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Nov. 30, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:33:32
YouTube's New Terms of Service - let's talk! Livestream
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So I wanted to talk about this controversial clause that a lot of people have been talking about.
I wanted to talk about, I want to get your guys' thoughts about it because it's going all the way from nothing's going to change It's like Adpocalypse 2.0 and everybody to the right of Chairman Mao is going to get nuked.
And here is the segment from the Terms of Service that are upcoming that states, and I quote, YouTube may terminate your access or your Google accounts access to all or part of the service if YouTube believes in its sole discretion, That provision of the service to you is no longer commercially viable.
And so people think, of course, that this is YouTube saying, well, we can just terminate your channel and account or whatever if you're not earning revenue.
And I don't believe, this may come back to haunt me, but I don't believe that that's going to be the case.
So... There are a lot of people who upload a whole bunch of stuff on YouTube and then they may set it to private or they may set it to unlisted instead of putting them on like a paid service such as Google Drive or I guess you could do Dropbox or a variety of other things.
And so there's that aspect of things.
You can have live streaming and you can have 24/7 high definition view of your driveway and that's not really particularly great for YouTube as a whole.
Now, it's not entirely new for...
Well, it's not at all new for Google to say we have to make money off you and it's certainly not particularly new for YouTube since early 2018.
In YouTube's terms of service, there is...
Well, the language has been modified to give YouTube more leeway in making the determination.
So now, what's coming up on December 10th says that YouTube has the sole discretion to terminate an account, whereas before it said that YouTube must reasonably believe...
It should do so.
That's not hugely clarifying.
If they say, oh no, we're not going to delete people of long-standing, we're not going to delete people who've got a lot of subscribers, we're not going to delete people who have a lot of views and so on, but that is sort of where things stand.
So... It doesn't say that if a specific user or channel is not commercially viable, then the channel will be terminated.
And YouTube says, to clarify, there are no new rights in our terms of service to terminate an account because it's not making money.
As before, we may discontinue certain YouTube features or parts of the service, for example, if they're outdated or have low usage.
This does not impact creators slash viewers in any new ways.
And so...
It's hard to say.
My particular belief, look, okay, so let's talk a little bit about sort of business and profit and loss because YouTube is, of course, like Google, a company that is designed to make money.
And so...
How does it make money?
Well, it makes money primarily through the selling of advertisements.
And for all of those people who are out there, and there are a lot of them who say, well, just create your own YouTube alternative.
Well, there are alternatives to YouTube.
I have accounts on BitChute, on Vimeo, and Dailymotion, and other places.
But here's the problem, is that when you allow people to just upload...
Whatever they want within some limits, of course.
You allow people to upload whatever they want.
And then what you have to do is you have a huge amount of bandwidth, of course.
And you have a huge amount of processing costs.
You've got to have some pretty fast computers to transcode all of that.
Source video into something that is easily consumable over HTML5 or, I don't know, did it even do Flash anymore?
Probably not, ever since iOS put a bit of a nail in that coffin.
So you need huge storage space, huge bandwidth, big costs, and an enormous amount of processing speed and power.
That's your cost.
And, of course, there's a lot of policing.
You need your copyright checks, and you have to have a whole system for resolving disputes and complaints and so on, and you have to monitor for violence, for pornographic content, for child exploitation content, for, you know, you have wildly different levels from sort of First Amendment open season to really restrictive hate speech laws all over the world.
It gets really complicated. And it's really challenging.
So how do you monetize that?
Well, you monetize that, and Google, of course, purchased YouTube for a fairly small amount of money, given that YouTube is considered to be worth $140, $160 billion these days.
I think Google got it for under $2 billion back in the day.
And the reason that YouTube, the second most visited site on the Internet after Facebook, I don't think free domains even in the top five come to think of it.
But the reason that they can do it, the reason they can monetize all that storage, all that bandwidth, all that processing costs, all of that overhead, the legal requirement compliance and so on, is because by tracking your usage, by uniting, I suppose, with Google's Tracking of your preferences, your searches, your emails, and whatever it is that they're scanning to get a hold of your preferences, they can serve up very, very, very targeted ads, right?
And that is the goldmine of online revenue generation is really, really targeted ads, right?
So, you know, you do a search for tinnitus and, you know, until the end of time, you're getting, you know, it's a miracle cure for tinnitus in, insert name of local town here.
And so the combination of YouTube with Google and that very, very precise data slicing and dicing to get a demographic of, you know, people who've ever had hearing problems, who live in some particular town, who are between this age and this age, and who have an income of this or this or what.
Like, you can really, really slice and dice, as opposed to the spray-and-pray traditional method of advertising, where you just throw an ad on TV and, you know, basically cross your fingers.
So that very... Laser pinpoint advertising is how it's going to make money.
I do understand, of course, that for people to...
I don't know if you say it's abusing the system.
I don't know what to say. But for people who just upload a bunch of videos, set them to unlisted, and basically have their entire family album of 10 years' worth of videos up there on YouTube, and nobody really goes to see them, but again, you still have to store them.
So you save on bandwidth costs, but you still have to store them, and you still have to process them, and that's all...
Very expensive, especially now that people's videos, like what they shoot from their phone, is like 4K 60 frames a second or whatever.
So, it's becoming really expensive.
I mean, I remember back in the day, YouTube only started taking videos in late 2005.
I think it was early 2006 that I first created my account.
I was like user number 12 or something like that.
And back then, it was, you know, it was 240p.
I remember when it went to 480p, how exciting that was.
And then 720p, and then 1080, and then 60 frames a second, and now 4K, and...
All I can tell you is that as I'm getting older, the resolution is getting better.
Not a great combo! It's like slowly getting closer to the moon and the shadows are lengthening.
So that storage, that bandwidth, that processing speed is all a big challenge.
And if people are just uploading a bunch of stuff, or let's say that they haven't logged in for quite a long time, and that's been the case in the past, then they can say, listen, we need to free up We need to free up our service.
We need to free up our storage for more relevant and useful and profitable kinds of interactions, right?
So that's important.
I think they're going to focus on that.
And it's kind of hard to argue with that to some degree.
You know, I have my arguments with YouTube.
You know, we have an exciting relationship.
And so...
I can understand YouTube saying, listen, you've got gigabytes of data up here.
It's all set to private or unlisted.
Barely anybody comes to watch it.
You know, we're not a storage site.
You know, you need to go and go someplace and store your videos elsewhere.
But, you know, we're not really a storage site.
That's not really what it's for.
I think there's going to be some of that for sure.
And so I can understand that, you know, they do need to make money and so on, right?
The big challenge comes, and I did tweet about this a little while ago, and I'll just finish up here.
We'll get to your sort of thoughts or questions about this.
Not that I can answer from YouTube's standpoint or anything.
I can just give you sort of my outside opinion.
But here's the thing. So YouTube started taking ads, I think, in 2007, serving up ads.
And there was an opportunity to make money back then.
But I, and of course a lot of other people, but I'll just talk about myself, I said I'm not going to do that.
Listen, I knew that, I know that the job of a philosopher is to try and move the Overton window of acceptable discourse to include arguments, evidence, reason, and so on, empiricism, that can make people uncomfortable.
I appreciate us having A civilization.
I appreciate enormously us being able to have this kind of incredible conversation.
I really, really do appreciate all of that.
And all of that It has come about because people are willing to make other people uncomfortable.
Listen, when I was in the software game, we'd do an RFP. The software that I wrote fundamentally, and of course lots of other people chipped in later, was selling sometimes for a grand total of over a million bucks because it was really designed to help corporations minimize environmental impacts and reduce emissions and groundwater and all that sort of stuff.
So we would go up to basically Fortune 500 companies, big government departments, and we would try and sell our software.
And there'd be a couple of other software companies in, admittedly, a rather niche market who were trying to sell stuff too.
And if they won, which was rare, then we felt bad.
We were uncomfortable.
We were upset.
And if we won, they would feel bad, right?
As YouTube, of course, has become more and more successful, which, you know, more power to them.
It's a tough space and it's a challenging business model.
Then they've made TV executives unhappy.
They've made radio people unhappy.
They've made music companies unhappy.
Like one of the most searched for terms on YouTube is music, right?
So it's like a big infinite music repository for a lot of people.
So financial discomfort, you know, when cars became big, then the people who sold and maintained and cleaned up after horses got kind of upset, right?
So upsetting people is just part of progress.
And it's almost impossible to upset people more than moral progress, right?
Or attempting to reclaim moral ground that I think was there before that maybe has sort of fallen away.
