on empirical logic and the Socratic method designed to help you bring the maximum freedom and happiness to your life.
Philosophy question.
Philosophy, really?
Isn't philosophy, well, kind of useless?
Isn't philosophy sort of like that Blank-eyed image of Socrates in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, Strange Things Are Afoot at the Circle K?
Isn't philosophy kind of, well, useless?
And say, well, postmodern philosophy in general, yes, having studied some of that in graduate school.
In terms of how you can make sense of your life, And make the kinds of decisions in the here and now that will make you happy in the future?
Absolutely not.
Philosophy is not useless at all.
Philosophy is the most extreme sport known to mankind.
It is intense.
It is grueling, exciting, challenging, ennobling, and occasionally utterly terrifying.
Here at Freedom Radio, we do not focus on philosophy as an abstract science, but as an immediate Personal and tangible methodology.
Philosophy will certainly help you understand politics and history, economics and epistemology, but most importantly, it will help you make rational decisions in your life.
Decisions that you just know are correct.
What approach does Freedom Aid Radio take?
Freedom Aid Radio takes a simple and common sense approach to philosophy.
Clearly, reality exists independent of your mind.
I am not a figment of your imagination, trust me.
I don't even know who you are.
You exist independent of me.
Truth in your mind is fidelity to reality.
Truth is always compared to what?
Well, compared to reality and logic and evidence is the only way of separating truth from opinion, consistency from conformity, fantasy from fact.
What about morality?
Ah, well, morality is one of the most challenging sciences in human thought.
Morality is a concept within the human mind and as such does not exist in external reality.
In the same way that gravity or rocks do.
This does not mean that morality is subjective or imaginary or arbitrary or votable.
Numbers do not exist in external reality either, but that does not mean mathematics is a subjective discipline.
Remember that from grade 12.
Any moral theory must pass a number of scientific and rational hurdles in order to be considered potentially valid.
It must be universal, logical, consistent, reversible, and it must both explain history and have the capacity to predict the future.
Anyone who proposes a form of preferential behavior, that's how I define morality in this conversation, universally preferable behavior.
Anyone who proposes any form of preferential behavior for humanity as a whole must submit that theory to rational and scientific examination, just like any other theory.
If you're not interested in proposing any form of preferential behavior, that's no particular problem.
However, you are then excluded from any debate about ethics.
I mean, just by the logic of it, right?
So, for more on the Free Domain Radio approach to morality, you can have a look at my blog.
There's an article called Proving Libertarian Morality.
It's pretty short, and there's a podcast on it as well.
Lord knows, I can't remember the number.
And it's freedomain.blogspot.com.
So, morality.
But, dude, aren't you an anarchist?
Yes, I am an anarchist.
Unfortunately, the term has been degraded through mythology to mean, quote, a world without rules, usually garbed in post-apocalyptic outerwear and riding a well-armed motorcycle.
This is nonsense, of course.
Anarchy is merely the logical application of the moral premise that the initiation of the use of force, the initiation of the use of force, is always wrong.
If violence is a bad way to solve problems, then the government is by definition immoral.
Since government, the word, always means a group of individuals who claim the right to initiate violence against everyone else.
In the form of taxation, regulation, etc.
Ah, cometh the question, but if there is no government, how can the inevitable conflicts in human society be resolved?
But the most important thing in philosophy is to consistently question the premises of propositions.
For instance, embedded in the above question is the premise that conflicts within human society are currently being resolved by governments.
This is also pure nonsense.
Governments are agencies of violence, of force.
Governments do not persuade.
Governments do not reason.
Governments do not motivate.
Governments do not encourage.
Governments do not resolve disputes.
Governments have no more capacity to create morality or virtue than rape has to create love.
A gun is only useful in self-defense.
It cannot be used to create virtue.
Next question.
Hey, for somebody who's anarchist, you sure do sound like a politician.
Wasn't that just a complete dodge of the question?
Ah, excellent catch.
Here is as good a place as any to introduce you to the concept of dispute resolution organizations, or DROs.
This concept cannot answer every conceivable question you might have about dispute resolutions within a stateless society, but it's rather a framework for understanding the methodology of dispute resolution, just as the scientific method cannot possibly answer every single question about the natural world, but rather points towards a methodology that allows these questions to be answered in a rational manner.
