All Episodes
Previous Next
Dec. 20, 2020 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
27:24
CRYPTO DEPLATFORMING IS COMING!
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Good morning, everybody.
Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain.
Thank you, everyone, who sent such lovely birthday wishes to my daughter yesterday.
It was delightful to hear and very funny.
Thank you so much.
And just wanted to mention something that's kind of interesting about crypto, right?
So there's a U.S. government preparing or putting out feelers for legislation to We require more details, more information, proof of identity for various crypto thingies.
And, you know, just so everyone understands, of course, the general concern that is being voiced is, oh my gosh, you see, it could be used for illicit purposes.
Crypto could be used for illicit purposes.
Unlike, of course, fiat currency, which is never used for such things.
And just so everyone is aware, right?
So, I'm sure everybody knows this, but just to sort of underline it.
The whole reason behind this is that the deplatformers are enraged that people can dodge deplatforming by using crypto.
So they're not pleased, they don't like it, they're not happy.
And so, of course, as a result, they are now going to try to extend the capacity to deplatform to crypto.
This is an inevitable process that is occurring.
And by inevitable, I mean that the drive to do it is inevitable, whether it actually happens, of course.
It's not inevitable and I just wanted everyone to be aware of that and think about it, talk about it, maybe even contact your representative in government about it.
It's bad for America as a whole to demand identity from people all over the world, third-world countries, you name it.
I mean, it's ridiculous. The idea that you're going to send personal documents Saying who you are, driver's license, passport, social security, you name it.
The idea that you're going to be doing all of that for various transactions is beyond ludicrous and, of course, is a massive security hole.
You don't know how well these things are going to be stored.
I mean, geez, now there's this crap floating around about how Russia is hacking into the U.S. government.
It's Russia, Russia, Russia.
Let me tell you, man, it is dangerous being an ex-communist country when communists are in control of so much in the West.
It's dangerous being an ex-communist country because they will try to F you up six ways from Sunday because, you know, they can't even catch pedophiles online, or at least rarely,
right? And so the idea that sophisticated governments Maybe if they are even sophisticated government attacks on U.S. government service, the idea that you could just hop, skip, and trace that back to the Russian government, the KGB, or whatever is the modern equivalent these days, is perfectly ridiculous.
And, you know, the whole, it's all Russia all the time, no matter what.
I mean, that got blown out of the water with Russia hacked the DNC. It's not the case.
It was a local thumb drive copy.
This is easily discernible from the timestamps of the files that were copied.
And Russia stole the 2016 election for Trump.
It's this Russia, Russia, Russia thing.
And until you sort of understand that Russia is a country that survived and renounced and counterattacked against communism, it's hard to understand that.
Why this Russia obsession?
Which even spills out to popular media, you know, like Homeland, Russia, Russia, Russia, all the Russian bad guys.
And of course, for me, when I was growing up and the Russians were, it's funny because the Russians were portrayed as kind of the bad guys in some ways when I was growing up.
But at the same time, I remember Canada giving billions and billions and billions of dollars of aid.
To Russia, food aid and so on.
It's like, well, if they're such bad guys, why are we feeding them?
It was just kind of strange.
But certainly in academia, the hostility towards Russia was never particularly strong when it was communist.
But now that it's become nationalist and Christian and, I dare say, quite white, now it is enemy number one.
And you can see this insane drive to war that's going on.
This insane drive to war.
And it's to some degree to punish countries who survive and push back against communism.
And, yeah, they really will.
They really will try and drive a war to one of the last independent countries.
Christian nations around.
And it's really unpleasant, ugly.
And it's strange for me, again, having grown up with Russia, communist, dangerous, scary.
You know, it's one of the funny things about my life that just kind of prepared me for all of this was how much my family suffered under both national socialism and international socialism, right?
Under both Nazism and communism.
One of the reasons why my childhood was such a wreck was because my mother was tortured by communists when she was a child.
And my family as a whole had to go into hiding under the Nazis in Germany and weren't allowed to publish.
