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May 3, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:43:52

MASTERCLASS ON SUCCESS: Philosopher Stefan Molyneux's Speech to University Students

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	We're fine. We're fine.
	We're just a little bit late because, as you know, it's a very early morning class.
	And, you know, students sort of like, and I used to like when I was a student, I used to like my late afternoon classes.
	I had a full year course on World War II that started at eight in the morning.
	And there's only so much you can learn about Operation Barbarossa through one bloodshot eye.
	So I'm happy to be here.
	And good morning to everyone.
	Good morning to you. Good evening to you, actually.
	Let me...
	Can you guys hear him okay?
	Should I turn on the volume now?
	Okay. So I have...
	If you can tilt the camera down at all, I'm just getting a lovely view of the ceiling here.
	Yeah. Okay.
	Okay. Let's...
	How's this?
	Is that better? Yeah, yeah.
	Great. Thank you. You can see the class, you can see us.
	Okay, let me kind of sit somewhere where I'm not covering all the students.
	There you go. Okay, great.
	Wait, how come you don't have to wear a mask?
	Well, because I'm kind of sitting far away from them.
	Okay, okay. So, and yeah, it's kind of uncomfortable, but yeah, I should be wearing a mask.
	Yeah, that's, yeah.
	So, once again, we're very happy, very happy to have you here with us.
	And I know I've been trying to get you on for a long time.
	I think it's probably the virus that finally got you here.
	It's been really busy with others.
	The virus has kind of displaced or preempted a whole bunch of other stuff that I had planned for this spring.
	But, you know, if you're a fireman, you go to where the fires are, I suppose.
	And this is a big one to try and put out.
	Yeah, yeah. Okay, I appreciate that you're not speaking as fast as you usually do.
	And that's a good thing because... As you know, my students aren't native speakers.
	Their English is pretty good. And we can probably edit out this part.
	But let's start with...
	What would you like to talk about first?
	Should we talk about free markets or...
	Yeah, I would actually, because, I mean, Taiwan, relative to China, relative to Hong Kong, is a really, really fascinating example of the power of free markets.
	And when I sort of think of the history of these three places, one, or two, I've visited Taiwan, I've not visited, I've spent time in China.
	And I've spent time in Hong Kong.
	I did a documentary recently about Hong Kong that is probably worth checking out.
	But you guys, boy, talk about dodging a bullet.
	I don't know if you've ever seen the film Pulp Fiction, but Samuel L. Jackson plays this criminal, and some guy just shoots all these bullets at him, and they ring them all around like some kind of cartoon.
	And he takes this as a sign that he should be doing something more uplifting with his life.
	And when it comes to Taiwan and it comes to China, boy, if there's ever a time that you wanted to be split off from China, it's China after 1949, or I guess you could say during the Civil War in the 40s.
	But you guys escaped...
	Really the most traitorous, treacherous, nasty regime in the history of the world.
	Communism is toxic as a whole, but if you combine communism with the extraordinarily high intelligence and efficiency of the Chinese people as a whole, you know, when you guys get communism, so when you guys get capitalism, it's a glorious thing, and you're fantastic at it.
	When you get communism, you're also fantastic at that too, which is not so good for everyone else.
	So the fact that Taiwan, of course, has a significant free market is so amazing and so incredible.
	And what we always talk about with the free market is how efficient it is.
	You know, it's good at making stuff.
	It's good at shipping stuff.
	It's good at organizing how raw materials are used to the benefit of mankind.
	That's all true, that's all true, but very few people get emotionally invested in economic efficiency.
	And it's tempting to just say, well, gold is gonna be our God and that's who we serve, but the free market is not fundamentally about property rights, it's not fundamentally about economic efficiency or rising gross domestic product or rising wages or declining it's not fundamentally about economic efficiency or rising gross domestic product or rising wages or But fundamentally, the free market is about morality.
	It is about humanity.
	And I'll give you a very, very sort of clear example or two.
	Why do we own things?
	It's funny because we're so instinctive of it.
	You know, I don't know if there's a phrase in Taiwanese, but in English there's a phrase, it's as easy as taking candy from a baby.
	Now, I don't know what you guys were like when you were young, but when somebody tried to take candy from me...
	I was not pleased.
	And you have this in kindergarten, right?
	Everyone has their toys.
	They come to school with their gum or their toys or their lunch, and it's yours.
	You own it.
	When I was a kid, if you came to school with gum and you were chewing gum, the teacher would say, "Well, did you bring enough for everyone?" It's like, hey man, I don't want any socialism in gum at the very beginning.
	But property rights are very important, and property rights are life.
	You, me, the teacher, everyone here, we need property.
	In order to survive. Now, let me ask you guys this, because I don't want you to glaze over, whilst I'm just like this talking Max Hedrum bobblehead on the screen here.
	Can I ask you guys questions and you give me responses?
	Is that probably going to be a bit more enjoyable?
	Sure, totally. To tell you back.
	Good, good. We have things to say back to you.
	Beautiful. So, give me an example.
	Yeah, give me examples so you can holler it out or just give me examples of the property, the things that you need to survive.
	Okay, class. Give...
	Other than masks.
	Obviously masks. That I can see.
	But, you know, at a more immediate level, right?
	You need property to survive.
	Like what? Well, come on.
	What do you have on you right now that is part of you and you need for survival, for keeping yourself from getting cold and getting wet and what not?
	Yeah, well, it's early, right?
	So, yeah, you need food.
	And, you know, certainly in Taiwan, as in other places, it doesn't just fall from the tree.
	So you need food, you need water, you need air and clothing and shelter, of course, for the rain because you can't sleep and you can't work.
	If it's raining, you get cold, you get sick.
	So we need property.
	And if you don't have the right to property, you don't have the right to life.
	Now, I didn't get a strong sense of what it's like regarding free speech and censorship and so on.
	I know it's pretty loosey-goosey in Hong Kong.
	How is it there? From my experience here, and this is why I like teaching here so much, is because I don't have to I don't have to not teach certain things just to keep my job like I would in California.
	And I think maybe one of these days, if you have the time and the pleasure, I would like to maybe have a talk with you why I ended up in Taiwan.
	That should be an interesting conversation, but I don't want to spend too much time on that now.
	But yes, I totally enjoy the fact that I've been able to actually teach the things that I want to teach without being confronted or stopped in any way by the educational system.
	So I think this is a great educational system because we don't have to deal with so much I mean, you'll find teachers that are all over the spectrum, but you're not going to find that the educational system, especially the social sciences, are all the way to the left like they would be in many countries, countries, I would say.
	Yeah, so this problem of political correctness and not being able to talk about certain things, not being able to say there are two genders, not being able to talk about differences between the races and so on.
	not being able to talk about differences between the races and so on.
	You guys have that, and that's a beautiful thing because we all need open discussions about facts, reality, science, all that kind of stuff.
	You guys have that.
	And that's it's a beautiful thing, because we all need open discussions about facts, reality, science, all that kind of stuff.
	But if you don't have property rights, you don't have free speech.
	But if you don't have property rights, you don't have free speech.
	If you run a newspaper and the government can take it away from you, you don't have free speech.
	If you run a newspaper and the government can take it away from you, you don't have free speech.
	You don't have the right to life, and you don't have the right to own what you make if the government can take it away from you at any time.
	So property rights are human rights.
	There is no distinction between the two.
	People talk about human rights like they're somehow separate, but if you don't have the right to the food that you grow, you don't have the right to life.
	If you don't have the right to a printing press or a webcam or computers or the Internet, you don't have the right of free speech because there's rights in theory and then there's rights in actual practice.
	So you can say, well, I have the right of free speech, but if the government takes away all of the equipment you need to actually utilize that free speech or they don't allow you access to the Internet, or if exercising your free speech causes this crazy hysterical mob, which is or if exercising your free speech causes this crazy hysterical mob, which is kind of common in the
	to try and get you fired, to try and do the two things which leftists and communists always do, which is they try to destroy your reputation in order to destroy your capacity to earn a living.
	And so if you say, well, I have free speech in theory, But if I say things, not that are false, not that are libelous, not insulting people unjustly about their character, but if I say things that some people don't like, I actually don't have the right to have an income because they will drive me out of my profession.
	While it's hard to say you have free speech, if the consequences for speaking freely are, say...
	Living under a bridge in Canada in February, which is not recommended for many, many reasons.
	I'm sure you can understand that the Christmas cards are all true.
	There is, in fact, that much snow out here in Canada.
	So if you understand that property rights are human rights, it's easy to understand if you exist in a system without property rights like communism, you have no human rights.
	They can take whatever they want.
	They can do whatever they want to you.
	You don't have a right to your home.
	You don't have a right to your income.
	You don't have a right to your savings.
	You don't have a right to any of the equipment you might need to exercise your rights.
	You don't even have a right to food because the government controls everything.
	And so, yeah, so when we think about property rights, generally we think about, you know, really boring stuff like contracts and self-ownership and things like that.
	But I really want to – the first point I want to get across is – If you want a human right, it's always associated with a property right.
	If you lose your property rights, you lose your freedoms almost completely.
	And it can be kind of subtle and kind of slow, but it's very important.
	So I want to make that point first.
	A couple other points I want to make, but if you guys have anything you wanted to ask about that or any topics on your mind, I'm happy to hear.
	Sure.
	Anybody has any thoughts or questions for Stefan?
	Anyone?
	Are you coming forward because you have a question?
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Okay. In football, we call that a fake.