So I knew from early on that I didn't want to be limited in the truths that I could talk about, almost no matter how challenging they were.
So I said no to ad revenue.
And this is back, you know, like I survive on donations.
And please, please, if you want to help me out, freedomain.com forward slash donate is the place to go.
I really, really would appreciate your help and your support.
freedomain.com forward slash donate.
But back then, I was barely scraping by.
I took a massive, I think it was about 80% pay cut to go from the software field into being an online philosopher.
And so back in the day, you know, it would have been pretty nice to dip into some of that sweet, sweet ad revenue.
But it was a challenge because I knew...
That it would be a point of pain that people who didn't want me to speak the truths I was talking about would be able to focus on advertising and get that pulled and then I would be up the old creek without the paddle, as they say.
So I... Did not take ads.
And that, of course, was perfectly acceptable, was perfectly fine, because they were trying to get people to come to the site, right?
So if you've been on YouTube, I'm sure you have.
Well, you are now, right? If you've been on YouTube, you know that's that little autoplay feature, which if you're listening to a quiet video at night to get to sleep, you really have to remember to turn off before someone's trumpets of doom blast you into the stratosphere suddenly.
But... When people would come and watch my videos, it's true.
YouTube paid for the bandwidth. YouTube paid for the storage.
YouTube had paid for the transcoding of my videos.
But the reason why they were willing to do that was I brought...
Tens of millions of people to YouTube through what it is that I was doing.
And then, for me, there'd be all the suggested videos and they'd go click elsewhere.
So once I got them onto the site for what I was doing, then they would go elsewhere.
And a lot of those other channels, a lot of those other videos were monetized.
And so YouTube would then get...
I was like the gateway drug, so to speak.
Hey, no ads here.
But they would then go to places where there were...
Ads. So that choice to remain ad-free was very conscious and very specific on my part.
Now, because I remained ad-free, I was able to explore topics and talk to experts and do all of the series that have got some people's knickers in a twist and so on.
But important stuff, important science, important arguments, important evidence to bring to bear on the complexities of the human condition.
So, you know, what I've talked about on Twitter and what I sort of want to reiterate here before just getting to your sort of comments about this is that those of us Who helped build YouTube.
I mean, people were coming to my videos before they were going anywhere else for quite some time.
And I'm obviously not foundationally responsible for the success of YouTube, but I was there.
And I certainly did help bring people to the site.
And I mean, what was it?
More than a quarter of a billion views of my videos.
People have come. And they've gone elsewhere, which has helped YouTube make money.
And now, of course, I understand that YouTube is saying, okay, well, if we just publish another Jimmy Fallon clip, it's going to get 10 million views.
We're going to get ads.
It's going to make money.
And we can be basically like the 2020 hindsight DVR of the 21st century or whatever, right?
Just watch. Clips or there's innocuous videos, there's the, you know, the really funny dude perfect videos, there's the life hack videos, the cat videos, the ubiquitous cat videos, the fail videos, the memes, the mimes, the whatever you write.
So I understand that YouTube wants to go to less controversial content and I sort of accept that as an argument to be made At a table, right?
Which is, you know, if they publish a video from CNN or NBC or ABC or whatever, okay, well, they can probably get some ads on it and they can share those ads revenue with the networks and so on.
And no one's, I mean, I guess some, maybe the people who advertise on Rush Limbaugh would say, what?
You put me on a CNN video?
I'm pulled. I won't stand for it.
But here's the thing.
So if there is something down the road where they say that, well, you know, if you're not monetized or we can't monetize you, then that's a problem.
I can understand that with very low view, but lots of storage and all of that, like the stuff I talked about, people uploading their family videos or home movies or whatever and keeping them private.
That I can understand.
That sort of makes sense to me.
For people moving forward, if there's a rule, like if it does turn out to be that people can't run their channels or whatever, can't do their videos because of this non-monetization situation, Then, to me, what's fair and what's reasonable is if you make that decision going forward,
like from here, like if you're starting up a channel and you say, oh, well, you know, if I can't be monetized, then that's bad, then you can be less controversial, you can be less upsetting in general to the left, and you can sort of sail forward with that.
For the people like myself who have made specific decisions on content, Based upon not taking advertising, then that seems a little bit retroactive to apply that backwards in time.
You know the old phrase, sort of grandfathered in and so on.
And that's my sort of argument.
That if you say, as it was in the past, well, you know, it's fine if you're not monetized.
You're welcome here. Okay, well then people made specific decisions that...
Made them not monetizable in a way, and sometimes that's explicit, like the channel gets demonetized, and sometimes that's implicit, like forget, I'm not even going to try and run for ads.
So people who've made that decision based upon there being a welcome in YouTube, even if you're not monetized, I think that that's a pretty harsh thing.
If it's going forward, it makes it more challenging to apply that backwards.
So I just wanted to mention that as a thought, and let's get to your delightful questions.
If we could... Make it about this topic.
That would be great.
And let's have a look and see what people want to chat about.
And sorry, while I just get kind of caught up here.
YouTube wants to become Netflix.
That goal will ultimately destroy the brand.
You know, it is a challenge.
You know, I like to put myself in other people's shoes, you know, particularly those high-heeled CFM pumps.
But if I sort of think about YouTube, you know, which was like, hey man, let's just share videos, you know, which is, you know, sort of the cool idea back in the day.
One thing that I think has been maybe a bit of a surprise to social media companies is just how pivotal they've become in massive conflicts regarding culture, regarding art, regarding politics, you name it.
I mean, these social media companies have just become ground zero in a lot of ways for these kinds of conflicts.
And that is really, really...
Tricky to navigate. You have to deal with the world that is, not the world that you would like to have.
For me, as an idealist, I have to keep an eye on the world that I want, but I really do have to live in and navigate the world that is.
It's tough to navigate the complexities of, in particular, look at 2020.
I mean, everybody knows that social media had a pivotal role in electing Trump in 2016.
I mean, there's no doubt about that whatsoever because Trump's margin of victory was pretty narrow and it didn't take a whole lot of people consuming social media content to switch the votes in a pretty small and pretty slim way.
I mean, I get like the electoral college vote was a landslide, but it was, you know, much closer when it came to, well, the people who decided those electoral college votes.
So, of course, in 2016, a lot of the people on the left kind of like, yeah, social media, you know, It's fine.
You know, let them have their little Trump fetish videos and all of that.
And, you know, we'll just let them be.
Let them play their little sandbox games and let them pretend that they're changing something because they were being assured.
I mean, this is the most amazing thing about 2016.
By God, it was great to be a public figure back then.
But... We're good to go.
Taking over social media.
It really wasn't worth bullying social media because everybody thought, based upon, you know, the old thing that all the generals are always fighting the last war, not the current war, everybody thought, ah, what does it matter?
Let them have the little freak out on social media and it'll be fine.
Hillary's still getting in.
And then, of course, when the mainstream media got it so completely and totally and utterly wrong.
Like, it wasn't like, oh, you know, it was 55, 45 Hillary to Trump.
It was like 98 Hillary to Trump.
And they got it so absolutely, completely and totally wrong.
And, you know, that's an amazing moment for people when you just get something so completely and totally and absolutely wrong.
It's a chance either for great growth or great dogmatic dig-in.
And, of course, we all know what the mainstream media did.
They did the great dogmatic dig-in and justified and so on.
And then it was like, oh, it's Russia's fault.
Oh, it's Ukraine's fault.
Oh, it's social media's fault.
And then, of course, this is where the big battleground is going to be.
In 2020, it's going to come down to social media.
It's going to come down to social media, and that's a real challenge.
So, you know, the people who founded YouTube and so on, I mean, the people who founded...
Facebook and so on. I mean, they were like, cool, you know, to share videos and pictures and text and it's going to be great and all of that.
And then as the snowball power of these platforms began to grow and have massive effects on society, Then the sort of cold-eyed political machines began to sort of cast their beady gaze on the social media companies and say, okay, well now, now...
You have our attention, right?
Now it looks like the power resides in social media.
And now we are going to try to bend you to our will.
And that's a real challenge from a business standpoint.
It's a real challenge from a business standpoint.
You know, when things change in a way that you don't anticipate, and in particular when you get a lot more power than you thought you did, right?
This is really new. This is really new.
I mean, think of some successful car company, right?
Some successful car company doesn't get people elected or not elected.
They don't change the cultural landscape in that kind of way.
You can say, okay, well, there are television studios, there are movie studios and so on.
But I believe that, if I remember rightly, I think that YouTube viewership is more than all of the cable companies combined in America.
