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Dec. 9, 2019 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
54:31
"Damn It, I'm Going to Spank My Kids!"
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Josh, you wanted to talk about spanking, is that right?
Unless it's actually banking and the transcription got it incorrect.
Are you with me? Yeah, I'm with you.
That's correct. More like spanking is a form of discipline and its relation to the non-aggression principle.
Right. Well, what do you think?
Well, that's what I called about.
I wanted to know. Well, let me ask you this.
Hang on. Is spanking the initiation of the use of force?
Yes, it is the initiation of the use of force.
Well, isn't that your answer?
Well, not necessarily, because force, when applied correctly, is absolutely appropriate.
Okay, give me an example, not related to spanking, where force, the initiation of force, not self-defense, but the initiation of force is appropriate.
Yes. All right, so not self-defense.
How about defending others?
Well, that's self-defense by proxy.
No, that's self-defense.
I mean, it's the defense of others by proxy.
It's still the same principle, right?
The principle is universal, so whether you defend you or I defend you doesn't really matter because the principle is universal.
Okay. Okay, then in that instance, I guess I can see your point.
But another instance where you might use force...
Would be, I mean, we use verbal force in our persuasion, our body language, we exert a dominance.
Wait, what is, hang on, hang on, hang on.
Wait, wait, wait, hang on. How do we get to, like, from physical violence to assertive postures?
I don't quite understand.
Because one breeds from the other.
Assertive postures breed the reaction, right?
So if you want to draw a line where Just a posture doesn't, you know, you're going to dictate where that leads to and the reaction that has in another person.
That's the risk you take by interacting with people, right?
I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're talking about.
Are you saying that if I have a physically assertive posture and someone punches me, I cause that?
Or what do you mean? Well, it could happen exactly that way.
For instance, if you are in a bar and having a drink and somebody comes by and kind of bumps into you and they're a little intoxicated, instead of being polite, you get loud and mouthy and you seem like you're going to be aggressive to that person and you might start something.
They may take a preemptive action and use a level of force that May not seem to you to be appropriate, but in their mind, they're taking a preemptive action so that they do not suffer bodily harm.
Well, okay, so there is preemptive...
Hang on, hang on. Yeah, no, I get it, I get it.
So, look, there is preemptive self-defense that is allowed.
Obviously, if a guy is running at you with a knife, you can shoot him, right?
So you don't have to wait for him to stab you, right?
So there is preemptive self-defense.
But you don't get to punch people who are rude.
That's just not moral, right?
Because rudeness is something you can avoid.
A punch is something that lands on you against your will, right?
You can walk away from rudeness with no injury, but you can't walk away from being punched with no injury.
Wait a second.
You were talking in the last phone call.
You were speaking with this guy, and I was blown away by your wisdom.
My God, man, that was the best advice on marriage I've ever heard anybody give.
But besides that, you mentioned that, you know, the way you feel about your wife, right?
Now, some belligerent jerk comes up to you and insults your wife in front of her, right?
And doesn't just stop there, keeps insulting.
Your failure to act will affect your marriage.
No, we leave the situation. Yeah, that's a...
That's an easy cop-out.
No, it's not a cop-out.
It's not a cop-out.
It's called being mature.
Do you know what would really affect my marriage?
If I punch some guy for talking trash and I go to jail for six months.
You know, that's really going to affect my marriage.
Yeah, I guess it would, but there are circumstances where your failure to act will affect you.
It absolutely will.
I'm not sure what you're talking about.
I mean, everything affects me.
I don't know what you mean. Well, no, you said that the act of turning away and words, you know, don't affect you.
Those, you know, comments somebody made.
No, no, no. Hang on.
I didn't say words don't affect you.
If I thought words don't affect you, I wouldn't have conversations with people.
What I mean is that you can walk away from rudeness without physical injury, but you can't walk away from being punched without physical injury.
So words don't physically injure you.
Of course words affect you. Okay.
So the physical chemistry in your brain and the respect your partner has for you, to me that's physical.
So I guess that's where we would have the difference.
No, but you see, my partner would not respect me for punching a rude person.
No, she wouldn't. Because it would depend on the level of rudeness.
No, no, it doesn't depend on the level of rudeness.
It's a basic element of self-control.
It's a basic element of self-control.
People can be rude to you.
Listen, you don't think people are ever rude to me?
Of course they are, right? But you can't go around punching people who are rude to you.
Well, no. I mean, we're talking about an extreme situation here.
A principle doesn't have extremity as an option.
There's no opt-out when it comes to extremity.
You don't sit there when you get married, right?
You don't sit there and say, I'm going to be monogamous to you unless...
I come across a willing Sofia Vergara, well-oiled, in the sun.
You know, there's no asterisk to a principle, right?