So, DROs.
DROs are companies that specialize in insuring contracts between individuals and resolving any disputes that might arise.
For instance, if I borrow $1,000 from you, I may have to pay $10 to a DRO to insure my loan.
If I fail to pay you back your money, the Bureau will pay you instead, your contract rating agency or your dispute resolution organization.
Now, obviously, as my credit rating improves, the cost of insuring my contracts will decline.
Like, if I have paid back the last 100 loans, the cost of insuring the 101st loan, not too expensive.
And you can stretch this all the way out to include multi-million dollar international contracts between countries that have different DROs.
All of this stuff is perfectly theoretically possible, so just have a look at some of the early podcasts or have a search through the categories for anarchistic theory.
The DRO theory can be as complex as any other free market theory, and a lot of intellectual effort has gone into resolving how particular transactions might occur.
Credible DRO theories have also been proposed that solve problems ranging from abortion to child abuse to murder to pollution.
So, have a look at the podcast and also on my blog, just do a search for DROfreedomain.blogspot.com.
But, isn't this always the sticking point for a lot of people around the state, the saying, tell me, oh anarchistic one, what about the roads?
The first thing to understand about anarchism is that it's a moral theory that logically cannot be over-concerned with consequences.
I know that that sounds like flippant or not responsible, but just give me a second and let me explain what I mean.
The abolition of slavery, for instance, was a moral imperative because slavery as an institution was innately evil.
The abolition of slavery was not conditional upon the provision of jobs for every freed slave.
In a similar manner, anarchic theory does not have to explain how every conceivable social, legal, or economic transaction would occur in the absence of a coercive government.
What is important to understand is that the initiation of the use of force is the moral evil.
With that in mind, we can approach the problem of roads a little bit more clearly.
Whether anarchism is right or not is not dependent upon who does the roads in the absence of a government.
The key issue is that a government, as a group of individuals who claim and use the right to initiate force against others, is innately evil, like slavery.
And so, in effect, it doesn't really matter what happens.
You have to get rid of the evil.
You have to stop the evil actions.
You have to quit violence.
What comes out of that is going to be a perfectly wonderful and flourishing human society.
We don't have to answer all those questions in order to know that violence is wrong.
First of all, now see with this framework in mind, roads are currently funded through the initiation of force.
If you do not pay your taxes, which support road construction, you get a stern letter from the government, followed by a court date, followed by a policeman coming to your house if you do not appear at court and submit to his judgment.
If you use force to defend yourself against the policemen who are breaking into your home, You're going to get shot.
Very likely.
You're shot down.
So the roads, in other words, are built at the point of a gun.
The use of violence is a central issue, not what might potentially happen in the absence of a government in the future.
That having been said, and there's lots of stuff on roads in the podcast.
There's a two-part series early on.
Again, just go to the website, click on the Navigate by Category.
You can just do a search for roads and download them directly from there.
That having been said, roads will be built by housing developers, mall builders, those constructing schools and towns just as they were before the government took them over in the 19th century.
Okay.
Here's a question that I've gotten only about 12 million times.
A guy builds a road that completely encircles a suburban neighborhood and then charges a million dollars for anyone to cross that road.
Isn't he holding everyone who lives in that neighborhood hostage?
Huh?
Huh?
Isn't he?
Isn't he?
Well, um... This is fundamentally impossible.
First of all, no one is going to buy a house in a neighborhood unless they are contractually guaranteed access to roads.
I mean, everybody's worried about this scenario for some reason that I kind of understand, but... So, of course, you're just going to put it in your contract that you're going to have your DRO, you're going to say to your DRO, guarantee me access for roads.
If anybody charges me anything excessive for roads, you've got to pay.
And then your DRO is going to worry about the road thing and they'll prevent it.
So, it's impossible for anyone to completely encircle the neighborhood.
People will be watching out for it.
Secondly, even if it were possible, it would be a highly risky investment.
Okay, imagine this.
You sit down with, I've done this, sit down with investors, so just, if you've never done it, just imagine this, right?