What is it, 500 hours of content uploaded a minute?
Now, of course, it's, you know, the 90-10 rule, like 90% of the views go to like 10% of the people.
Apparently everybody just watches new Latino videos.
But this battleground was kind of unexpected, I think, for a lot of people.
In these companies, and it's been tough.
You know, I know this sounds kind of weird, but I do sympathize.
I really, I do sympathize.
It's really, really tough.
And I say that because, I mean, I went through a bit of a similar transition in the business world, obviously not quite as intergalactic.
But when, you know, we were bought out by a company that went public, and when you go public, Your focus tends to shift from the customers to the stockbrokers and to your stock price, and it's just one of these things that kind of changes, and it's really, really tricky. All right.
Let's get other questions in here.
Stefan, life is rough, but don't quit.
It doesn't matter that everything is against you.
You are not alone. Suck it up.
Conservative common sense people will have their day.
Thank you. That's very nice.
Thank you. I appreciate that.
All right. Let's keep going with some other comments and questions.
Will YouTube get too big and some smaller company take over, especially since it's so expensive to have the hardware maintenance service centers, coding engineers, managers, etc.?
Yeah, you know, it's tough.
I've thought about the challenges that social media companies face and, you know, putting myself in other people's shoes and what would I do in their situation?
Because, you know, when you're kind of outside, everything's simple.
I remember someone telling me when I was younger about...
He said, you know, I'm sitting in a bar.
No, he was a coffee shop. I'm sitting in a coffee shop, and there's a guy at the end of the coffee shop, kind of in shabby clothes and so on, drinking this bottomless coffee.
And it sort of reminds me, when I was at McGill, you could get, at the Peel Pub, you could get eggs, toast, and unlimited coffee for 99 cents in the morning.
And I had a friend of mine, an Iranian guy, who...
I had 20 coffees.
He just got really, really intense.
We'd have great coffee. I wasn't there, but he ended up with 20 coffees and ended up in the emergency room because his heart just, you know, obviously that's overloading your caffeine too much.
Stay on target, Steph. Stay on target.
But these social media companies...
It's really, really quite complicated because if they say, well, the only thing we're ever going to take down is if there's a court order, right?
Okay, well, that's going to get you some leeway, and I think that's ThinkSpot's new approach, and that gets you some leeway, but man, do you get a lot of pressure.
You know how this pressure works.
You find some truly objectionable video, like a video where, I mean, everyone has their own particular horrifying hall of mirrors thing that they're going to look at, but you get some really just, nobody could defend that.
Nobody except the one guy who made it and maybe his mom who made him.
And then they say, well, are you going to let this stay up?
And that's when you grit your teeth and you say, look, it's It's principles, man.
That's free speech, you know?
It's horrible, and it's a principle.
Now, if you can weather that storm, then they'll often just sort of go on to someone else and so on.
But if you start to say, okay, yeah, that's too much or whatever, well, then what happens is you start to go into this world where you say, okay, well, if someone's really upset, we'll take a video down.
But then you're assuming that everyone's a good faith actor, right?
In other words, you're assuming that everyone who is upset is genuinely upset and really literally shaking or whatever, and not that they're putting it on in order to shut down an opposing viewpoint, that they're manufacturing their outrage, that they are politicizing their emotions in order to shut down legitimate that they are politicizing their emotions in order to shut down legitimate debate or So that is a real challenge.
And to me, again, I don't know how this would work, but if I was sort of in charge of...
Yeah, you know, sorry, but certainly in America, First Amendment, if the court says take it down, we'll take it down.
But other than that, you know, we can't afford to moderate the planet.
We cannot afford to moderate the planet.
And we certainly don't want to give the power to the most offended and upset people to drive the debate, right?
Right. Whether that's possible or not, to me, that's sort of...
I mean, there's a moral discussion to that as well, but there's also a business element too, which is you go to your shareholders and you say, hey, I mean, just talking about America here has got a very, very clear First Amendment.
There's no such thing as hate speech in America.
That's been adjudicated by the Supreme Court, I believe, more than once.
But you go and you say...
To your shareholders. Okay, here's our projected costs for policing the content outside of court orders, right?
Here's our prospective costs.
You know, we're going to need 10,000 people.
We're going to need a budget of this.
We're going to, you know, it's just going to get, and it's going to escalate.
Because the more we control the conversation, the more people say, oh, wow, you control the conversation.
Great. You know, I want to get in and start moving those levers, right?
Because that's kind of an addictive power.
So I don't know what...
What decisions were made and why, of course, right?
But to me, you know, hey, no court order, it stays, right?
And that's the way things have got to go.
And I mean, you'd really save a lot of money, but of course, you'd get a lot of bad press.
Because, you know, what people do is they find something egregious, you know, I mean, they've done this with a bunch of people, they find something egregious, or even something that just sounds egregious, and then they wave it around and say, this is being supported and enabled by this company, and they try and stick it to you, and you're like, oh, I want it to stick to me, whatever, right?
So, it is tough.
I don't know. I don't think that YouTube has this amazing relationship with With Google, of course, right?
And it has amazingly precise data, I believe, with which to serve up advertisements to very targeted people.
You can't just go and make that on your own, I don't think, right?
I mean, I just don't think that you can go and make that on your own, and that would be the big challenge.
And, you know, people who were like, well, let's just go create an alternative.
I would.
I would I'd be very, very leery of people who didn't sort of address that very basic thing.
Right.
All right, let's see here.
I'm just having a quick look and have a quick look, see if there are any other questions or comments.
The London terror attack.
Oh, it's terrible. There was one in London, of course.
There was one in The Hague. And the guy from London, the guy from London was, I believe, he was just let out of jail a year ago for terrorist-related activities.
And he had a monitoring anklet bracelet or whatever.
And he'd also, I think, been to a Cambridge University lecturer as proof of deradicalization and so on.
It's like... Whew!
Really, really rough.
It's really rough. Yeah, here's the thing, you know, and I... Just tell me what you guys think.
Just think about...
This. Because I used to, of course, I used to do, when there were these kinds of attacks, I used to do sort of the one-two video, right?
Like, the first one was what pisses me off about, right?
And I would just sort of tell you my thoughts and feelings.
And the second would be more sort of a detailed, in-depth dive into the history and what happened and so on.
You know, I tell you, it's...
It's a combination of sort of...
It's a bad combo for me.
I'll be straight up with you guys as always, right?
It's a bad combo for me because it's a combination of increased horror with a really grindingly dull sense of repetition.
Like I could do another video, but there's an attack.
And I could do another video, but there's an attack.
And I could do another video, but there's an...
And it just is...
It's hard to motivate myself.
Listen, I mean, there are times when I push myself to do things that I don't really want to do.
I mean, that's the case for all of us.
I'm not anything special that way.
But it's really tough when I just like, okay, well, I've been doing these kinds of videos for like 15 years, and wow.
Wow. All right.
Where's my Hong Kong documentary?
You know, it's funny, you know, it's a lot of work to make a documentary.
It's a lot of work to make a documentary.
And so I would say that, well, I know that it's coming out hopefully within 10 days.
Obviously, given everything that's going on in Hong Kong and the latest Trump legislation to supporting it and so on.
It is, you know, we're working hard on it, by which I mean mostly John is working on it, but it will be out soon.
And, you know, listen, doing a documentary in six weeks, in eight weeks, including, like, the planning, the flying out, the interviews, all of the work, the on-site stuff, the memorization, the speeches, and then coming back with all that footage and collating it and getting it all done.
Visually normalized and knowing exactly which scenes you want in and out and putting it all together and getting the music and tweaking it and normalizing the audio and making it all sound the same.
It's a lot of work, my friends.
A lot of work. I'll say it again.
Free Domain Radio. Sorry.
FreeDomain.com forward slash donate.
Let's see here. Yeah, it's, um...
It's a challenge.
It's a challenge.
And... I don't see political...
I don't see being a politician anytime soon in my future.
I'll just tell you that straight up because, I mean, you always have to take into account the mainstream media at the moment, right?
Like for those of us who kind of web-enabled, it's a little bit less important, but for a lot of people it is.
So that's kind of important as well.
Where would you go if YouTube immediately ended?
Unverified TV. I have not looked into that.
I do have, of course, as I said, I have Vimeo.
I have BitChute, of course, which is the one I think is the most up-to-date, and Dailymotion, a couple of other places.
So, I mean, I would continue on with BitChute if YouTube immediately ended as a whole, not just for me.
Stefan, at a college talk, my mother is Jewish.
Well, no, see, that's not what I said.