So you don't sit there and say, no.
You don't get to punch people for verbal abuse.
Unless they say this word and then you do, right?
The whole point of a principle is it's kind of an absolute, right?
There's no asterisk there, right?
And listen, there are certainly some situations where you feel that hot-blooded and hot-tempered response to a verbal instigation, to an insult or to whatever it is, right?
Uh-huh. And that's where self-control and self-mastery is, right?
Like, I mean, as a friend of mine said once, you know, like, yeah, I still notice attractive women.
I'm married. I'm not dead, right?
But let's say there's some woman who's exactly your type who comes along and whatever, right?
But you don't—you just avoid those situations.
I've never been in a situation—I've never been in a situation where someone has verbally abused me or my wife to our face.
Never. Never. I mean, I'm not in those locales.
I'm not around those kinds of people.
I'm not in those environments.
At what age did you get married?
I got married in my 30s.
Interesting. Okay. So that might be a cause.
No, no, no, no. I had lots of girlfriends.
Hang on. I started dating in my teens, mid-teens.
I had lots of girlfriends all throughout the years.
I was never in a situation where someone was trash-talking my girlfriend.
I'm just not in those environments.
Anyway, you were saying. Sorry, go ahead.
Well, yeah. Vegas is a different kind of town.
But anyway, I don't see that initiation of force is necessarily aggression.
That's all. I think that force has a use, and it can be corrective if applied correctly.
But if it's... No, you can't talk about force...
Without including the initiation of, right?
Because, of course, force can be corrective.
If some guy's running at you with a chainsaw, you shoot him in the leg.
Or you shoot him in the chest. Or you shoot him in the face.
I don't care. You do whatever you need to protect yourself, right?
I get all of that. Force can be absolutely corrective.
A friend of mine was drunk.
I refused to give him his keys.
I took him from him. I initiated force to get the keys from him.
He wanted to drive drunk.
That was his call, not my call.
No, you didn't initiate force.
Oh, I stole his keys from him and didn't give him back.
You did not steal his keys from him.
You didn't steal his keys from him.
You prevented him from committing an illegal action that could have resulted in death to himself, great harm to others, destruction of the car.
And the real question is not how he perceives it while he's drunk.
The perception, the important question is how does he perceive it the next day?
Right, so the next day, hopefully, he's sobered up.
Right, so the next day he's sobered up, and is he going to press charges against you?
Of course not. Of course not.
He's going to sober up. But just like the child who you have to smack on the butt because they're doing something that is going to have disastrous results for them later, and talking to them is not getting through...
Bullshit. Absolute bullshit.
Hang on, Josh. That's absolute bullshit.
Hang on. No, no, no, no, no. Can't let that stand.
Absolute bullshit. You talked about taking keys away from someone who's about to commit an illegal and dangerous action, right?
That's right. Now, you didn't say you get to beat your friend.
You get to hit him in the face.
I didn't say nothing about beating a child.
You said hitting a child.
So you've gone from taking property away to prevent an illegal action to initiating the use of force against a child.
You cannot put those in the same category, man.
That's not fair. Wait, wait, wait.
A dangerous action. Dangerous action.
Okay, forget law for a second because a child can't commit a crime.
So dangerous action.
That's what's important here.
It's the danger of the action.
If the child's action...
It's putting it in danger.
And a constructive word, positive reinforcement.
Those methods do not work on this child.
Sometimes a little force applied in the right way can save that child's life.
Okay, so give me an example.
I don't understand calling him violent.
Hang on, give me an example.
It's a word very abstract. I need a sort of concrete example.
And I'm enjoying this, by the way.
I appreciate the debate, but go on.
All right. I try not to talk in analogies too much, but...
Here would be one for you.
So, as a child, I happened to really, really like knives and fire, okay?
My mother was very, very much about not, and this goes back to some points you made about the way you're raised, right?
So my mother was very caring, very loving, made sure that she gave me all the attention and love I needed.
The problem was, I liked to do things I wasn't supposed to do, right?
I would, you know, like try to make firecrackers and Do all these things, climbing chandling fences when I was three years old, and just playing with knives and stuff like that.
Well, I learned when my mom swatted my ass that touching that knife wasn't worth getting my ass smacked.
So that's the only reason I didn't touch the knife.
That's the only reason why I didn't try to light matches on fire.
The only reason.
Because I was afraid All right.
Now, let me ask you a question.
I appreciate that sharing.
It's a powerful story, and I just have one question.
What was going on in your childhood that you wanted to set fire to things and use knives?
I don't know. Not set just fire to things.
Fire is an amazing, amazing chemical reaction.
It's just, it's amazing when you watch what fire does to something.
It takes it from its natural state, and it turns it into a completely different state.