Go to investors with a business plan that says, hey, I'm going to buy all the land that surrounds the neighborhood and then charge hugely high rates for anyone to cross that land.
Well, no sane investor would give you the money for such a plan.
The risk of failure would be too great, and no DRO would enforce any contract that was so destructive, unpopular, and economically unfeasible.
In order to have deals with investors, you've got to have a DRO to guarantee your loans and whatever, right?
So DROs aren't going to get involved in that.
It's not going to work.
See, DROs, unlike governments, must be appealing to the general population.
And when I say unlike governments, I mean the absence of 14 years of public school propaganda about how wonderful governments are.
If a DRO got involved with the encircling and imprisonment of an entire neighborhood, it would become so unpopular that it would lose far more business than it could potentially gain from this particular transaction.
Never gonna happen.
It's a perfectly understandable fear, I guess, but it's never going to happen.
Question comes back.
All right, smarty pants.
What about this?
The company that supplies water to a neighborhood suddenly decides to increase its rates by ten times.
People are going to be forced to pay the exorbitant prices, right?
I mean, people have got to drink!
Don't you have any humanity?
Well...
First of all, if you're so concerned about people paying increasingly exorbitant prices for services, then it scarcely seems logical to propose the government as the solution to the problem.
I mean, taxes have risen immensely over the past 30 years, while services have declined.
I mean, this doesn't even count things like the national debt and the inflation that's caused by the printing of the money supply and so on.
So if you're really concerned about Tenfold increase in prices?
Well, you've already got that with the government, so... However, even if we accept the premise of the problem, it's totally easy to solve in a stateless society.
First of all, no one will buy a house in a neighborhood without a contractual obligation that requires the supply of water at reasonable rates.
You sign long-term contracts, whatever, it's no problem.
Secondly, if the water company starts charging exorbitant prices, another company will simply move in and supply water in another form.
Barrels, bottles, tubs, whatever, it doesn't matter.
Thus, raising prices permanently costs the water company its customers, right?
So if I'm supplying you water, and I suddenly jack up the price ten times, you just find some alternative.
Just go buy those water jugs or whatever, right?
I can't hold up.
It's costing me business.
Those people aren't going to pay.
It's costing me business.
Somebody's going to come in and undercut.
And you're going to figure out another way to get your water.
Or some other company...
Investors will quickly realize that the water company is shooting itself in the foot and will align themselves with the shareholders, resulting in a hostile takeover of the price-gouging water company.
Given that this result will be known in advance, no CEO would be allowed to pursue such a self-destructive course, i.e.
the raising of rates by ten times.
The consumers are perfectly safe.
It is only when a government exists that can be manipulated by corporations to prevent competition That competitor is a trillion dangerous.
If you're a corporation and you get to go to the government and say, hey, you slap a tariff on here, and you control these unions, and you do this, and you give me these tax breaks, and you give me these tax incentives, and you give me this free land and free services, and you sell me electricity at cut rate prices, so I mean, you don't, whatever.
Right?
When there's a government, corporations, you know, they're not saints, they're, you know, corporations go to the government and get favors and manipulate the government because it's a whole lot easier than coming up with new products that may or may not fail, may or may not succeed in the marketplace.
Okay, so this is the Ayn Rand objection.
Okay, dude.
What if two DROs have different rules?
Isn't that just going to result in endless civil war?
No.
Alright, next question.
Okay, more than that.
First of all, it's unlikely that DROs would have wildly different rules, because that would just be economically inefficient.
Cell phone companies use similar protocols for data exchange so they can interoperate with each other, right?
So if I have a cell phone company that doesn't have service in Tibet, I contract with some Tibetan cell phone company to provide service, so we both make money.
But we have to use the same data protocols, so it makes sense, right?
Railroad companies, they kind of use the same gauge, same width of the tracks, right?
So the trains can travel as widely as possible.
Internet service providers exchange data with other internet service providers, passing back emails and HTTP packets and so on.
Like evolution, the free market is far more about cooperation than pure competition.
Think of all the bacteria that are helping you digest your food.
In competition, it's cooperation.
If a DRO wants to create a new rule, that rule will be fairly useless unless other DROs are willing to cooperate with it.