That's not what I said.
And it's also not deleted. So, this is, listen, it's partly my fault, so I sort of understand that.
So, I did say many, many, many years ago, my grandmother was Jewish.
I also did, at a college talk, say that my mother came from a fairly Jewish clan.
I've obviously been asked that question.
Am I sort of genetically Jewish or whatever?
And no, because my mother's mother, and I just talked about this in the last live stream, my mother's mother died in Dresden during the firebombing of Dresden.
And my grandfather was married to another woman before, I think it was before my grandmother, and my understanding is she was Jewish.
And so it's a step-grandmother, and they were all, I think, fairly close, even during the war, which is one of the reasons why my uncles and so on were not allowed to write under the Nazi regime and so on, and not allowed to publish.
And so, yes, it is, it is, but...
Evaluate the arguments.
Evaluate the arguments. That's what matters.
Evaluate the arguments. Trying to sniff around ethnicity is not...
And listen, I was raised a Christian and so on, right?
So just sniffing around ethnicity is...
All right.
Let's see here. Please don't give up.
Those videos were important.
Never stop fighting, Stefan.
All right. Stefan, I've lost my spontaneity.
How do I find it? Hmm.
I don't know. That's a good question.
I would need more information.
So please...
Please send me a message.
And again, I've got some room opening up soon for the call-in show.
If you want to have a sort of one-on-one, which we publish as a show, of course, you can just go to freedomain.com and there's a place there.
You can just send me a message and don't forget to include your Skype number and when you're available and so on and that.
Let's see here. I have to say I really appreciated the fall of the Roman Empire documentary.
I appreciate the factual nature of your work.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate that.
And... I really, really want to do a history of philosophy.
You know, it's funny because that's kind of how I started.
I mean, in my graduate degree, the degree was specifically focused on the history of Western philosophy.
My thesis was that the philosophers who have...
I call it supersensual, like nonsense-based metaphysics, higher realm, nirvana, and all that stuff, that they ended up advocating for dictatorship as the ideal political model, whereas more empirical philosophers ended up with limited democracy as their ideal political model, and I went through a whole bunch of philosophers and it did really seem to hold.
So yes, I'd love to do a history of philosophy.
You know, it's funny because I think like most of you, I think like most of you, When you look through the news, you look through Twitter, you look through Facebook or whatever, right?
I mean, there's a lot of bad news.
There's a lot of not progress.
There's a lot of, well, we've fallen back here and we've fallen back there and we've lost this and we've been driven back here and so-and-so has been deplatformed.
I mean, it is tough news.
For me, I've sort of been mulling over, like I have a couple of novels.
Oh, I've loved writing these novels.
I actually took a year and a half and I wrote a novel, 350,000 words, on an English family and a German family from the end of World War I to the end of World War II. And, I mean, the research and the writing and the characters and so on, to me, it's a really, really great, great book.
And I'd love to sort of get that out as an audiobook.
I'd love to get that out and I'd love to read it myself.
I could hire someone to, I'd love to do it myself.
And the reason I'm sort of mulling that over, appallingly though it may be for those who are like, we've got to do politics, it's like, but I kind of need to...
I need to sort of lean forward and drink from the well of beauty as well as, you know, fight the geistes of horror, so to speak, right?
So that's kind of important.
All right. Love you, Steph.
You are the best. Thank you very much.
Laura Loomer is running for Congress.
Yes, she is. Yes, she is.
All right. Worry about Canada.
Don't mind Hong Kong.
Yeah, but you see, the thing is not about the thing.
The video is not about Hong Kong.
And you'll see that when you...
It's not fundamentally about Hong Kong.
It takes place in Hong Kong. But...
Anyway.
I have not watched Tim Pool's copper video.
And that is...
So yeah, the COPPA is the Children's Online Privacy and Protection Act.
And I think YouTube got dinged for $170 million for gathering data that children, I think, under 13 need their parents' permission.
You need parents' permission to gather data from them.
And I think that YouTube did and all of that.
So that's been quite a challenge.
Yeah, Tim Pool...
It's interesting. I mean, I like Tim in a lot of ways.
He's the guy who's wearing that hat, right?
He's like that kid from the old animated Cosby show.
And somebody did a video where he took that hat off and there was another Tim Pool face above him.
It's kind of funny. But he is, as far as I understand it, by his own description, he is a sort of milquetoast fence sitter.
And so that is a challenge.
Let's see here. I would actually love to buy an audiobook read by you.
Well, thank you. Thank you very much.
I appreciate that. All right.
Let's see here. I'm just...
Oh, how do you forgive yourself for hurting someone you once cared for quite a lot?
I am living with regret and hurt for emotionally hurting an ex.
Yeah, that's tough.
That's tough because if you hurt someone...
And you feel really, really bad.
And listen, I appreciate your moral sensitivity that you feel bad about this.
Well, here's the thing.
So if you then go and hover around your ex-girlfriend and try to make amends, are you making amends because you feel bad or because it's better for her, right?
Because we hurt people in general.
That we care about, obviously.
We hurt people because we put our needs above theirs.
And you can't have your own needs separate from someone else in a relationship.
You can't.
You simply can't. That's the challenge of a relationship, is it has to be a balance of your needs and the other person's needs, right?
And, you know, when you're a parent and your kid is very little, it's 100% their needs and 0% your needs, right?
Right. You may want to sleep, but if your baby needs food, get up and feed the baby, right?
So we start with this sort of 100% parent, 0% kid, and then you're supposed to change it over time, right?
So my daughter now, it's like I can't have it be 0% her needs and 100%.
Sorry, I can't have it be 100% her needs and 0% my needs because that's not how her adult life is going to be.
So you kind of got to change it over time.
And that's the great challenge of trying to find really good relationships or trying to maintain really good relationships is you just keep working at solutions until you get a win-win for both of you.
That's really, really important.
You just find some way that you can both get And so why I'm saying all of this is because if you say, oh my gosh, I feel so bad about what I did to my ex-girlfriend, I'm just going to keep contacting her and telling her I'm sorry and so on.
Well, you're kind of using her to feel better yourself, right?
Because that's the big question.
That's the big challenge.
Are you apologizing to someone because you wish to be relieved of some guilt or something like that?
Then it's not for her, right?
Now, what's best for her, if she's an ex, might be for you to not contact her, to not kind of keep raking up these old wounds or whatever, and maybe just, you know, say I'm really, really sorry, and then see if she wants to talk back or whatever.
But, yeah, you really have to make sure when you want to make amends to someone, you have to make sure that it's about what's best for them and not what you need as well.
How's your family? And what's your favorite band?
Oh, that's funny. My family is very well.
Thank you. I appreciate you asking.
And what's my favorite band?
I have a number of favorite bands, but generally the one that I float to the top is Queen, just because Freddie Mercury is such an amazing singer.
I mean, you know, when you do something in an amateur fashion, you really get a deep appreciation of those who are really good at it.
And because I like to sing myself, you know, hearing Freddie Mercury is like, wow, that's like a once-in-a-century kind of voice, and the man can do just about anything vocally.
And that's sort of the ambition that I wanted.
Like, I never wanted to be good-ish.
I never wanted to be good.
I always wanted to be great.
To me, what's the point of doing something, especially if it's risky and out of the ordinary?
Like, why bother doing it if you can't be the very, very best?
Please comment on the idea of changing people's minds.
It's tough, you know?
It's tough, changing people's minds.
When I was doing the research, and I've been meaning to look this up since, and I will at some point read it and ponder it.
It's really chilling. I was doing the research for the fall of Rome, and in it, one of the guys was saying...
You know, what's the point of trying to change people's minds?
Everyone has their mind made up by the time they're 10.
And it's just debilitating and useless and exhausts everyone.
And that is a very real possibility.
That is a very real possibility.
And... Can you change people's minds?
I think it's almost two-thirds of one's, like in twin studies, about two-thirds of people's perspective on immigration is genetic.
It's genetic. Political beliefs have significant genetic bases.
That's tough, man. Which means that left versus right, to take a cliched example, Is a genetic battle.
Not 100%. People change their minds and so on.
It happens, right? Certainly it has happened with me, but you have to be really dedicated to reason and evidence to change your mind on something.
But what if it's a genetic battle?
What if trying to turn someone into a free market person, if that person is a dedicated socialist, what if it's like trying to talk them into changing their eye color or their height?
Well, I mean, if that's the case, man, we're kind of doomed.
We really are. Then all of this is just blah blah until the big guns come out, right?
So I hope not.