	She looks like she's going one place, but she's actually going another place.
	Yeah. Are you talking about Canadian football or soccer?
	I'm talking about football, football, not the soccer thing.
	Although I get it. I grew up in England, so same kind of thing.
	Yeah. Well, you know, I don't know if you knew my folks...
	My grandparents and parents immigrated from Romania to the U.S. I know a lot about communism, trust me.
	I'm very familiar with what they went through.
	It's a good thing that my students here, they have all the freedoms that they could ever dream of.
	We have YouTube, we have Google, we don't need a VPN. But the only issue is that they don't really like to exercise their freedom of speech.
	In other words, they're kind of shy.
	I wish they would take advantage of this.
	Hey, we've got time. We've got time and sometimes it's early.
	Everybody's caffeine is still kicking in.
	Okay, let me ask this of the class as a whole.
	This is a raise your hand situation.
	All right. I'm not going to ask for any details, but hands up if you've ever seen a crime.
	Anybody? Oh, we got someone back there.
	Okay, now, this is not a confession time, so if you've done the crime, don't say anything.
	I'm going to complicate things. Okay, so for the people, if you can just turn around there, so for the people who've seen a crime, what are the crimes that you've seen?
	Did you see like a robbery, or what kind of crime did you see?
	A robbery.
	A robbery? Can I get a couple of details on that?
	Yeah. Am I currently stealing your heart?
	Is that what's happening?
	A little bit of detail.
	The robbery was from Mexico.
	Because actually, I'm a Japanese boy.
	I was grew up in Mexico.
	So, this robbery was...
	I process reading from my mom's store outside.
	They just grab someone's necklace and speak.
	Wow. Did they get chased?
	Yes, but they didn't get captured.
	They didn't get captured.
	Right. You know, Mexico was Mexico, right?
	It's tough to chase people because they can go into some pretty bad neighborhoods where you're suddenly not a friend to anyone, and then it's like, okay, you can keep the necklace.
	I'm getting out of here. There were some people off to your right who also had seen a crime.
	I'm just curious what you've seen, and then I'll sort of say why I'm asking.
	I'm almost kind of curious in general, but I'll say why.
	I'm sorry? Wait a minute, I'm just asking who has raised their hands.
	Oh yeah, there was somebody I think on your right there who had also seen a crime behind you.
	Is there anybody else that's seen some kind of crime?
	It happened when I was young and some kind of guy would hide at night somewhere else and then when my mom and I showed up He shoved his knife and then he grabbed my mom's purse and then ran away with his scooter.
	Was your mom okay?
	No, she wasn't.
	She was totally upset and she called the police and nothing happened.
	Sorry, I meant she wasn't injured, like they were just threatened with the knife, right?
	Yeah, he just threatened.
	Right, right. So, anyone else?
	This is really interesting, learning about crimes overseas.
	Well, I guess not that far overseas if it's Mexico.
	Anybody else see anything? Oh, look at that.
	You bunch of clean-living, good-looking people.
	All right. So the question is always interesting, which is, okay, well, it's called a crime, but why is it a crime?
	Right? You can say, well, it's a crime because it's listed as a crime in the law books.
	Well, it's not a great argument because, I mean, a lot of the terrible stuff that happened in China or happens in China or other...
	Dictatorships around the world, that's all legal.
	So you can't just say because it's written in a book, therefore it magically becomes a crime.
	The question is, why is it a crime to steal?
	We'll start with stealing and then we'll talk about the knife thing, right?
	So stealing, why is it a crime?
	Why is it wrong? It has to be immoral, I think, for it to be a crime.
	Otherwise, they can just make up whatever they want, call it a crime, and then you go to jail.
	But there has to be some relationship between morality and And something that's illegal.
	So when you create something, then that thing exists only because you have created it, right?
	So you go fishing, right?
	So we're talking where you are.
	There's lots of fishing going on, right?
	So when you have a fish on your plate, that fish has been brought from the ocean or a river, and it's been put on your plate.
	Now, the fish wasn't created.
	I mean, they don't grow it in a vat, in some sort of Wuhan style, but the fish is created as something you can use by the fishermen.
	You know, in other words, if I had a fish, a little fish stall in the market, and I said, I will sell you a fish, and you gave me some amount of money and said, okay, can I have my fish?
	And I said, no, your fish is out there in the ocean.
	That's where your fish is.
	Then you'd be like, I'm...
	I'm not really sure I want to pay for that because that's not a very good deal.
	So somebody has to convert the fish from not usable to usable.
	And they do that because they either want to eat it themselves or they want to trade with you.
	And so... You have created the fish as something you can eat.
	It only exists on your plate because someone converted it.
	It's the same thing if you sow a rice paddy or you plant some crops.
	The crops only exist for you to eat because someone has created them.
	So property rights generally are not about taking, but about creating.
	So if you give a certain amount of money to the guy who's selling you some fish, He's created that fish for you to use, and you have hopefully, not stolen, but created the money through trade that you use to trade that.
	Now that exchange aspect of things, that voluntary aspect of things, is very essential.
	Now, we always think of property or things that we create as if it's always a painting or a fish or a house or whatever it is that we're creating.
	An essay, it could be, right?
	But I want you to think of a crime like property.
	And that's why I was sort of asking about criminality, right?
	I can create a speech, I guess, as I'm doing now.
	I can create a podcast.
	I can create a book.
	I own the effects of my actions.
	In other words, I'm responsible for the effects of my actions.
	So you guys have, you know, brothers and sisters, and when you were little, you played around in the house, and every now and then, if you're like my brother and I, you knock things over that are kind of valuable and expensive.
	And your mom or your dad, they come storming into the room, and what's the first question?
	That they ask when they see this lamp on the floor or a mirror that's broken.
	What's the first thing they ask?
	Who did it?
	Who is responsible for breaking, hopefully not the urn that has my mother's ashes in it, but, you know, something a little bit less important, right?
	Who is responsible? In other words, who owns the broken lamp?
	If you drive into someone else's car in a parking lot, people say, well, you, they get out and they say, you owe me to fix the car because you created, you own the dent in the side of my car.
	So we own the effects of our actions.
	Some of that is really good.
	If you're a great singer, you write a great song, then you own that song and you created it in the world.
	But the bad things we do, we also own.
	So if you do something immoral, you own that as well.
	If you've been in a relationship and you cheat on your girlfriend or you cheat on your boyfriend with someone else, you own that lack of honor.
	You own that lie.
	If you steal ideas from someone else and you turn the paper in as your own, then you own that theft because you've committed it to paper and you've handed it in.
	So we own the effects of our actions.
	That's really, really important.
	And that's what property is, but that's also what morality is.
	We own the effects of our actions.
	Who did it? When you think of a court case, a trial, that's the whole point is trying to find out, did you do it?
	Or if not you, then someone else.
	And so owning the effects of our actions is so important to understand in life.
	Now, why is...
	Theft, a crime.
	Well, I have a whole theory of ethics I'll just touch on briefly here, but the reason why theft is a crime is it can't be universalized.
	So everyone could tell the truth.
	That's fine. You can say everyone should tell the truth, and that can be universalized.
	You can say everybody should respect property rights.
	And that can be universalized as well.
	By universalized, I mean everyone could do it all the time, everywhere, no matter what.
	It doesn't mean they will, but they could, right?
	Everybody could eat well and eat in a healthy manner and exercise.
	It doesn't mean they will, but they could all do it if they wanted.
	If it can't be universalized, it can't be moral.
	Now, think of theft as really interesting.
	So theft is me taking your property without your permission.
	So if you guys were locked in here, I assume you're not, but if you were, if you were locked in here, I would be kind of taking your time without your permission because you wouldn't be here voluntarily.
	So when I take something, a piece of paper, a pen, a car, if I take something of yours without permission, that can't be universalized.
	Universalizing theft would be to say everybody must steal from everyone all the time.
	That's called universalizing.
	We could respect property rights.
	That's physically possible. We can all go around not stealing from each other.
	That can be universalized. But if someone says, as a theory, that we should steal from everyone all the time, it doesn't work.
	If theft is what I call universally preferable behavior, Then it ceases to exist as a category because if I want you to take something of mine, then you're not stealing.
	So if everybody must want to steal and be stolen from at the same time, then theft doesn't exist as a category because if I want you to take something of mine, it's not theft anymore, right?
	So it can't be universalized.
	Neither can rape or assault or murder.
	These things can't be universalized.
	This is kind of how we know that they're wrong.
	But if you take away the principle That people own the effects of their actions, whether it is the creation of a fish or a house or a poem or an essay or a crime, then we have no responsibility, no accountability. There can be no justice.
	If you come across someone standing over a body in an alley, they've got a smoking gun and the guy has a bullet hole in him, well, clearly he just shot the guy.
	He owns that death.
	He has created that death.
	He owns the effects of his actions, the murderer, and that's why identifying who actually caused the death is so important, right?
	Making sure you have the right criminal.
	So property is a subset of everything we do.
	We own the effects of our actions, for good, for bad.
	If I slap someone across the face, I own that stinging welt.
	I've created something that wasn't there before.
	That could be, of course, assault, and maybe I should pay a fine or go to jail, but owning the effects of our actions is so important.
	I mean, you can include babies, right?
	Why do parents have responsibility for and, quote, ownership over their children?
	Because they have created...
	Those children that would not have existed if the parents hadn't done, well, the various things I believe we all know that you need to do in order to make a baby.
	So when you understand this, we own the effects of our actions.