And that state is inert.
No, no, no. Hang on, hang on.
No, I understand. Hang on, hang on.
I understand that fire is fascinating.
So... If you have an interest in fire, your parents can sit you down and say, okay, we're going to go put the stones out in the backyard, or we're going to go someplace where we could start a fire.
We're going to start a fire.
We're going to talk about fire.
We're going to explain the fire.
We're going to poke at the fire, and we're going to teach you about the fire.
We're going to teach you how to respect fire, how to take care of it, how, you know, it's a good servant, a dangerous master, and all that kind of stuff.
So... The fact that you're interested in fire doesn't mean, I think, or I don't see how it causes you to be some dangerous pyromaniac who's going to set fire at half the Amazon forest, right?
Because you can be educated on fire with your parents' participation, and they can gain a commitment from you because you respect and love them, where they say, listen, until such and such an age, we don't want you to play with fire on your own, and we'll explain why we go through it, this, that, and the other, right? So my question is, what was going on with your childhood that that didn't seem to have happened?
Well, I did light fires and campfires with my father.
He let me light the barbecue fire when we do barbecues.
You know, taught me how to hide without burning my hands.
All those kind of things.
It's the evolution of anything.
When I get into something, I get really into it.
And so I didn't want to just learn about fire.
I wanted to learn how gunpowder was made.
So I was doing experiments.
Wait, did you do those with your father as well?
No, he worked a lot of graveyards.
So I had a mother and three sisters and, you know, only son.
And I kept myself busy with my chemistry sets.
Now, I guess my question would be, why wouldn't you go to your mother and say, I'm really curious about how gunpowder works.
I know it's kind of explosive and all of that, but what's a safe way that I can work with this?
And, you know, maybe she could have talked to your dad or maybe...
She would have flipped her lid.
Okay, so there's the issue that you couldn't talk about it with your mom, right?
Yeah, yeah, that's the issue.
You couldn't really talk about it with my mom.
Sure, you could summarize it like that for a conversation to say, sure.
Okay, so because you couldn't talk about it with your mom, you ended up experimenting with these things in a dangerous manner, and she flipped out even more and hit you, right?
Yeah. Now, if she had been the kind of mom where you could talk about it...
Sorry, go ahead. It was never out of control or anything.
You know, it was just, you're going to burn your house down.
Well, I didn't. But, you know, that was my logic.
I'd argue with her about it.
Right. And that was her solution.
Right. Now, I think if you had the kind of mom where you could sit down and talk about these things with her and try and figure them out, then I think you would not have needed to be hit as a child for that stuff, right?
I would imagine that could be true.
I don't know.
I don't know. That's what I experienced.
But you would rather, I think you would rather have, you would rather have learned about this stuff with one or both of your parents, I assume, at least at this age, right?
Oh, heck yeah, I would have loved to have a physicist as a parent, you know?
There's a lot of things I would have loved, but that's not where I was born, that's not where I was raised, you know?
And so it's, you know, and you do what you can do in life.
And try to rise above where you came from.
Yeah, listen, look, I'm not saying your parents are terrible people or they were abusive or anything like that.
But what I am saying is that there are options other than hitting your children.
And my concern is if parents have, you know, that old saying, if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, right?
So if parents have this solution called hitting children...
Then they can just go do that, right?
And that becomes their parenting.
Whereas if you say to yourself, no, I'm not going to yell at my kids.
I'm not going to call them names. I'm not going to hit them because I wouldn't do that to a customer at my business.
I wouldn't do that to my boss.
I wouldn't do that to my best friend.
If my best friend does something I don't like, I don't get to hit him on the ass or anything.
I'm going to have a universal principle on the non-initiation of force.
then as a parent, you have very interesting and creative problems to solve, right?
So if your mom had as a rule, and look, I get it.
It's a different time and all that.
But if your mom had as a rule, look, I'm not going to hit Josh.
Like whatever, I'm not hitting him because all I'm doing is teaching him that I'm bigger and scarier.
And that's not a great lesson for him to learn, right?
So if Josh is interested in dangerous stuff, I have a challenge as a parent.
And my challenge is how do I try and keep him safe?
How do I...
Deal with my anxiety about his dangerous stuff along with his desire to pursue dangerous stuff because, I mean, I was the same way.
I remember my friends at junior high coming over to my little apartment during lunch and we would take hairspray and matches and we would create, we called it dragon breath, you know, like you hold the match up, the hairspray puts out, crazy dangerous stuff, right?
That stuff can explode like crazy, right?
So I get all of that.
But there are ways to satisfy children's natural, especially boys' natural curiosity about this stuff, without hitting.
Now, I would say that if your mom didn't have the option to hit you, she would have had to find another way to deal with your curiosity that would have been much more productive.
