I keep diving into all of this, having guests on and call-in shows, which I'm still doing.
I spend my time on the Discord server and so on.
But, you know, one thing I'm not doing as much of as I like is just checking in with you guys and seeing How are you doing?
So I wanted to do that tonight and get your thoughts.
I've had a lot of thoughts myself over the last couple days about the state of society, the state of the world, and all of that.
And I wanted to share some thoughts with you, you know, get your thoughts and get your feedback on it.
You know, it's funny. I guess like most people.
I think I'm like most people.
But, you know, when someone says to you something critical, my first response, I guess like most people's first response is to say...
Nonsense! Nonsense!
And then, you know, when the smoke clears, there's a little bit of, hmm, maybe, just maybe, they have a little bit of a point.
And so somebody said the other day, you know, hey, what happened to the philosophy channel, right?
What happened to the philosophy channel?
And, you know, he said, I missed my philosophy.
Let's get our philosophy on.
And part of me was like, and I wrote back to him, and I'm like, hey, man, I just released a two-hour philosophy lecture, which I gave to a university class in Taiwan.
There's lots of philosophy there for you if you want it.
And then I thought, actually, you know, come to think of it, what am I doing in the show?
Well, I'm doing a lot of COVID. I'm doing a lot of interviews, and I'm doing some news analysis and so on.
But the actual philosophy part, I miss that, and I miss you guys, and I miss talking about it.
So I wanted to get into that with you guys tonight and tell you some of the thoughts.
But first, let's check in with the audience.
Let's just check in with the audience and say hi to everyone.
And listen, I mean, it could be a lonely time at the moment.
It's a lonely time, it's an isolated time, and it's a real challenge.
So I'm just going to throw some stuff up here on the screen.
Nathan says, good to hear from you.
Steph, well, thank you for dropping by, Nathan.
It's a great pleasure. And Maria says, great.
And England says, oh boy, thoughts.
Kibble, brain kibble, brain thoughts.
Betsy Ross is repping for Boston and I guess making a flag or two.
Hey, Steph, do you do Instagram Live?
You know, there's a whole bunch of stuff that I keep meaning to do, keep meaning to get into, such as, I mean, YouTube has stories and shorter stuff and so on, but a variety of things, right?
Jess had a rough day. I'm sorry about that.
Perhaps you can tell us a little bit more about it.
Somebody says, doing better than Joe Biden.
Well, that's not too tough these days.
Workers getting busy fixing cars, says Spence.
Cheers from Florida, says Oscar.
Hi, welcome back.
I... I do like me some Florida, and I was hoping, of course, to give a speech at the 21 convention.
Hmm. 22 convention, but that's all.
Yeah, communism shuts down my speeches, and then communism shuts down everybody's speeches.
Aleph says hi. Chili Prepper.
Chili Prepper, that's pretty funny.
Says hi. Hi. Same shite, different shovel.
Yeah, I've had that before.
Um... Kajo says, hey Steph, very good.
Thanks. How are you? Well, I will tell you.
I will tell you because I've had some real thoughts.
Michael says, you're the man?
Well, I'm hopefully more of a man than Prince Harry.
Prince Harry who married Vortex Social Justice Warrior from hell.
Meghan Markle?
Meghan is her name. Meghan Markle from Suits.
And as I tweeted today, I... Another one of the family is dying in a tight tunnel.
Tragic. She made him sell 50,000 pounds worth of rifles because she doesn't like them.
Great. Excellent.
Greetings and salutations to you too, John.
And Logic Barbarian, that's a great name, says, great.
Matthew says, hey, Steph, government control of everything sucks.
Yeah, boy, our conservatives have been getting red-pilled on the police, eh?
Whew. Jeff says, can I call in?
Yes, the information is on the website.
I would love to chat with you.
I just had a chat today with a guy, oh man, military guy.
He married the woman of his dreams, the hot girl that everybody was chasing, but he won and he caught her.
And what happened?
Well, she pulled the pin on the FAC grenade and blew up over 100 pounds, and they have...
Nine children, a bunch of adoptees and some natural-born killers, so to speak, and it's not a great marriage, man.
And this is what's kind of happening in this time of challenge, which is, you know, people are getting closer, people are getting further away.
What do you think is going to happen if Canada opens up again fully?
Well, Canada is not going to open up again fully, I think.
Because fully would be to be the way that it was before.
And it's not going back to the way that it was before.
And I know half of the listenership blames me in particular for that.
You fear monger!
Like I have these big giant levers that make the world work, right?
But... It's not going back.
I mean, airlines, I mean, they're going to be eviscerated.
Even if people want to fly in the future, it's going to be really tough for them to fly because there won't be that many planes around, even trains and so on and buses.
It's going to be tough.
It's going to be adapting.
And, you know, I... You know, it's complicated for me.
This whole coronavirus situation is very complicated.
And anyway, just get a couple more highs and then we'll get into it.
Lieutenant Survival says, hello from Quebec, Canada.
It's a tough place to survive these days.
Lone Dogism says, good evening, Steph.
Gardening in Canada. Hello from Saskatchewan.
Do you know... There are a few provinces I've never been to.
I worked, obviously, in Ontario, lived in Ontario, went to Manitoba.
Oh, no, I did go to Saskatchewan for some mining work back in the day, or gold panning work.
I've not been to Alberta, and I think that's about it.
I've been all to the East Coast, all over the place.
I took a driving tour with my wife on the East Coast shortly after we were married.
A lovely, lovely trip.
I love the East Coast.
Greetings from Spokane!
Well, Fox Pro.
Isn't that an old database program?
Look at me with the old software trawling from way back in the day.
Data ease, I think.
Oh, you know what's so funny?
Because I'm home like you guys and a little bit stuck like you guys, I'm doing stuff like...
I guess M&M style cleaning out my closet.
I actually have cleaned out my closet.
I have a bunch of old tech.
You know the old tech that I may use this again someday.
It's like I'm not sure that I'm going to use the 240p camera anytime soon no matter how it looks out here on YouTube.
But I came across some of the old brochures from my old company.
Now, for those of you who don't know, I co-founded a software company and grew it and was involved in the sale of it to a larger company that itself was listed on the Alberta Stock Exchange and so on.