	That can be universalized.
	And we do universalize it all the time.
	And we do this with our children all the time.
	And I've always said, if you can't explain morality in a way that children can understand, Because morality can get ridiculously complicated.
	You know, there's like, well, you can judge it by the general effects on society of positive or negative, right?
	You try doing that to a kindergarten class, right?
	I mean, well, Jimmy, if you steal Timmy's blocks, that is negative social value for society as a whole.
	Come on, right? It doesn't make any sense, right?
	Well, what do we always say to kids when we talk about morality?
	We say, well, how would you like it if he did that to you?
	Which is an appeal to universality, right?
	Right. Also, thieves are hypocritical, right?
	So picture this. So there was the one young lady there.
	The thief shook a knife in her mother's hand.
	Was it a necklace? Did I get that right?
	Was it a necklace that was stolen?
	Right. Now, can you imagine?
	You're a thief, and you go do a terrible thing.
	You shake a knife in someone's face.
	You grab their necklace, and you go running off.
	And then you bump into someone and then when you keep running you realize they just stole the necklace from you.
	Now the thief, what would the thief say?
	For sure he's not going to say, oh, I deserve that.
	Well he's gonna say, that's outrageous!
	I can't believe someone stole that necklace from me right after he stole it from this young lady's mother, right?
	So that's hypocritical, right?
	So that's a failure of empathy, a failure of universalization.
	Because the outrage that the thief has if someone steals the necklace from him is, of course, exactly what your mother felt with the addition of the knife being in the guy's face, right?
	Here's another thing that's interesting about property.
	Is there anyone in the class who's not taking the class?
	Is there anyone, I don't know what they call it, but auditing the class.
	You're just sitting there and you're not going to hand anything in.
	You're not going to be taking a test or anything like that.
	Anyone? Yeah, I have some guests that they're just...
	They're just here to listen to you.
	Oh, good. Okay. Well, so good.
	Everyone gets the wisdom, but only some of you get the marks, right?
	So at some point. So you have a purpose in this, right?
	And property rights is not just the ownership of property.
	Property rights is the creation of property.
	It's the creation of property.
	I did read, of course, a little bit about the history of Taiwan over the last couple of days.
	You guys have had some owners, so to speak.
	I mean, you've had a whole bunch of different cultures and races flow across the island taking stuff.
	I mean, the Chinese in the past, you've had the Dutch, you've had the Spanish, you had the Japanese from 1895 to 1945.
	And then Chiang Kai-shek and his son and the martial law.
	There's been a lot of people kind of washing over the island and claiming it, you know, like homesteading the actual occupation, the occupants of the island, right?
	Which is not great, but that's a whole other topic.
	But property rights are not just about taking or owning property.
	Property rights are responsible for things being created in the first place.
	Like, do we have any fishermen, fisherwomen in the audience?
	Anybody? Because, I mean, it's an island nation, right?
	I assume that there are people there who like to fish.
	I do. I've gone fishing a few times in Taiwan.
	You cannot be the only fisherman in this audience, I refuse to believe.
	Anybody? There's other people that have done it for fun.
	But, you know, I got a quick question while we're on the show.
	You know, the issue of how things have occurred in Taiwan, you know, fairly recently.
	And I believe, I mean, we all believe this is a fairly young democracy.
	And we compare this to other democracies that have been around for a while.
	Do you think that those tired old democracies like in the West, do you think that's why they're having so many issues?
	Because people are pretty much forgetting the They're bad old days, and they had too many good days.
	And they're just kind of like, hey, we want to try something different, something new.
	We don't care if it's bad.
	And maybe that might be going on.
	No, that's a great question.
	Let me just tidy up the loose end or two on the property side, and I'll get to that.
	And again, the more questions, the better.
	So if you're a fisherman...
	If you don't take pleasure in fishing, the only reason you would do it is to either eat the fish or sell the fish.
	I mean, it's the same thing.
	There are some people who garden because it's kind of fun and they like it and they don't sell it and so on.
	But they only garden because nobody's going to come and trample and steal all their flowers.
	But most people who grow things, it's not a huge amount of fun.
	They grow it so they can either eat themselves or sell.
	Now, if you don't actually have the right to own what you create, you won't actually create it.
	So why is Taiwan so wealthy relative to other countries, even China relatively?
	Because you have property rights, which means it's worth creating something.
	So in Europe, during the Dark Ages, the early Middle Ages, nobody could really be guaranteed of any ownership over what they planted, right?
	You'd plant a whole bunch of food and then you'd make some bread or you'd harvest your food.
	And then some warlords would come riding over the hill and they'd say, hey, give me your food or I'll chop off your head.
	And they'd be like, okay, well, this is great.
	Here, take all my food.
	And so people kind of realized that and they stopped making any more food than they needed to survive.
	Like there's no point making excess If someone was just going to come and steal it, right?
	So many years ago, I wrote this article, and I called it Marxism.
	But it was M-A-R-K-S-I-S-ism.
	Like Marx, not Karl Marx, but Marx to do with Marx.
	So you guys, in this class, you do your work, and you get your Marx.
	Now, if everybody put their Marx, their school Marx, into kind of like a big bucket, and then they would just distribute it out evenly to everyone...
	You wouldn't really bother doing the extra work.
	You wouldn't really bother studying as hard because you wouldn't even get to own the marks that you've earned.
	They'd be distributed out to everyone else.
	And I remember when I was about your age and I was in college and there were socialists around, I'd say, hey, you're better at this subject than I am.
	Can I have some of your marks?
	What did they say?
	Hell no. I earned these marks.
	I'm keeping these marks. I'm like, no, but you're a socialist.
	You're a communist. You should want to redistribute your marks to those who are less able, right?
	So they say, from each according to their ability, you take from people according to their ability, and you give people according to their need.
	And I said, listen, you have, like, I was not good at French translation, and there were people who were native French speakers who were getting great marks.
	And I said, listen, your ability is far greater than mine, and my need for those marks is far greater than yours.
	So please, let's sit down with the professor and find a way to transfer your marks to me.
	They didn't want to do it at all, because it's one thing to talk about it in a theoretical way.
	It's another thing to have something you've earned taken from you.
	So the high marks in your class only exist because you own them.
	And if you didn't own them, those high marks wouldn't be there.
	Because this is what happens, and this is what is coming to your country as well, if you're not careful, which is people look at a wealthy country and they say, wow, there's a lot of rich people here, there's a lot of middle class people here, and there's not too, too many poor. So we'll just take a little bit from the rich, a little bit from the middle class, we'll give to the poor, everyone will be okay.
	But that's a slippery slope, very much.
	Slippery slope is not a fallacy if it's repeatedly proven historically.
	Because what happens is, as soon as you start taxing the rich and you start taxing the middle class in order to pay for a whole bunch of stuff for the poor, the rich and the middle class stop producing as much.
	And when they stop producing as much, there are fewer jobs, less wealth available, less economic growth, and more people say it's easier to take money from the state than it is to work.
	And so what happens is you end up in this situation where, you know, there's a whole bunch of people pulling the cart, and there's only a few people sitting in the cart at the beginning of this situation.
	Take from the rich and give to the poor situation.
	But what happens is more and more people are like, oh man, it's kind of nice back in the cart.
	You can lie up against the hay, you can strum a guitar, you can sing, you can have a nap.
	It's a lot easier than dragging this thing through the mud.
	So a couple more people go from pulling the cart to go sit in the back of the cart.
	Now for everyone who's still pulling the cart, it gets worse and worse.
	And then they're like, oh man, this is terrible.
	And then everyone's in the back of the cart.
	And nobody's pulling it anymore.
	And you just end up squabbling because you're not getting anywhere.
	And that's what happens when the government violates your property rights.
	I mean, I'm a big fan of charity.
	I think people should be helped.
	They need help. But it's one thing to do it voluntarily, and it's quite another thing to do it through the power of the state.
	And that is sort of my big concern about where the world is heading, both in the West here, where you are in Hong Kong, in Singapore, and other places.
	That when you get wealthy, to your point there, when you get wealthy, Especially if the government can just print money or borrow money, then this weird flow of gold just comes through society.
	And then it becomes like, well, why would you say no to anyone?
	Because we can just create wealth out of thin air.
	And for the socialists, money, it's kind of like oxygen or air.
	I mean, in this room, there's nobody who's going to say, hey man, next to me, I don't think you should have any oxygen.
	I don't think you should have any air.
	At least I hope not, right? Nobody's going to say that.
	Why? Because air is free and it's everywhere.
	So the only reason you'd want to deprive someone of air is because you hate them and want them dead.
	And people take it very personally and they get very angry and they get very upset.
	Because when you can borrow money, when you can print money, when you can counterfeit your way into imaginary wealth, there's so much money and it's so easy to get.
	Why would you say no to someone who's in need?
	Well, the only reason you do that is you must hate them somehow.
	In the same way, if you want to take air away from someone, it's because you hate them.
	You want them dead and you're a murderer.
	And this delusion that you can borrow or create money and become wealthy makes us kind of lazy.
	It makes us amoral.
	Not bad, not evil, but yeah, okay, if the government can create a bunch of money and hand it out to people and if the government can give people free healthcare and the government can give people free education, why not?
	And the reality aspect of things, you know, like, I mean, rice is horribly hard to grow.
	And so if you've spent your year back-breaking labor, getting all the water levels right and the levels right, and someone comes along and says, hey man, I really want half your rice, you're like, I don't think so.