But because she could hit you, that's what she did.
But that doesn't necessarily mean it's the only or even the best way to do it.
No, you're correct.
It's not the only way to do it.
But not everybody is born with the same tool set.
Some people, you talk about IQ a lot, and I find it fascinating, but some people do not have the tool set to be able to think rationally.
So they can be taught to maintain some sort of self-control, but at some point in time, their intellect is being surpassed by their obstacle.
And there has to be an acceptance that sometimes things that we think are wrong may have a more positive effect than we give it credit for.
Well, I will say this.
Look, I mean, first of all, I really, really appreciate the conversation.
It was very, very enjoyable and very helpful for me as well.
It's always good to clarify this stuff.
But I will say this. I completely accept with you that a lot of people out there who don't have the tool set to think rationally.
Kind of why I do the show.
It's kind of why I do the show.
Hopefully spread this kind of stuff.
But listen, I'd move on to the next caller, but I really, really appreciate the conversation.
Thank you so much for, you know, fighting so hard.
And I promise I will not come to your house and spank you for what you said.
I appreciate that. Thanks, man.
Bye. Take care. Yep.
Good talking. All right.
Okay. We've got...
Let's see here.
Brian. The man they called Brian.
All right. Brian, I believe you are coming up.
Are you on, my friend?
Do you want to talk about your daughter?
Yeah. Okay.
I'm very happy to talk to you, Stefan.
Thank you for calling in.
It's a great pleasure to chat. Okay.
Well, the situation is, okay, back in 2003, I had been laid off from my computer programming job, and I'd been laid off for like a year and a half, and I was thinking, well, I'm like real desperate.
And so I was looking online, I was thinking of changing careers to be a teacher if I don't have teaching certifications.
So I was looking online and found out I could teach English in Korea.
And so I moved to Korea, lived there nine years.
Wow, I'm sorry to interrupt you, Brian, but I've always been kind of fascinated.
Because to me, moving to another country is like a whole mess of paperwork and visas and passports.
You just go and you can just live in Korea and just stay there and work there and so on?
For me, it was pretty easy.
I was scared because I'd never been out of the country before.
But the important thing I wanted to mention about this is that at the time, I had a daughter who was at that time one or two years old.
And I wasn't getting along with the mother.
I'd already moved You know, to a different state trying to find work.
And so I'd already, like, left Ohio, went to Texas, you know, lived in Texas eight months, you know, had trouble.
I could find, like, ordinary low-paid, you know, factory jobs, but I couldn't find another well-paid programming job.
And so, you know, because I was, like, you know, Kind of desperate.
I went to Korea, started teaching English there, and my daughter views that as that I abandoned her.
I wanted to keep in touch with her through email or Skype or things like that, but that never panned out.
Sorry, and how old was she when you went to Korea first, nine years ago?
Yeah, well, she was born in 2001, so she would have been almost two years old.
Oh, I'm so sorry. So, 2003, you went to Korea for eight years, so you were there until, what, 2011?
Yeah, that's right. Okay, and then what happened?
Sorry, we'll get to your daughter. I just want to get the map of your movements.
Okay, go ahead.
Yeah, so what happened after 2011?
Okay, well then, to be frank with you, I like Korea.
I liked living there.
Got to know the country pretty well.
But then certain aspects of it kind of annoyed me, to be honest with you.
So I decided to move to China.
And I'm still living in China now.
Also teaching English.
I'm a partner.
I'm kind of an adjunct professor right now at a university.
All right, all right. And your daughter is 18 now, is that right?
Yeah, almost 18.
She'll be 18 in December.
And what has been your contact with her over the last 17 years or so?
Okay. This is complicated.
Okay. In 2009, I got a message from the mother saying that she wrote a letter to me, and then I was scared.
Part of this is I have what I would regard as perhaps certain Mental problems, I would guess.
But anyway, so her mother writes to me and says, well, or emails me and says that my daughter wrote a letter to me and what was my address in Korea that she could send it to.
And I was just afraid that, well, what's going on in her mind?
Like, I haven't heard from her for Hello, are you still on?
Oh, come on! That was a great...
I wanted to know. Are you still on?
Oh! That's too bad, man.
Can you hear me?
I'm all still well-connected.
I guess we'll have to try returning him to the queue.
We'll see if we can get him back in a bit.
Let's see if David is back.
We'll see if we can get back to Brian.
David, are you with us at all?
Yes, can you hear me?
Yes, David, are you with me?
Thank you.
Yes, sir. All right.
So, you know what? I'm so sorry.
I know you've been waiting for a while.
I did try dropping in with you before.
Let me just see if I can get our friend back to finish his story, and I promise I will get to you in a few minutes, all right?