And so, yeah, just these supposedly opposite poles of Nazism and communism.
It's the same damn thing for both sides of my family.
And it kind of prepared me for anti-collectivism, anti-totalitarianism as a whole.
And there is this kind of inevitability these days.
It's pushed forward, which is if you're anti-communist, you must be.
Pro-Nazi, right?
Because that's Antifa, right?
Anti-fascist. But when your family has suffered, as Poland, that's just one of the reasons I got emotional when I was in Poland doing the documentary a couple of years ago.
You can find this at freedomain.com forward slash documentaries.
You should really watch them all.
They're great. But Poland was carved up By both the communists and the Nazis.
Where they just came in and decapitated the high IQ populations.
Shot everyone in glasses.
40% of the doctors were killed.
More than a third of the lawyers were killed.
Just, you know, it's a revolt of...
Collectivism is a revolt against intelligence usually.
Resentment, rage. And the reason for that is not anything built in.
It's not anything built into the human condition like, oh well, as soon as you have a meritocracy, the smart people will do very well and that's going to rouse the resentment of the dumb people who are going to band together because they can at least outnumber you and they can hit you better than you can hit back or at least there's more of them to hit you than you can gather to hit back.
It's nothing inevitable. It's nothing inevitable.
I love music enormously.
And I don't view the musicians as having stolen anything from me.
You don't listen to that lovely baritone with the rasp from Michael Hutchins and think, oh man, he stole that from me.
He took it from me.
I don't believe that the Beatles rummaged around in the DNA of my pre-birth and stole all of these wonderful songs from me.
I don't believe that tall people stole my height.
I don't believe that hairy guys stole my hair.
I don't believe that guys who look better than me stole my looks.
I don't believe that people with incredibly fast reflexes stole my reflexes.
I don't believe any of that stuff.
I feel envy at times with people who have particular skills or abilities that I don't have, but I never for a moment imagine That somebody took things from me in order to achieve what they have.
But when it comes to economics, right, this is the great lie.
The great lie is that everybody who has stuff in a meritocracy stole it from you.
Now, you could, in fact, you know, very patiently and positively explain to people and say, you know, again, we're talking more of a meritocracy than we currently have, but just a free market theory as a whole.
You could sit people down when they're young.
You could give them an IQ test.
And again, it's not determinism.
It's not. I mean, Richard Feynman, one of the great scientists, physicists of the 20th century, and really, it's a great writer, actually.
I always remember reading I read his autobiographies that were given to me by a friend of mine's father who was an academic when I was in my teens.
I think it was teens, early 20s, something like that.
And really a great writer as well.
And Richard Feynman had an IQ I think of 120 or something like that.
It's not purely deterministic.
And of course, what was it? Marilyn Voss-Savant?
Something like that. Or those people who've got very high IQs who don't do particularly well in life.
So it's a bell curve.
Of course. And it's not deterministic.
And of course, to me, the purpose of philosophy is to bring the consistency often achieved by very high IQ theorizing to practical daily use for people like yourself.
And to translate down from the abstract to the practical, the logic of personal and political liberty.
Personal always coming first, that which you can enact in the world.
And That's why I'm taking a step back indefinitely from politics because you can't enact things in politics anymore.
It's all just came down to fraud and violence and threats and all that.
So if we explain to people who aren't that smart that Everything that they enjoy comes from people who are often smarter and certainly maybe more ambitious or work harder or whatever it is, right? And some of which they can achieve and some of which they can't.
You know, everyone can improve their singing voice by taking singing lessons, but of course that doesn't mean that you're going to end up sounding like Pavarotti or Sting or Freddie Mercury or Adele or whoever, whoever you think's got a great,
great singing voice. So, if we explain to people how things really work, you know, if you're five foot tall and you love watching basketball, you have to be excluded from the basketball court, otherwise there won't be any basketball for you to watch.