And the original name of the software, which was helping people manage environmental issues and conform with regulations and reduce air, groundwater emissions and so on, The original name was EnviroEase.
You know, it's easy to manage your environment.
EnviroEase. Until somebody in a meeting said, who's in the South?
Sounds like an environmentally friendly laxative.
And we're like...
You know, it kind of does. So we changed it to Caribou Systems because the CEO had a cottage on, I think it was a place called Jumping Caribou Lake or something, and we kind of liked it.
Caribou Systems, and then one of the programmers designed an employee management system called Ungolet Management, because Caribous are ungolets.
Anyway, little bits of detritus of data from years past, but...
So, Sid Vicious says, I'm hanging in there.
Just not sure if I lose my house next.
I hope you are doing well. Please keep doing what you are doing.
You give me motivation. I am so sorry.
I'm so sorry for that.
That is, you know, I myself, I'm not particularly good with helplessness.
And I would rather act badly than not act at all.
So, I am really, really sorry about all of this stuff that's happening to people from their savings.
Absolutely. The naggy part of me says you're supposed to have six-month savings on hand at all times.
This is the way, just being that annoying guy who grew up dirt poor with eviction notices and fears of sleeping on the streets...
It is something that was just kind of drilled into me from early on.
I mean, it's so funny. When I was a teenager, I distinctly remember this.
I read a bunch of books. I read books on financial management because I was hoping if I ever get my hands on any money, I'm going to hang on to it.
There's a song. I'm going to love you like nobody's love you.
Come rain or come shine.
Happy together, unhappy together.
Wouldn't that be fun? And there's a line that says...
We're in or we're out of the money.
You know, the money comes, the money goes.
That to me was kind of terrifying.
And it's this like chaotic situation or sense of life where it's like, I'm flush with cash.
I'm going to spend like crazy.
Oh, I'm broke. And that always struck me.
I knew people like this when I was growing up.
Like every time they'd get some money, just go buy a bunch of stuff.
And then they'd sit on it.
And then they'd crap their pants when they ran out of money.
I had a friend.
Oh, I shouldn't laugh. Oh, it's story time.
Why not? Why not? Let's chat.
So I had a friend who, I mean, would just buy the most ridiculous things.
Things that didn't even make sense from a hedonistic standpoint.
So he bought a big drafting table, right?
And he bought a drafting table because he was going to get into drafting.
Was he an architect? No.
No. Was he a cartoonist?
No. Did he really have any need for a drafting table?
No. But it was cool, you see.
And then he went out and he bought secondhand a marble table.
What's a marble table?
I mean, first of all, he lived in an apartment with flimsy floors.
We weren't even sure if it wasn't going to just go all the way down to the basement, taking people out en route.
But it also had a big crack down one side, so everybody was afraid to sit on one side.
So basically, he would cram people on the other side, and it's like, what a great purchase that was.
And I'm not a tightwad insofar as I don't mind spending money on great memories, you know, go and have fun.
I don't know, some sort of day trip that's really fun and memorable and so on.
Buying memories, I think, is a good thing because you don't want this endless plodding pastel days from here to eternity being some underground minor drudge worker bee that never has anything that changes the shape of your day.
So I am...
I'm fine with that. I'll spend money like a drunken sailor on the harlot called free domain.
Like right now, I have a better camera, but as you probably have seen from my last couple of live interviews, my camera pixelates like crazy.
It goes all kinds of Minecraft-y.
So I'm just trying a Brio webcam instead.
So I don't mind spending money for better audio-video quality and so on.
But I'm a big one for, like, this way.
Like, I'm not asking for donations during this crisis.
I mean, I'll struggle through, I'll survive, and I don't want anybody out there feeling obligated.
Like, enjoy the show, share the show if you want.
But this is the time to just hang on to it, right?
Oh, there's that other song.
I think it's an old Sam Cooke song.
I know Eric Clapton covered it.
If I ever get my hands on a dollar again, I'm going to hold on to that oldie.
Nobody loves you when you're down and out or nobody wants you when you're down and out.
And once I had a job...
Anyway, it's a great song.
And it's one of these things like, hey, you're spending money.
You're the big man on campus.
Everybody's your friend. And then you run out of money and people just don't return your calls.
So I've always sort of found that to be a terrifying thing.
And I hope that this situation with this...
Communist virus. I mean, I hope that it wakes up people a lot.
I hope it wakes up people to the reality that the government will just grab power whenever they can.
All crisis serves to the increase and improvement of state power.
I also hope it gives us an answer.
So, you know, for those of us who've been advocating for a state, a society, for me, 15 years, 15 years, before that privately, and 15 years, We always get this question, okay, but if there's no government, who's going to build the roads, man?
If there's no government, who's going to take care of the property?
If there's no government, who's going to take care of stuff?
Who's going to guard the borders?
Who's going to fund the libraries or the prisons or whatever?
Without the government, dot, dot, dot, right?
I'm telling you, this is the new reality, right?
The new reality is this. Well, man, without the government, who's going to fund the highly dangerous Bioweapons labs, both domestically and overseas.
Without the government, who's going to subsidize flying everyone all over the planet so they can spread this disease?
Without the government, who's going to arrest people trying to earn an honest living?
Because they happen to be a small business, because this communist virus miraculously seems to pass by big businesses and just hammer small businesses.
It doesn't seem to attack Planned Parenthood or liquor shops or Sorry, or big box stores, but it really does zero in on those churches and those synagogues.
And it really does zero in on small businesses and got to get rid of that.
So I hope that this is waking people up.
I mean, I hate this pandemic, of course, as everyone does, but you do try and get as much good out of things as humanly possible in these kinds of situations.
And one of the good things that we can get, of course, is Is understanding that this is what government does.
They cause problems.
They botch any conceivable solution.
And then they say, well, they need more power and money to prevent problems like this from ever happening again.
And then they go and screw things up again.
And it's an old Harry Brown.
Brown with an E. A former libertarian candidate.
He's now deceased former libertarian candidate for presidency and an investment advisor and so on.
And he wrote some really, really good books.
And he said, the government breaks your legs, sells you a crutch and then says, see, hey, without me, you just couldn't walk.