Sure. Thanks, man.
I appreciate it. All right.
This is a close number.
I wonder if it's the same guy.
Let's see here. Brian, is that you?
Did you call back?
Okay, I called back.
Can you hear me? Yeah, yeah.
Okay, sorry. You were just talking about how your ex-wife or the mother of your daughter had said she wanted to write to you but you were nervous about what might be going on in her mind?
Yeah, that's correct.
So I waited for a couple weeks and then I decided to go ahead and give her my address in Korea and then I got a letter from my daughter, which I still have.
And then I told her, well, if you want further contact with me, I'm going to demand a paternity test.
So I found an online private company that does paternity tests by mail, and I verified that she is my daughter.
And then I decided to send her A little bit of money every month, you know, it wasn't a lot, you know, I'm not, I don't make a lot of money, but I did send her money for, you know, you know, every month for about a year and a half.
And then for some reason I lost contact with my daughter and I was like saying, well, what is she doing?
You know, you know, you know, yeah.
And I would get no responses so then I decided to not send money anymore and then I got started getting responses a few like two or three emails and then after that she didn't I didn't hear from her anymore at all okay and then in 2011 I visited her briefly you know in you know and then A few years ago...
Okay, this is strange.
Can you still hear me?
Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Okay, this is really strange.
A few years ago, a number of things happened.
One is I got a Chinese girlfriend, who I'm currently married to.
Second is I got this feeling of some spirit or something like that, and I wanted to, you know, check, you know, objectively if this is a spirit or whatever.
So I said, told the spirit that, well, if you're real, have my daughter contact me in four days.
And then it was a day late, five days.
Okay, five days later, I noticed that she had contacted me on Facebook in some areas I don't normally look at.
And then after that we had some conversations, you know, back and forth, you know, a lot.
And then she kind of got angry with me because she...
One is to go to college.
I told her, well, don't go to college unless you have some workable plan, like you want to do a job, like, I don't know, for example, nursing.
No, I get it. Sorry, I don't want to get too much into the weeds here.
So, yeah, only go to college if you've got a specific degree you need to get for a job.
And then what happened? Okay, well, she got...
Mad at me because she said she wants to become a cook.
And I said, well, you don't know that.
You don't know if you want to become a cook or not.
You should try working in the restaurant first to see if that's something you want to do before you invest in it.
And I'll give her advice like this, and she interpreted this, plus the fact that I left the country and all this as...
That I don't care about her or I don't support her dreams, things like that.
So she kind of said, fuck you and just drop all contact from me, period.
So now I have no contact with her.
Well, I'm certainly sorry to hear that.
What is it that I can do to help you?
Okay, so a number of things.
How, like, from your perspective, how badly have I done as a father?
Well, I mean, technically you haven't done much as a father.
Right? I mean, you were gone from very early in her life.
You went to not just another country, but basically...
the other side of the world pretty much, right?
And you were there for a long time and then you moved, I don't know if it's closer or further, my geography is not my strong suit, but you have had virtually no contact with her over her life, right?
Right, okay.
So, I mean, I hate to sort of make it as crass as, you know, sperm donor, but as far as being a father, you, you know, you didn't change your diapers, You didn't teach her to walk.
You didn't, I mean, I know she was, you were around a bit when she was, she was young, right?
When she was a baby. But you don't have, I mean, it's kind of weird, right?
Because I grew up with, without a dad and I would see him once in a, in a while.
And it's weird because you have this very charged relationship without a relationship.
And that's just, I don't know, it's just weird.
It's confusing, it's complicated, it's messy.
And because you've had very little influence other than genetically, which doesn't really count, because you've had very little influence on how she turns out, you don't know any way in which your values may overlap.
Right? So I'm going to get totally sexist and cliched here.
I mean, it's more nuanced than this, but just for the sake of convenience or at least brevity, a lot of women have this thing where they say, I want to do X. And then a man will say, well...
The sensible approach would be to do A, B, C, and then maybe X, right?
And then the woman says, you're not supporting me.
In other words, the woman says, whatever I want to do, you have to tell me that you want me to do it and you're willing to pay often for me to do it.
Otherwise, you're not being supportive.
Now, that's not how men in general operate, right?
So, you know, if you have a friend when you're a teenager and he wants to be a long-distance runner, then you say, hey, man, you've got to go train like 20 hours a week or whatever.
If you want to be like a long-distance runner, you've got to go train, right?