I hope not. All right. CB asks advice on how to keep children from becoming spoiled.
Just had daughter's first birthday party and Christmas is around the corner.
Everyone is excited and overdoing gifts.
We don't want a monster.
Well, that's a good question.
And I have seen a lot of this going on, like, I mean, with my daughter, right?
When her friends would have parties, I mean, the kids would literally be buried in presents.
And the sad thing is that the kids wouldn't really even appreciate or enjoy the presents.
I mean, I don't want to, you know, do the woeful cry of poverty from my distant childhood, but...
When I was a kid, I mean, you would get maybe one kind of mediocre present, and that would be it.
I can remember shortly after Christmas, having either become bored with or broken, my present, my friend and I, my friend Jamie and I went dumpster diving, which is, I guess, something out of a Jim Carrey comedy routine, but it's also a, well, you go to big sort of garbage dumps, preferably industrial ones, and you try and find cool stuff that you can play with.
And I remember we got big rolls of paper And we would get...
I sort of imitate with my finger here.
Sorry for just listening.
You'd get a pencil and you'd only be able to push the top and you'd draw a racetrack and then you'd put the pencil and you'd sort of push it from the top and then the end of it would be where your car would go and with one pencil and a roll of paper we could while away an afternoon having these pretend racing games with, you know, pencil switches or pencil flips or whatever, right?
And, I mean, that's, you know, I wrote plays, space operas, right, for my friends to sort of act out and I taped them and they are probably somewhere on the planet, but that's kind of what we did.
It's like that little woman, Louisa May Alcott, that little woman, sorry, I think they've just redone it.
Where, you know, they're bored.
It's winter. And so they've got to make up their own entertainment.
They've got to make up their own stuff, right?
And that's really challenging.
So what I would do is I would say...
To people that your preference for your present for your daughter is something made, something that could make something for her.
I guess a first birthday party, it's kind of, right?
But, you know, something that, you know, they made.
Or something just to have a dollar limit, like 10 bucks or less.
Because, you know, she's one. Like, you know, whatever presents she's going to get is probably not going to be too meaningful for her.
So just, you know, please try and set a limit on it.
Because she gets too many presents and they just become meaningless.
All right. Let's see here.
How many at the men's conference at Florida?
A couple hundred, I believe.
And there's a new one.
22 Convention is sort of opening up.
Let's see. If YouTube wants to make money off you, could you simply pay the monthly?
YouTube is... Okay, so this is...
It's an interesting question, right?
So... It's tough to change a whole business model, but one thing you could do if you were YouTube is you could charge 50 cents an upload, a buck an upload, or something like that, just to keep people from using it as a storage facility or something like that.
Yeah, that's certainly a possibility.
All right, so a follow-up to the question about forgiving yourself.
She actually contacts me, which is surprising.
I cheated on her. I want her to move on because I did wrong.
How do I live with myself?
Hmm. It's a good question.
I cheated on her.
I wanted to move on because I did wrong.
How do I live with myself?
Okay, so listen. I'm not going to say, oh, just forgive yourself and so on, because that's just an easy thing to say.
But it doesn't mean anything to just say it.
But what you need to do is look at the root cause of why you cheated.
And, you know, if you want to call in, please do.
Just send me an email. We'll sort it out.
You have to look at the root cause of why you cheated on her.
Now, why do people cheat?
Well, they cheat because if it's a long-distance relationship, they get eventually seduced by the local attention that may be going on.
They may cheat because they're angry.
They may cheat because they want to end the relationship but don't really know how.
They may cheat because you may have cheated on her because a woman wants you and you don't know how to say no.
Not really overly programmed to say no, right?
You may have cheated on her because maybe your parents had faithfulness issues, let's say.
Or maybe that's something that's been sort of modeled.
Maybe somebody cheated on you and you've been avoiding that pain, which often can reproduce the behavior.
I mean, there could be any number of things.
Feel free to call in.
We'll talk about it. But if you assume, like you did something wrong, and it's wrong, it's wrong.
I understand, right?
But if you did something wrong, like cheating, then you can either just call yourself, oh, I'm a bad person.
I'm just a bad, I cheat, I'm a bad person, right?
Okay, well, then what? Now what?
That doesn't help you.
It doesn't give you any knowledge.
It doesn't give you any insight.
Right? It doesn't give you any wisdom, and it certainly doesn't help you avoid the situation.
So let's say you say, I'm such a bad guy, I'm such a terrible guy, I cheated on a woman.
Okay, well that means you're probably just not going to date for quite a while, in which case you're never going to figure out whether you cheat again.
You're never going to be in a situation because, you know, you're not dating anyone, you can't cheat, right?
Because you use your right hand or whatever, right?
Or left hand. It doesn't do any good.
The question is, why did you cheat?
And there is an answer to that that is very powerful and very liberating and very positive for you.
But you have to be willing to ask that question without jumping straight into self-attack.
The answer as to why you cheated is going to be fascinating, absolutely guaranteed.
The question, why did you cheat?
The answer is very complex and very deep and very interesting and very liberating and very empowering because if you understand that, you won't cheat again.
But if the answer is simply, well, I'm a bad person.
You have gained nothing except self-castigation.
You understand it's a form of ad hominem.
There is a legitimate question.
Why did you cheat? It's a very important question.
It's a very powerful question.
And if all you're going to do is ad hominem yourself into infinity, because you cheated, you're not going to learn that.
You're not going to solve the problem.
And it's a form of self-bullying that arises usually out of a fundamental lack of curiosity as to why you did what you did when you were younger.
Let's see here.
Censorship, keeping free speech.
Think spot as an alternative.
Yes, it's a tough call.
It's a tough call. It's a tough call.
I think that we just have to keep being honest about...
I mean, this is always a tough thing, right?
So when you're being censored, right, the question is, okay, what do I talk about?
What do I not talk about? What's allowable?
What's not allowable? Did I go too far?
Did I not go far enough? Right.
I mean, it's a really kind of boring dance that a lot of people have to do.
And you can usually see them doing it in real time.
So you have to be able to persuade and convince people.
I think it's really, really important.
And I really don't...
Know the answer to that.
I really don't know the answer to that other than just keep speaking the truth as much as you can.
All right. Let's see here.
Hey, Stefan, in an anarcho-capitalist...
Oh, anarcho-capitalism!
How cool. In an anarcho-capitalist society...
By the way, go and look at Dave Smith's speech.
All right. In an anarcho-capitalist society, how would corporatism, big business be combated?
Hmm. Very good question.
Now, I have a whole book on this called Practical Anarchy, but very, very briefly, what is a corporation?
A corporation, and I did a whole show with Stephan Kinsella, that's S-T-E-P-H-A-N-K-I-N-S-E-L-L-A on this years ago.
An archo-capitalist society, what is a corporation?
A corporation is a legal fiction that is created by the government to gain the allegiance of big businessmen in general back in the day, and now big businesswomen, which allows for the corporation to separate the personal assets of the executives from any wrongdoing that they might engage in, right? So way back in the day, if you ran a bank and your bank ran out of money, well, you lost your house.
It's quite a good incentive to keep your deposit to lending ratio at some reasonable level, not at 30 times or whatever it was, profits to risk that was going on in 06, 07.
So the whole question that you have to ask yourself, Jake and Elwood Blues, is this.
Let's say you're in a free society, in an eco-capitalist society, a stateless society.
Where do you want to put your money?
Do you want to put your money into an organization where the directors are in no way liable?
If the entire thing goes feed up and gets buried in, augers in, as my old business manager used to say, if it goes under, if it goes into bankruptcy...
If the directors just skate off with their bonuses and their pay and none of their personal assets are ever liable for that, or would you rather go with a bank where the personal directors have put a stake and say, if the business goes under, I will pay a million dollars into receivership or I will put a million dollars into escrow or whatever it is, right?
Or you get my house.
Or like, well, that's who I want to do business with.
I want to do business with people who have skin in the game.
So, it's so funny because we think in society, right?
When we look at a society like a free society, a voluntary society, an anarcho-capitalist society, a stateless society, we look and say, how is this going to be combated?
What structure or legality or incentives are going to be in place to make sure something bad doesn't happen?
But the great thing about a free society is what do you want to have happen?
What do you want to have happen?
So let's say you go to a restaurant, and one restaurant says, we are regularly inspected, and if you get verifiable food bald illnesses from our food, we will pay you a quarter of a million dollars.
That's a little sign, right?
Or there's some other place which doesn't have any of that, and the guy is regularly wiping his spatula and sweaty armpits while he fries your eggs or whatever, right?