So I hope that people are waking up to the nature and the power of the state as those of us who've been warning everyone for many, many years have told it so.
Yeah.
Pete says I've had a rough day today.
Crashed my car. Oh, Pete, I'm so sorry.
Oh, that is...
that is terrifying.
I, uh... Yeah, car crashes are...
I mean, they really stick with you.
And I hope that... I mean, I'm sorry about your car, obviously, but I hope that you're okay, right?
That you don't have any sort of lasting damage.
I said this with Paul the other night.
I had a car crash.
I haven't thought about this in years.
It was a Ford, right? And people make these jokes like, Ford, found on road, dead.
But a Ford truck saved my life, right?
A friend of mine and I, we were working up north.
We were in the bush and we went into town.
And we went to a bar.
We watched a live band.
We were dancing. We met some girls.
And nothing sexual happened, but we ended up crashing with the girls at their place overnight.
And then the next morning, we headed back to the bush.
And it was a really nice evening.
It was nice, girls. It was a lot of fun.
It was, you know, one of these just fun things that pops in out of nowhere when you're working in the middle of nowhere.
And we were driving back along this dirt road.
And I was tired.
My friend was driving. And I was kind of, you know, like you ever try and get that kind of squidgy sleep face in a car?
You know, I mean, I spent my whole youth, my whole teenage life, like been having a car in my family.
So I spent my whole teenage life In the backseat, you know, because, you know, I always forget to say shotgun or whatever.
I mean, entire teenage life was in the backseat.
And there's a great comedian who says, like, you know, when you're in the backseat of a car, especially in the playing some music, it's kind of loud.
The wind is rushing past if anyone's cracked a window or whatever.
So when you're in a car in the backseat, you can't have any fun.
All you can do is watch profiles, watch the profiles of people having fun up in the front seat, which is true, right?
Like you see, you know, let's change the music.
And then eventually you get so bored, you try and Make contact with other people in the backseat of cars and so on.
And it's really, it is, you know, make little pictures with your breath on the window and so on.
So I was trying to get some sleep in this car and my friend said, there's a Winnebago up ahead.
This is one of these dirt roads where it's a little humped.
It's like an inverted bowl, and then it goes down into the swamp on either side.
It was built up in the middle.
I said, yeah, I'm sure you can pass them.
Then what happened was he hit the gas, and he didn't...
See, in these northern roads...
It's like, it's not quite two lanes because they, you know, they're very underused, right?
And so you kind of go, if you're going to pass someone, you want to honk and, you know, make sure that they can see you before you pass because it's not going to work out that well otherwise, right?
And so he didn't find out whether they had seen him or not.
So he's like, the Winnipeg goes up here and he starts passing and the Winnipeg starts drifting towards the middle.
And, you know, we're running out of road, right?
The road is not that wide.
The Winnebago's getting closer to the center of the road, and he's trying to pass, and he starts to drift to the left, right?
And then what happens is he starts to go down the ditch.
Now, we're at passing speed, so we're going like 110, 120 kilometers an hour, right?
And, you know, man, you hit a swamp going that fast.
You are having a very Roger Rabbit eyeball kind of day, and they may never go back in, right?
So I'm like, go right, go right, because I would rather have hit the Winnebago than go into the swamp.
But by the time, like, we had gone down the edge of the road, and by the time he wrenched the wheel to go right, we basically went into the air.
Like, we went up the side of the road, and we went into the air, and we just flipped.
180 in the air.
And we landed, like, hard on the road, upside down.
And, you know, it's the kind of thing like you ever want to hear a robot being disassembled by some evil deity.
That's what it sounds like being in one of these trucks.
And there is like gravel spitting its way through the shattered window.
And then you're just sitting there thinking, is the truck going to crush us?
Now, this is why Ford, at least what they did back then, is like a really, really great car company because...
I walked out of that.
My friend had a scratch on his arm, but he was mostly okay.
But I literally unbuckled, kicked out.
And of course, we smelled gas, right?
Because the puncture of the gas had been punctured.
So we were terrified. Of course, the thing was just going to go up and incinerate us.
And so, you know, I made sure my friend was out and we kicked out the side of the glass and we jumped out of the car.
And we stand up and we're both looking at each other like, how is it possible that we're both still alive and uninjured after we just flipped a car on a gravel road going 120?
And that was like the first thing.
And then the second thing was, where the hell is the Winnebago gone?
Is it like Ghost Winnebago?
It was one of these completely surreal things.
Well, first of all, after this, you know, we're both screaming at the top of our lungs.
You've got the car being disassembled by the road upside down.
And then we're kicking and we're getting out.
And then it's just suddenly like ear-ringingly quiet.
Just boom. Just quiet.
And you see a couple of birds scattering off in the distance from the sand, and we couldn't...
Like, it was like, where the hell is this Winnebago?
And then we saw the back of the...
But they'd gone into the swamp. Now, they hadn't been going super fast, of course, and they were in a much more structured vehicle, and so they were all okay, fortunately.
But, yeah, it was a...
It's really the only car crash I've been in, but it was...
It was pretty memorable. And I was about maybe 19 or 20 at the time.
And no long-term damage.
Everybody was okay, which is shocking.
And boy, I didn't envy his call to the head office about that.
Man. So anyway, I hope you're okay.
If it's just the physical machinery, sympathies for that.
But my gosh, I hope you're okay.
Pete, so... Okay, what else have we got?
A couple more, and then I'll sort of tell you my thoughts.
It's nice to sit and chat with you guys.
It really is. Christine says, great to hear from you, inspiring people.
Great. Stephen Wolf, Ock says, Stephen Wolf.
That's very nice. Betsy Ross says, how are you doing?
I'm doing all right.
I'm doing all right. I'm getting a little...
A little stir-crazy.
I mean, I'd like to go out and meet people.
I was planning a bunch of documentaries this year, and so it's a little tricky.
Derek says, thanks for checking in.
Really appreciate you, Steph. You're an incredible role model and gift of the world.
I am well. I hope the same for you in every facet of your life.
Please keep going strong.
Thank you very much, my friend. I appreciate that.
Joshua gives me the thumbs up as...
What do you say? Going cuckoo at home with nonverbal autistic.
Oh, you have somebody at home who's a management challenge as far as that goes.