And why don't you try it out for a couple of weeks of, you know, maybe 5 or 10 hours a week and get warmed up and see if you like it, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
sensible thing to say to somebody who says they want to be a long distance runner right like it's an old novel i read when i was a kid the loneliness of the long distance runner and so when a man says i have a i want to do something and other men say oh you know here's a practical way to approach it men usually say hey man thanks that's great i appreciate the feedback that's helpful right but for uh for women they they often interpret it quite differently in other women your daughter says i want to be a chef or a cook you said
and and you say okay well you know don't necessarily go plunge straight into very expensive schooling for all of that figure out if you like even working around food or in restaurants you know at least spend maybe a summer working in a restaurant you can be a short order cook or whatever see if you like it at all right well that's that's a sensible thing to say, I think.
But because she hasn't grown up with you and she's grown up, I don't know if there have been stepdads around, but she's grown up, I assume, with her mom as her primary.
So the mom maybe has said to her things like, well, you know, if he doesn't agree with everything you say, he's just not being supportive.
Now, that to me is not being supportive, but that's how a lot of women experience support.
In other words, if you say...
Here's a sensible way to approach getting what you want to even find out if it is what you want.
The women will get very upset and feel unsupported.
And it's a problem.
This is one of the sort of problems between men and women and one of the general incomprehensions that occurs.
And the fact that this showed up In your daughter's choice of potential career is not too surprising, right?
So, you know, if your daughter wants to be a doctor, say, okay, well, why don't you volunteer at a hospital for a summer and see if you even like the environment?
It's like, you're not being supportive.
It's like, no, I am.
It's a conversation that men and women have like 5,000 times a day in, you know, 5,000 different countries, it seems.
So, yeah, as far as being a father goes, you really haven't been around.
You've had barely any contact.
You've only seen her a couple of times in your life, as far as I can tell.
And so I don't know what you can be to her, but I don't know how it translates to father, because father is something that starts pretty early, right?
I mean, should start from even before that.
I mean, I was reading to my daughter before my wife gave birth, right?
So she'd recognize my voice when I came out.
So as far as, you know, I think about my own dad, like, what could he be for me?
I don't know. Like, I was just in a...
I was just in a pharmacy the other day, and I saw a sign which said, Thursdays?
Is a senior's discount.
It's a senior's discount. And I'm like, ha, senior, right?
And then it said, so if you're 55 or older, you get a senior's discount, right?
Now I'm 53. And now I know that that's not old.
But holy shit, man.
I'm two years away from a senior's discount.
I'm two years away from a senior's discount.
I can't tell you how weird that feels.
But it's true, right? I mean, at least, you know, I mean, that's not...
I don't know if that's, like, not medically old.
But, you know, hey... 55 plus, you know.
Freedom 55 was the old ad, right?
You want to retire at 55.
So like, what can my father do for me now that I'm two years away from becoming someone eligible for seniors discounts?
You know, not that much.
Now again, I know your daughter's younger, but the problem is, can she listen to good advice from you when you weren't around for her childhood?
And I don't know, did you send money to her mom or how did that work out?
Well, I had the bank I had at the time automatically send checks to her, you know, mail physical checks to her every month.
So while she was growing up, you sent money.
How much were you able to send?
It wasn't very much.
Maybe $150 a month.
Right. So that doesn't do much for child raising, right?
Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, you're not like a deadbeat dad, but you, you know, you could have been a smidge more generous, perhaps, or maybe that wasn't possible.
I don't know. But so her perception of you is the guy who left and went to another country, didn't really send much money.
And as you say, the Skype or email thing or whatever didn't didn't really work out.
And so it's a charged relationship without any history that builds trust.
And that's usually a pretty volatile situation.
I mean, what do you most want?
What would be ideal for you?
Well, I don't know, to be honest.
I'm wondering what the best solution is.
Okay, another thing I wanted to bring up that affects my mentality with not just this relationship, but this relationship in general, that I have a general sense that I'm...
Not important, you know, that if I were like not here and like not teaching at this university, for example, they could just hire someone else.
And so I get this general idea that I could be aloof and then when I'm finished with this job, they'll forget about me and that I could apply the same principle to everybody and then just kind of disappear.
And so This kind of affects my mentality with my daughter that I'll sometimes say, well, you're better off without me or maybe she would be better off without me.
Maybe I should not try to contact her and live her life.
I'm sorry that you have this perspective, but given that you feel that your daughter might be better off without you, And if that's how you ran your relationship or lack of relationship with her when she was growing up, now that she's an adult, why would you change that perspective?
Well, I just don't know if this perspective is correct.
If I take that perspective to its logical conclusion, then what I should do is be aloof with everybody and then kill myself and then In such a way that nobody would notice and then I'm gone.
But no, you were married though, right?
Yeah. I mean, assume that your wife would notice if you weren't there and would miss you, right?
Right. Yeah, my wife genuinely cares about me.
Okay. And I'm sure you matter to your students and I'm sure you have friends and so on, right?
But if you, with regards to your daughter, if the way that you ran the relationship when it was in its most important phase, which is when she was a child, right?
