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July 13, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:11:46
Libertopia 2012 - Opening Speech - Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio
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Time Text
Does anybody want to feel like maybe being part of the speech?
I need a human prop, just for a few minutes.
Anybody?
Yes.
You, sir.
Is your name Lenny, by chance?
Okay.
No, that's all right.
I'll be calling you Lenny.
All right, so should we roll?
It's so beautiful being out here in California.
You know, I just came out here from Canada, and people are like, I was in the pool with my daughter, and they're like, aren't you cold?
It's like, dude, you don't know.
I mean, my nipples are up, but just because I'm happy to be here.
Okay, so, okay, a couple of announcements first.
Now, we're going to try and send this video out quickly to try and snag people who aren't as aware of what's going on here, but I don't know if you know that tomorrow night there's going to be a toga party.
And as far as what Sky tells me, you're actually only allowed to wear a toga.
Nothing underneath.
Nothing.
And there's going to be a whole bunch of New York subway greats.
You know, I'd like to go on with this mental picture, but I just can't.
I just can't.
So, you can pick that up.
It's $25 to get you dinner and drinks.
You can get that at a registration desk.
So, I hope you'll come by for that.
The Sovereign Awards tomorrow night.
You don't want to miss those.
Richard Boddy is the emcee.
Doug Casey and the doctor, David Friedman, will be receiving an award.
So, I hope that you will come and check that out.
And, of course, I'll be emceeing all weekend.
So you'll be completely sick of my accent.
However unreal it may be by the end of the weekend.
So should we start a speech?
I got a little something for you.
It goes a little something like this.
All right.
Okay, so if you can just go off to the side, I'll grab you in a sec.
Okay, so I wanted to talk about Unreal or artificial divisions.
By the way, how's the volume here?
I don't want to be blowing anyone's hair back, but at the same time, I don't want you to have to lean forward.
Okay.
The guy with the upside-down mask is really freaking me out.
Everyone else can see that mask, right?
They can see that guy?
Good, because if he's my conscience, I'm screwed.
Okay, so yeah, artificial divisions.
I wanted to sort of take two swings at that concept.
And one of the things, if you're a statist, how many do we have here in the audience?
I'm kidding.
It's a great joke.
And no, do we have any?
Are we all on the A side?
We're all assholes.
Anarchists.
Anarchists.
No, it's okay.
It's okay.
I mean, you can say it.
Yeah?
You have a statist?
Not a statist.
Okay, so we have no statists.
Okay, good.
Because one of the things that's really hard for statists to understand is how they look to an anarchist.
Like we all know how anarchists look to the status, right?
Step on the poor, eat the rich, right?
So we all know how we look to a statist, but statists don't know how they look to us.
I wanted to give the statists out there who may be watching this at some point, to give the statists a sense of how they look to us.
It's hard, you know, it's hard since there's such a majority.
So, this is how the statists look like to us, because they divide human beings into two categories.
There are all the bad people out there in the world that we really have to be scared of, right?
You know, like if there's no government, all the people who will just come and take your stuff and molest your dog and set fire to your house, for no reason.
There's an inner mohawk in everyone that's going to come out the moment that the thin blue line goes down and they're just going to come and eat your porridge, whether it's too hot, too cold, or just right.
It's just going to happen.
It's horrible.
And so this is humanity to the statist.
It's this seething Freudian id of desire and rape and theft and seething ugly humanity that's just going to come out and strip the world free of all virtue.
And that's what human beings are to the statist.
They're power-hungry terrorists to be dreaded of why we need the police to protect us from all these monsters.
And that's what humanity is.
So then they say, well, we should put human beings in charge of the state.
Because those human beings who are in charge of the state, they're nothing like that.
See these artificial divisions?
The seething mass of humanity that will, you know, rape your cat the moment that you turn your back.
But then over here, these angelic people who have no nefarious desires, no self-interest that's ever at your expense.
These people over here on the government side, are just wonderful, but everyone else you've got to be terrified of.
It's a really weird and artificial division, and so it's guys like Lenny who are the problem.
So, Lenny, come on out here.
Okay, so, Lenny, now I'm going to need you to make... Can you make an evil face?
That just looks like you need to fart, so can you try something?
I don't mean fart evil.
I mean, like, can you embody it in some way?
It just looks like you sold me a really bad used car and I didn't know it.
I can't believe he's going to drive that Lada off the lot.
Okay, so more obvious evil than a politician.
You don't have magic underpants on.
You're not a jug-eared beanpole.
Give me evil.
Okay.
Would you be scared of that?
Can the audience see that?
Would you be scared of that?
Or would you just say, here, if you need a quarter, there's a public toilet just down the... Anyway.
Okay, so Lenny here, whose name is actually Adrian, but Adrian is not scary.
Lenny, to me, is like, you know, sinister, vaguely Italian.
I'm going to create my own artificial stereotypes here, not the sadist ones.
Okay, so Lenny here is... Give me evil face.
Okay, calculating, that's fine.
Okay, so Lenny here is the embodiment of all that is evil.
And Lenny is humanity.
So this is what the status looks like to your average anarchist.
Okay, give me your evil face.
Lenny here is a rapacious, thieving bastard who will strip you of property, life, liberty, happiness, joy, the future, and your offspring in the wink of an eye!
So we really need to put Lenny in charge.
Lenny doesn't care about the education of children And if it was up to Lenny, they'd all be working in a mine from the age of six.
And I don't even mean six years.
I don't even mean six months.
Or six weeks.
Six minutes.
The woman would literally give birth over the mineshaft.
There'd be one snip, a guy at the bottom with a catcher's mitt, and they'd give them a little tiny fucking plastic shovel.
And that's what you call a free market.
So Lenny here does not care about educating children.
He wants to put them all in mines and make sure they never learn how to read.
Because there's a guy named Rothbard out there who will really blow their minds.
So Lenny doesn't care about the education of children.
Let's put Lenny in charge of the education of children.
Do you see how weird it is?
Because if that's humanity, it's the same humanity that's going to be populating the state.
Lenny is a drug addict.
If you don't ban drugs, Lenny will be injecting heroin into his eyeballs.
Within about 12 nanoseconds.
So we need to put Lenny in charge of making sure that nobody gets any drugs.
That's status thinking.
Okay, can you give me a virtuous face?
That is pretty much exactly the same as your evil face.
Do you have no conscience?
Is that the problem?
Unless he really has to crap, I don't know where the variety in his acting is coming from.
Okay, so imagine that you're just, like, angelic and perfect and absolutely wonderful.
You just bought Girl Scout cookies?
Is this really your definition of virtue?
Socrates wrestled with it for a long time, but that's because there were no Girl Scouts when Socrates was around, otherwise it would have been easy.
What is virtue?
Really cheap sugar.
Sorry, you look bored.
Is that virtue now?
It's just boredom?
I'm so good, I'm indifferent.
Okay, do you get a Buddha vibe coming off him?
I do.
A little bit of, you know, Buddha.
It's not just the arms, the fleshy arms.
Okay, so Buddha.
Okay, so this is the other view of the status thing, right?
So the status says that everybody who's in charge is really virtuous, right?
Because they have to be.