I'm sorry about that too.
Can we discuss the argument?
No, but we can't argue the discussion.
What are your thoughts on natural law as an ethical theory?
So natural law versus positive law.
And this is a strange coincidence as well.
I was cleaning out my basement.
Yesterday, and it's a good chance, you know, stuff accumulates in life and you just gotta get yourselves in space.
And I came across my old philosophy of law textbook and all my notes in it and all that.
So yeah, natural law versus positive law.
So very briefly, natural law says that the law must reflect a higher moral standard, whereas positive law is like, hey man, whatever the law says is kind of legal and there's no outside ethical standard that it really has to follow.
And Yeah, natural law is the law.
Well, first of all, there should be negotiation, not the law, but that's for a stateless society.
But the law, of course, it should reflect a higher morality.
Otherwise, it's just brute force.
Oh, Shay Whelan says, I have a horrible toothache.
Oh, my gosh.
Oh, man, that is a bad scene.
There is no pain.
Like tooth pain. I had an ankylose tooth, a tooth that never quite descended from when I was a kid.
It should have been dealt with when I was a kid, but it was socialist dentistry in the UK. And I had to last, was it last year, I think?
I had to get this thing, I mean, I went to a bunch of specialists and so on, but I had to get this thing just drilled out.
And basically, the guy went in there with a cherry bomb, and he actually had to drill all the way through to my sinuses.
He had to take the bone graft and pack it in there like a snowball from hell.
And, you know, it left me with a little bit of a droop here because they just went through a bunch of nerve endings and so on.
So... And that was, it's nothing to do with hygiene.
I actually take really, really good care of my teeth.
I have like a water-picked floss and I don't eat much sugar and I brush well and all that.
And I get my teeth checked like every three to four months.
But yeah, that was just a matter of, that was just one of these things like sooner or later, right?
Because it was just going to happen.
So I'm sorry about the toothache, man.
I don't know. I mean, my dentist is available.
I'm not saying you can go see my dentist.
My dentist is available for emergencies.
Maybe you can call around and find a dentist who will see you in an emergency because that does sound like an emergency, man.
Tooth pain is like a concentrated ice cream headache that just goes on forever.
A friend of mine was...
We used to have this kind of joke.
Man, I grew up with some funny people.
I really, really did. I really think all of them should have gone into being comedians.
But anyway, he would say, like, whoever could mentally control an ice cream headache could just rule the world.
Like, you disagree with someone, ice cream headache.
You know, whatever you need, whatever you need.
So yeah, toothaches are like concentrated ice cream headaches.
And man, if you've never had tooth pain, you've had a good day.
So I'm sorry about that. And you know, please, please, if you can find someone to go have a look at it, that would be my particular suggestion.
Let's see here. I've had to get a root canal in the midst of the closures.
They classified it as an emergency.
I didn't get sick. Thank God.
Oh yeah, that's right.
That's James, right? James, you may remember him from helping out with the Discord server and help him run the call-in show on Friday.
I was hoping with this tooth that they could get the root canal thing done, but there was no luck.
It was just done.
Maurice says, Dear Steph, I've lost my job in this hellish time period.
Parenting for your thoughts on how to get back on my feet.
I want to work in online media as well.
I'm Dutch. If that even makes a difference.
Well, so, you know, how you deal with this shutdown is obviously a very, very big question.
I mean, I've been doing it partly just trying to get things sorted out from a technical standpoint that I've needed to get sorted out for quite some time.
Like, I have two different computers that I use to run shows.
And one of them had a crackle in the audio.
The other one doesn't livestream video games because it's not fast enough.
And it's just I'm trying to consolidate things so I don't have to keep changing all the cables in the back every time I need to switch a show.
I've been working on trying to improve video and audio quality and trying to find more efficient ways to get shows.
Produced because I don't have a producer and haven't had for a year and a half, I guess, now.
So when you have this kind of slowdown, what is it that you're going to do with it, right?
Now, you can, of course, kind of veg out and have despair and so on.
And we're all going to have that to some degree or another.
And I sympathize with that.
And that's a natural human reaction.
But, but, but...
Whatever happens to you in life...
This is really, really important.
Whatever happens to you in life, you have to try and find a way that you're happy it happened.
It sounds odd, right?
It sounds odd.
Whatever happens to you in life, you have to try and find a way to make yourself glad it happened.
I mean, so I had cancer, right?
And so now I like to wear this big-ass brimmed hat, like to make sure I don't get any extra sun on my skin as much as humanly possible, and I wear out to sunscreen, and I try and stay in the shade.
So I'm like, okay, so I got cancer, but at least I can use that to get me to...
Not get skin cancer, right?
Because I'm half German, half Irish.
We're not exactly known for our swarthy complexions, right?
Although this camera is very kind on my spottiness, whereas the high-def cameras are not.
But, you know, if I get kicked off a platform, I'll just try and find some way to get a better situation on another platform.
And so if I once had an optometrist, a couple of years ago I had an optometrist, oh, your eye nerves are on one eye, both eyes are too thin, or in six months I'm like, oh, I hope my eyes are okay.
And I think I was talking with John Waters who was saying his eyes.
So now, you know, what do I do?
Well, I take sort of eye supplements and I make sure that I do my 20-20-20 rule, like every 20 minutes, take a break for 20 seconds and look at something at least 20 yards away or 20 feet away.
I can't remember what it is, but I listen to more audiobooks rather than reading with a book in front of my face, you know, just try and sort of help my vision sustain itself.
And I have pretty good vision, but, you know, I've needed glasses for like 10 years and I just want to keep things as healthy as possible.
Now we're stuck inside, so what can I do?
Well, I can deal with all the technical hiccups and slowdowns that have plagued me all these years, and I can teach my daughter how to play Scrabble better, and I can exercise more, and whatever it is that you can do to say, I made the best of that situation.
I made the best conceivable.
I had the best conceivable outcome of that situation.
And so I was in a seven-year relationship in my 20s, almost married the wrong girl, like disastrously the wrong girl.
And I'm glad that happened now because that led me to the woman I've now been married to for 17 years, and it's wonderful.
So I became a good parent because I had such bad parents, right?
So you've got to do the reversal.
You've got to do the flip.