	Like, I worked really hard for this.
	Maybe I'll give you a little bit if you want, but you can't take half of it because I worked really hard to create it.
	But when governments start creating all of this stuff and handing it out, it becomes very easy to say, sure.
	And it becomes very hard and unpopular to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, no, no, no, no, no.
	We can't keep borrowing and imagining we're getting wealthier.
	We can't keep creating money and imagine we're getting wealthier.
	That's like saying, well, I want twice the amount of wine or tea next year, so I'm just going to add twice the water.
	And it's like, no, no, no, that's not actually creating any new wine or tea.
	You're just diluting it.
	And that's a very subtle form of theft that is...
	Really hard. Yeah, you have to have these things in stores, right?
	You get a box of something, a box of raisins or rice or whatever, and the box is like this big, right?
	And then you open it up and it's like, it's half, right?
	Or a third sometimes, depending on how much is settled, and you think, well, that's kind of deceptive.
	But that's what the government is doing with money, and it makes it a huge problem.
	Because if there's a big problem that's obvious, it's easy to solve.
	But if there's a subtle problem, That is changing everything all the time.
	It's very hard to fight.
	And that's why, you know, sound money, private property for money.
	I mean, the money should be controlled by the free market.
	It should not be controlled by the government interest rates, which is the price of money, should be controlled by the free market, not by the government.
	And when we start to forget that and we just say, ah, the government can do what it wants.
	I don't want to say no to poor people.
	I don't want to say no to hungry people or sick people.
	You know, it's a very easy road.
	And like with exercise and diet, the easy road usually leads to a bad, bad place.
	And so, yeah, that's sort of my sort of introduction to the free market and private property.
	Please don't think about it just like owning a book or a house.
	It is life itself.
	It is all of your rights.
	It is all of your freedoms.
	And it is all of the morality that we so desperately need to maintain in a civilized society.
	Sorry about it. That's the bell.
	The first period, it's over, so there's a break.
	And some of my students, they have to leave because they haven't on the class, but most of them will stay.
	So let's keep going. Wait, so are you saying that my timing is so precise that I actually finished that speech like four milliseconds before the bell?
	Boom! Now that's what I call some serious timing, my friends.
	Yeah. Okay, well, let's keep going.
	Those of you that have to leave, it was good that you could come.
	Don't worry, I'm going to sing most of the second half, so you should definitely stay for that.
	Okay, so what are you looking for, Brian?
	Okay, let's keep going.
	Sure. Well, thanks very much for coming.
	I'm sorry you guys have to leave, but I really, really do appreciate you coming by, and I hope you have a good rest of the day.
	Just some of them. Most of them, yeah.
	They know they can tune in later.
	We're trying to make some adjustments here.
	Sure. This will be part of the lecture known as Earthquake in Taiwan.
	More center of the classroom.
	Thank you, Brian. Brian is one of my former students from another university.
	I invited him to come.
	He's one of the main expatriates that are leaving Taiwan.
	What do you mean? Maybe sit in the middle.
	What do you think? I don't know if it reaches all the way there, but yeah, this is okay.
	I think this is fine. Okay, so let's kind of talk about the...
	We were talking about how the government likes to thin down wine, good wine, and great money and stuff like that.
	I think one of the...
	Good things about Taiwan is that they don't really have a welfare system.
	They don't...
	And I'm not aware that Taiwan has had a deficit, a budget deficit, for quite a few years now.
	They've been having a surplus for the last few years.
	And this tells you that because we don't...
	There's no welfare system.
	There's no...
	And, you know...
	Just, I don't know, just a thought.
	Do you remember that guy, Andrew Yang?
	He came up with that dividend?
	A universal basic income.
	Yeah. You know, honestly, I wouldn't think it's such a bad idea if we take away the welfare system and put that in and then remove that afterwards.
	But I don't know.
	What's your take on that?
	The welfare system is a big hole that we in the West have dug ourselves in.
	And my only consolation is it started before I was even born.
	So the welfare state is a huge problem.
	And one of the biggest problems is the way...
	It's named. And this is so ridiculous.
	Like, you're not fighting reality.
	You're not fighting morality.
	You're not fighting the violence of the state.
	You're fighting a name.
	Like, well, don't you like the welfare of the people?
	And it's like, you can't even get to a real discussion about what it is.
	Because people get tripped up on the name.
	Like, Obamacare.
	It's like... Do you not believe that Obama exists?
	Do you not believe that he cares about people?
	And you can't even get past the name.
	This is how bad the educational system is in the West these days.
	But the welfare state is so destructive on so many levels, but it's kind of like a bad drug.
	Well, I guess there are good drugs, right?
	But like a drug that is real fun in the short run, but man, does it ever mess you up in the long run.
	And now we've had three or four generations in the West of people living on the welfare state, of entire communities, of entire parts of the cities.
	They just live on this welfare.
	And it's so destructive on just about every level.
	There are now families in the West, three generations have not had anyone working.
	Now, when you guys go out into the workforce, I mean, your parents work, you've got relatives who work, and you say, oh, how do I do a job interviewer?
	And, you know, you sit down with your relatives and they'll say, oh, you know, try it this way or try it that way.
	This is what worked for me. And then if you go into the workforce, you will have conflicts, you will have challenges, you will have...
	Office politics and backstabbers and, you know, these kind of people who just seem to be invented by the planet to make your life difficult and make you stronger, I guess, too.
	And so you'll go home and you say, oh man, you know, I had this real trouble with this guy or this woman at work and your parents or your friends or your siblings will say, oh, you know, I had that too and you can try this or you can try that or maybe you should quit or whatever it is, right?
	But imagine if you didn't have access to any of that information.
	It's really hard.
	Like I came from a very poor background and then I ended up co-founding a software company and I grew it and we ended up selling it and I was chief technical officer.
	I did a lot of the marketing and sales, traveled a lot.
	That's how I ended up in China to help them with their air pollution and so on.
	And it was so hard because I didn't have anyone in my family that I could ask and say, Well, you know, this really important guy has asked me to play poker at his club.
	What do I do? How do I talk?
	What do I say? What do I wear?
	You don't even know these things, and you really have to, and we call it invent the wheel, like you didn't even know there was a wheel, you had to invent it.
	It's really hard. It's really a big challenge.
	And so in the West, we've got three, sometimes four generations.
	Nobody has a job. Nobody's had a job.
	And then what happens is, because you pay women to have children, They don't need reliable men.
	They don't need to get married to stable men.
	They don't need to get married to men who are good providers, who are emotionally mature.
	They get, you know, look, men like women, we always have this choice when it comes to dating because, you know, there are, in the West, we call them hot messes.
	This is in particular to women where it's like they're very attractive and But a little crazy.
	And that little crazy can get really crazy pretty quickly.
	And of course, there are very attractive men and women who are stable and healthy, but sometimes they're a little crazy.
	And you kind of have to grit your teeth and you have to say, hmm, she's very pretty or he's very handsome.
	But I have to watch out for my heart.
	I have to watch out for my future.
	And I sure as heck couldn't start a family with someone like that.
	And so we all have to grit or teeth.
	Yeah, go ahead. That's something that I want to bring up.
	Let me make a little parenthesis on what you're saying.
	I think the problem, the biggest problem with the welfare system, from my point of view, as I've studied, you know, I teach business studies and a little bit of economics and what not.
	So what I notice is you take irresponsible people and you make them even more irresponsible.
	Because here's the thing.
	You have a woman and she has one or two kids with, let's say, two irresponsible men.
	And she realizes that...
	Okay.
	Sorry, I think I turned it off.
	Okay, so she realizes that the state is willing to pay her more money if she's going to have more kids.
	Now, she already...
	Pretty much messed up her life because she's got two kids from two different men.
	And the only way she can get a third man is to find an even more irresponsible one.
	And this guy might have some STDs.
	He might be a crack addict.
	So she's going from bad to worse.
	And then you're going to end up with like a crack baby and whatnot.
	But the state is still waiting to pay her.
	So she might go even further for a fourth one and get even a more irresponsible man.
	So can you see how the issues or the problems escalate with the welfare state and how you turn people from irresponsible to even more irresponsible by the end of the road?
	Yeah, there's this terrible rule.
	There's an old saying that the Greeks, that not even gods can escape the rules.
	And there's this terrible rule in life, whatever you subsidize, you get more of.
	And whatever you tax, you get more of.
	You get less of. So I don't know if anyone in the audience has ever had somebody who's a drinker, like a problem with alcohol, right?
	So if you have someone like that in your family, let's say it's your dad who drinks too much, if your mom is like, oh, I'll go out and get you some alcohol and I'll pay the bills even if you're not working or if you are working and you've got a hangover, I'll call and make an excuse for you and she just subsidizes all of his bad behavior, well, it's probably going to get...
	So if you tax something like productivity, you'll get less productivity.
	If you subsidize irresponsibility, you'll just get more.
	And in America in particular, though it's true elsewhere as well, there's this thing called the welfare cliff.
	The welfare cliff. It's really terrifying.
	So in America, in most places, if you are a woman and you have...
	Two children and no men around, no man around to help you out.
	You get the equivalent of about $75,000 US a year.
	......
	That's the Big Ben theme, isn't it?
	I remember that from Big Ben when I was growing up in London.
	So, yeah, you get about 75,000 US dollars a year in welfare and free healthcare and subsidies and rent control.