If the people who are in charge are evil, then evil wins, because they've got all the guns and the laws and all that.
So, if everybody's really virtuous, then according to the democratic model, how do virtuous people get into power?
Any guesses?
You people aren't going to vote, are you?
No, no, no.
I mean according to the democratic model, not according to the truth.
You don't want to confuse the two.
You run for office, right, but how do you get in power in the democratic model?
The majority of people will vote for you, right?
And so the majority of people in society have the capacity to recognize this incredibly virtuous person.
I mean, he's so virtuous I need like welding goggles just to look at his soul.
And so the majority of people in society can see and vote for really virtuous and wonderful people.
So the majority of people in society have to be virtuous in order for democracy to work.
Because to get virtuous people into society, like into the top of society, they, lo and behold, have to be voted for by all these virtuous people.
So the weird thing is, is that the Statist says, if he's a Democrat, and I mean, Statists generally tend to be, because the other ones have fallen out of favor, for now, anyway.
He says that the guys in charge are good, and they're only put there because the majority of people in society have the capacity to recognize virtue, they will vote for it, they will support it, and they will support only virtuous policies coming from a virtuous guy.
So, how is it possible That the majority of people in society are there to be feared, are there to prey upon you without all the state and its apparatus, but at the same time, the significant majority of people know how to recognize and vote for and support a really good person.
You see, this equation doesn't match up at all.
And this is the weird thing, is that if you don't have two classes of people, then you can't be a statist, because you have to divide people into the predators and the virtuous.
And the predators are a very small minority, but somehow they'll take over everyone, but they'll never take over the state, because, you know, evil people are never attracted to violence and power.
And so it's just this completely bizarre paradigm where, according to every premise that the statist has, the statist system cannot work.
If, how does status and fail if everyone is evil?
Yeah, nobody good will be voted in, right?
Amen.
So if everyone is evil, then whoever people vote in is probably going to be the most evil, and therefore you're giving the most evil person the most power.
And that can't be good.
No matter what your definition is, giving the most evil guy the most power can't be good.
Okay, what if the majority of people are evil and the minority of people are good?
What happens to statism?
I should have done this before everyone had a beer, right?
What's that?
Well, they will criminalize the minority, but what happens in a democracy if the majority of people are evil?
Who gets in power?
Super evil!
That's right, evil with a cape and tights.
And so if the majority of people are evil, then evil guys rule and the minority of good people have no chance because they're outvoted by the majority of evil people.
Okay, what about if the majority of people are good and a minority of them are evil?
What happens in a status democracy?
You may say that you need the government because there's still some evil people around.
Of course, if everyone's good, you don't need the government, right?
I understand that.
But what if there's a minority of people who are evil and a majority of people are good?
What happens in a democracy?
What would you expect?
Like, what if you're an evil guy and there's a state around?
What do you want to do?
Yeah, the evil guys are going to want the state, because with the state they can impose their evil will on them, even on the majority.
But the problem is, you see, there's good people around.
Those rat bastards, patooey, we hate them.
There's good people around, so how do you gain power over good people if you're a bad guy in a democracy?
You lie!
You lie, give me a lying face.
Actually, that's a trick question.
For a man, a lying face is just a face.
I'm just kidding.
Okay, so yeah, you lie to them and you tell them, ooh, I'm going to do all this really good, wonderful stuff for you.
I'm going to take care of the poor.
Yeah, that's it.
Ooh, you like that, don't you?
Ooh, you like that, don't you?
I take care of the poor.
How about the old?
Oh, yeah, we'll get to work on the old.
We'll take care of the old, too.
Oh, yeah, that works for you, doesn't it?
Is that like a good back rub?
Oh, yeah.
You care about children's education?
Oh yeah, me too.
I care about children's education too.
Let's take care of the kids.
Ooh, give me your children.
I mean, sorry, let me do that in a normal voice.
Give me your children.
And I would love to take care of them.
And, ooh, what's that?
Sick people?
Sick people.
Oh, don't we all just care so much about sick people?
I will take care of the sick people for you.
I really will.
Sorry, I mean, I really will.
And so you will lie to them and you promise to do all of these good things.
If they simply surrender to the coercive power of taxation and violence and all this kind of good stuff.
And isn't that pretty much what happens?
You know, I think the majority of people are generally moral.
You know, I mean, they've done studies in this, you know, you leave a wallet somewhere, the majority of people will return it and so on, unless their status... No, I'm kidding.
Which case they'll say, I'm taxing this baby for my own benefit.
But the majority of people are generally good, but there's a minority of evil people who will want to gain power over good people.
And they do that through lying to them, through making promises, and through obscuring the method of achieving the goals, right?
Oh, you want to take care of the poor?
We'll take care of the poor, but give them money.
And then you obscure how the money comes in through violence and taxation and so on.
Thank you so much.
I appreciate that.
go and practice your faces.
And so let me, does this sort of make sense You don't have to have a whole lot of political theory.
It doesn't hurt.
And you don't even have to have a whole lot of philosophy.
You just have to work through the various scenarios of what is the proportion of good and evil in society.
No matter which way you cut it, you can't have a state.
You can only have a state if you imagine that somehow vast money and power and the capacity to type whatever you want into your own bank account does not interest evil people at all.
If you can believe that, then you can be a statist.
I mean, you're wrong.
Completely wrong.
Right?
The statist is like this huge mound of feces.
Say I put this huge mound of feces there, flies aren't going to care about it at all.
They won't want it at all.
But once you get that aggregation of power, and you get that aggregation of force, and you get that aggregation fundamentally of fiat currency, right?
I mean, this capacity to delude the public by printing whatever money you want is, I think, foundational to state power.
Because none of the other lies can be believed if you don't have the power to print money.
I mean the boomers who I guess are retiring at what the rate of I think it's 50,000 a day or 50,000.
It's some crazy number of people who are going over the conveyor belt into Social Security.
You couldn't sustain that system even as a promise without the ability to print money.
You couldn't have wars without the ability to print money.
You can't have all of these programs that have allowed people to save money, in a way.
I mean, even the roads under Eisenhower, they weren't paid for.
They were just added to the national debt.
And so it's like, do you want free roads?
Yeah, I guess so.
Why not?
And so you can't have a state of society without fiat currency.
In fact, I don't know of any that's ever lasted without fiat currency, and there's been thousands of fiat currencies, literally, that have died over the millennia.
And so the idea that you can create this monopoly of power, this monopoly of force, this monopoly of law.
I hate using that word because it makes it sound objective like a law of physics.
Law is just an opinion with a gun.
But to create this monopoly of power and then think, well, evil guys won't want any of that.
I mean, it's completely deluded.
It creates a gravity well that draws evil in to the detriment of all good souls.
So, when you talk to a statist, I think it's important to remember, to remind the statist, that everyone that he's trying to make you scared of is everyone who's going to be in charge.
Right?
Because what does the statist say?
Well, if there's no social programs, then the poor will starve, because nobody cares about the poor.
Well, if nobody cares about the poor, how are the guys in charge?
Gonna care about the poor.
It's the same, like, whatever they're saying about the general population, they're saying about the rulers.
But they always create this weird divide.
You know, like, before the fall and after the fall, we're just different species.