Now that she's almost an adult, the job of the parent is largely done.
Or at least it shifts considerably after the child becomes an adult, right?
You become maybe an advisor, you become maybe a resource, but you sort of hopefully have helped to outgrow you as an authority figure and maybe just as an advisor or resource going forward.
But given that you ran...
Your relationship with her, like, you didn't matter to her for 17 years or 15 years or whatever.
Why would you change that now that she's an adult?
Like, is it because you look back and you say, well, I should have been there, I should have not...
I shouldn't have had the perspective that I didn't matter?
Okay, well, then my question would be, should I continue with the perspective that...
I don't matter to her or shouldn't matter to her and continue.
No, listen, you're always going to matter to her.
You're the father.
I mean, maybe it's mostly a genetic relationship, but you're always going to matter to her.
That is, my father matters to me.
My mother matters to me.
People I haven't seen in my family of origin for many years, they matter.
They're never going to not matter to me.
You can't just scrub that history completely out of your life.
But here's the thing.
With regards... Sorry for interrupting, but it seems like there is a contradiction here.
On the one sense, I don't matter, because you said that I wasn't much of a father, but now you say I do matter.
No, no. Hey, I never said you didn't matter.
I said you didn't do much fathering, and you weren't much of a father to her, and that's true.
That doesn't mean you don't matter.
I didn't see my father very much when I was growing up.
That doesn't mean he never mattered to me.
Of course he matters. It matters that I didn't see him that much, right?
It matters that he was on the other side of the world when I was growing up.
This all matters. So it's not a contradiction when I say you didn't do much fathering, which is true, and also then to say that you do matter.
But let me ask you this.
Okay, so maybe, just maybe, you know, show's pretty popular.
Maybe your daughter will hear this, right?
So I will give you a platform.
You can take a couple of minutes if you like.
What is it that you would most like to say to your daughter?
Maybe you have some regrets.
Maybe you have some thoughts. Maybe you have some hopes.
What is it that you would most like to say to her?
Because, you know, six degrees of separation, it's not going to be at all impossible for someone to know someone to get this to her.
So if this is your platform, what is it that you would most like to say to her about the past?
And what is it that you would most like about the future?
Okay, well, I'll name her.
I'll give her first name, Alexis.
Okay, so Alexis, I want to be some kind of father to you.
I want to negotiate, like, how we can have the best, you know, mutual relationship.
I don't know what that is, okay?
We may need help from others, like...
Like someone who's an expert in family, you know, issues or something like that.
But I would rather, you know, we negotiate something rather than I say, you should not go to college or whatever and you say, well, fuck you, I am going to college.
I don't want that.
I want it to be like, I'm not always right and you're not always right.
But let's try and figure out how both of us can find the best possible solution.
Okay. That's what I would want to say to her.
Well, I appreciate that. I don't have much to add other than, you know, I would let her take the lead in this because she is to some degree the wronged party because she didn't choose to have you go to Korea.
But, you know, Alexis, if you're out there, I hope that you hear that.
And, you know, maybe if you do end up being in contact with your dad, you can drop me a line and let me know how it goes.
But thanks very much for the call, man.
And I wish you the best.
I wish you the best. All right, let's get back to David, who's been very patient.
I do apologize for that.
David, are you with me? Yes, sir.
Can you hear me? Oh, man, you are very, very patient.
That's a lot of on hold. So what's on your mind, brother?
Yeah, no problem. First, I want to say I appreciate you very much.
I think you're the bravest influencer out there today, and you certainly inspire a lot of us.
Thank you. Okay, so...
I find myself putting together a little argument between my patriotism as well as my respect for capitalism, and I'd like to kind of run this by you to see if you can poke some holes in it.
Good. Go for it.
All right. So, in my debates with libertarians, they seem to support quite a bit of business leaving America that would benefit the business owners, and I can understand that.
You know, factories going to China, etc.
Now, when we start arguing, I usually dive into the main argument over how this business is benefiting itself or how they can even survive by moving all the way across the planet.
And what I end up actually using is basically the government intervention in the currency is a form of theft from the Chinese people Which allows the business owner to profit.
So if you really want to call yourself a free market capitalist, are we not breaking some type of non-aggression principle or using force to steal from the Chinese people through printing money, therefore being able to be a profitable business?
Alright, I'm probably 60 to 65% of the way to understanding what you're saying, and that's not because you're being unclear.
It's just maybe kind of late for me, but I'm dedicated to figuring it out.
So if you can give me a concrete example, I'm sure I'll be able to follow it.
Okay, so I'm a small business owner myself, and I've worked with clients who shut down their American businesses to move to China.
However, None of their employees go to China, and none of their equipment goes to China.