So if you come up with some fantastic new way of resolving disputes, it's going to spread like wildfire.
You might even patent it.
But if you come up with just some bizarre rule, then other DROs aren't going to be interested in enforcing it.
You have to have some kind of commonality with the other DROs.
You guys are going to compete on service and efficiency and so on, not on wildly different rules.
The need for interoperability with other DROs will inevitably keep the number of new rules to the most economically efficient minimum.
The US government added 100,000 regulations to the Federal Registry last year.
They don't shave stuff off.
I still have ridiculous rules from like 400 years ago in certain places in England, and more sometimes.
But there's no efficiency principle to winnow these things down whatsoever.
So new rules also add to the costs for DRO subscribers, and if it costs them more money than it saves, the DRO will lose business.
So if I come up with 10,000 new rules, I have to inform all of my customers, I have to have people to answer all those questions, the customers are going to say, well, I don't want to read through all these rules, and what if, like, rule 6223, you know, says that I now owe you my firstborn?
Forget it.
I want a DRO that's going to give me one page of rules.
Pay your debts, keep your promises, don't use violence, you know, feed your children, whatever it is, right?
That's the DRO rule that I want.
I want a nice simple EULA, not one that comes, you know, in a microchip.
Ah, cometh the question, but won't the most successful DRO just arm itself?
Violently eliminate all the other bureaus and emerge as the new government, saith Mel Gibson.
First of all, if the potential emergence of a new government at some point in the future is of great concern, then surely the elimination of existing governments in the present is a worthy pursuit.
If you've got cancer, you go through chemotherapy to eliminate it now, even though you may get cancer again at some point in the future.
Get rid of the bad thing now and don't worry so much about whether it comes back in the future.
Secondly, unlike governments, DROs are not violent institutions.
This is kind of important.
DROs are going to be primarily populated by white-collar workers, accountants, executives, and so on.
DROs are about as likely to become paramilitary organizations as your average accounting firm is likely to become an elite squad of ninja death warriors.
Given the current existence of governments that possess nuclear weapons, I for one am willing to take that risk.
Maybe you're not, but I certainly am.
Thirdly, if a D.R.O.
tries to turn itself into a government, the other D.R.O.' 's will certainly act to prevent it.
Right?
Some guy, some D.R.O.
starts amassing nuclear weapons, the other D.R.O.' 's will just start dealing with it.
Right?
They don't want to be taken over and put into the D.R.O.
gulag or something like that.
DROs would simply refuse to cooperate with any DRO that refused to submit to arms inspections, to take an extreme example.
This wouldn't last too long because of this reason.
DRO customers would also not take very kindly to the DRO becoming an armed institution, and the costs of dealing with that DRO would certainly skyrocket, because the DRO would have to provide all of its regular services, plus pay for all of those RPGs, nuclear weapons, attack carriers, subs, and black helicopters.
Right, so...
If I say I'm going to sell you coding services at 75 bucks an hour, and at the same time I'm also buying all of this weaponry, I have to pay for that somehow, right?
So either my profit goes down if I charge the same rates, in which case people stop investing in my company and I go out of business, or I have to raise my rates hugely to pay for all of these arms, in which case people stop doing... It's never going to happen.
Only a government can achieve these things.
Only a government can force people to pay for the military.
So any hero that was paying for goods or services that its customers did not want, i.e.
an army, would very quickly go out of business because it would not be competitive in terms of rates.
Are there any examples of anarchic societies being successful in the past?
There are in Ireland and Iceland, but that's not the essential question.
Again, the essential question of anarchic theory is the moral rule banning the initiation of the use of force.
Anarchists advocate a stateless society because governments are evil.
When slavery was abolished for the first time in human history, there was no example of a slave-free society in the past, successful or not.
If that had been a requirement, then slavery would never have been abolished, right?
You say, well, I'm not going to support a stateless society because there's no example of one in the past.
Well, then you're pro-slavery, right?
Because it's the first time slavery went out.
Anyway.
That having been said, I can absolutely and confidently point towards a non-violent society that you, you my friend, are intimately aware of.
And that is, yes sir, ma'am, you, sitting right there.
I'm guessing that you did not use violence directly to achieve your aims.