And they create this weird divide that the guys in charge are gonna be immune from all of the moral judgments that they're passing on the general population.
Which means, I guess, that David Icke is right and they are reptiles.
Because they are not people.
But they are people, so it's just important to remember all the moral judgments.
Well, we have to have Medicare and Medicaid because nobody's going to care about the sick.
But if nobody cares about the sick, then nobody in government.
They're just people.
They're not going to care about the sick.
But the only thing that can explain the truth of the situation, the proof as to how the sick and the poor and the old and all will be taken care of, because I think they should be, is that, and this is the final part of this argument, If nobody cared about the poor, why do people support social programs designed to help the poor?
Because they do.
They vote for them, and if you talk about cutting them, everyone goes crazy, as if the debt wall isn't going to cut things a lot more inelegantly than anything that libertarians could propose.
But if people didn't care about the sick, the poor, and the old, why would these social programs exist?
And why would people vote for them?
And why would they rebel against them being cut?
It would make no sense.
So even democracy as itself is a proof that this stuff works.
And that the poor, the sick, the old, the indigent will be taken care of in a free society.
Now the other division that's kind of weird.
How many people in the audience grew up poor?
All right, you look pretty well fed now.
Congratulations.
Well done.
Clearly you've exploited a lot of people in your eyes to the top.
I hope you enjoyed it.
I hope it was worth it.
Yes, that's right.
A little evil rubbing of glee hands there.
And they tasted wonderful.
But, okay, so, I mean, I grew up poor, too, and there's this weird divide between the poor and everybody else.
And the poor are like this club that's used to silence everyone who talks about freedom.
And I've thought a lot about this, and hopefully not without some utility, but it's kind of weird.
So, let's do a little thought experiment here.
Okay, so those of you who grew up poor, do you still have friends who never quite propelled themselves to the middle class, who kind of stayed in that down-and-out-in-Paris-and-London-low-rent world?
Okay, so what are the benefits of being poor?
Like, nobody has social programs from monks.
I mean, they're broke people.
I mean, they eat porridge and gravel.
I don't know what they live on, right?
But nobody's like, well, we've got to have programs for monks, because those people are really poor, right?
So for the people who have... And I have friends.
We all grew up poor together.
I made a little more money.
Some of them didn't.
And I know why they didn't, I think.
But what are your theories?
Why did some of your friends not escape that?
Again, just assume there's something wrong with it.
But why do you think?
Oh yeah, I'm looking at you.
You glee hands.
Anyway, yeah, go ahead.
It gave them a good excuse for inaction, like I grew up poor, I never had a chance, the man controls everything, I can't break through, that kind of thing?
Okay, but why do they want that excuse for inaction?
I'm sorry?
They get rewarded for being poor?
And how so?
They avoided failure.
Yeah, I mean, to risk stuff is really hard.
It's scary, right?
It's like standing on a cliff edge, leaning forward and hoping some weird economic updraft is going to keep you from twirling a wily coyote on the canyon floor, right?
It's a weird thing.
But sorry, you were saying in the back there?
The lady?
Right.
Okay.
So they didn't have to face the rejection.
Now, what do you mean by rejection?
Rejection from who?
So like they go out and try and snot something and they would fail at it and so on, right?
Now, for those of you who tunneled their way up from the mines of Moria, so to speak, what was the reaction of those around you?
Were they enthusiastic and happy at your entrepreneurship and your get-up-and-go attitude?
They're bitter.
Yes, I think there's some truth in that, and certainly it's been some of my experience.
And anybody else?
Sorry? - Okay.
It's not universally celebrated, right?
Like, so if you say, like, I'm gonna really go for it.
This dishwashing gig is not gonna be the rest of my career, so I'm gonna really go for it.
I mean, what happens?
There's some pull-down, right?
So why is there pull-down, do you think?
Envy?
Okay.
Yeah.
Like, so I think that there's a thing where people feel there's a certain mindset, which is like, well, this is my life and I'm resigned to it.
The forces are too big.
There's lots of conspiracy theories about, well, you can't get X, Y, and Z done.
But if somebody does break out of a particular low-rent situation, then in a weird way, everyone else's life now becomes a choice.
It's not an absolute.
You can't make it.
Go and get up.
Never try.
He made it.
Oh, shit.
Right?
Damn.
That theory isn't holding so well.
So if you break out of a mold, it's a challenge for everyone else who stays in that mold.
And that certainly has been my experience as well.
I mean, yeah, some friends, like, you could see them.
You know, I had a friend once.
I was sort of, you know, I was really into self, I'm still really into self-knowledge and psychology and all that kind of stuff.
And we used to drive to work together and he was really coming along.
You know, he was really, you know, he came from a small town and he'd never really been exposed to this kind of stuff before.
And, you know, we were listening to Audio books of Jung, and we were talking about dreams and self-knowledge and all that kind of stuff, and it was weird.
You could almost see, like, people begin to move and block him, you know?
It was weird.
It was like, ooh, he's getting out.
Shit, we better block him.
And so they started taking him to more parties, and let's drink more, and how come you're not drinking more and all that?
And one of them actually said to me, he said, you know, we're fighting over this guy's soul.
I know it.
And he ended up not making it, which was a shame.
But there is, you know, if you begin to sort of rise out of a particular environment, there are lots of people there who don't want that.
It makes them anxious, right?
Because it's like now what they do is a choice, not an absolute.
Yeah, it's easier to pull someone down than, you know, some prisoners, their eyes get so old that the brighter day just makes them cry, and it gives them headaches, and especially if they've lived that way for a long time.
And also, you know, if they've gotten embedded in social situations, like maybe they married the wrong person, or maybe they had kids with the wrong person, or maybe they, you know, got dug into a particular job that they, you know, whatever, for whatever reason, like benefits or whatever, the government job they can't get out of, and so on.
There's a resentment, too.
Right?
That's the secondary gains of poverty is something that we don't really talk about.
Socially, if you grow up poor, you get a lot of secondary gains from staying poor, because not a lot of people are going to disapprove of that.
I mean, there's an exception that I know of, which is like immigrants who come, they're poor, but they want their kids to really do well, and so there's a lot of... And that's an exception, but I'm sort of talking about this multi-generational, low-rent kind of lifestyle, where it's really hard to break out of, and if you stay down there, you're going to get a lot of social reinforcement.
And this is, of course, poverty programs can't deal with that, but that's a huge factor, I think, in that kind of stuff.
What are some other benefits of staying poor?
Yeah, so you don't have to start re-evaluating yourself. so you don't have to start re-evaluating yourself.
If somebody breaks orbit, right, and sort of heads for the stars or heads for the mountaintop, then you don't feel like you're in a valley anymore.
That's true.
But what are some other ones?
Okay, so, sorry, go ahead.
You don't have to pay a mortgage.
All right, so you're either the president or you're poor.
Okay, yeah, so what do you mean by that?
Tell me a little more.
Why don't, sorry, how do they live for free? - Okay.
Oh, they're squatters and so on, right?
So you don't have to take on those kinds of responsibilities and so on.
And I think that's a good point.
So for those who went from poverty to middle class or upper class, how easy was it?
It was not easy, right?
It's not easy.