What they actually do, it seems like they're just hiring the Chinese government to make their products, technically, because China owns all the businesses.
In order to profit, they're capitalizing on the lower, number one, the labor cost, as well as the geo-arbitrage, which is created by all the trillions of yen that they're printing.
So isn't printing money theft from those individuals?
And if so, are we no longer in a free market if you're actually partnering with a communist entity?
Perhaps your American business is now just Right.
No, listen, I completely understand.
I think I get it now.
So, the question of, you know, factory relocation is really, really fascinating.
I know up here in Canada, there was a North American Free Trade Agreement came in, I think, under Mulroney in the 80s.
And there was all of this concern, some of which was justified, that the factories were all going to move down to Mexico, right?
Car factories and other manufacturing facilities were all going to go down to third world countries and so on, right?
So to me, that's a very, very interesting question.
It's a very interesting question.
First of all, How bad is your educational system that you can't compete with people in a third world country?
That's, to me, a very, very important.
Now, I know Mexico is different from China, and I'm just sort of giving a sort of example as a stepping stone to get there, right?
So how bad is your educational system?
How bad is your business environment that you can't compete with?
China or with Mexico.
Because, you know, there are language barriers, cultural barriers, religious or communist or atheistic barriers.
There's lots of barriers. There's huge distances you have to transport the goods and so on.
So, to me, when a business wants to relocate out of the country, it means a couple of things.
The government educational system is terrible too.
There's probably hyper-regulation or excessive taxation going on in the country of origin for the plant.
And so, you know, health and safety regulations, environmental regulations, unionization is a huge issue.
Unionization is a huge issue in terms of how difficult it is to run a business in a lot of Western countries, for sure.
Certainly places like in France, it's not so much the unions.
In fact, it's almost impossible to fire people.
So it's easier to shut down an entire factory and lay everyone off, move the factory to China, than it is to fire your inefficient employees in various places, particularly if there's a strong union or just in France, these crazy labor laws.
So the business environment has become increasingly complicated, complex, red tape, bureaucratic.
The workforce is unskilled.
And, you know, advanced first world economies should be moving away from unskilled labor because it's very hard to compete with the third world, even if you import it regularly.
And also, automation is progressively eliminating a lot of low-skilled jobs, which is a huge problem, which, you know, I'll probably do an entire show on that at one point.
But And then, of course, as you're right, there is the currency arbitrage.
I think what you're referring to is changes in value between the currencies and ways in which you can leverage that to manufacture goods more effectively and efficiently.
And so if the Chinese government is printing a whole bunch of money, then their money value goes down.
You can buy more of them Those yen with foreign currency and so on.
So these are all non-free market situations, right?
I mean, if you look at government education, that's not a free market situation at all.
If you look at unions, I mean, I have never had any problem with unions as voluntary organizations to leverage unions.
I have no problem with that whatsoever.
It's when they get government protection.
It's when they start donating lots of money to governments.
It's when they're in the public sector.
Unions should never exist in the public sector because there's no profit motive in the public sector to drive down wages.
And also when you have laws against strikebreakers or what they call scabs and so on, unions gain way too much power and then they exacerbate the demands upon the employers to the point where the employers say, well, I just can't run the business here.
Like unions have just made labor too expensive.
So I'm either going to automate or I'm just going to go to some other place where I can do business in some reasonable manner.
So, and of course, if you look at massive printing of central banking currency, that's not at all a free market situation.
So you put these sort of four major things together and you're really looking at...
To some degree, a pretty fascistic model, which is public funding but private profit.
And yeah, I mean, this doesn't have much to do with the free market.
But naturally, of course, one of the things governments love about having the remnants of the free market around, this is an old Thomas Sowell point, that you have middlemen that you can blame for all of the problems, right?
If the government's distributing the goods and services and the goods and service price goes up, everyone gets mad at the government.
But if you have nominal private ownership of corporations, then when the price goes up, everyone can blame the free market and the government gets off the hook.
So I think your analysis is very good.
Great.
Thank you.
I try to use this with business owners who I know are leaving the country and then they call themselves free market capitalists.
Quite a bit more at play there, I guess.
I think you're right.
I think you're right.
Well, listen, I'm going to shut off the show for the night.
Sorry for the people who didn't get through.
It was a great pleasure to chat with everyone.
Please don't forget, freedomainradio.com forward slash donate to help out the show.
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And thank you everyone so much for giving me this incredible opportunity to speak to the world.
I hope, as always, though, I'm sure I know you from time to time, or at least some of you, that I do you proud as a whole, as I always aim for.
So thanks everyone so much.
Have yourself a wonderful, wonderful evening and weekend if I don't talk to you before and then.
Lots of love from here.
Take care.
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