If you love music, but you're not particularly musical yourself, maybe you're tone deaf, maybe you don't have a good singing voice, maybe you don't have the manual dexterity for being a musician, maybe you're just not that interested in playing, but you love to listen, Okay, but then the only reason you have music to enjoy is because you're excluded from the music industry as a player,
right? If you love jazz, the only reason that you get to enjoy jazz if you're not good at music is because people keep you away from the stage.
It's the only reason that there's any music for you to enjoy.
Keeping people out of high-skilled occupations is the only way those high-skilled occupations can work.
And it goes all the way back, of course, in the day to farming.
It's really the foundation of all of this, right?
There are some people, when I was growing up, one of my aunts had what was called a green thumb.
A green thumb is just people are really good at growing stuff.
I mean, they can't explain it necessarily, but they're just plants flourish.
Around them, and they just do really well when it comes to growing things.
And how or why, it doesn't hugely matter.
But the important thing is that they're really good at it.
And people who, you know, even read the instructions and follow what's supposed to happen, but they're just not good at growing things.
Just things die in their vicinity.
It's just one of these 80-20 rules or Price's Law, Pareto Principle.
There's just some people who appear to have magic.
I know that's not much of an explanation, but it's true.
You know, there are some people like, you know, Lennon McCartney, great songwriters, and other people.
I think it was Radar O'Reilly from MASH was a musician as well on the side, and he'd written over a hundred songs.
Nobody's ever heard of them. You know, he worked very hard at it.
He just didn't have the magic, didn't have the X factor, didn't have the mystery juice of productivity.
Lots of people work at podcasting.
Lots of people work as YouTubers.
Lots of people work as vloggers, writers, and so on.
But a few people have that special something, that magic who knows what, right?
I mean, I do. And because I have it in this field, I recognize where I don't have it, which is in other fields.
So if we just explain to people, and it may take a couple of runs at it, but they'll get it, then they will appreciate the highly productive people and say, no, no, no, the millionaire didn't steal anything from me.
In fact, I'm wealthier because the millionaire has money.
If somebody has, like my aunt had, not that she's lost it, but she's dead, the green thumb.
The green thumb. Now, if somebody has, a farmer has a green thumb, And it's able to coax more productivity out of the land.
Then they're going to end up being able to bid more for that land.
They're going to end up owning more land and you're going to end up with a whole lot more food.
So rather than the farmer stealing food and money from you, he's actually giving you cheaper food and more of it, which generally goes hand in hand, right?
The more food there is, supply and demand, the cheaper it becomes.
So he's saving you money.
By you not working the land when he's better at it, he's saving you money and keeping you alive.
And be grateful. I don't see be grateful like praise the guy like some demigod, but just be grateful.
You know, I mean, if you think of your favorite band, your favorite artist, your favorite singer, favorite musician, the fact that they worked so hard.
To become good at what they did, the fact that they took so many risks, the fact that they forwent all of the productivity, potential that they had in other fields.
Is it John Hamm, the guy who was in Mad Max?
Sorry, Mad Men, slightly different show.
I've never watched it, but the guy was doing pretty badly.
He gave himself until he was 30 to Make it as an actor, otherwise you can do something else.
David Schwimmer, who played Ross on Friends, was a waiter for seven years before he had his break and, you know, obviously brought a lot of great comedy to the world.
So, yeah, we can be grateful that at least these people are willing to take these risks so that we can enjoy the fruits of their creativity and productivity.
So if we just teach people that, then they won't grow up with this petulant, low-rent, younger sibling rage against the more competent.
I mean, you have to train people into hatred.
You have to train people into hatred.
It's something I remember when I was an early father.
That it was only a couple of months into my daughter's life when, after feeding her, she turned around and gave me a handful of food back.
So you feed me, I feed you.
That reciprocity, that gratitude, that's all.
It's part of our nature.
It's part of our nature to be grateful and to be happy.
Like, you know, David Letterman, when he had almost died from a blocked artery, He brought out his entire medical team to the late show and publicly thanked him in a very emotional and passionate way.