	And in order to, well, it's a little bit less than that, maybe $60,000, but in order to get that amount of money, if you're working, you have to earn $75,000 or $80,000 because you're going to pay taxes and you won't get all of those benefits.
	Now, getting a job that pays you $75,000 or $80,000 a year, it's not very easy.
	And it usually takes quite, you don't start off that way.
	You take a while.
	It might take you five or ten years to get that far.
	And so for a woman, she effectively is taxed at 100%, or she will be taxed at 100% for the first 5 or 10 years of her career, assuming she even has the IQ to get a job that's that complicated, which is not always the case.
	And so you get stuck in this system because nobody's going to want to get up early.
	Well, I know you guys do because you love philosophy, which is beautiful.
	But nobody's going to want to get up early and drop their kids in daycare and go and work at some job that's tough and all of that and not see their kids to get no money whatsoever, to be taxed at 100%.
	Because every dollar that she makes, she's just not getting in welfare.
	Her welfare costs go down for every dollar extra that she makes.
	So nobody's going to get up and have a difficult life if you're taxed at 100%.
	And of course, if you were to sort of design that system from scratch, everybody would look at you and say, that's never going to work.
	You can't possibly tax people at 100%.
	And expect them to make good decisions about working.
	Because, I mean, it's like saying you can come and take this class, let's say, and you're never going to get any credit for it or any marks, and maybe you won't even enjoy it.
	Like, no, people don't work like that.
	We all respond to incentives.
	So nobody would design that system, but it's a system we have because it's just easier to keep giving more and more money to the poor rather than reform the system.
	The problem is now that so many generations of people are dependent upon this and so many people have made so many terrible decisions to end up in this system that when the money runs out, you get riots.
	You get neighborhoods getting burnt down because people have become so alienated from actually having a job or being economically responsible or sexually responsible or personally responsible That all they know how to do is like some bratty toddler.
	They hold their breath, they stomp their feet until they turn blue, until mommy and daddy government give them exactly what they want, except they're not toddlers.
	They're people who can riot and commit violence and set fire to neighborhoods.
	So now it was like, oh, let's just help the poor.
	That's how it started.
	And now it's like, well, we've got to keep paying them or they'll burn down our city.
	That's a really terrible...
	Situation to be in, and it all arises from the fact that the welfare state is a violation of property rights.
	It is outright theft.
	It is taking from one group of the population and transferring money by force.
	Everything the government does is based on force.
	It is the one agency that can initiate force in societies.
	Non-aggression principle is fine to use self-defense, good thing to use self-defense, but the initiation, starting the fight, you know the old saying, I don't start fights, I end them.
	Starting the fight is bad.
	And so because the government is using guns to forcefully transfer money from one person, it's all individuals eventually, from one person to another, It also reduces the danger of theft.
	Like if you want to go steal something, like let's say I decide, hey, I'm going to come to your country.
	I'm just going to start stealing stuff.
	Well, you guys look pretty tough, pretty strong.
	I might get my butt kicked.
	I probably would. In fact, I'm not much of a fighter.
	So the problem is if I want to come steal from you, it's kind of dangerous.
	Bad things could happen to me.
	to me, it's risky.
	But if I just vote in a booth, and then the government sends me a check, all that risk has been removed.
	And now I'm not in trouble if I try and steal from you.
	You're in trouble if you don't.
	Let me steal from you through the government, because they'll come to your house, they'll take away your house, they'll throw you in jail, and if you resist, they'll shoot you right there on the street.
	Nobody will go to jail from the government because it's all legal, right?
	We talked about the laws earlier.
	So by removing the risk of theft, by making it a political process, you're subsidizing thieves and calling it democracy.
	You're buying votes and calling it charity.
	Well, it really does.
	Free stuff corrupts us in a way that almost nothing else does because it seems so beneficial.
	I don't know if you guys ever knew anyone who won the lottery.
	Which is different from welfare, but the lottery is a bad thing for most people, man.
	It just wrecks their lives.
	Yeah. You know, since we listened to one of your videos on how to succeed, success, I think it's probably, if you don't mind, can we ask you to talk a little bit about success?
	A lot of us here, students especially, they're about to graduate and they're Looking forward to how to succeed after all these years of maybe, you know, more or less not so much success.
	I mean, you know, education is in a way a success, but I mean, you're looking for bigger and bigger things, right, and bigger success once you graduate.
	But I think sometimes education is a very difficult puzzle to fit into your life.
	It's not always going to fit well, you know.
	The education puzzle and the life puzzle, they don't always fit well with each other.
	So maybe you can give us some intuition on success and how you did it.
	So yeah, success is one of these words a little tough to define.
	I don't mean to start off sounding like Bill Clinton.
	It depends what is, is.
	But success is a little hard to define.
	And I've now had both successes and failures in a variety of fields.
	I originally studied to be an actor.
	I didn't hugely like it.
	I felt I had too many of my own words to spend my life mouthing other people's words.
	And then I was in academia for a while.
	I did a graduate degree.
	And I was like, something's not quite right about this.
	Plus, there were a lot of socialists and communists.
	So I was constantly getting into fights with everyone.
	And I'm like, I don't really want that.
	So I always loved computers.
	I started learning how to program computers when I was 11.
	I got a little bit of an inheritance from my grandmother.
	8K. 8K of memory.
	Shockingly, shockingly complex.
	I learned how to program, so I ended up co-founding a software company, and that I was successful in.
	That is a company that's still running, and we grew it, and we sold the company, and then for the last 15 years, I've been doing this philosophy show, which is now the largest, most popular philosophy show in the world.
	700 million downloads.
	You know all of the Stats, so definitely successful.
	It's the biggest philosophy conversation the world has ever seen.
	And the question is, okay, so kind of the clue as to what I succeeded at and what I failed at has to do with love.
	And it's funny because we always think of success in terms of status or money or whatever.
	Material goods or whatever.
	But fundamentally, success is about what you love.
	Because if you don't love it, you can't do all of the crazy work that you need to do to succeed.
	You know, when I was co-founding the software company, I spent a year not getting paid at all, working 60, 70, 80 hours a week.
	I would never do that if I didn't love what it is that I do.
	Now, the love has to do with what it is that you're doing, but it also has to do with the people you're doing it with and the people you're doing it for.
	So for me, I grew to genuinely love the people I hired, the people I worked with, and I genuinely loved the customers, and I genuinely loved what we were doing, because what we were doing was I was building and selling software.
	ground pollution and water pollution.
	Now, that's kind of an easy thing to love.
	It can be something else.
	Like, let's say you're building some game for a phone or a tablet.
	You have to love the fact that you're giving 20 minutes of sheer, silly fun to people on their tablet, right?
	I was just playing, I'm playing this game, Doom Eternal.
	It's the new version of Doom.
	And it's gruesome, ghastly fun.
	And so the people who make the game, they have to be like, more skulls, more lower intestines, more...
	Demons that you put their eyeballs down their throat and they explode.
	They just have to love that ridiculous exploding carnage that characterizes the game.
	The chainsaw should go from this angle, not this angle, because it's more gory and you see more spine.
	A horror movie director has to love the goosebumps that he's going to give to his audience.
	If you love that...
	What you do, you love the people you're doing it with, and you love your customers, you can't fail fundamentally because you'll outlast everyone else.
	If you love it 100% and someone only loves it 50%, you won't do twice as well.
	You'll do 10 times as well.
	And so finding that passion.
	I mean, your teacher, your professor here has given you the skills.
	That's fantastic.
	Without the skills, you can't do it.
	But if you have the skills without the passion, without the love, without the commitment to make the world a better place, how is it you're going to make money in the world?
	You're going to make money out of people's gratitude.
	Out of people's gratitude for what it is that you're doing.
	So they have to love you in a way to give you the money.
	You have to love a particular kind of fish, and you also have to like the fishmonger.
	Because, you know, there's tons of fishmongers out there, people who sell fish.
	They have to love coming to you.
	Why? Because you give them a smile, you give them a story, you give them something that makes their day a little bit better.
	I mean, I learned this even when I was a waiter in my teens.
	I made good tips because I would tell a little joke.
	I would ask people how they're doing.
	If they were regulars, I'd ask them how their week was.
	Now, that wasn't all fake.
	I really like people as a whole, so I'm always curious about people's experience.
	But people would ask to come and sit in my section and all of that.
	I do these call-in shows in philosophy where people can call in with any problem and I don't think I've ever said no to anyone who has a problem and we'll see if philosophy can help them because I love philosophy for itself but mostly for what it can do to make people's lives So find something that brings a light to the world and brings joy to people's hearts or relieves their suffering or distracts them from their suffering, which is fine too, right?
	I mean, the guy who invented Novocain did more good than most philosophers in history because then you can get your teeth drilled without screaming out.
	Like one of the demons in Doom Eternal, I think you can put it that way.
	So success to me is you have to be patient to find what really moves you, to find what really motivates you.
	And that can take a while.
	And there's nothing wrong with getting a bunch of jobs and playing around and just playing with ideas and meeting the people because success is not, it's never a solo thing.
	It's never just you.
	If it's just you, you're just home doing nothing, right?
	It has to be you plus the customer, you plus the people that you work with, and you plus this idea that you love for the good that it can do in the world, for the benefits it can bring to the world.
	The guy who goes and fishes, he's not just handing you a fish that's not very inspiring.
	He's feeding families.
	You know, he's bringing smiles to the face of children who love the fish that he's making.
	Like that old story about, you could think of this, of course, a guy building a Buddhist temple.
	There's two guys building a Buddhist temple, right?