Seems likely to me that you did not hold your employer hostage until you got your job.
I also doubt that you keep your girlfriend locked in the basement or that you threaten to shoot your friends if they do not join you on the dance floor.
In other words, you are the perfect example of a stateless society.
All of your personal relationships are voluntary and do not involve the use of force.
You are an anarchic microcosm.
To see how a stateless society might work, all you have to do is look in the mirror.
How can a society without a government pay for a national defense?
Many people, when first hearing the concept of a state to society, cannot imagine how collective defense could possibly be paid for in the absence of a government or taxation.
It's an important question to ask, of course, and there's a way of answering it that also answers many other questions about collective action.
In any society, there are four possibilities that can occur in the realm of collective defense.
The first is, no one wants to pay for collective defense at all.
The second is that only a minority of people want to pay for collective defense.
The third is that a majority of people want to pay for collective defense.
And the fourth is that everyone wants to pay for collective defense.
So let's compare how these four possibilities play out in a state-based society, like a governmental, democratic society.
Number one, no one wants to pay for collective defense.
In this case, voters will universally reject any politician who proposes collective defense of any kind.
So, you get no army if nobody wants to pay for collective defense.
If only a minority of people want to pay for collective defense, you still get no army because no politician who proposes paying for collective defense will ever get into office because he will never secure a majority of the votes.
Three, The majority of people want to pay for collective defense.
In this case, pro-defense politicians will be voted into office and spend tax money on defense.
Four.
Everyone wants to pay for collective defense.
It's the same outcome as number three.
Thus, all other things being equal, a democracy produces almost the same outcome as a stateless society, with the important exception of number two.
If only a minority of people want to pay for defense, they cannot do so in a democracy.
You can't.
But you can in a stateless society.
In a stateless society, if the majority of people are interested in paying for the collective defense, it will be paid for.
Democracy doesn't add anything to the equation.
The addition of the government to the interaction is entirely superfluous, the equivalent of creating a ministry devoted to communicating the pleasures of candy to children or sex to teenagers.
However, the possibility exists that people are willing to pay for collective defense only if they know that everyone else is paying for it as well.
This argument, it's a great argument, but it fails on multiple levels, both empirical and rational.
First of all, people tip waiters, they give charity and so on, even though they know that some people never do.
Secondly, there's no reason why, in a state of society, people should not have full knowledge of who has donated to collective defense.
Agencies providing collective defense could easily issue a donor card or a bumper sticker, which certain shops or employers might ask to see before doing business.
Names of donors could also be put on a website easily searchable, thus creating social pressures to donate.
Thirdly, when the money required for collective defence is stripped from taxpayers at the point of a gun, a basic moral tenet and rational criteria is pretty much violated.
Citizens institute collective defense in order to protect their persons and property.
It makes no sense whatsoever to create an agency to protect property rights and then invest that agency with the power to violate property rights at will.
Makes no sense.
To create an agency to want to protect your property rights, you create a government and then give it the right to strip your property at will.
No sense.
Fourthly, when collective defence is paid for by the initiation of the use of force, there is no rational ceiling to costs, and no incentive for efficiency, thus ensuring that costs escalate to the point where they become unsustainable, leaving the country vulnerable.
Budgets for a military-industrial complex just go up and up and up.
Finally, if military might is to be used exclusively for the defense of a geographical region, extensive standing armies are not exactly required.
The invention of nuclear weapons has rendered invasion of a nuclear power impossible, as has shown by the fact that no nation possessing nuclear weapons has ever been invaded in the history of the planet.
In a nation of, say, 300 million citizens, how much would it cost each citizen per year to pay for the maintenance of a few dozen nuclear warheads, the deterrence factor for invasion?
It seems hard to imagine that such a program would cost more than 300 million dollars a year.
Even if we assume that only half the citizens are earning an income, this national defense program would then run to about, yes, count it, massive sum total of two, count them, two dollars per citizen per year.
People lose more than that annually behind their couch cushions.
Ah!
Come at the next question.
Mr. Dewey, yes, you in front.
What about education?
The question of education follows the same pattern as the question of collective defense outlined above.
However, there are certain additional pieces of information that can strengthen the case for a free market in education, or for education not being supplied at the point of a gun.