You've got to do the flip. It's a wake-up call, right?
COVID is a wake-up call.
You've got to do the flip. And you've got to look back and say, I made the very best that I could out of that very difficult situation.
Right? I mean, when I first got attacked by the media back in 2008 for being a cult leader, right?
Because I was telling people they didn't have to spend time with abusive parents or abusive anyone for that matter.
Well, what did I say to myself?
I said, okay, well, that's not good because, you know, I didn't really have much of a platform to respond back then because the show was very small.
And I said, okay, well, what can I do about this?
How can I make my show better based on this?
And so what I did was I started doing interviews.
I started interviewing psychologists.
I started interviewing mental health experts.
I just started, I think Stuart Shanker was one of my first interviews way back in the day.
And I was just like, okay, I'm going to just...
If people aren't accepting the reason, then maybe they'll accept the evidence, right?
So the reasoning behind voluntarism in personal relationships was, to me, pretty clear.
But maybe I can get people to start accepting the evidence.
In other words, the experts will kind of back me up on this.
So I did. And that kind of got me into doing interviews, which has been kind of a mainstay of what it is that I do.
So I turned a negative and tried to make it into a positive, right?
And that's... That's really important to try and achieve in life.
Try, try, try. Your very, very best.
Got a little blurry there, right?
Try, try, try. Your very, very best to make sure that you get the most positive out of a negative to the point where you say, like, nobody's glad that COVID's happening, so I'm not trying to sort of say that, but what I am saying is, can you get to the point where you can say, It was a plus for me.
I made the most plus out of it as possible.
And look, I understand how sensitive this is because people in the audience, people around the world, you're losing people.
We've got a quarter million people who are dead.
Some of them would doubtless have died otherwise, but not all of them.
And other people are dying because of the shutdown, as I talked about a month ago.
Now I was calling for the reopening of everything.
So nobody's going to sit there and say, you know, yay, SARS-CoV-2.
But what you can do is you can say, I got the very, very best out of this situation because I couldn't make the situation go away, but I got the very, very best out of it.
So that's a long way of saying, look, you've been given a gift of unemployment.
Now, you can look at it as a curse, and I get that, right?
But let's say you don't have enough money.
So what you can do is you can vow to yourself that you are never, ever, ever going to be in the situation again.
Well, you have to worry about paying rent.
And if that means living lean, living close to the ground and saving and saving and saving, that's what you got to do.
So you can sit there and say, man, that one time, I mean, I remember one time in my life, one time in my life, I'm like, oh my gosh, I was only paying 275 bucks a month in rent for a room.
And I was like, you know what? I'm absolutely out of cash.
I'm absolutely, I'm like skint.
Turn your pockets inside out.
And I'd already tapped my friends and all that.
And, you know, frankly, that got me off my butt.
And I called a recruiter.
I just told this story before.
I called a recruiter. I still remember her name.
Marnie. I even remember her last name.
And I said, you know what?
I said, I need a job.
Like, I love it to do with computers.
I mean, it can be cleaning computers.
It can be moving computers.
I don't... Please, but please, please, please.
I desperately need a job.
I will not let you down.
I'm so hungry for this, and I want to make it work.
And... She was very nice and she set me up at an interview with a trading company, a stock trading company, and I went in and they asked me some questions and I showed them some of my computer code that I've been working on as a hobby and they were like, yeah, sounds good.
So that was my first professional job making $40,000 a year, which was all the money on the planet back then, coming out of my graduate degree in history.
And I biked to work every day, and it wasn't too far, and that was the beginning, and from there I started a software company, and it was like, so you've got to make sure you bounce.
Like, life is going to knock you the hell down from time to time, and sometimes it feels like every bloody day you're just waking up to a punching bag, or being a punching bag, right?
So life is going to knock you down.
The important thing is not how far you go down or how fast you hit the ground.
The whole thing is...
How high can you bounce?
How can you use that momentum to get something better in your life?
So you can look back and say, my God, am I glad that I got fired.
My God, am I glad I got fired.
That's the challenge. That's where your level of creativity has to be in life.
I am so glad.
I am so glad I broke up with that girl in my 20s.
I am glad that the media went after me because it caused me to significantly improve and expand the range that's doing, right?
I am so glad for X or for Y or for Z. I am so glad.
I mean, I could go into stories after story, but you get the point.
You're a smart audience, right? So you get the point, right?
Life is going to knock you the hell down on a regular basis if you're trying to do anything, because we have no choice about that.
If we don't take any risks, we get bored and depressed, feel useless, and we are not extending ourselves to our full capacity, and that's just going to make us unhappy.
So that's not an option, right?
You could work as a ditch digger your whole life, but if you've got an IQ of You know, 120-plus, you know, it's going to be a pretty wretched existence, and you are going to be, you know, wasting your capacities, wasting your talents, wasting your potential.
It's going to make you depressed and anxious, and you're going to be down there in this sort of underworld of people, right?
And so you have to try things that you're going to fail at.
If all you do is say, I'm really good at walking, I could walk without falling down, and you just walk around all day saying, yay, I walked, you know, which I mastered at the age of one and a half, Well, that's not going to be very satisfying for you.
It's going to make you depressed and anxious, and you're going to get this growing sense of panic at the underutilization of your God or nature-given talents, which I assume in this audience are prodigious and intense, right?
So you've got to go and try things that you can fail at.
You have to, have to, have to go and try things that you can fail at.
Otherwise, there's no satisfaction in winning.
You know, I mean, there's no point taking the same spelling test from grade two for the rest of your life and calling yourself.
You have to always be at the edge of what it is you can do.
And I'm pushing myself to be at the edge of what it is that I can do, where I have success and I have failure, because I have no capacity for failure then.
There's no possibility of achievement, no satisfaction in mastery or anything like that.
You have to be doing something that you can fail at, and that means you're going to fail.
And the failure, of course, is natural.
It is inevitable. It is healthy.
It is a positive thing.
So you lost your job.
I'm so sorry about that.
I'm so sorry about that.
So the first thing you need to do is say, how am I going to make this job loss the greatest thing that ever happened to me?
Right? When I broke up from an on-again, off-again, seven-year relationship in my 20s...
Shoot, was it 20s?