	And they're putting bricks on top and someone comes by and says to the first guy, what are you doing?
	He's like, oh, I'm just putting brick on brick.
	I'm just sweating here and waiting for five o'clock so I can go home.
	And he's going to make his bricks and he's going to spend his life Having no fundamental connection to what he's doing, like a robot, like a machine.
	Now you go to the second guy and he says, I'm building a shelter, a place of worship for people to contemplate how to become better in this world.
	Who's more motivated? Who's going to do a better job?
	Who's going to have a happier and more satisfying life?
	And who do you want to hire?
	Because remember, every piece of success requires somebody wanting to hire you.
	I don't just mean a manager or an employer.
	Your customers are also hiring you to do whatever it is that you do.
	They are hiring you to do whatever it is that you do.
	And if you have that passion, if you have that belief, if you have that certainty that this is the best way for you to spend your short and precious time in this world exercising your considerable talents to their best ability, you will draw people to you, good people to work with, good customers who you will draw people to you, good people to work with, good customers who will respect and value what it And that to me is success.
	And people who get the money or who get the fame without that love, they're not successful to me at all.
	And the guy who puts one brick on top of another to build a place of worship, who is content and happy with what he's doing and knows the meaning of his day, that man, that woman is successful.
	All right.
	Do you have anything that you want to talk about?
	Anything else that interests you?
	Any tips for Doom?
	Anyone who's played it? Yeah, some of the boys here, some of the men, they like to play that game, right?
	Yeah. Okay.
	So, do you have any tips for Stefan?
	No? Okay.
	Well, that's only because you've never seen me play, which is not a spectacle to be admired enormously.
	All right, Stefan, I think the next thing I want to talk about is maybe if we look at this COVID, coronavirus situation, I know there's a lot of speculation what if or what could have or what might have been this and that and the other.
	What I want to maybe talk a little bit about or point out is the fact that We have great science, we have great technology, we have great drugs, and this makes our lives better in some ways and longer.
	But on the other side, we're building these viruses up and bacteria to become superpox because they become more and more resistant.
	So I think maybe this coronavirus might be just the tip of the iceberg.
	It's probably going to get a lot worse in the future as they get more virulence because our drugs is pushing them to get stronger and better at fighting us.
	So I'm thinking maybe in the future we might look more into genetic editing or some other things to fight them rather than just trying to Overpower them with all kinds of new drugs and stuff like that that are becoming useless rather very quickly because these viruses and bacteria, they find ways to evolve and to get stronger very quickly.
	What's your take on this? I don't believe at all that coronavirus evolved.
	At all. Like, there's not even one-tenth of one percent of me that believes that anymore, having done a lot of research on this.
	And I did just produce a video called The Case Against China.
	The researchers...
	Of SARS-CoV-2 took the SARS virus, which has low reproducibility, and combined it with a bat-like coronavirus that has high reproducibility, put the two together, and we have this horrible Frankenstein beast roaming the world, kind of half-exploding people from the inside out.
	The essential thing to remember, I think, for that is that this is not a product of the free market.
	There's no customer for this.
	There's no business plan.
	You'd go to some bank and say, hey, I'm going to be the Jeff Bezos of deadly pathogens.
	You know, I'm going to be the Bill Gates of virulence.
	I'm going to create something that can escape around the world and kill a very large number of people, shut down economies, and what?
	There's no bank in the world.
	The banks would call the police.
	Yeah, they would call the police.
	They wouldn't have anything to do with you.
	They would consider you to be a crazy, lone, highly dangerous nut job.
	And, you know, for those of you out there who listen to this at one time or another, and maybe you believe that it's a crazy conspiracy theory, that this ridiculously improbable virus, that it was man-made, and you believe that it came what they call zoonotically or straight out of evolution.
	Okay, that's fine.
	You can toss the man-made aspect of it aside.
	But nonetheless, it was, of course, the Chinese government, the Chinese Communist Party, that was responsible.
	To tell the world about this illness.
	The moment they had wind of it, the moment they sequenced it, the moment that they knew how dangerous it was, the moment they knew human-to-human transmission, the moment they knew its very high reproducibility rate, they had a responsibility.
	And they didn't just have some abstract moral responsibility, although that is very true.
	They had a specific international treaty-based obligation.
	The only reason that they're allowed to trade with the rest of the world It's because they promised and swore to tell the world every single scrap of information about any potential illness that could spread around the world, especially after what happened with SARS. In 2003 and afterwards,
	I'm not sure how bad it hit your lovely island, but of course it was, what, 800 or more dead just in Hong Kong alone, and it spread around the world, but it had a low reproducibility rate.
	This thing is SARS plus HIV with a very high reproducibility rate, which is about as bad a thing as you could imagine.
	And so this pandemic...
	It's entirely the product of violations of property rights.
	It is entirely the product of sadistic and sociopathic governments playing not God.
	Oh, you're playing God.
	No, they're playing the devil.
	They're playing Satan with these things.
	The U.S. government gave $3.7 million to this It's a ghastly level 4 bio lab in Wuhan.
	The Chinese government funded it.
	The French government funded it.
	Some of the original work was done in America.
	And then Obama shut it down and this woman, Xi, ended up going to Wuhan.
	None of this has anything whatsoever to do with customers, with trade, with property rights, with free markets.
	This is entirely a creation and or product of the state, and in particular of the American government for funding it and then shutting it down, but the Chinese government for continuing it, either creating it and or hiding its virulence and spreadability and danger.
	From the world as a whole.
	So when we look at coronavirus and the fact that it's eating through people's savings, it's eating through people's lung tissue, it's eating through people's freedoms.
	China commits the crime and we all get house arrest.
	How fair is that in this world?
	This is entirely the responsibility and effect of states around the world and the Chinese Communist Party in particular.
	And in our fear and our anxiety and our panic and our frustration, we are trying to deal with the immediate rather than remembering the cause.
	And that's fine. You deal with the difficulties at the time.
	But we really have to remember That a free market where you have to have voluntary investment and voluntary customers would never in a million years have come up with something like this.
	This is a state situation.
	This is a state pandemic.
	And this is the dangers that you have with governments as a whole.
	Well, you know, so this is obviously a case of genetic engineering and the I'm thinking whether it might be a good thing to use genetic engineering to make perhaps humans stronger, now that we made viruses stronger.
	Well, you could say that given the path of destruction that this virus is having among weakened populations, either weakened through age or weakened through obesity or weakened through heart disease or cancers or other immunosuppressant ailments, That it is going to end up with us all being horribly stronger because it is taking down the weakest among us.
	It is a predator like a lion that is taking down the old, the sick.
	Fortunately, unlike the 1918 flu pandemic, this is not hitting the young.
	And this, of course, gives you another indication as to why it might have been engineered or I think was engineered, either as a horrible experiment or as an actual weapon, because it fundamentally attacks...
	The economy. The virus attacks the economy.
	It doesn't just attack the people.
	The amount of damage that this has done in the world.
	There's a lawyer in Texas who is filing a $20 trillion lawsuit against China.
	India is working on similar situations.
	There's been a recommendation for over 300 billion pounds that the British could pursue.
	And these things, it actually sounds kind of ridiculous, like how are you going to hold the Chinese Communist Party liable for any amount of money?
	There are very specific mechanisms by which you can do this through the international court, through the World Trade Organization.
	You can attach their assets that the governments may have.
	You can not pay the debt back.
	China is one of the biggest holders of American debt.
	And why America continues to pay interest on loans that China gave them is utterly beyond my comprehension, other than there may be some big scary geopolitical things I'm not aware of.
	But it's crazy.
	It's like I go and burn down someone's house and then say, hey man, you owe me $300.
	You better pay me right now.
	It's like, but you just burned down my house.
	I'm not paying you any money.
	There's lots of ways you can do it, but to me, this is one of the greatest crimes ever perpetrated in humanity, on the human race, in the human species.
	This is worse than an act of war.
	An act of war is localized and can end this Horrible creation is going to be with us in perpetuity, and its mutation rate is very high.
	Even if people say, well, it's just kind of like the flu, well, it's a very bad flu, and we still have the flu after thousands of years, and this is now a permanent part of our landscape.
	And I don't know what punishment would be great enough for the people who perpetrated this, but I'm a pretty imaginative guy.
	I can't think of anything too harsh.
	What do you think of the public health response?
	My name is Brian. I'm Dan's friend.
	Hi. I'm not a student.
	What do you think of the public health response in the West?
	Particularly masks.
	If you look around at the students behind us, you'll see many people are wearing masks and have been since the very beginning, along with social distancing.
	And I think you're probably aware that Taiwan was...
	Hard hit by SARS in 2002, 2003, and has taken very appropriate measures since the beginning of this outbreak.
	And sitting as an American in Taiwan, I'm mystified by recommendations that I heard in the West not to wear masks, that they were unnecessary.
	Do you think that was an attempt to prioritize Uh, masks for medical personnel?
	Do you think that was a mistake?
	Or do you think we'll never know?
	Why didn't they learn from Taiwan?
	Taiwan currently has 360-something, maybe 370 active cases.
	And it's clearly an example for the world.
	And of course, simultaneously, it's been excluded from the WHO. Anyway, I'm wondering what your thoughts on all this are.
	I don't know. It's morning for you guys.
	How dark do we want to go for the rest of your day?
	You know, I can see sun's down here, but I can see the sun coming in through your windows, and I'm not sure how dark we should go in the motives of the people in the West.