I mean, for me, like, I came from very poor, and then I ended up doing, like, presentations to executives in various countries as a software entrepreneur.
It's freaky stuff.
I mean, half the time it was like, how do I do a tie?
Like, what am I supposed to say?
I felt like an anthropologist almost in my own society, because you're moving in a whole different world.
And none of the stuff that you learned in sort of the low-rent situation you grew up in works in that world.
And did you feel... I mean, maybe that's just me, but did you feel like you kind of had to learn a whole new way of interacting with people?
Like you had to learn golf and shit?
I mean, you had to learn... I mean, for me, I don't care about sports.
And half the time in business, people were like, how is X team?
I don't know.
Is that a comic book character?
I don't know what that is.
And so I had to learn.
I even had to watch some games.
And I had to pretend like, oh, shit, people are cheering.
Yay!
Ooh, ooh, that's bad.
I don't know what it is, but it's bad.
And so I had to learn all of this stuff.
Like, what do rich people talk about?
I had no idea.
I had to pretend I had stocks.
I thought it was... Anyway.
Got a guy in the basement in wood.
That's my investment.
He's going to work for me when I get older.
Sorry, that's Social Security.
But it's hard to break out, right?
So you don't have to learn this whole new language.
You don't have to learn this whole new way of interacting.
Is there any other benefits to staying poor?
You don't have to stretch yourself to find a way to add more value, right?
Yeah, if you keep doing the same thing.
If your job is to do this, right, then just keep doing that, right?
And you don't have to really find ways to add more value.
You don't have to challenge and grow and so on.
You don't get as much sympathy if you write So if you're poor, you can pull the woe-is-me card, right?
You could be the minister of doom and gloom from the kingdom of woe-is-me, and people will shower you with sympathy and social programs and stuff like that, right?
Whereas if you come to be middle class, it's a little tougher to cry about your life or whatever, right?
Is that sort of close to what you're saying?
Yeah, okay.
Yeah, I mean, that's true.
You get a lot of social sympathy, right?
Like there was this You remember Romney did this thing where he said, you know, half of people are dependent on government, so they're probably not going to vote to shrink government.
It's so weird in modern politics where to tell the truth is a revolutionary act that shocks everyone.
It's like, wait, wait, wait.
If you receive money from government, you don't want that money to go down.
I mean, this is how weird we are.
This is a factual statement that is completely true economically.
It is completely true according to any sound public choice theory.
Economists say we respond to incentives, and that's the basis of economics, along with the fact that all resources are limited and all desires are infinite.
And so Romney says that, and people are like, oh my god, he said something that was true!
Don't you understand this is politics?
You can't be doing that!
And so, you know, you start pulling out the sad sack stories, that's what reminded you.
So I read something on the Huffington Post, because every now and then I like at least one of my eyeballs to explode with left-wing socialism.
So I read something on the Huffington Post where, like, Poor Jenny is a nursing aide.
She has three children.
She gets by on $22,000 a year.
She has no husband.
"Is this who Romney is referring to?" - It's like, and you're sort of not allowed to criticize these people, as opposed to, why do you have three children and no husband?
Are you, like, what are you doing?
That's completely irresponsible.
You know, like, Noam Chomsky was saying, well, some guy, you know, he can lose his, I don't know.
I can't do a good Noam Chomsky because I still have vocal cords.
He's like somewhere beyond Clint Eastwood.
I feel like he's just about to seduce me when he talks.
He whispers so much.
He was talking about, you know, well, some guy who's got three kids and no savings.
And, you know, he then loses his job.
He's at the mercy of capitalism.
And it's like, why do you have three kids and no savings?
I mean, God, have some money before you have children.
Have a stable marriage before you have children.
Is that too much to ask a parent?
But you lose that, right, if you're middle class.
You don't get that.
Everyone rushing to your defense if you've made completely retarded life choices that are at the expense of the innocent, like children.
If you're in the middle class and you get divorced, a lot of people will say, well, that was kind of dumb.
Poor kids, right?
But if you're poor, it's like, but you're poor.
You know, everybody's got to love everything you do.
You can't be criticized because you're poor.
So I think that's just a reminder of what you're saying.
Now, maybe you're all such hard workers.
How many Protestants here?
How many people infected by the Protestant work ethic?
Oh, shit.
I spent five minutes picking my nose.
I better go start a company.
Oh, if only I could get it down to five minutes.
Anyway.
If you just have a low-rent job, what do you get to do at the end of the day?
You can go home.
Right?
You ever been a boss?
Anyone?
All right?
Are you the sad, sad person who makes friends with the cleaning lady at the end of the night?
Hi, Alice.
You're just starting your job.
I'm still here.
Everyone home hours ago.
They got lives.
They got families.
They go to the gym.
They go to movies.
I don't even know what movies are anymore.
My movie's my screensaver.
Right.
So if you're the boss, you're there a long time.
You know, I mean, I built a company, ground up, completely retarded, knew nothing about business.
And I mean, I was 70 hours a week for years.
All the people were going home and I was still there.
So it's easier to stay poor because you don't have to work as hard.
I mean, there's no punch out clocks for entrepreneurs.
I mean, you do that stuff, you just cry.
But if you're working in a restaurant and you're not the manager, you know, like I worked as a waiter as a teenager, we had managers who would get so tense.
I don't know if they still do this, but this used to be at This is a completely rambling speech, but I hope you don't mind.
But we used to do this thing at, I think it was, the pizza hut I worked at, where you'd have, like, the people would come and they'd order their food, and then within five minutes, you had to bring them their pizza, and you had to bring them their drinks first.
It was completely mad.
And they even put timers on the table so you could measure this.
And the boss used to get so, so stressed about all of this, because they'd have to make so many pizzas.
It had to be just right, and some were late, and if you didn't get the pizzas out in time, they got a free pizza, and it was nuts.
He would actually throw up at the end of every lunch.
There were no dishwashers who were like, oh man, I've had so many dishes, I can't take it.
They'd be like, yeah, I finished my dishes, I'm going home.
And the other guy's, oh, being a boss has so much power.
Sorry, I'll stop making that noise.
It's kind of gross.
But the thing is, if you stay in the low rent situation, there's lots of secondary gains.
Nobody ever talks about the secondary gains of being poor.
It's a lot easier socially if that's where you came from.
There's a lot less stress in your job, a lot less risk.
You don't have to challenge yourself as much.
You don't have to go to night school.
You don't have to learn all these new ways of interacting with people.
You don't have to constantly learn new things.
You don't have to challenge yourself.
You don't have to push yourself.
Now, I know there's studies that say, well, the bosses have the least stress of everyone and so on, but that's after you become getting there, you know?
Maybe when you're floating in orbit, it's kind of peaceful, but when you're coming off the rocket, it's kind of stressful, right?
Your jowls are shaking, your, I don't know, your kidney's coming out your ass.
I mean, that stuff is hard.
So, I mean, the reason that I'm talking about all of this is that there's this weird thing where, I mean, of course, the poor are victims.
And the poor victims, they did nothing to cause themselves, nothing could have changed, you know.
That's why you see these people appear, like, the single mother of three children needs your help.
It's like, but she, you know, they weren't asteroids that hit her, these children.