I might have been my early 30s.
No, it was 20s. I said to myself, okay, this is a terrible situation, but I'm never going to repeat this mistake again.
I'm never going to waste this time.
I'm never going to cross my fingers and hope things get better.
Because it was one of these relationships where it's like, it wasn't hell.
I mean, it wasn't terrible. I mean, she was a nice lady in many ways, but it was just kind of like...
It never quite, you know, like a plane that's got enough fuel to just lift the wheels up, but not enough momentum or energy to get up and fly somewhere.
It's just kind of bumping along, right?
And if the plane just stops, you get out.
If you're up flying somewhere, you get somewhere.
But this kind of bumping along stuff, it drives you crazy, right?
Because you're always crossing your fingers.
And then you get the fallacy of sunk costs.
Well, I've sunk three years in.
Why not four, right? It's going to get better.
I'm going to lose. I'm going to grow. But I wanted to look back and say, okay, I mean, I got out of the ring, I proposed, and the fact that I broke up with her, like, this has to be the greatest thing ever.
And it is now, in hindsight, I look back and say that was one of the greatest things that happened to me because it taught me a huge amount, and I made sure I was never going to make that mistake again, right?
So you lost your job. Okay.
Were you not productive enough?
It may be completely outside of your hands.
Okay, so then you're going to say, a disaster has happened, as it's happened to all of us economically.
COVID has, you know, communism is trying to kill capitalism, right?
So you're saying, well, how can I make myself less vulnerable to this next time?
You know, can I save my money, right?
I had a friend who spent probably...
Maybe $15,000 on, like, believe it or not, on bootleg concert videos.
Like, they used to be out of...
They probably aren't anymore.
But there used to be these big giant halls where you'd go and you'd buy bootleg concerts.
And if he'd gone to a concert, he wanted to get the bootleg of it and so on.
He had this entire wall full of bootleg CDs and back in the days, VHS videotapes and all that kind of stuff.
And he was a music fanatic.
And he taught me a lot about music.
And I really, really appreciated his tutelage on music.
He was a bit of a music nerd when I was younger, kind of into Engelbert Humperdinck, although I never really got into Leroy Connersting, which my mom liked because that was just a little bit too boomery for me.
But he had like 15,000 at least.
Could have been more. I never understood buying movies because I almost never watched the same movie twice.
But anyway, he had this entire wall full of just stuff, right?
And then he lost his job and he got really depressed and he had a tough time shaking it off and getting back on the horse, right?
And I remember him telling me, like he said, I'm looking at this wall and I'm like, why did I buy all of this stuff?
Right? Why?
I never take it down.
I never listen to it. It's like this weird Gabber Mate classical music CD compulsion to just hoard.
Like you're some obsessive squirrel storing up nuts for a Game of Thrones winter of endlessness, right?
And so he got...
The overspending. And I said, okay, well, so you've got to make a...
Maybe you can sell some of this stuff or whatever.
And now the funny thing is, of course, all of these things are available online for free.
You go look up live concert.
You can go and find Queen from the Rainbow Room in 1974.
You can find Queen at Montreal, Queen on Fire, Queen at Milton Keynes.
You can find Queen all over the place.
And yet he had all of these, right?
And how many times did he pop it down and put it in and listen to it and play it?
Almost never. So that...
Financial panic was like, okay, you can never let yourself get into the situation again.
So whatever skills you have to develop, whatever entrepreneurial skills you may want to develop, whatever partnership you may want to develop, whatever abilities that you need, use this time to get those abilities like it's a five alarm fire, like it's a massive emergency, because it kind of is, right?
I don't mean you, you're not going to starve to death or anything, but...
If you want to work in online media, then make it your business to go and find value for someone.
You know, like, I can't tell you the number of people who's like, oh man, you should interview this person, that person.
It's like, they just give me a name, right?
Like, come on. I'm ridiculously busy.
I'm a stay-at-home dad.
I'm a husband. I run this world's biggest philosophy show.
My days are kind of like getting shot out of a cannon and splat hitting the wall and sliding down, Looney Tunes style at the end of the day.
So when people say to me, you've got to go and interview such and such a person, right?
And they just give me a name. I'm supposed to go and look them up, find out what they're all about, figure out what their position is, go watch some of their videos.
I don't have time. I don't.
I don't have time. And so what I do is I appreciate when somebody says...
I think you should interview this person.
Here's why. Here's an extract from the video.
Here's what they said. Here's where it's relevant.
Like, all the people are like, hey, you should do a presentation on such and such.
It's like, just give me one.
Give me one that's well-sourced so I can put it together.
And, you know, but I don't know.
It's just strange to me.
Like, if people want something done and they just kind of, hey, man, I suggested something.
It's like, that's not going to get you anywhere in life, right?
I mean, that's just not... So if you want to work in online media, you know, find whoever runs your favorite online media and figure out how to provide them value.
And then if you've got to work for free for a bit or whatever, just do it, right?
So you can, and then you can look back and say, oh man, I'm so glad I got fired from that job because now I've got this great new thing.
But it's, again, life is going to knock you down repeatedly.
And the only thing, the art of the bounce, maybe that's my next book, right?
The art of the bounce is all that really matters in life because there's so many people, they go down like freaking plasticine.
You know, like you throw plasticine at the entire floor, it don't bounce.
It just goes splat, like slime, right?
Just splat. Like you take out your liver, just throw it on the ground, right?
You want to be as rubbery, as bouncy, as humanly possible.
Because so many people get knocked down, they don't get back up again.
You got to be the person who bounces higher.
I know it defies the laws of physics, but we have will to substitute for physics.
So that's my suggestion to you.
I hope this isn't too long, but I also know that there's lots of people facing that kind of stuff as well.
You know, I did a video last year called My Brutal Year, and it felt rough at the time, and it got worse after that.
Like, it got worse after that.
And, you know, now my views are being crushed again, and it's just like, man, I'm going to bounce.
I'm just going to bounce.
And I have bounced enough times now to know I'll find a way.
I'll find a way.
I'll find a way to make it work.
You can't keep a good man down.
If people are already going without...
Government living above or off the grid explain what is the best way to do so without the government screwing things up more.
I don't know. I'm so sorry.