Well, what do you want? That's the whole thing about a free society is what do you want?
Not what structure can I see being formed by others magically that's going to shield me from all negative consequences.
What do you want?
If you're a construction worker, would you rather work for a construction company that says, hey man, if you get injured on the job, we're paying your family five million dollars.
Or someone who's like, yeah, good luck.
You don't even need a hard hat.
Right? What works for you?
What works for...
Now, there's a balance, right?
We all understand there's a balance, right?
I mean, you can make everything super safe, just like you could probably design a tablet to last 100 years if people were willing to pay $30,000 for a tablet, but who wants a tablet that lasts 100 years?
A computer tablet doesn't really make any sense.
So I think that's important.
Just look at what you would like.
Think about being, instead of being a consumer saying, oh, how am I going to be kept safe?
Think of being a business and say, how would I sell all the wonderful things I could do to keep my customers feeling secure and happy?
All right. Let's see here.
Are you going to read the full Inspector General Report when it comes out and do a video review?
Do you think I should?
Do you think I should? Stefan, could you talk about online dating sites, especially for people 50 plus?
I'm not sure what that means.
What do you think about serious relationships with a big age gap?
Well, one of you is going to be heartbroken in general, right?
Has Stefan cheated before?
I have not always been the best boyfriend on the planet.
Let's just leave it at that. Moses' tablet lasted over 2,000 years.
Yeah, right. Let's see here.
Would you do a video of yourself taking a big five personality test?
Eh, personality test.
Why does America First piss you off?
It doesn't piss me off. It doesn't piss me off at all.
I think America First has very legitimate questions and concerns to bring to big conservatism.
Let's see here. Yeah, Big Five personality test.
Why do you care?
I mean, I don't mean to sound cold or anything, but like, why do you care what my Big Five personality test is?
I mean, I can't imagine why anyone would really care.
All right. Does high IQ make you have a disposition to mental breakdown or insanity?
No, unless you spend your time around low IQ people, in which case you'll be driven mad.
No, it doesn't. High IQ generally is associated with better physical health and better mental health.
And so this like crazy genius is kind of a bit of a myth.
It's not obviously impossible, but it's a bit of a myth.
Nature versus nurture.
Your honest, maybe short opinion.
Okay, so I don't care that much about nature because philosophy can't really touch it other than, say, find someone great to be the mother or father of your children.
So I focus on nurture.
I focus on nurture because philosophy can do a lot with nurture.
Philosophy cannot talk one gene differently.
Out of being itself. Or it can't repair genes.
It can't change genes. It can't splice genes.
Philosophy can't do any of that.
Philosophy can only alter the contents of your mind after your genes have had their way.
And so I really, really focus on nurture.
I think it's important to talk about nature so that we don't end up trying to talk people into changing their genetics, which we can't do.
So, all right. Somebody says, I cheated on my fiancé whom I love.
I was drunk at a party and lost all control and ethics.
I want to be with her forever.
Should I keep it secret forever?
It's eating me alive. Oh, gosh, my friend, that is harsh.
Well, first of all, I would talk to a therapist about this.
I think that's really, really important.
You know, that's a hell of a question.
And I've gone back and forth on this.
So this is a big game of pong with me in my own brain.
So I'm sorry if I'm not going to be particularly foundational around this or give you some sort of easy answer.
So you say it's eating me alive.
So if you unburden your secret onto someone else and it causes them great harm, Then you are now...
You've now harmed that person.
Right? You've now really harmed that person.
And if you're drunk at a party and lost all control and ethics...
So here's the thing. This is my perspective as it stands.
And I hope that it will be this way tomorrow too.
But maybe I'm drunk.
Okay. Look.
If you could figure out the causality, the reason, and the circumstances under which you ended up cheating, I was drunk at a party and lost all control and ethics.
So then your penance, your punishment, although it's really not a punishment, I think, is, listen, you can't get drunk anymore.
You can't. You can't go to parties.
You can't take drinks. Maybe you can go to a party.
But, you know, parties, if you don't... If people are getting drunk at parties and you're not getting drunk...
Forget it. Forget it.
No way. I mean, they're really, really boring, right?
And you'll realize how boring they are.
That's why people drink, because it's the lowest common denominator, right?
So let's say that if you don't go to parties and get drunk, then you will never cheat again.
Then I can certainly see the argument which says something like this.
Look, if I figured out the causality behind this, what is the greatest good that I can get out of this terrible situation?
This is always the question when you have a terrible situation.
What is the greatest possible good that I can get out of this terrible situation?
Now, in your case, maybe the greatest good, I think the greatest good, is you can say, well, that's it.
I'm not going to touch alcohol again.
Because it undoes me, right?
It's a disinhibitor, right?
It doesn't reveal the true you.
It creates a distorted you.
The true you is with inhibition, right?
That's reality. It's human nature, right?
We're not disinhibited.
Apes are disinhibited. They're like, you know, fap in front of kids at the zoo or whatever, right?
So... If you say, okay, my penance is no more alcohol for me, then if you know for sure you're never going to cheat again, because this was the condition under which you cheated, if you know for sure you're never going to cheat again, then you don't have to worry about a repetition of the behavior.
And now if you don't have to worry about the repetition of the behavior, What good does it do to tell your fiancé?
Oh, you say, oh, but it's the truth and this and that and the other.
Okay, but what if you say, well, my penance is no more alcohol for the rest of my life, or maybe like one drink or just, yeah, maybe none, right?
Then are you able to let it go given that you know you won't do it again?
You say, oh, but she has a right to know this and that and the other, but...
If it's not going to happen again, what's the point of telling her?
Now, again, if you continue to drink, then you have to tell her, right?
Because it could happen again, and she's got to make that decision.
But if you can say, I'm simply not going to drink, not going to happen, you tell that to your fiancé and so on, then I would say, if you can forgive yourself, you were drunk, you've learned your lesson, no more drinking, not going to happen again, I can certainly see that The value of that.
Now, if it continues to eat you alive even after that, then you have to tell her, in my opinion, right?
Because it's now having a huge effect on your relationship.
Because it's having a huge effect on your relationship, she's got to know why.
because if you're like thinking about it and thinking about it and thinking about it and thinking about it then you're not very emotionally available to her and at some point if you can't let it go and whatever then then she's going to need to know what's going on because now the cheating is continuing insofar as you're hiding your heart from your fiance because you can't forgive yourself and you can't commit to not putting yourself in the situation where it's going to happen again right
so at some if it's going to continue to eat you alive then you have to tell her because this could go on for the rest of your life.
It could go on for 10 years and she needs to know, hey, I'm going to be emotionally unavailable for 10 years, right?
But don't tell her just because it's bothering you and you just want to unburden yourself because that causes her great harm.
But again, if you can virtually guarantee this is not going to happen again and you can let it go and say, look, that was a really, really bad thing.
I'm never drinking again.
It's not going to happen again and there's no point making my fiancé miserable about something I can forgive myself for because I've now, If you've taken steps to ensure it will never happen again, then I think there's a case to be made for that.
Let's see here.
Turn back to God, you sinners.
Women are the biggest cheaters, so don't feel any remorse.
She's already cheated on you.
Oh, come on. Oh, come on.
No. No, no, no.
Not true. Not true.
Not true. All right.
Can you give advice for marketing books slash videos if you have little to no money to spend on it?
Sure. Yes.
You go on social media and you find someone who's small and who has an interest in your topic.
And then you say, hey, I would like to come on and talk about my book.
I'll give it to you for free or whatever, right?
That's what you do, right?
You look up a couple of rungs on the ladder and you say, I'd love to come on and talk to you about my book.
I still have somewhere a recording before I even started being a public figure when I published my novel, Revolutions.
It was published. And I went on the radio at York University and I talked about my book.
I should dig it up, actually. It's kind of interesting.
It's like over 20 years ago now.
And it was just some little local student radio station.
I'm like, yeah, I'll take that. I'll do that, right?
And then eventually you... Speak to 30,000 people in person and online at the next web conference or whatever, right?
So, yeah, just find people who are a couple of steps above you and offer them a free book and say you'd really, really like to talk about it and all of that.
So, all right. That's the way you do it.
All right. Again, Stefan, thank you for being you and for being so involved in helping the lives of others.
Again, please do a truth about Jiddu Krishnamanjuriti.
Sorry. When you were a CEO, how did you decide which employees to keep and which ones to get rid of?
I wasn't a CEO. I was chief technical officer, and then I was a director of marketing.
I was chief technical officer, then I was a director of technology at a company, and then I was director of marketing at a company because I didn't so much of that.