You know, it didn't just like, oh shit, what was that?
Three?
Are you kidding me?
I'm a virgin.
Ooh.
No.
There's potential in this.
I could start a new, anyway.
These are the results of life choices that are not that complicated.
You know, birth control is easy to get, and you know, whatever, right?
There's one called this.
Anyway.
But you sort of appear out of nowhere, these poor people who now need all of our help and our resources, and nobody can ever hold them accountable for what it is that they've done to get where they are.
And that's the weird thing.
But this is incredible.
I don't know what to call it.
I mean, it's not racism.
Classism?
That just sounds like you're upset about people going to school.
I don't know what to call it, but it's like you can't say to the poor people, or the people, you know, I got three kids, a single mom, a single dad, you know, I married the wrong person, and we had a bad divorce, and I'm broke, and it's like, but aren't you responsible?
I mean, the kids aren't responsible, I fully accept that, but aren't you, but you can't do that, right?
This is a taboo topic, at least for the most part.
You simply can't, because then you're heartless, and you don't care about these people.
You know, to treat them as human beings who are responsible, You know, I'm a big one for, you know, do you want me to care if?
Like, you know, when it comes to race issues, you know, do you want me to care if you're black or not?
If you don't want me to care, then I'll speak my mind and let's get rid of affirmative action.
If you don't want me to care that you're black, then I'll pretend you're not black, because that's the way I want it to be.
And you can pretend I'm not white?
That's wonderful.
Let's speak human to human to human to human.
Do you want me to care if you're poor or not?
If you don't want me to care that you're poor, then I will give you the same standard that I give to everyone else, which is you're responsible for the choices that you make, and if you've made bad choices, particularly if those choices involve children, that sucks!
It doesn't mean you're an evil person, but it means that you've made some really bad choices, and you need to fess up to those.
But of course, there's this weird phalanx that goes around the poor whenever these questions come up where they're like invulnerable from any kind of criticism.
And that's just weird for the people who fought their way out.
It's hard.
And there's times where it's like, damn, I wish I wasn't on this rocket.
I was going right back down to the underworld because it was comfy down there.
I knew where the lay of the land was.
I knew what was what.
I knew how to relate to people.
I knew what WWF was.
Wasn't about saving panda bears.
It's about beating people up.
But the politicians will create this separate category called the poor.
You know, the whole poverty industry.
Create this separate category called the poor.
And if you've been there and you've fought your way out, you know that there's a lot of goofy games to staying poor, which people don't talk about.
Because being poor is just a tragedy.
And the moment that you classify people like this, That they have a dominant characteristic which overrides their humanity called being poor?
That is catastrophic for society.
It's like having a characteristic called race, called black, white, whatever, that overrides their humanity, their essential humanity, which I think is common, we all share.
But when you create these categories, and this is why it ties into the first part of the speech where I said, you know, there's these, we're in the government, we're automatically good.
No, you're human beings.
We all share these characteristics, this potential for corruption, this love of power, this love of getting stuff for nothing.
We're mammals.
You know, we don't have air conditioning because we didn't like getting stuff for nothing.
You know, in the past, you know, there was some poor guy with a palm frond all night.
Now we want stuff for nothing.
It's great that we want stuff for nothing.
That's the essence of technology.
That's the essence of how we get, how I got here without walking.
It's beautiful!
But that same impulse to get something for nothing, when you put it in political terms, is cancerous, is vile, is destructive.
Because then you can get money by typing stuff and getting the Fed to To get in the Fed to buy the bonds to fund the government is completely weird.
It's like mailing in your visa bill to pay your visa bill.
It's completely bizarre.
So that wanting to get something for nothing is great until you get a government, and then it turns evil and rancid.
It's not then technology which gets you stuff like Dick Tracy watches and stuff like that.
It gets you wars and national debts to get something for nothing.
But this stripping the poor of their humanity, of the responsibility for their choices, It's weird.
And then, of course, what you could say is, well, the poor, you see, the poor can't make good choices.
You know, they just have children because they don't know about birth control.
They don't know about how to not do stupid things.
Good, then let's stop them from voting.
Oh, no, we can't do that.
I'm sorry?
You have two doctor friends that are poor?
Are they vets?
Are they poor?
Are they a surgeon?
Like an eye laser surgeon?
Oh, varicose veins?
And why?
Why?
Do you know why?
Oh, social communication problems?
Okay, right, right.
Yeah, well, I mean, there's a lot more to having money than just having a great idea, right?
I'm sorry?
No, it's not black and white.
I absolutely agree.
And I absolutely agree.
It's not like if you've got a great education or a great skill set, you're suddenly automatically rich.
There are lots of PhDs who drive cabs.
There's lots of stuff that goes into it.
But this question of stripping the poor of their humanity, I think it's really, really essential.
I really, you know, there are certain classes where I'm willing to grant diminished capacity.
You know, if somebody has a Metal spike through their head that's, you know, taking away their frontal lobes.
Okay, diminished capacity.
I'm down with that.
Right?
I mean, I'm willing to grant diminished capacity.
If you have a major political party lawn sign on the front of your house, okay, diminished capacity.
I got it.
It's tough.
I mean, I'm surprised these people can even hit the sign, you know.
That would be my next thought.
But they managed to do it somehow.
But I'm really loathe and hesitant to give diminished capacity to people, because it's a very big step.
I mean, it strips them of some responsibility, but it also strips them of any respect, moral quality, or anything, or potential for improvement, and so on.
And so, when you create these categories of people where some characteristic overrides their humanity, you know, whether it's race or poverty, whatever, what happens is you don't have empathy for them anymore.
Because they become a category.
They become an object.
They become something to manipulate, usually for the purpose of gaining political power.
And there's been these great advances in economics lately, which have to do with, you know, why government programs fail.
So, good, just to keep you awake, give me some of the major reasons why government programs fail.
Governments run them.
Okay, tautological, but I'll take it.
What else?
Concentrated benefit, diffused cost, right?
So the sugar manufacturers get millions of dollars in benefits from tariffs and the consumer pays, you know, well I guess in America it's $10,000 a year because you all like your sugar, right?
But I mean, yeah, so the consumer pays very little and the recipients benefit a huge amount, okay?
What else?
No accountability.
In a free market, you fail and you take the consequences.
In the government market, which I include the majority of financial institutions, if you fail, you get rewarded, right?
Isn't that the way?
In Canada, it's always the same.
I'm sure it's the same here.
You had the Olympics, right?
Because we just can't get enough of Greek imperialism.
But in Canada, it's the same thing.
If you get lots of medals, it's like, wow, these programs are working really well.
Let's expand them.
And if you don't get a lot of medals, it's like, we're not funding these programs enough.
We've got to expand them.
And if you get the same amount of medals as last year, it's like, we've got to do better.
We've got to expand these programs.
Wait a minute.
I think I detect a pattern.
Give me a moment.
It might come to me.
What else?
The impossibility of economic calculation.
That's right.
That's right.
Math is hard.
No, wait.
Yeah, so if there's no prices, you can't calculate efficient resources.
You can't get all the information that prices come, right?
That's the old argument about recycling.
You know, like you have arguments with people about recycling.
It's real easy.