I don't really quite follow that.
All right. So what happens if someone breaks the contract brought on by negotiation?
Popper puppy. It seems like a tongue twister.
So they're called dispute resolution organizations.
I don't know Is that people are going to require some enforcement of contracts in a free society.
Now, the government is like the illusion of an answer, in the same way that superstition is like the illusion of an answer for how material phenomena work.
We say, oh, why did the volcano erupt?
Oh, because you see the volcano guy is angry and you were dancing, so let's not dance anymore.
And then the volcano erupts. It erupts again and say, why did the volcano erupt?
Well, the volcano god was angry because you were singing, so now no singing and no dancing, and you just end up with this perpetually shrinking sphere.
This is what the social justice warriors do, like paint you into a corner to the point where you lash out and then they say, ah, you're violent, right?
So the state is not an answer.
Like, the only people who think that you need a government to help you resolve disputes are people who've never once tried to use the government to resolve a dispute.
I had an issue many years ago, and I wanted legal remedy.
I called the lawyer, and the lawyer said, yeah, it's a good case, but it's going to take you five to ten years and about a quarter of a million dollars.
I mean, that's when a quarter of a million dollars really meant something, right?
I mean, and I was like, oh, okay.
So we ended up going to arbitration, but there was a cap on how much I could get and all that.
So I did win and all that.
And I remember saying to the lawyer before we went into arbitration, I said, yeah, we've got this, right?
And we did. I won't tell you how, but we had them by the short and curlies, right?
I remember the lawyer saying, oh, yeah, yeah, you're totally in the right.
The law is completely on your side.
And I'm like, well, let's go for the max.
And he's like, hmm. Now, they've made an offer.
Let's just take their offer. I'm like, no, but you said we got them.
And he said, listen, son, I tell you, when you go into that mediation room, you have no idea what the judge is going to do.
And I said, hmm? But basically, we have a signed confession.
It's like, yeah, yeah, but you never know.
You never, ever know.
And I'm like, okay, so there's no law, right?
There's just some opinion with a gun, as I said before, right?
So the only people who say...
That we need the government to help us resolve disputes are those who've never tried to use the court system to resolve a dispute.
One other time, I used small claims to get something from someone.
That's sort of a different matter, but that's sort of very, very, very limited, right?
So, how does a contract get enforced in the absence of a state?
It's a great question. Okay, so let's say that...
You have a building and I want to lease it for a couple of years to 100,000 bucks or something like that, right?
So clearly you could come with guards and kick me out.
And clearly I might not pay you on an ongoing basis.
Maybe I don't put the whole money up front.
It's a mortgage situation or something like that, right?
So we're both going to need protection from that situation, right?
So what we do is we...
We both put a small amount of money in to say that if either of us breaks the contract, we agree to be bound by XYZ company, right?
Some mediation company, some external agency.
We say, okay, if we have a dispute, we're both going to take our facts to this particular agency, and we absolutely agree to abide by the conclusion of that agency.
You know, there may be an appeal process or whatever, right?
So that's what you do. You don't...
Like, let's say you and I get into a dispute.
We go to XYZ company and they say, Steph, you're in the wrong.
You've got to pay 50 grand. And I'm like, nope, I'm not going to do it, right?
So I've said that I'm going to Pay $50,000 if the company tells me to, but then the company tells me to, the mediation company tells me to, and I don't, right?
Okay, well, what happens then? That's a valid question, right?
Well, first of all, what happens now if somebody doesn't follow a particular court order?
Well, frankly, very little for the most part.
Maybe you can get them to garnish you wages or whatever, but it's really, really tough to enforce.
So there is no magic system where this all works perfectly.
So what I would want is I would want from XYZ Company That if, well, you would want, let's say, we'll go back to the example of you.
So if you and I in the dispute, XYZ company says, I, Steph, have to pay you 50 grand and I don't pay it, then you want the company to pay it instead, right?
It's like insurance for a failure to comply with arbitration.
Okay, so then the company is out $50,000, right?
Now, are they going to raise the rates on you for insuring contracts?
No. They're going to put a big black checkmark or X, I guess, a big black or big red X right next to my name saying, Steph, this guy does not honor his contracts.
You know, he has a dispute.
He agreed ahead of time.
To accept the arbitration and then he rejected the arbitration.
So then they're not going to insure me again, right?
They're not going to be somebody who guarantees my contract.
It's not going to happen. They're going to kick me off, right?
Now, maybe there's some other place, right?
Some other place is going to look at me and say, ooh, you just cost the last company 50 grand because they had to pay the 50 grand that you didn't pay.
So I don't want to know.
No way. I don't want to have anything to do with you, right?
So it's going to be really tough.
Now, there may be some sort of dodgy edge of the empire, Tatooine-style companies that will be like, yeah, I'll take you on.
But they would be known to not have great reputations.
Reputation is very easy to figure out online.
And so at some point, it would be very, very tough for me to enter into contracts.
In fact, it would be functionally impossible.
And I don't mean like maybe I could go buy groceries, obviously, or whatever it is, right?
But if I tried to do business and people called out my name and, oh, what's your contract rating, right?
Now, if my contract rating is very good, and that doesn't mean that I've never had a dispute.
What that means is that I have agreed to And abided by the arbitration that I agreed to ahead of time, right?
And then there will be companies all competing for the best ways to figure out this kind of arbitration.
So it'll be very, very efficient.
It'll be very cheap. It'll be very effective.
And there'll be appeals process and so on.
So it's kind of the way that it works on places like eBay or whatever.
Like, you have a rating. Like, if you don't ship stuff and people are like, hey, man, you didn't ship me the stuff, then...
You get a bad rating and people don't want to do business with you.
So it's very important for you to protect your reputation.
So this is how contracts would work in a free society.
Now, I could go into the criminal aspect of things.
That's more the civil or the business aspect of things.
But for more on that, you can read.
I've got two free books at freedomain.com.
One is called Everyday Anarchy, which shows just how this works in our life every day.
And it's a great thesis in the book.
One of the theses goes something like this.
We say that we need the government to enforce contracts, but the government runs on illegal contracts.
The government runs on illegal contracts because you're not allowed to give 2,500 bucks to a congressman to have a meeting.