First of all, it's important to understand that state education was not imposed because children were not being educated.
Prior to the institution of government-run education, the literacy rate of the average American was over 90%, far better than it is now.
After hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent, quote, educating children.
Before the government forcefully took over the schools, there was almost no violence in schools, there were no school shootings, no violent gangs, no assaults on teachers, and it did not take more than two decades and hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce a reasonably educated adult.
Most of the intellectual giants of the 18th and 19th centuries, founding fathers included, did not even finish high school, let alone go to college.
Government education in America was instituted as a means of cultural control due to a rising set of tribal fears about the growing number of non-Protestants in society.
It was the immigrant issue of the time.
They come here, they don't know our ways, they don't speak our language, let's inflict school on them and basically screw them up with that way.
There are a number of core reasons that government education cripples children's minds.
For the sake of brevity, we will deal with only one here.
It's reasonable to assume, I think, that the majority of parents want to give their children a good education.
And this education must necessarily include the teaching of values, of the relationship between personal ethics and real-world choices.
In any multicultural society, however, a common curriculum cannot include any specific values for fear of offending various groups.
Thus values must be stripped from education, turning its focus to rote memorization, bland technical skills, geometry, sports, woodshop, and neutral and propagandistic views of society and politics.
Democracy is good!
Respect multiculturalism!
Recycle!
This effectively kills the energetic curiosity of the young, turns school into a mind-numbing series of empty exercises, creates frustration among those needing stimulation, particularly boys, and engenders deep respect for the educational system and its teachers, who remain hypocritically indifferent to the welfare of the students.
Combine this hostility and frustration with the easy money available through drug sales and the possibility of surviving on welfare and entire generations of youths become mentally crippled.
The costs of this are beyond calculation since the damage goes far beyond economics.
Ah, yes!
But how, how, how will poor people get an education if it is not paid for through taxation?
This reminds me of the old Soviet cartoon.
Two old women are standing in an endless line up to buy bread.
One says to the other, what a terribly long line.
The other replies, yes, but just imagine in the capitalist countries the government doesn't even distribute the bread.
Apparently these Soviet women are vaguely gay old British men.
Anyway, whenever I argue for a state of society, I say, the government should not provide X. That's one of the arguments.
The response always comes back, yes, but how will X then be provided?
Well, the answer is simple.
Since everyone is concerned that X will not be provided, X will naturally be provided by those concerned with its absence.
In other words, since everyone is concerned that poor children might not get an education because it costs too much, those children will be provided an education as a direct result of everyone's concern.
Look, either you're going to help poor people get an education or you're not.
Charity, volunteering, however it is, you're either going to help them get an education or you're not.
If you will help poor children get an education, you don't have to worry about the issue.
If you will do nothing to help poor children get an education, it's kind of hypocritical to raise it as an issue that you claim to be concerned about.
Maybe they're going to do it, or you don't know.
That having been said, there are a number of ways that a free society can provide education that is far superior to the mess being inflicted on children now.
First of all, poor children are not currently getting any sort of decent education.
The perceived risks of a stateless society cannot be rationally compared to a perfect situation in the here and now.
Those most concerned with the education of the poor should be the ones clamoring for the abolishment of the existing system.
The statistics for poor children are absolutely appalling, and this should raise the urgency for finding a solution.
It's one thing to say, uh, you should never cross the road against the lights, even if there is no traffic.
It is quite another thing to say, you should never cross the road against the lights, even if you're being chased by a lion.
Those who oppose a state of society always ignore the existence of the lion, thus adding their intellectual inertia to the weight of the status quo.
Secondly, much like the question of collective defense, the cost of education will be far lower in a free society.
The $10,000 to $15,000 a year currently being spent per pupil in public schools is ridiculously over-inflated.
As an example, it would be far cheaper to buy a poor child a computer and internet connection than bus him to an expensive school.
If socialization is desired, play dates can be arranged at local parks and so on.
Similarly, year-round accelerated education could help the child graduate several years earlier and with tangible job skills.
To boot, the resulting increase in earnings would more than pay for the education, and many companies would scramble to offer loans to such children, knowing that they would be paid off soon after graduation.