You don't have to get complicated.
You know recycling is inefficient because nobody will pay you to pick it up.
I mean, that's all you need to know.
It's right there in the price.
Yeah, so if there's no prices, you can't calculate anything for shit.
And then you end up joining the Venus Project and Marxist robots become your mommies.
Yeah, you've seen Zeitgeist, you know.
Sorry, go ahead.
Yes, that's right.
If you, you know, there's not a lot of people who do LASIK eye surgery who were looking at putting themselves out of the business of doing LASIK eye surgery.
So yeah, I mean, my argument is, I don't know if you know this, in the post-war period, after the Second World War, poverty was getting better.
Like, unbelievably better.
And did you know, after the Second World War, in the black communities, The divorce rate was lower than in the white communities.
The family togetherness.
I mean this is a community that got back together after slavery.
The only thing they couldn't survive was the welfare state.
And so poverty was declining by a percentage point every single year after the end of the Second World War.
It's astounding.
We were within sight of having all but voluntary poverty.
Like artists and graduate students and podcasters.
Okay, I'm back.
But all but voluntary poverty would have been eliminated.
And so I think generally the government was like, shit, if we run out of poor people, that's even worse than running out of criminals.
So we gotta go make some.
I mean, it's not the war on drugs.
Shit, we're running out of criminals.
Let's go make some.
Let's make stuff that people really like illegal.
Pot, heroin, soft drinks of a certain size.
17 liters, moral.
18 liters, evil.
That's some pretty fine calibration of the ethics there.
And so the government was like, shit, we're running out of poor people.
We've got to fix that.
Let's go help them.
They go help them, and it's like, ooh, that's good.
Problem averted.
We're going to have tons of poor people now.
Oh, and by the way, let's make divorce really easy, and let's tell all the women in the world to be dissatisfied with marriage so that we can create a whole new generation of, anyway, problems down the road.
Shit, where was I?
Oh, I was so close.
Oh yeah, okay.
So if you look at...
The poor, like, they're not human beings who've made a whole bunch of complex choices of various benefits and various rewards.
You know, like, okay, so maybe they didn't get out of the lower class, but, you know, they get to have really comfortable Thanksgiving dinners where nobody calls them too uppity for their own good, and nobody bitches at them for their success, and nobody snipes at them, and whatever, right?
Oh, you're just too good to hang with us now, Mr. Big Shot?
Yeah, I'm totally stereotyping, but this stuff does occur.
So they've made a whole complex series of choices Of which, remaining poor is just one effect.
There's a whole complex series of choices.
And I think we have to respect those choices.
There's nothing wrong with being poor.
There are costs and there are benefits.
Nothing wrong with being rich.
There are costs and there are benefits.
But if we just look at them as poor, without looking at this incredibly complex series of choices, of cost and benefit calculations, Then we make fundamental mistakes as a society.
It's a lack of empathy.
It's a lack of respect for the choices.
I can respect the choice of somebody who decides to stay poor.
I can understand it.
There are times I wish I made this exact same choice.
I mean, I used to make a lot of money as a software executive, became a podcaster, and now I can fill half a hole.
Right?
But I mean, that was a huge income decline for which I'm eternally thankful, and thank you guys for coming out.
I mean, it's wonderful, because it is much more meaningful.
I think the world needs better ideas more than it needs another piece of software.
But if you just look at the problem of the poor, that they lack money, rather than their lack of money is a huge effect of a whole bunch of complex choices, you make fundamental mistakes as a society.
And the fundamental mistake is the poor are exactly the same as the non-poor, except they don't have as much money.
That lacks empathy and respect for the choices that people have made about Social conformity versus breaking out of cycles or whatever.
And so what they say, and let's simplify it just for the sake of a mental exercise.
So the politicians then sell this thing to the public where they say, well, people who make less than $10,000 a year, they need a top-up.
You know, like they're not human beings but a tank of gas.
They need a top-up.
So let's give them $2,000 more a year.
Those people who make less than $10,000 a year.
Because you're just fixing not a complex series of choices and calculations and benefits and costs, which have the effect of poverty, or less money, but it's like, oh, they just need more money.
You lack empathy for the complexities of the situation.
So what happens then?
I mean, you all probably know this quite well.
So what happens to a government program that says anybody who makes less than $10,000 a year gets $2,000?
I'm sorry?
It gets a lot more customers.
Okay, so what happens more specifically?
What happens if you make $9,000 a year?
What are you going to do?
Well, or you may drop down to... Because if you drop down to $8,000, you get $10,000.
In this bizarro world of, you know, like reverse reality.
So you make $9,000 a year.
Oh, well, I could get $11,000, I guess.
Or I could just drop down to $8,000 and still get an extra $1,000.
And because whatever jobs you have at $8,000 or $9,000 a year, they probably suck.
So, wanting to work less rather than push through to make more money, it makes sense, right?
What happens if you make $11,000 a year?
Yeah, you drop down to $9,000, you're still at $11,000.
Except you have $2,000 less work to do every year.
Same thing if you make $12,000.
You can drop down to $10,000 and end up at $12,000.
If you make $13,000, You know, it's still kind of tempting, right?
Because you feel kind of like ripped off.
Like for $1,000 a year less, I could have to do a whole lot less work.
And of course, if you make $7,000 a year, how much money do you have to make to do better than the government program?
A whole lot, right?
Especially given the complexity of the quality of life issues.
Flipping burgers sucks.
So if you make 7, you get automatically bumped up to 9.
If you make 8, yeah, you go to 10.
But then to break out past that, right, this is the weird null zone that the poor get stuck in, this canyon of the government programs, where to go past it, you have to make significantly more.
But that's only the tip of the iceberg.
I won't get into all of it, because, of course, it's all... I mean, I find it fascinating, but, you know, life's short.
So what happens for the employer?
Because, you know, there's a whole bunch of jobs for $8,000 to $10,000 or $7,000 to $11,000 a year.
What happens to the employers there when this program hits?
People are going to work less.
Or they're gonna demand a lot more money to get over the trough of the government program.
Right?
So, you know, when was the last time you went to... Ah, this is the shit that I really miss.
You went to a grocery store and somebody bagged your groceries.
Anybody ever do that still here?
It still happen?
Doesn't happen where I come from.
Doesn't happen.
Well, it's minimum wage plus, you know, all of this stuff, right?
Did you ever get your windshield cleaned?
Does that ever happen anymore?
Used to happen when I was a kid.
I love watching that stuff.
But now, does it ever happen?
Sorry?
In the state of Oregon, they do it?
Okay.
All right.
I'm sorry?
You have to pump your own gas?
Yes.
Are they cleaning your windshield?
Because you have to pump your own gas, they'll clean your windshield?
That's weird.
That's like going to a dentist and he shines your shoes but won't clean your teeth.
What's the point of that?
So what happens, of course, is that the number of job applicants dries up for all of these jobs.
Now, either the jobs don't have to get done, like, you know, you don't have to clean someone's windshield, in which case they just stop getting done.
And people just learn to live without it, and nobody really expects it anymore, so a whole bunch of job opportunities just dry up.
Ushers at movie theaters, do you still have them here?
Gone where I am.
Missed out on the Batman movie.