That's called a bribe, right? So you're not allowed to do that.
However, you can donate to a congressman.
And if you get a whole bunch of people, you have a, you know, whatever dollar a plate dinner and you raise whatever hundreds of thousands of dollars for that congressman.
When you call out that congressman and you say, after he gets elected, you say, hey, man, I want a meeting.
The congressman is going to say, come on in.
And he's going to feel obligated.
And that's how the system works.
Now, all of this is completely illegal.
You can't legal to use money to influence a congressman.
But this is how it all works.
Everybody knows this is how it all works.
So we say, well, we need the government to enforce contracts that would be above board, perfectly legal, and perfectly transparent in a free society.
We need the government to enforce contracts, but the government itself runs on contracts that are unenforceable and illegal, but work beautifully.
So if we understand that something like the government works from an illegal standpoint...
We understand that a free society would work very well from a legal standpoint.
Reopen now, says Harry.
Cojones! And I can't help you, but I can't help but agree.
Given that there is no cure, how much longer should we suffer from home imprisonment at gunpoint?
Well, the communists want to destroy the market, right?
They want to destroy the free market.
That's What is going on?
So, we will wake up, sorry, we will get out when we wake up to the danger of communism.
The wizard says, Defend Molyneux, I have to disagree.
There is no disagreement. I've had some serious tooth pain.
I have also had three burst discs in my neck.
Give me the tooth pain any day.
Ooh, that's rough, man.
Because, you know, it's sort of like until you have a sore butt, you don't realize how often you clench your butt.
And until you have, I guess, what was it, burst discs on your neck, you don't realize how much you swivel your neck.
Did communism originate in Sparta?
Actually, the great Diana West has a bunch of stuff...
You know, was it last year?
Oh, I'm sorry. I'm getting all kinds of blurry.
So last year I was sort of investigating or asking questions or mulling over, you know, what was sort of the role of Judaism and communism?
Because, you know, it's kind of a common trope in online chatter.
And I've kind of heard the rumors and I've heard Putin and I've heard Solzhenitsyn and I've read the articles by Winston Churchill and so on.
And Solzhenitsyn and Winston Churchill have never been described, to my knowledge, as sort of basically anti-Semitic or anti-Semitic at all.
And so I was sort of interested in this, and she had a great tweet where she was saying, you know, here are all of the other non-Judaic antecedents to communism, and that's really, really kind of important.
So yeah, it well could, but I do not know the history of communism from that standpoint.
So Steph, can one, Jerry says, Steph, can one be self-sufficient on their own property?
And the only subservience to the state would be property tax.
Can a group of people avoid the state by being self-sufficient for the most part?
Yes. Yes, you can.
Chuck says, Stephan, I'm white, male, and too poor to pay you for a question.
Do you see anybody paying me for a question here?
How do you think the rewiring of our...
Non-economy will affect the mental health of the social justice warrior.
Well, I'll tell you.
I mean, that's a great question, Chuck.
and you've paid me more than enough just by asking that question.
We're a problem-solving species.
That's what we do. I just tweeted about this today.
We are a problem-solving species.
So we got to the top of the food chain by just being the best at solving problems.
You know, like anglerfish. Like, how do you get the mosquito larva down from the leaf?
Well, you spit water at it and it falls down, right?
So we're a problem-solving species.
So when we're poor, when we're Stone Age, when we're medieval, our problem-solving is, let's not die.
Let's try and avoid the Black Death.
Also comes from China, by the way.
Let's try and avoid...
Dying because it rained on our wheat after we harvested it before we ground it into bread, or, you know, can we survive the winter, or how long is it going to go, right?
Can I fish so I can live?
So we're constantly solving problems that are kind of emergencies.
Now, when you become a parent, you're in a constant state of solving problems as well.
Right? And that's a good thing, right?
How am I going to keep my kids entertained?
How am I going to get them educated about the world?
How am I going to engage with them in an enjoyable way?
Is it age appropriate? You know, can I wrestle with them to the point where they have fun, but no one gets hurt?
Like, it's all problem solving when it comes to parenting, right?
So we are a problem solving species.
Now, when we become wealthy as a society, we still have the same hunger to solve problems, but there just aren't as many dire problems to solve.
So what do we do? We start inventing problems.
So allowing for inequality is how we gain wealth, right?
As I've talked about a million times on the show, right?
The square root of any productive group produces half the value.
So you get a 10,000-person company, 100 people produce half the value.
10 of those 100 produce half that value.
So you get 10 people out of 10,000 producing fully 25% of the value of the entire company.
And so if they don't get a disproportionate reward to their productivity, they'll just stop working so hard.
Everyone gets poor and everything falls to crap, right?
So allowing for inequality is how we become rich.
But then what happens is, and I think it's a little bit more on the female than on the male side, because men are a little bit more content with artificial challenges like video games and so on, right?
And so what happens is, Inequality, the acceptance of inequality is how we build our wealth, and then we destroy it by inventing the problem called inequality.
Inequality is a solution to poverty.
I don't mean inequality under the law, you understand.
It's just inequality of outcome.
I mean, there's no music industry if...
Bad singers and bad songwriters have exactly the same amount of exposure as great singers and great songwriters, right?
I mean, there's no music industry, right?
So the only way that you have a music industry is a wildly disproportionate sorting mechanism to get the most talented or the most popular in front of people.
And that's the only reason there is a music industry.
Inequality is the foundation of the music industry.
It's the foundation of the sports industry as well.
Nobody's going to pay to watch me play basketball, but hopefully people will support me while I do philosophy, which I'm a little bit better at than I am at basketball.
So, inequality is the root of progress, because inequality allows the most productive resources to be in the hands of those best able to maximize their output, right?
So you want the means of production to be in the, quote, robber baron geniuses who can make the most productive use of those resources rather than scattered among a bunch of people who Don't know which way the machine points and can't make it work productively, right?
It just destroys everything.
So inequality gives us progress and it gives us wealth.
And then we say, well, the big problem is now inequality and we're going to solve that.
And then what we do is we take our wealth from the productive people and we give it to the unproductive people by force and then everything falls apart and everything turns to shit.
And that's the cycle.
That is the cycle.
It's a status cycle, you understand, is what happens when you have a government.