Thus education would be more beneficial, and since there would be no war on drugs or automatic welfare in a free society, fewer self-destructive options would be available.
As for higher education, it's either recreational or it's vocational.
If it's recreational, Art history, say.
Then it's about as necessary as a hobby, and thus can't be considered a necessity that has to be paid for by the use of force against others.
Not that anything should be paid that way.
If higher education is vocational, such as medicine or accounting, then additional earnings will more than pay for the cost of the education.
That's how that works, right?
Businesses need accountants, say, and those businesses will be more than happy to fund the college expenses of talented youngsters in return for a work commitment after graduation.
That's how my dad got his PhD.
Talented but poor children will also be sought after by schools, both for the benevolence they can show by subsidizing them, and also because the high-quality graduates raise the prestige of a school, enabling it to increase fees.
If I say I took this kid from the ghetto and I turned him into a PhD, that's pretty good sales, right?
In a stateless society, a tiny minority of poor children may indeed slip through the cracks.
But that's far better in the current situation, where most poor children slip through the cracks.
The fact that some non-smokers will get lung cancer does not mean that we should encourage people to smoke.
A stateless society is not a utopia.
It is merely a utopia compared to a violent government-run society.
All right, all right.
Even if I agree with you, come with the question, how on earth can we possibly bring a stateless society about?
Seems a little daunting to me, Steph.
Well, there's no reason.
Absolutely no reason to believe that a stateless society is impossible to achieve.
Right?
I mean, in fact, most of the hurdle... I mean, I wouldn't want to be advocating this in the 15th century.
I'd be burned at the stake, but... Most of the hurdles have already been overcome.
The efficiency of the free market is already well established.
No intelligent person says that the free market is inefficient.
The principle that violence is immoral is also generally accepted.
For many people, religion no longer has a monopoly on question of ethics.
Very few people believe that a further expansion in the size and power of government will produce a substantially better society.
In fact, very few people believe that the government is a moral agency.
At all.
I mean, we do have things like global warming.
Everyone wants to give the power to the government to solve this false panic of global warming.
But that's not around making society better.
Nobody really believes the government can do that, but I guess they believe that maybe we can prevent it from becoming, you know, burning or something like that, as fire falls from the sky in some doom-laden revelation apocalypse.
People do still advocate for government programs, often couched in moral terms, but that is more because they know they can receive money from the state rather than as the result of a broad ethical approach.
This isn't Fabian Socialism anymore, it's just grab what you can.
Socialism, as a moral ideal, is dead, dead, dead, dead.
Not yet buried, but dead.
Communism and fascism as well.
Slavery has been rightly vilified and eliminated.
And the initiation of the use of force is generally considered immoral.
All the pieces are there.
All the bricks are there.
You've just got to put them into a wall to keep this violence at bay.
Thus, many of the necessary arguments are in place to bring about a stateless society.
How, then, can it happen?
Well, for me, the first value is always honesty.
And the second value The first virtue is always honesty.
The first virtue is always honesty.
The second is always integrity.
We must first tell the truth and then we must live the truth.
That's philosophy, right?
The truth is said in the most fundamental ways.
We do not need the government's permission to be truly free.
And I'm talking here about the Western systems.
The first thing that philosophers must do is lead by example.
A key ingredient in the moral ideal of a stateless society is that there is no such thing As unchosen positive obligations.
Unchosen positive obligations.
I can't go and buy you a car and then send you the bill.
You are not obligated to pay a bill that I have incurred.
Being born in a particular country does not obligate you morally to pay off the rulers with your money or get thrown in jail.
There is no such thing as an unchosen positive moral obligation.
Being poor does not create a moral obligation for others to give you money.
They didn't choose that you were poor.
Being poor, sorry, being successful does not make you a slave.
Failure does not give you the right to be a parasite.
Having children does not create a moral obligation for others to give them an education.
Getting old does not create a moral obligation for others to pay for your retirement.
So here's where we turn to the core of freedom and radio philosophy.
Our family.
Huh?
What does family have to do with the state and society?
Ah, well.
The examples of religion and patriotism show that irrational ideals are easy to spread if the people who spread them are convincing.
To free the world that is not enough to know the truth, you must also convince others.