	It's dark, man. It's dark.
	It's very dark. It seems like the health organizations patronize the public with recommendations like Exercise 20 minutes because we think you might exercise 20 minutes even if we think the benefits continue for an hour.
	It seems like, you know, the truth, you can't handle the truth.
	Okay, so first of all, Taiwan is heroic in this pandemic.
	So Taiwan, at considerable political risk, told the World Health Organization that China was lying its ass off.
	They informed the World Health Organization and the world.
	And again, you guys are, what, 100 kilometers off the coast, and you've got a pretty nasty Leviathan glowering over you.
	And you screwed your courage to the sticking place as a culture, as a society, and desperately tried to warn the world that China was lying.
	About the animal to human transmission being the only thing that was going on.
	You warned that China was lying about, oh, there's no real human-to-human transmission and lying about its virality and so on.
	So Taiwan, at considerable political risk, at considerable potentially military risk, Desperately tried to warn the world, the World Health Organization, which is headed by an outright Maoist, I'm a communist who's hand in glove with the Chinese Communist Party, who in fact lobbied heavily to get that guy into his position and quasi-bribed his entire region with a $50 million facility, and it's all just about as corrupt as can conceivably be imagined.
	So I have nothing but massive respect and admiration for what Taiwan as a whole did in this situation.
	They really have saved countless lives and have, I think, elevated themselves to an extraordinarily high place of honor in human society.
	And it's something that everybody who agreed with that decision, which I assume is everybody in this room, should be enormously proud of.
	And so I just really wanted to mention that first.
	Many of the elites in the West, in the media, in academia, in Hollywood and other places, they really hate the West.
	And the reasons why they hate the West as a whole, long and deep and complicated and historical, you know, a very brief belief, of course, is that this Marxist theory that if anybody is rich, they must have stolen from everyone else.
	That it's a negative net transfer, like if the West is rich, they must have stolen from the third world.
	And if one guy is rich, he must have stolen from all of his employees and so on.
	That creates this festering well of hatred for success.
	In this world. And so there is a lot of people in the West who really, really hate the West and believe that the successes and wealth of the West have to do with its predatory and exploitive and destructive behavior.
	You hear this garbage probably even where you are, that the only reason why America exists is because it genocided the natives.
	Isn't that kind of an oxymoron to live in the West, make you damn millions in the West, but hate the West at the same time?
	You may be looking for a certain amount of logical and emotional consistency that may not be there.
	Like a sadist, a sadist likes hurting other people, but if you hurt the sadist, he's like, hey, stop that.
	That hurts. You know, there's an old story from Solzhenitsyn from the Gulag Archipelago where he talks about a guard who beat him who ended up Just doing something that the authorities in Russia under communism didn't like and he ended up being beaten by his fellow guards and he kind of crawled into the cell next to Solzhenitsyn and said, my God above, I did not have any clue how much that hurts.
	Not a clue. Even though he enjoyed inflicting that pain on others.
	So if you look at the response in the West, it's characterized by two things.
	Number one, to downplay the risk.
	to downplay the risk and to urge from the World Health Organization, from China, from the endless cries of xenophobia and racism, it was to downplay the risk, to urge the West to have open borders or not to restrict any movements of people.
	And then once the danger of the pandemic became clear, the media flipped and then tried to complain about everything that Trump tried to do to remediate the issue, complained about the closing of the borders, complained about the emergency shutdowns, complained complained about the emergency shutdowns, complained about social distancing, complained about mask usage and so on.
	So you understand, they couldn't have tried any harder to get people killed.
	It's inconceivable how they could have done a better job of making this pandemic spread.
	Now, why would you want to make this pandemic spread?
	Well, because it's going to hit wealthy countries in some ways worse than poor countries because there's more of an economy to collapse.
	Because it is going to paralyze and destroy the free market system that you consider to be monstrous and exploitive and destructive and imperialistic and all that kind of garbage and it is going to transfer more and more power to the state.
	Which, of course, communists and socialists love to do.
	It's going to trample the Constitution, the rule of law.
	It's going to trample people's freedoms.
	And it's going to swell the petty power lust of local police and governors and bureaucrats to the point where they're going to be corrupted.
	So it is my genuine belief, and it's not just a belief.
	There's no other way to interpret the evidence that if you invite people You want them killed.
	Look at what's happening in America.
	In America, they're letting out dangerous prisons, dangerous criminals from the prisons.
	At the same time as they are stopping people's ability to buy guns to protect themselves, well, why would you do such a thing?
	Why would you want to release criminals into a neighborhood and prevent people from defending themselves because you're hoping that the criminals are going to attack the people that you so hate and loathe?
	One of the things that's very powerful about a place like Hong Kong, about a place like Taiwan, is there is...
	I know that this is not perfect, and I understand that it's complex, but there is a kind of social unity.
	There is a kind of cultural unity that is going on.
	I don't get the sense that there are very dangerous...
	I don't think it's a strong threat from inside.
	And that's not the case in the West.
	In the West, we have people, and they're in considerable positions of power, who did everything they could to make sure the virus spread and then did everything they could to prevent people from responding in a manner that guaranteed their security.
	Now, I mean, I mispronounce a word on a podcast.
	I'm bothered by it.
	You know, these people make these kinds of mistakes.
	They just sail on and on and don't seem to be troubled by it at all.
	And I think that they're actually secretly celebrating.
	For the left in America, for the Democrats as well, what they can do, since they're afraid of losing the election in November, is they can say, oh, well, you know, it's too dangerous to vote.
	We've got to vote by mail, which allows for massive amounts of voter fraud, and I think will allow them or give them a reasonable chance to actually just steal the election outright.
	Now, If there is a general perception that the Democrats have stolen the election, you could be heading towards civil war.
	And the destruction of America has always been number one, because it was economically and politically for a long time the freest country.
	First Amendment, Second Amendment, freedom of speech, right to hold and bear arms.
	It has been in the sniper side of the communists for as long as there has been both America and communism.
	And this is not me saying this.
	This is exactly what the communists say, and they've been infiltrating America.
	And so I think that the communist hold of America and the West is extraordinarily strong and deep.
	And I think this is a big wake-up call that if they're acting on the part of the virus, so to speak, if they're acting on the part of the Chinese Communist Party, then the enemy within the gates is the most dangerous thing of all.
	And I said this very early on in the pandemic, which I called as a pandemic in January.
	I said that the real virus is communism.
	Coronavirus is just how it spreads.
	You know, with all these things going on and how the WHO has been treating Taiwan so far, do you think it's even worse for Taiwan to battle with the WHO at this point in time?
	Oh, yeah. Don't have anything to do with the World Health Organization.
	My gosh. I mean, the communists, like all of these international organizations, the UN, the World Health Organization, I assume the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, the IMF, they're all infiltrated.
	They've all been targeted and infiltrated by leftist radicals.
	Lord, no. I mean, I would have nothing to do with these organizations whatsoever.
	But of course, you know, we're back to this thing I talked about with the welfare state.
	We're just battling names now.
	Well, if you want to defund the World Health Organization, it's because you don't like the world being healthy.
	It's like, no, that's just a name.
	It's like calling... The North Korea calls itself the Democratic People's Republic or blah, whatever it is, right?
	It's not democratic. It's not run by the people and it's not a republic.
	It's just a word. You know, it's like me calling myself handsome guy with a great head of hair.
	You know, it doesn't change the facts on the ground, which is that there's a whole lot of scalp and a whole lot of not hair.
	So the fact that we have to fight these language games is kind of frustrating, but that sadly is where the battle is at the moment.
	Okay. I was wondering...
	Well, I have my own example, which is I'm in Taiwan and there are no restrictions on my travel.
	Essentially, social distancing, wear a mask, use common sense.
	I have a sister simultaneously in California who's supposed to shelter in place.
	And I was wondering if we could just go around in the audience and ask people what their life is like and if they have any relatives in We're friends abroad who are in quite different circumstances.
	Just for some audience. Yeah, no, please.
	That would be great. Yeah, so the question is, do you have any relatives that are in another country that are really...
	Yes? Okay, so can you tell us a little bit what is their situation like?
	Like, what is their life like since this, you know, maybe...
	Can someone stand somewhere where we can see them?
	Are you on camera? Yeah, just turn that a little bit.
	Yeah, just make sure you're on camera.
	Are you on camera?
	Actually, right now they cannot work because they are right now in quarantine.
	They were going to open the shop on the 13th, but the government told them that you cannot open because you're still in this kind of a situation.
	So, actually my parents can go out, my sisters can go out, they are all closing in quarantine time.
	And actually, in Mexico, in schools in Mexico, they are all closed.
	Most are closed.
	Actually, the situation in Mexico is too, like, what do you mean that?
	Even a very big disaster, so actually Mexico's government is too crazy because they actually don't sell masks and they don't take this situation to risk.
	So I know we have a student from Indonesia, right?
	So what is the situation in Indonesia like?
	Can we pass the mic? We have another student from Indonesia, Stefan, and another one from Hong Kong.
	Please, I'd love to hear.
	Tell us the general situation in Indonesia.
	What are people doing now?
	I don't know much about our country situation right now, but I know that Indonesia has been Do the lockdown system.
	And campus, education, and work and office, they're already doing the online system.
	So I guess Taiwan is one of the very few countries where we still have in-classroom meetings at this point.
	We were thinking of doing online, but we're waiting to see how How the infectious rate would go and it seems like it's okay, so the schools have decided to stay open.