No, seriously, those are effects.
I mean, it may not have changed anything, but it's still an effect.
Or, if the job still needs to be done, you have to pay a whole bunch more money.
To people to do it, to get them out of that trough where they just won't come to work for that amount of money because what's the point?
And so then you have to pass along the cost to the consumers or something like that.
Or what's more likely, do you all have these things now where, I don't know why in the States I start using y'all when I'm not even in the South, but I'm sorry about that.
I mean, one too many Dr. Phil shows maybe.
But do you have this thing where No, it can't be like that.
OK, so you have to stop paying for this stuff.
So you pass along the cost to the consumers.
The consumers get upset.
Oh, yeah, I remember now.
So you have this thing now where in checkout stores, do you have to do your own checkout sometimes?
Do you have that option?
That's coming by, right?
Yeah, it's kind of weird, doesn't it feel like?
And what do I want to do?
I'm supposed to mop the floors next?
I mean, can't you people do something for me?
I mean, this is your store.
Why am I doing your job?
Doesn't it feel weird?
And it's like bringing... Sorry?
Yeah.
Yeah, and so what happens is the incentive to automate goes way up.
Because you can't get people to do these jobs, you've got to pay them a whole bunch more, which raises the value of automating this.
I mean, when tellers got unionized, what was the next thing you saw?
Bank machines.
You know, there are probably people in this audience who have no idea what it meant to live before ATMs.
Ooh, it's Thursday.
The bank's closing at 3.
It's a long weekend.
I've got to get to the bank.
Or I'm playing with my hand puppets all weekend.
That was just completely insane.
I remember the first time in Canada, bank opened from 8 in the morning till 8 at the night.
It was like the second coming of the financial universe.
It was just incredible.
Wait, I don't have to line up for 45 minutes to get 20 bucks?
And so what happens is you automate this stuff, which is why there's so many robots and assembly lines and all.
You just automate this stuff, and that permanently eliminates those jobs.
Because once you've automated, you don't go back.
You've already put a whole R&D in.
You've already bought all this stuff.
You've trained everyone.
The customers got used to it.
You don't go back.
And so what happens is the jobs dry up all around this area.
The jobs dry up.
They either stop being required, or they get automated, or they get outsourced to China, or something like that, because you've created this incentive problem.
Because you haven't treated people like human beings who are responsible for their own choices.
But you treated them like four letters and two legs.
P-O-O-R.
Give them money and you've solved the problem.
First of all, it may not be a problem.
Nothing wrong with being poor.
Secondly, if you really want to solve that problem, go talk to people, figure out what's holding them back, if they even want a change.
It's complex.
And so then what happens Is the people who are making ten, eleven, twelve thousand dollars, they find those jobs are being automated.
Right?
So what do they do?
We've got to expand this program.
See the common pattern?
We've got to expand this program.
It's terrible.
So they start to get lobbyists, and you get the media involved, and you get more, she has three children, she, you know, all these things that, you know, she, one of her dog has scoliosis.
It's terrible.
We must help her.
Don't we care, as a society?
So then you get more.
Oh, okay, well, so all these people now, 10, 11, 12, $13,000, they're out of work, they're broke, they're complaining, they've got whole sad sort of after-school specials about how sorrowful and sad-eyed clown their lives are.
And then, we've got to give them more money.
So then I get $4,000.
And then, you see, it's like these sinkholes, you know?
They just sink, and then more land, and more land, and more land goes down, and then you lose whole states sometimes.
All because people have not given the poor the respect of their choices, but have imagined that their only problem is they lack money, rather than money being an effect of a wide variety of choices.
And this lack of empathy, which I think is really endemic to our civilization as a whole, not just our civilization, but what we're talking about right now, is this lack of empathy, this lack of respect for people's choices.
And I'll just end with this.
The fundamental problem with the state in terms of resources and in terms of the escalating financial catastrophe that we're lashed to.
You know, no lifeboats anymore.
There's no place to go.
This was the place to go in the 19th century, early 20th century, even in the mid-20th century.
America was the place to go.
Canada was the place to go.
And lots of people came.
But there's no place to go now.
I mean, you could go off world, but it's just going to be another government program.
Was it the moon station?
It was at Newt Gingrich, right?
I know why he wanted a moon station.
That guy's fat.
Here, I feel like I've dieted.
That's just a theory.
I don't have proof.
But it's a convincing one, I think.
Pillsbury Doughboy in space.
I'd pay to see that.
This lack of empathy is so foundational to our society that we almost can't see it anymore, where you just see this endless parade of monochromatic, two-dimensional portrayals of human beings, all to just say, give us more stuff.
Surrender more power.
Surrender more freedom.
We have to raise your taxes, because these poor, tragic people had children and no husband beamed to them, or children and no wife beamed to them.
Or these people need health care.
I mean, the statistical estimate, which is fairly convincing, is that 70% of illnesses arise from lifestyle choices, including death.
I mean, you have a lifestyle choice called being alive, which is going to end in death.
But, you know, and I hate to pick, but, you know, did you see these guys in Chicago?
The teachers, they went on strike, right?
I mean, they had to bring out fisheye lens just to get these people in the camera.
I mean, they were huge.
And it's like, oh, so you need your health care.
I understand that.
But may you have had something to do with an increased need for it?
Anyway.
But you can't give people the responsibility of their own choices.
That's being uncaring.
To treat people as human beings who are responsible for where they are is uncaring, is monstrous, is cold-hearted.
And to me, that's fine.
Okay, so let's stop having children fail tests.
Let's just change the whole school system so you can't fail the test anymore.
Because obviously, if adults aren't responsible for their choices, children are not responsible for their choices at all.
But try putting that one across.
No more failure in school.
Because there's no failure in adulthood, clearly.
Everybody gets subsidized, rich or poor.
Bankers get subsidized for lying, stealing, and cheating.
Well, I'm repeating myself.
I said bankers.
I mean, not in a free market.
Because everyone's like, ooh, fractional reserve banking is terrible.
No, it's not.
It's just the force that's terrible.
If you want to put your money into a bank account where they pay you 50% a year, you just know that's some casino shit going on, right?
I mean, you know ahead of time there's going to be some risky stuff going down.
You don't get 50% by investing in, I don't know, something solid.
But if your fractional reserve is fine, take 10 times my money, lend it out.
I just know I might take a hit.
If you want your money solid, then put it in gold under the floorboards.
But I don't mind people who... Everybody wants the reward and nobody wants the risk.
But this lack of compassion is so fundamental.
And the people who claim that they have so much compassion for people are the people who actually don't have.
Compassion for them, who don't have empathy for them, who don't give people the respect of their choices, but try to reduce them to these two-dimensional black holes of need that you're just supposed to fill and everything becomes fine.
Just give the poor 2,000 bucks more a year and they're great.
Just give workers protection from being fired because there's all these unjust bosses around who fire productive workers because they're completely retarded and have no sense of their own self-interest and they'll be fine.
Just force children to go to school, and they'll be educated.
Like if you rape someone, they'll love you.
It's mad.
We will use force to achieve these ends, and these ends will magically be achieved.
And we'll pretend that there's no force involved, and we will never track the consequences.