He's grateful. Aren't you?
Grateful for...
I mean, just go to the dentist for heaven's sakes.
If you need something drilled, they don't just give you three shots of whiskey and tie you down.
You get all this lovely Novocaine and all that kind of stuff.
If you have to have an operation, you know, Charles Dickens Was going to become a doctor until he saw a bowel operation on a child.
And he's like, I never want to be anywhere near that again ever in my life.
Because, of course, you would have to cut open a living human being with no anesthetic.
He'd be grateful. I don't feel that the anesthetologist had stolen anything from me.
I'm like, thank God.
You're here. You know, if my dentist ever does something, you know, they scrape you...
They scrape the plaque off and stuff like that.
And if there's ever anything like tender or whatever and she says, oh, I'm sorry.
I'm like, hey man, I got no problems with dentistry.
I'm incredibly grateful for modern dentistry.
My daughter was asking me the other day, why are some foods really spicy?
And I said, well, Some of it's cultural, but some of it's also in warm climates where you're not fishing.
Food tends, like the meat, tends to go pretty bad pretty quickly, and so you'll often toss in a bunch of spice to cover up the fact that it's gone a little rancid.
Let's be grateful that you have a fridge, for God's sakes.
Be grateful that you have a fridge.
I mean, it's a beautiful thing.
A fridge is a beautiful thing.
A freezer is a beautiful thing.
A freezer, you know, you could be king of the world.
A century or two ago, in a hot climate, and you could never have a cold drink in the heat.
Never. Never have one of those wonderful frosty water condensation beating on the outside, pop the tab, have a guzzle.
Glorious sensation of cooling yourself down in the heat.
You could never have ice in the hot climate for 99.999% of human history.
Air conditioning. Oh, I remember reading a Henry James story just about being in New York and...
Oh, it was so hot!
It was so hot they couldn't sleep.
Man, it was too hot to sleep.
I thought I'd go down to Madame X's and let her read my mind.
It's an old Robbie Robertson song.
It's actually pretty good. So much to be grateful for.
I mean, the fact that we can have this conversation and share ideas, share arguments, share thoughts, share oppositions, share conflicts.
Beautiful. Beautiful.
And the people who made fridges, they didn't steal anything from me.
They didn't steal my innate capacity to cool things down.
Beautiful. Now, they get rewarded.
I mean, they're not altruists in that sense.
I mean, some of them are. But they get rewarded.
They get paid. They really get fame.
Good for them. I remember when I was a kid, it's one of these little conversations that happens, right?
It's a conversation that happens, and it just takes a little bit to turn people's minds, right?
So I was 11, just come to Canada, and there was that sour-faced kid who was telling me, you know, a can of Coke sells for 20 cents, but you know, the cost of the Coke ingredients is only 2 or 3 cents.
Now that's what they call a world-destroying little asshole.
You know, he was just repeating the propaganda.
I'm not blaming him particularly.
He was older than me.
He was still a kid. He was probably 14 or so.
But he was trying to lure me into this resentment.
Oh, the world is one giant colossal ripoff and they sell a can of Coke for 20 cents, but it only cost them two or three cents to make it.
So they're making 17 cents, 18 cents, pure profit, stealing, greedy, resentment.
Trying to lure me into that, right?
Trying to lure me in. And the other kid I was with, forever blessed be his name, the other kid I was with turned and said, yeah okay maybe the ingredients only cost that much but you've got to pay the workers, you've got taxes on the building, you've got lighting, you've got heat, you've got transportation, you've got advertising.
You've got investments. You've got health and safety standards.
You've got regulatory compliance.
It's expensive. It's expensive.
You've got to ship it all the way to the store.
The store's got to make some money. Otherwise, why would they sell it?
So, don't be an idiot.
Don't be an idiot.
Isn't that glorious? That's really my motto in life.
No, at least try. Try not to be an idiot.
That's my motto. Just don't be an idiot.