	Okay, thank you. What about in Hong Kong?
	Can we organize what I'm going to say first?
	Okay, so we'll give you a minute.
	In the meantime, is there anything else you want to say Brian or should I go?
	No, go ahead. Stefan, I wanted to maybe get you to talk a little bit about I look at the current situation now.
	I do believe that this pandemic is definitely a big crisis, but we look back at the situations like the Spanish flu or even the bubonic plague, when people were living very, very difficult lives and It seemed like people were a lot braver than they are now.
	I mean, they were fighting through anything and everything.
	And I'm wondering if science and technology, although it has brought us all these good things, maybe it has sopped us up and has made us maybe a little bit more afraid and scared of reality and how to deal with things.
	And maybe...
	I don't know.
	I often think maybe...
	Who knows? It seems like a lot of us, we lack motivation because it's so much easier to start playing online and doing less purposeful things and useful things with the internet rather than doing more practical and useful things even though we can do so much more because of the internet.
	So I'm just kind of curious.
	Do you think that in a way Science and technology is taking away some things that we could have had and should have had if science and technology wasn't here.
	I would caution you, and I suppose the class as a whole, that you don't want to mistake science for the state.
	I mean, the science is why we're talking.
	This is how we can have this incredible conversation all the way over the world without me propping myself up on a cane from jet lag.
	So technology to me is great.
	It's the state that causes problems.
	You don't want to blame the gun for what the criminal does.
	And so I think that I have no problem with technology.
	I have no problem with the market.
	I have no problem with...
	Good dental work and all of the great things about the modern world.
	But what I think has happened as a whole is that because we can't fight wars anymore, I mean, because of nuclear weapons, because of a variety of other biological targeted weapons, you can actually design viruses that only because of a variety of other biological targeted weapons, you can actually design viruses that only target a specific individual, which makes the So we can't start wars.
	So it's now all about subterfuge.
	It's like China said very clearly, we can't take on American conventional forces, right?
	I mean, Taiwan remained free because the Seventh Fleet interfered with China's ability to come and take it over, right?
	So China recognizes that it cannot engage with American military power directly.
	So it has to go to subterfuge, to undermining, to buying up land, to buying up property, to bribing people in universities to do terrible things, to having pro-China moles everywhere in the media and Chinese bots.
	It's now an information war.
	It is now a war of perception, not of...
	It's a war of the pen, not of the sword.
	Now, most people can fight like this, like you're in an alleyway, you can do your best and so on.
	But the number of people, and this is why I really wanted to talk to this class, the number of people who could fight the intellectual battle, that's not as common.
	You think of all the First World War soldiers or the soldiers who fought to kick out the Dutch or the Spanish from Thailand and so on.
	Just about everyone can get involved in that fight.
	But the fight that we have is about ideas.
	It's about truth.
	It's a philosophical fight, which is why what I do has become so essential and relevant and popular, because I'm trying to give people sort of the hard-won lessons of my life, fighting anti-rationality, fighting socialism, communism, violence, and all of its obvious and hidden forms, child abuse, circumcision, you name it.
	And so, there aren't that many people who can fight this kind of mental battle in an effective way.
	And the problem is, people like you guys in this classroom, you've got great lives if you don't want this battle, right?
	Because you can go make money, you can travel around, you can have a wonderful time, you can be an entrepreneur, you can...
	Whereas it's about, join me in the trench fight against socialism and people will attack you for no reason and they'll try and destroy your income and you'll get threats.
	And you know, when I try and go and give speeches, not, I'm sure in Taiwan, but when I try to give speeches in...
	Even in Canada, my home country, in Australia, in America, in New Zealand, there are bomb threats, there are death threats, there are people who physically attack the venues and tip over the buses if people come to hear philosophy.
	You know, compared to the fun I had as an entrepreneur, sometimes it can be just a little intense, you know, but this is the gig, right?
	I mean, if you have the ability to do it and you know how important it is, it's kind of like an obligation that you have to do it.
	And so trying to lure people like you into saying, you know, go have a great career, you know, go raise your families, go please your customers, go live a life of passion and purpose and meaning...
	But also, every now and then, if you can dip into this particular battle, it will mean that everything else you build can be sustained.
	You know, it's kind of like you want to drive the car, you don't want to maintain the car, but if you don't maintain the car, you can't drive it for very long, and the whole engine block will seize up if you don't change the oil and get filters changed and all that.
	So, so many people who are the best people in this fight can make a lot more money and have a lot more fun doing other things.
	And I think that's one of the reasons why it's tough to battle.
	It's not about getting drafted and picking up a weapon, at least I hope it never comes to that.
	But it is a mental battle, and everyone we kind of want to draft has a draft-dodging card called I'm Having a Great Life Over Here.
	But, you know, if you extend the window of time a little further down the road, everything you built will be taken away if you don't at least throw some intellectual energy into this battle because they want to take everything you've got.
	I mean, the Chinese take over.
	Come on, you guys under the Chinese Communist Party, your society will cease to exist in any recognizable form.
	The people who are successful will get dragged off to gulags or you're going to have to be thrown in a ditch with a bullet in the back of your head.
	This is not... This is what these totalitarians, this is what the communists do.
	I just did a whole documentary on Poland a year and a half ago where I talked about the aftermath.
	Of the invasion of the Communists and the invasion of the National Socialists into Poland.
	Man, they shot everyone like us.
	They really did. Or they tortured.
	Or they drove out.
	Or they imprisoned. This is very significant stuff.
	And I want you guys to have a great life.
	And I want you guys to go and build wonderful things.
	But I also want those wonderful things to sustain.
	And we do need some energy in this battle as well.
	Okay, I think our student from Hong Kong is ready to share a few thoughts.
	I think the Hong Kong government really did a great job during the coronavirus.
	They are not doing a good job because I think their reactions were too slow.
	And they should be a model because Hong Kong is too close to China.
	I think they can be a model by doing like a good preventing the coronavirus to be a good model by doing a good model by other countries.
	Like they can.
	Yeah, I like doing like a.
	How could I explain that?
	Yeah, something like that.
	OK, so basically what you're saying is that Hong Kong didn't really take the measures that Taiwan had or had.
	so therefore they weren't as successful.
	So there's more cases in Hong Kong.
	Yeah, okay. No?
	No more than Mexico.
	Oh, no more than Mexico, okay.
	Mexico already arrived to go to five million.
	Five million? Oh, I didn't know that.
	Did you hear about that, Stefan? Five million cases in Mexico?
	She's saying that Mexico has about 5 million cases.
	No, no, no, no.
	That can't be accurate.
	I mean, the last count I heard was a couple of thousand.
	There's no way there could be a 5 million.
	That's way higher than the world.
	The world just passed 2 million.
	She said carriers, not them.
	Oh, carriers. Sorry. I'm not sure how they would estimate that.
	But this is another thing that's so incredibly cruel, is that if you look at, say, average national IQs around the world, this is going to hit the countries that generally have, for a variety of reasons, lower average IQs.
	And that is another particular aspect of how brutal this is going to be.
	It's also going to attack open societies more than closed societies, and it is really a terrible, terrible plague.
	Oh, I think the ice cream truck is here.
	Okay, so I know that some of you guys have to go to your next class.
	I think we're going to keep you for a few more minutes, if you don't mind.
	I'll have another couple of minutes, sure.
	Yeah, I think that the problem with, like you were saying, the distribution of items around the world, it seems that places and countries would...
	Lower IQs.
	It seems like people are less disciplined.
	It's not only the fact that they don't have the necessary equipment like masks.
	Masks are rather cheap.
	They're not that expensive.
	But it's a matter of discipline.
	It's a matter of doing the right thing.
	It's a matter of education.
	It's a matter of a lot of things.
	So that's why it hit the more developed economies hardest at first.
	Eventually, towards the end, it's going to take the developing economies or the third world economies the worst, in my opinion.
	Oh, it's going to throw them back a generation or two, I think, in this great progress.
	But of course, in the world as a whole, every human being is sustained at the moment by about US $30,000 in debt.
	Every single... Like, you take the national...
	You take the total debt in the world and you divide it by the population, about $30,000 a person.
	That bill is going to come due at some point.
	And this is another reason, I think, why we can go pretty dark in the analysis of COVID. Because what happens is that governments promise the world to the population in return for the obedience and allegiance of the population.
	Here's all the free stuff, and then what happens is the governments run out of money, the governments can't pay their bills, the government have excess populations, and then governments go to war.
	Now, you can't go to war anymore because of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.
	So what do you do? Well, maybe you just allow a virus to spread, and that's how you deal with your debt.
	Okay, well, we want to thank you so much, Stefan, for being able to spend two hours with us.
	We definitely want you to join us again at some point in the future, if your time permits.
	We want to support you and encourage you to keep up the good work.
	And like I said, you know, that's why I'm so thrilled to be in a country like this, because I can have people like you Thank you.
	That's great.
	And listen, I really, really appreciate the invitation.
	It was really nice to meet you all.
	And I promise you that when this all lifts, Thailand will be one of the first places I go.
	I would love to come and do a documentary out where you guys are and learn more about what I think is a truly beautiful society and a truly beautiful country.
	So I really do appreciate the invitation.
	It was a great pleasure to chat and a great privilege.
	Thank you very much, Stefan. I'll get to you on Skype so we can talk a little bit about a few things.
	We'll hang this up now and you can call me back later.
	I'll message you. Bye, guys.
	Thank you so much. It was a great pleasure.

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