So how do you decide which employees to keep and which ones to get rid of?
Well, you work and you coach them as much as you can.
And then eventually, if they're just not being productive, you just have to say.
And the way that I did it was, you know, in general, it's usually a pace issue.
Like there are some people who just like working at a really fast pace.
And there are some people who are sort of more slow and measured.
And generally, there would be a mismatch when I would get people more slow and measured.
You know, dot their I's, cross their T's, and make sure everything's hunky-dory, and proofread everything 20 times.
And it's like, no, we're a startup, man.
Like, oh, we're a small company.
This doesn't work together, right?
It would be as bad as me being at some big, giant company where I had to do all that stuff, right?
But, yeah, what we eventually did was we just created our own intelligence test, and that solved pretty much all of our problems.
All right. Yeah, so the question is, if you've got a sibling who's still, maybe you're an older sibling, maybe you're like 25, you've got a sibling who's like 15, and maybe there's some really bad parenting going on and so on, it's a real challenge because...
I mean, you can't go in and bungee in and usually can't take the kid out or maybe the parent won't let the kid go or parents won't let the kid go.
So generally, I think be around as a positive influence and show them a different way of interacting.
You know, maybe you can stand up to the parents more, although the problem is, of course, you stand up to the really negative parents.
They might take it out on the kid, your sibling afterwards or whatever, right?
So it's a real challenge.
And in general, heartbreaking though it is, I think that you've got to hang in there and be around as a positive role model and a different way of being so that when the kid gets older, your sibling gets older, they'll have had a choice on how to view things in life they'll have had a choice on how to view things in life and they will be, I think, very lucky to have someone like you in All right. Let's see here.
What is your opinion on commercial surrogacy for infertile couples?
Well, my opinion is that it's great.
It's really, really great.
Do I own a shirt with buttons and a collar?
Why, yes, I do. Thank you very much.
But no, it's really, really great.
So there are like 10% of married couples have real trouble Having babies.
You know, there's this old thing that a woman told me once.
She said, I spent my entire 20s trying not to get pregnant.
Now I'm spending my entire 30s trying to get pregnant.
It's horrible. And yeah, it is.
I think it is tough. So I think that is great.
I think it's great that people can have babies and enter into commercial arrangements with which to have a baby.
I think it's great. I think it's tough On the woman who is the surrogate, right?
The woman who's gonna have the baby.
It's tough to give up and all that, right?
Fernando says, are you still bullish on Bitcoin?
Yes, I am very bullish on Bitcoin.
It's just going to take a couple of hiccups on fiat currency, particularly the US dollar.
It's going to take a couple of hiccups, which is coming, I believe, for sure.
And yeah, I'm very bullish on Bitcoin.
I have not read the book The Bitcoin Standard, but let me take a note of that and I will have a look.
Let's see here. Let me just make a note of that.
Thank you for the comment. Will Trump win again?
I think he will win by a landslide because...
Sorry, I just kind of came and went, right?
Let's see here.
Let me just get that comment again.
Oh yes.
Will Trump win again?
I think he will win by a landslide because the big thing is the economy, immigration, so-called free trade, which is code for managed decay that we've had versus America first.
It's tough, you know, it's tough because, look, Trump is moving people from being on the receiving end of government money to being on the paying end of government money, right?
So a lot of people off food stamps, black and Hispanic unemployment, pretty low now.
Some of that is government hiring and all of that.
But a lot of that is like real legitimate, honest to goodness, great stuff for those communities.
So you got this surge of people who want lower taxes and less regulation, and that's a natural Trump constituency.
You have people like Jesse Lee Peterson and Candace Owens with her Blacksit movement and so on, and lots of really, really great people, both black and non-black, who are talking to the black community, people who are talking to the Hispanic community saying, hey man, you know, like, you might have this kind of wrong.
He's not some evil billionaire racist or whatever.
Like, he... You're doing better now than you were under Obama.
So you're kind of getting this shift of people from receiving tax money to paying tax money.
And listen, not just in the black and Hispanic community.
It's happening in the white community.
It's happening all over. So that's a kind of base for more Trump.
There's a base for Trump voters.
Now, the problem is, of course, you have this immigration issue, this immigration issue, this immigration issue.
And is there going to be the kind of swarm of votes that is going to replace the people who've moved more towards Trump because they have jobs or whatever?
It's a tough call.
It's a tough call.
And see, the left, they have not as one big blob, there are honorable people on the left, but as a whole, the end justifies the means for the left.
And so if the means, sorry, if the end is anyone but Trump, then whatever they do is fine.
If they need to de-platform people, if they need to cheat on voting, if they need to, like, whatever, like, if they need to just We're good to go.
And what I've experienced as well, right?
I mean, I criticized Christianity very harshly for a long time, and Christians responded with love and positivity, and it was kind of hard to argue with that.
And that's not how it works with other groups in society, I'll tell you that, right?
So, again, it's...
And also, the social media buoyancy that Trump had last time is going to be pretty hammered, I think, by the left.
So, it's tough, you know?
It's tough. It's... You know, it's going to come down to what you do.
It's going to come down to what kind of case you make and it's going to all that.
As an atheist, does the lack of religion in modern society make you happy?
What positive or negative things can come out of a religious society?
I am not happy with the diminishment of Christianity given that it has not been replaced by secular ethics.
And I have a very complicated relationship with that.
I have a complicated relationship with that.
The pushback against Christianity, was it because, oh, well, there are irrational elements and we're more reasonable and we're more objective and more philosophical and more scientific, or is it just, you know, Christianity's a drag because I've got to get up on Sundays and there are rules to follow.
I have to be nice.
For myself... That's actually a little hard to talk about.
For myself, the The void or the vacuum of universal ethics that was left with the absence of Christianity was what drove me so feverishly and so passionately to create universally preferable behavior, right? The Rational Proof of Secular Ethics.
The book's available for free at freedomain.com.
So, for me, I wanted to fill that God-shaped hole in my heart with universal ethics and And as I said before, I thought that atheists would view this as the second coming of philosophy.
Not me, but the actual, it's like, oh my gosh, now we have a universal system of ethics and that's fantastic.
Like, wow, let's sort this out.
Let's push this debate. They reacted with almost universal indifference or hostility to that.
And if you sort of...
Yeah, it's really, really hard.
It's really hard. Not for me.
I mean, it's hard for me, of course.
I mean, I brought something beautiful to the world and it largely got scorned or spit on or whatever.
And that's, I guess, not the...
Not the end of the road. But I thought it would be like water to somebody lost in the desert.
Like, oh, thank you. You know, fantastic.
But I began to be less positive towards atheism when that kind of occurred.
All right. Okay.
Different question, says this young man.
I'm 20 and about to enter college.
What should I do or not do with the cliff of civilization getting closer?
Well, I wouldn't go to college if it's just arts.
I mean, it's really compromised and it's going to be a couple of years of biting your tongue until your nose bleeds.
So if you need college for some particular thing, it may be a good idea.
But my gosh, if it's just because you're not sure what else to do and so on, I wouldn't do it at all.
I just wouldn't do it at all.
Alright. Let's see here.
Let's do one or two more questions.
Very, very good. My girl cheated on me and I will never trust another person ever again.
Oh, don't do that, man.
Don't do that. Come on.
Don't let the cheater also be a thief of your future happiness as well.
Yeah, that's no good.
Don't let her win, man.
Don't let her inconstancy and cheatiness.
Don't... Don't let her shut you off from love forever and recognize that you chose her too, right?
Are you saying there were no warning signs, no issues, no problems or anything like that?
Come on. Come on.
All right. The case of the guy cheating on his fiancée should tell her and leave it up to her to forgive him.
The wages of sin is death.
Okay, listen. I get the argument and you may be entirely right.
But here's the thing. If you've done wrong to someone, don't just dump your wrongness on them.
You have to have a knowledge of why it happened.
You have to have some reasonable assurances that it's not going to happen again.
You need to process it yourself.
You need to get to the root of the issue.
Because if you just say, hey, I haven't told you, I just cheated, right?
Or I cheated a month ago or whatever, right?
Then the whole month, it's just terrible, right?
Because if she's trusted you for that month, then she now...
It's not just the cheating.
It's now that she trusted you for the month and it turned out you weren't telling the truth and all of that.
So I would say...
Yeah, maybe you should tell her, but don't just dump it on her.
You've got to figure out why it happened first, because then you can say, listen, I cheated, I've been tortured about it, here's what I've learned, I've gone to therapy, I've talked to Steph, whatever it is, right?