Convincing others requires that you first convince yourself.
A doctor who fears to take the medicine that he prescribes can scarcely be considered convincing, if he's got the same condition.
A philosopher should not fear to live the values he espouses.
If I believe that there's no such thing as unchosen positive obligations, then I must evaluate all my personal relationships, all my personal relationships, using the same criteria.
We must examine our families first, since they are the least chosen of our relationships.
We choose our wife and our friends, but not our parents or our siblings.
If no man has a right to my time and energy simply because he exists, then clearly my parents, for instance, can make no such claim.
If my parents and siblings are wise and moral and good, then it's only just and reasonable, not to mention intensely pleasurable, to spend time with them.
If, however, my parents are none of these things, then spending time with them is neither rational nor moral.
I cannot legitimately advocate a state of society, no unchosen positive obligations, while at the same time enabling and supporting Unchosen positive obligations in my personal life.
This has both moral and practical dimensions.
Our first and most lasting perception of authority is our parents.
If our parents are unjust, abusive, negative, distant, unaffectionate, arbitrary, cold, selfish, and so on, we can't love them.
Love is an involuntary response to virtue and can only arise in the presence of vice as an empty and self-destructive label.
You can only tell yourself you love bad people.
You can't actually love them.
If we feel that we owe love to our parents for being born under their dominion, it is logically impossible to argue that we do not owe allegiance to our government for being born under its dominion.
If our parents do not have to win our love through consistent virtue, as all love must be won, then neither must those in government win our respect through consistent virtue or our obedience.
If we do not live the principle of voluntarism in our personal lives, it is nonsensical and pointless to advocate it in the realm of politics.
If we owe allegiance to power with respect to our parents, we logically owe allegiance to power with respect to our government as well.
We cannot, quote, love power in the personal realm while despising it in the political realm.
Consistency.
Integrity.
Honesty.
No positive unchosen obligations.
Integrity.
Applying it consistently.
We have no power over the government, not a shred.
We can defy it at the cost of going to prison or being forced to live off the grid.
We do have power over our personal relationships and it is in the application of moral theories to our personal lives that our greatest freedoms are to be found.
I would rather pay 50% taxation and have my wonderful happy marriage than pay no taxes and have an unhappy marriage.
I'm more free living with a wonderful, beautiful, intelligent, amazing woman and paying 50% taxation than paying no taxes at all and being stuck in a dismal and depressed relationship or an abusive one.
The government can only take your money.
Unhappy relationships can drain your very soul.
If we consistently apply ethical principles to our personal lives, we gain enormous credibility when we advocate those principles to others in general.
I'm not saying it's easy, and I can tell you from a year and a half of doing this It's really not easy, but you can make a state of society.
You just have to pace the people off, and you can have, in your relationships, in your personal life, you can have a state of society, which is a wonderful thing, a wonderful place to be.
And then when you talk about a state of society, you know it works, because you've tried it.
You've tried it.
No positive, unchosen obligations.
You've tried it in your personal life.
But, cometh the question, the government is an agency of power.
Parents are not.
Well, that's not true, though.
I mean, with all due respect.
Except in the most extreme dictatorships, parents have far more power over their children than governments have over their citizens.
As an adult, you have many strategies to reduce the interference of government in your daily life.
You can move, you can live off the grid, minimize your taxes, pay off the IRS and live relatively free.
As a child, because you did not leave your family, you are utterly dependent on the will and whim of your parents.
As an adult, you will never again be as dependent on those in power as you were when you were a child.
Since parental power over children outstrips state power over citizens, we must first free ourselves of bad parents before we can confront the state.
Philosophy is more about our personal relationships than abstract relationships like the state.
The power of the state, in fact, is derived from the power of parents.
A woman who demands freedom from state violence but then goes home to an abusive husband cannot be said to really understand the meaning of the word freedom.
Similarly, advocating some sort of abstract political freedom while suffering abusive, unpleasant, boring, or negative relationships in your personal life displays similar ignorance.
If a plane depressurizes, you have to first place the oxygen mask on your own face before turning to help others.
This is also true of philosophy.
The only way to free the world is to free yourself.
Thank you so much for watching.
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