And it's the unborn who will pay the most.
I love the Republican dedication to the rights of the unborn.
Abortion is a terrible thing.
I mean, nobody wants it.
But how about the debt?
I mean, what about the rights of those unborn to actually live a life free of the state-asserted base shackles of being sold off to foreign bankers for the sake of grabbing a few votes in the here and now?
I mean, it's repulsive.
But, I mean, our society couldn't function if children mattered.
We'd have to change our whole educational system.
We'd have to change our family structures.
We'd have to change What it meant to work and what it meant to be at home, to raise your kids.
I mean, everything would have to change if children were people who had needs.
But what is it Albert Shanker, former head of the Public School Teachers Union, said?
I will start representing the interests of school children, or children as a whole, when they start paying union dues.
And that's the truth.
And that's the incentive problem.
And that's what we face as a society.
This incentive problem cannot be overcome.
So, thank you for your patience.
The last thing I'll say is that economics says people respond to incentives, but you have to create this weird situation where the poor don't respond to incentives, right?
It doesn't take a lot of thought.
I mean, we did it in, what, 15 minutes where we talk about why giving 2,000 bucks more Two poor people is never going to work.
and it's only going to require more and more and get worse and worse and further crater the ambitions and potential of the poor who want to escape that situation.
But if we don't find a way to look at human beings as rich, complex products of a wide variety of environmental choice factors, genetic factors, such as they are influenced by choice, which seems to be increasingly understood such as they are influenced by choice, which seems to be increasingly If we don't look at people with the full respect that you've made your choices, then we're going to get caught in this trap, and this is the most fundamental trap that we're caught in, I would argue.
The fruits of virtue can be transferred.
The fruits of vice cannot be transferred.
That's, I think, the most fundamental problem we're facing.
So, for those who went, again, I don't mean to keep singing, but those who went some sort of poor upwards, or those who went middle class upwards or whatever, right?
There's a lot of work, right?
Those are the grindstones, sparks in your eyes, it's, you know, late nights, bleary eyes, lost problems in your relationships, whatever, right?
And, you know, you feel like you're sort of trapped in this work coffin with windows while everyone is out there like you're in summer school and everyone's out there just playing with balls and throwing frisbees and getting drunk and, you know, all that sort of stuff, right?
And it's like being Joe Friday stuck watching movies in Woodstock for the rest of your life.
I mean, it's just horrible.
So if you go to work and you go to night school and you start a company and you do all of that sort of stuff, then you may end up with a million bucks or two million bucks or whatever.
I think that's fine.
I think that's a good mark of economic value.
It's not a mark of human value.
It's not a mark of virtue.
But it is a mark of economic value, and that's great.
But if you didn't do that, right, if you, as the guy in the back was saying, you conform to everyone around you, you don't rise, you don't grow, you don't go to night school, and you go partying on the weekends.
It's a cliche, but there's some truth in it.
Then what happens is all that fun, and it is fun, all that fun that you had, you got two guys when they're 50.
One guy's got a million bucks because he started a company and worked like hell.
Another guy has got a hundred bucks because he didn't work like hell and went out and partied a lot.
Well, the million bucks can be transferred, right?
The hell of a lot of fun that you had when you're partying can't be transferred, right?
And that's what I mean when I say the fruits of virtue, i.e., the fruits of, in this case, you know, hard work and discipline and sacrifice for the sake of achieving some financial goal, well, the government can take half that million bucks.
Oh, what is it in England now somebody just wrote to me?
97% taxation?
It was 95% with the Beatles, right?
Remember they said, that's one for you, 19 for me, says the tax man?
That was true.
95% taxation.
So you can take the million bucks that the guy earned from working hard, and you can give it to the other guy.
But the fruits of having a lot of fun and not working hard, you can't transfer that.
The rich guy is not going to say, OK, I'll give you half a million bucks, but you've got to give me 10 years of great party memories.
Because the party memories, you can't remember them anyway.
You can't sell them.
I will sell you a big bag of blackouts for half a million dollars.
What's my bid?
It won't happen, right?
And so because the products of discipline and hard work and virtue can be transferred, the monetary rewards you get from working hard can be transferred, but the fun stuff that you had from not working hard can't be transferred, there's this gravity well.
And the more that people take from those who've worked hard, of course we all know, whatever you tax diminishes, whatever you subsidize increases, then people are going to say, well, I'll go work hard and I'll just get some of this guy's money through taxes.
And that is where we are.
And the fundamental problem, of course, is not the transfer of money.
It's the decay in character.
It's the decay in ethics.
It's the decay in capacity to defer gratification for self-sacrifice.
I know all the objectivists are going to write to me.
Self-sacrifice is evil, man.
Don't you know?
Can't?
Just one word wrong with that.
But there is a value in that.
There is a value, I think, in hard work and the deferral of gratification.
I think all of that stuff is good, but it diminishes as a society.
And then what we're asking people to do is to have an intellectual revolution when they've got all kinds of lazy.
Which is like going down to your local overweight smoker's lounge and trying to get a ski team together.
Even if you start with random people, it's better than if you do that.
But that's where we are.
We got all kinds of soft, and I think lazy as a society, because we got bribed by the bad people into giving up our integrity to virtue.
And that's a tragedy.
And I think that it will change very quickly.
I mean, I think the financial system can't last and they'll turn on the dependents just like they did in the Russian Empire and the run out of money under communism.
All these poor old women selling teacups on a corner because their rubles weren't worth anything for their pension.
They'll turn and they'll say it's all about self-sacrifice.
Then we'll have a chance.
You know, it's annoying to be right for so long and not to be listened to, but when events change enough and people have no choice to listen to the people who predicted it all along and who were right all along, And there's nothing sadder than being right as a libertarian, right?
I mean, it's terrible.
It's awful.
It's like being a doctor saying to somebody chain-smoking, you've got to stop that.
You're going to get sick.
You've got to stop that.
You're going to get sick.
You hate to be right.
You know you're right.
But doesn't it suck to be right?
You pick up the paper every day, and it's like, oh, man, Atlas shrugged again.
Are you kidding me?
I hate being right about this stuff, because it means there's going to be a lot of suffering, because people didn't listen to the advice of people who knew some stuff about where this was going.
And, you know, like any addict who doesn't listen to the advice of a wise friend, you've got to hit bottom before you'll change.
And that's where we are as a society.
So I think we just have to be there to continue to remind people what truth and virtue, peace, non-aggression principle, property rights, what it means, why it's important.
And to give everybody the respect of full humanity, those who've succeeded and those who failed.
Those who failed have succeeded in other areas.
The poor who've remained poor have succeeded in maintaining social cohesion or avoiding hard work or whatever it is that they want to do.
Giving them the complexity of their decisions and the full mantle of humanity is, I think, fundamental to empathy and respect for other human beings.
And it gets us out of the pity party and the manipulation that the poor have been used to gain more and more control over us as formerly free human beings.
That's it for me.
If you have any questions or comments, I'm happy to listen.
I've got nowhere to go tonight, so thanks for your attention.
Anybody?
Questions?
Comments?
You don't have to.
It's optional.
It will not be enforced.
Now, let's not be around if you want to chat afterwards, but thanks again for your time.
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