Even if it's true, and I don't know if it's true or not, that the ingredients to a can of Coke are only two or three cents, and back this back when they sold it for like 20 cents.
Even if that's true. Excluding everything else.
Excluding everything else is just being a jerk.
And, you know, that moment was very important to me.
And if you're out there and you're listening, you might be.
You know who you are. Thank you.
Thank you for that. Thank you for putting the breadcrumbs away from that dank cave of resentment and frustration and paranoia.
It's paranoia. You understand? It's a purely paranoid world view.
The Coke executives, somehow they're making 18 cents off every can of Coke because the only cost is the ingredients rip off.
That's the way the world works, man.
You've got the power.
You rip everyone off.
Now, of course, he was a socialist, this older kid, he's not talking about the government.
Of course, how it rips people off by actually pointing guns at people so they have to pay taxes.
He's not doing any of that, right?
But it's a purely paranoid worldview that they're inviting into you and out of paranoia comes rage.
Fear is the rock that strikes the flint that produces the spark, which is the rage.
You make people afraid long enough, they will lash out.
I mean, yeah, think of the leftist activists.
I mean, you make people afraid long enough.
You make them paranoid.
You make them feel that the entire world has conspired against them, that the world is full of, I don't know, KKK members who want to genocide ethnicities.
And you make people paranoid, afraid for long enough.
Because with fear comes helplessness.
And with helplessness comes hopelessness.
And with hopelessness comes rage.
You're going to push people down into the pit of fear for so long before they'll just burst back up.
You know, it's like you can chase a raccoon.
The raccoon will run away if you keep chasing the raccoon.
In other words, if the fear is inescapable, you turn and you fight.
And that's what the raccoon does, what a rat does.
Even against it being 200 times its size.
If you keep chasing people, if you implant into them such a great and deep fear of the world, paranoia about being exploited and stolen from and so on then, then the fear is inescapable because the fear is internal.
The fear is internal.
And because it's a constant predator, this fear, at some point they'll turn and fight in the same way you chase any animal, corner any animal, it will turn and fight.
Heck, even viruses now.
There's a new strain of COVID in the UK that's currently codenamed The Grinch.
It's killing Christmas. Because apparently it's like 70% more transmissible.
Not more fatal, but more transmissible.
And people are still mad at me.
Not at China. Still mad at me.
Not at China. And China, of course, put out these as a giant army of trolls to suppress information about COVID. After the first whistleblower doctor died.
Still mad at me. Still mad at me, of course.
It's how you know in the modern world, it's how you know someone is not dangerous.
Or some group is not dangerous.
It's the complete inverse.
The more people are angry at someone or some group, the more they de-platform, the more they hate, the more you know that person is not a danger to you at all.
Not a danger to you in any significant way at all.
And the more that people step around a particular topic, the more you know that particular group is in fact the real danger.
This is how I know that Russia is not the danger.
Russia is not the hacker. Russia is not because they're willing to call it out.
Having groups that are actually dangerous, you won't hear about.
If you do, it'll be vague, maybe negatives, nothing direct, and often it'll be positives.
And then, of course, any group that is really dangerous, Any criticism of them is referred to as a kind of phobia.
It's a mental illness. It's a hatred to criticize whatever particular group that is in fact dangerous.
It's just this inverse world these days.
So I don't view this hatred as inevitable.
It's something that has to be cultivated.
There are some people who have a green thumb not for plants but for envy.
For envy, that's their green thumb.
You plant a demon seed, you raise the flower of fire, as the old song goes.
It's not inevitable. If human beings were so naturally anti-rational and prone to collectivism and hatred and all of that, then you wouldn't need to have them propagandized.
We wouldn't all need to be propagandized for decades in order to achieve this.
You don't need a whole bunch of propaganda for kids to like sugar.
You don't need a lot of propaganda for an alcoholic to want another drink.
That which comes in a sense naturally to us doesn't need propaganda.
That which doesn't come naturally to us ends up being propagandized from here to eternity.
▲
Export Selection