And, you know, I now have, right, an answer, right?
All right. My wife is waking up about how she's messed our family.
I've compromised lately on kids, re-video games.
I feel strongly about it.
I haven't always stood strong. Help me avoid a slippery slope.
Yeah, let's do a call on that.
Let's do a call. Steph, what are your thoughts on people who say my truth is if there is only one truth?
But there isn't only one truth, right?
If I feel upset about something you find funny...
Then my truth is I don't find it funny.
Your truth is you find it funny.
Right? So you can absolutely have truth about your own subjective experiences, which you can be honest about with others.
It's not just one truth, right?
There's subjective and objective.
And the subjective is not true or false.
It's how honest you are about your emotional state or what you're thinking or feeling or whatever, right?
All right. How does one fix feelings of resentment towards kids who had a vastly better childhood than oneself?
Hmm. Hmm.
Hmm. Tough call.
You know, first of all, you can be very happy that you know kids who had better childhoods than yourself because they gave you another path, another option, another choice, another way to go, right?
That's important. That's important.
And, you know, it sucks, but your bad childhood will give you particular strengths that they won't have.
And, I mean, they'll have strengths that you don't have and all that, but it's not all bad.
Having a bad childhood is not all bad.
So... The resentment actually is not towards the people who had it better.
The resentment is actually towards the people who made it bad for you, right?
The resentment is not against your friends who had a better childhood.
The resentment is against your parents or whoever was in charge who made your childhood bad.
And it's not your friends' fault.
And they may have unconsciously given you some kind of soft place to land, some kind of better environment, some kind of positive thing.
So, it's not their fault.
Listen, I'm sure you wouldn't want them to have had as bad a childhood as you, right?
All right, let's see here.
Let's do one or two more.
I've started reading the Bible and let Jesus into my life.
I wish I did this years ago, but it would have saved me heartache and grief.
I mean, if I had a sign, man.
If I had a sign. All right.
I've been watching Stefan since 2008.
I'm starting to get like that old woman at the beginning of Titanic and her reflections changed a bit.
I'm watching my videos back. Actually, not too bad.
Not too bad. All right.
Roman Empire got crushed by a bunch of barbarians.
Not exactly. Not exactly.
All right. Let's see here.
I can do one more. You are incredibly insightful, Stefan, and the lucidness that you speak is great.
What do you think about Stoicism?
The time may be coming for Stoicism.
See, Stoicism is what happens when the time for arguments is past.
When the time for arguments is past and the events that have been set in motion decades or longer ago become nothing that can be solved or pushed back against by mere language, by mere reason, evidence, and rhetoric, then what you do is, you know, if insanity is a disease that's curable by language, then you work very hard to cure the insanity through language.
If the insanity becomes...
Terminal, then you stoically prepare yourself for what is coming that can't be changed.
So I think stoicism is something that I don't want to end up having to come to grips with.
So we'll see. All right.
Let's do one or two more. These are great.
These are great questions.
How do I fix my resentment toward you for not answering my comments?
Double dog not representing Gary Eppie.
Oh, is that JF Gary Eppie?
All right. Let's see here. I will respond.
Oh, I can't search because you've got this freaky stuff on here.
Okay, I can do a search for not representing.
Let's see here. What do you got here?
Can you talk to Gavin?
Okay.
Let's see here.
I'm 19 and I'm going from girlfriend to girlfriend.
I seem to fall in and out of love often.
Once I get the girl, I just want someone I don't have.
How can I become satisfied?
Well, I mean, you're 19, so listen, you may not.
But what you need to do is you need to discipline yourself to point your penis towards a woman of virtue and quality.
If a woman will sleep with you soon...
Like, I remember being horrified by someone I knew who was much younger than me who was saying, oh yeah, if there's no sex by the third date, you just move on.
It's like, what, are you kidding me?
What, are you crazy? Any woman who's going to give it up on the third date is just, like, it's not quality.
It's just not quality. It's not safe.
This is not someone you're going to be safe around, not someone you can give your heart to.
That's someone who has such low self-regard that if she doesn't offer up sex, she doesn't think you'll have any interest in her.
And that's a terrible situation to be in.
So aim for higher quality and you won't keep moving on.
Someone says, what do you think of Hans-Hermann Hoppe's argumentation ethics?
Has it been a philosophical influence for you?
No. And I think that...
Was it... Murray Rothbard had something kind of similar.
Argumentation ethics, I'm not going to try and summarize it here because it's been a long time and I've never read anything directly or deeply in it.
So I think it's somewhat like the idea that once you begin to argue, you have to go by the rules of debate and so on.
Hey, Stefan. Are children being educated well enough in the present-day age of information?
Well, certainly not in school, but now that there's alternatives to school, like, I guess, this very platform, right?
I think the kids are learning a lot out of YouTube and so on.
I'm not answering that spanking question.
again.
All right. My only libertarian anarcho-capitalist friend has reverted back to an advocate for limited government after becoming obsessed with books about warfare and warmongers like Napoleon.
Alright. Do you think porn is problematic in the way young men approach interpersonal relationships?
Yes. Yes.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Hi, Steph. Do you care to offer your opinion on the works of Ayn Rand?
Well, you can go to, I never did finish a series, but I've got one, two, and three of a four-part series available on YouTube.
You might want to look at it sooner rather than later.
But yes, she's a very, very powerful thinker.
What about disaster preppers?
They, I think, have gone already towards stoicism.
All right. Would you consider yourself to be egoistic?
Good heavens now. Egoistic.
See, I don't want you guys to be interested in me.
This is why someone says, well, you take a video of yourself taking a big five personality test.
It's like, why would you care? Why would you care?
Like, don't forget about me.
I want to be a...
You know, like if you're a glassmaker and you've got to build sort of like a whole wall of glass...
To the most amazing and beautiful view that you can picture or that exists, right?
If you're the glassmaker...
You want people to see the view.
You don't want them to say, wow, that's really nice glass.
You want the glass to be so perfect it's like invisible.
You want to be the missing equation factor in the entire situation.
You want people to just see the view, not the glass.
And the view is philosophy, and I want to be out of the way so that you can see philosophy and not look at me.
Don't look at me.
I'm idiotic. I mean, don't look at me.
Just use the language that I built, the arguments that I bring.
Use it to look at the beautiful vision of philosophy.
Don't look at me. I'm like an inconsequential nonsense, who cares, distraction.
For you. The people who are interested in me, oh, was my grandmother Jewish?
And what's my IQ? And what kind of personality type do I have?
And what do I eat for breakfast? Forget it.
It doesn't matter. It's relevant.
It's important. It matters to my family.
It matters to my friends. It might matter to me sometimes.
But when it comes to what I do here on the screen with the camera, forget about me.
It doesn't matter. My ego is nothing.
My ego is nothing other than something maybe I can spark a little verbal pyrotechnics to get you interested as somebody who will look at the view of philosophy.
I'm the glassmaker.
I'm just something you're supposed to pass through to get to philosophy.
That's all I am. Forget about me.
Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter.
If the left continues to advocate for violence, is civil war inevitable?
Well, there's something worse in Civil War, which is absolute surrender.
So, I hope not.
I very, very much hope not.
Do you think society places too much importance on fiction?
I think it does.
I think it does. And by that, I mean people addicted to Netflix and Amazon Prime and Crave and you name it, right?
All right. What is your opinion on mandatory vaccines and the effects on the human body?
I don't know enough.
I'm a big fan of vaccines insofar as we don't have horrible things like polio and smallpox anymore, but I don't know.
I know that this is a big question, and there are some big questions.
I look at how long it took me to get good at some things in philosophy, and I sit there and say, do I have five years of virtually full-time work to spend on this?
I really don't. So I'm going to have to beg off from that one and just refer you to medical advice and so on, right?
All right. I think that's...
Yeah, I would avoid living in or visiting London.
I think that if I went to London, I would be heartbroken.
I would be...
I would be heartbroken.
All right. Well, I think we'll close it off here.
Thank you everyone so much for dropping by, and I hope that you enjoyed this conversation.
Please, please help me out at freedomain.com forward slash donate.
Your support is very, very, very important.
I would actually very much like to continue doing the documentaries, and for that I do need your help and I do need your support, which is...
Enormously and massively appreciate it.
So freedomain.com forward slash donate to help me out.
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You know, like 100,000 of you are downloading my books every month.
I really, really appreciate that.
No. 100,000 of my books are being downloaded every month.
I don't know how many people that is exactly.
But, you know, they are free and I'm glad that you're reading them and so on.
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