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Dec. 15, 2022 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:35:40

HOW TO AVOID SCAMS! Freedomain Livestream

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	Yo! Good evening!
	Friends, how are you?
	How are you doing today? It is the 14th of...
	Oh my gosh, it's the 14th of December.
	It is but five, count them, five wee days until my wonderful daughter, my lovely child, turns 14 years old.
	And by the way, do you know?
	Do you know why? Teenage girls always travel in even numbers.
	2, 4, 6, 8.
	Do you know why teenage girls always travel in even numbered groups?
	Because they can't even!
	So, I hope you guys are doing well.
	And listen, I'm all yours for the evening.
	I am your willing philosophy slave for the night.
	If you want, you can ask questions, you can make criticisms, comments, whatever is on your beautiful minds, my friends.
	Just raise your hand and I will unmute and we will talk and I will listen and you will speak.
	But before we get into that...
	Anybody. It's your show.
	Whatever you want to talk about is fine with me.
	But one of the things that I was interested in is...
	Would you be interested in how to tell, like, the FTX scams, the Theranos scams?
	Would you be interested in...
	Like, I never get caught up in these things.
	I never get caught up in these things.
	And I guess it would be...
	If you're interested, hit me with a why...
	You know, why being the quintessential letter and question of philosophy, hit me with a why if you would like me to tell you how to avoid these kinds of scams.
	Just let me know if you're interested, and I'd be happy to tell you how I managed to avoid this kind of nonsense.
	Sounds like we've got some yeses.
	All right. I will save you from yourself, just as I had to learn how to save myself from myself.
	You know, I've been in the business world for a long time, and I wrote a whole novel about corruption in the business world.
	It's called The God of Atheists, and you can get it at FDRUL.com slash TGOA for The God of Atheists.
	So, I have studied this in great detail.
	I lived it for, oh, quite some time.
	Yes, I did. Lived it for quite some time.
	And... I can tell you.
	Here's what you do. Okay, so to avoid these kinds of scams, like the Bernie Madoff stuff, the Elizabeth Holmes stuff, the Sam Bankman-Fried stuff, it's not super complicated.
	So the first thing you have to disabuse yourself of, now this is less relevant to Bernie Madoff, but I guess he started fairly young, but you have to, have to, have to disabuse yourself of the notion of the boy wonder genius.
	The boy or girl wonder genius.
	You know, this crazy, nutty, horrible, deranged, goodwill hunting nonsense.
	Oh, he's just born a genius!
	Just a total stone genius!
	This guy is just brilliant!
	And he's got it going on, and he's got it sorted out, and he'll just make sure that he's the best guy, and he's revolutionary, and he's revolutionizing the...
	It's all nonsense.
	It's all nonsense.
	Now, it is true that there are some people who make a lot of money quite young.
	For sure. They tend to be people who are innovating in a new industry, creating something of value for new customers.
	A crypto exchange, not the most brilliant and original idea in the known universe.
	So the idea that there's someone who's just so brilliant at crypto exchanging.
	I mean, I'm sure that technically it's challenging, but as a business model, it's completely retarded.
	I facilitate the buying and selling of crypto.
	Ooh! That's just Satoshi levels of genius.
	And again, I'm not saying that the business is honorable and it's a fine business and it's helpful, but the idea that you're just so much better at it than everyone else.
	It's a piece of the pie transaction.
	It's a Visa transaction.
	Visa worked out this model, as did banks.
	Well, Visa worked it out dozens of years ago, and banks worked it out thousands of years ago.
	You want to borrow some money.
	You want to lend some money. Okay, I'll facilitate that, and I'll take a couple of points on the transaction.
	Ooh, business genius.
	I mean, there's nothing new. Nothing new.
	So it's not new.
	It's not innovative. It's not brilliant.
	It's just, and again, nothing wrong with the business, and I'm sure it takes much to run it.
	I get all of that. But there's no boy-wanderer genius crap that can suddenly make that into a world-shaking business model.
	So that's number one. Don't ever believe the boy genius stuff.
	Like Elizabeth Holmes, I mean, she literally, well, we won't even need to draw blood to test people's illnesses.
	I mean, she literally, we'll hover it above their skin.
	I mean, it was literally that mad.
	And her very first business idea was to have a kind of antibiotic or something like that that would detect your blood and then pump the appropriate amounts.
	It's completely mad. Completely deranged.
	That's just wish fulfillment stuff, you know.
	So the wish fulfillment stuff, like wouldn't it be great if, especially when it comes to a young person, it's completely mad and stay clear of it a million miles.
	There are a few, a few, a few industries where you can make significant contributions when you're quite young.
	A few. They tend to be in the creative arts, significantly in the creative arts.
	So if you are, I don't know, the Gimme Your Lovin' guy, give me some lovin' every day.
	He led ahead, oh gosh, what was it?
	Valerie, call on me, come and see me.
	I'm the same boy I used to, what's his name?
	Why is it driving me crazy? When you see a chance, take care, something like that.
	Why is it? Why is it?
	That only one company gets the name, gets to...
	Why is it only one company gets to make the board game Monopoly?
	It's just wrong. And only one company gets to take a chance on risk.
	Oh man, it's driving me crazy.
	Help me brothers and sisters! What is his name?
	I can't remember.
	Steve Winwood. Ah, there we go.
	A good-looking guy, too. So, yeah, I mean, one of his first hits was, I don't know, he's 14 or 15 years old, and you've got Michael Jackson just out of diapers, squealing in musical tones.
	And so, yeah, if you're in the arts, you've got Arthur Rimbaud, who ended up dying, what was it, in Ethiopia, for gun-running and slave training.
	He got shot or killed or something.
	And he contributed fairly significantly to the arts in terms of poetry, grim and horrible that poetry was.
	So if you're, you know, and Shelley, a lot of Percy Bysshe Shelley, the famous poet, died in a boating accident.
	He was like 26, beat Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin by one year, Jimi Hendrix by one year.
	So if you're in the arts and it's fluid, creative intelligence and you can build everything yourself and it doesn't require significant prior knowledge of things, yeah, you can.
	But this idea that we can translate Steve Winwood into the medical field, it's like, no, no, no, no, no, that doesn't work.
	To make... Substantial advances in the medical field, you have to learn everything that's already out there and learn what's possible and what's not possible and so on.
	The same thing is true in engineering in many ways.
	And mathematics is another one of these, you know, based on Good Bill Hunting, it's another one of these, well, this total genius has figured all this stuff out for himself.
	Sure, but what are the odds that somebody has a genius in the realm of, say, mathematics and And also is an excellent businessman.
	Because being an excellent businessman is really tough.
	Really tough. You have to be inspiring.
	You have to be a leader. You have to be hard-nosed.
	You also have to be sympathetic.
	You have to know how to manage talent.
	You have to know how to negotiate with difficult people.
	You have to know how to assuage client anxieties.
	You have to know... I mean, I've done all of these things, and obviously I'm no great shakes as a businessman, but I've had some pretty good experience and some pretty good success, but...
	You have to have an extraordinarily wide and deep skill set.
	This is one of the reasons why these guys get paid millions and millions and millions of dollars a year because they're extraordinarily rare to have all of these abilities and be good at economics and be good at reading the market and be good at pivoting and changing and marketing, sales, research and development.
	I mean, to be a CEO is just a wild, wild thing.
	And you also have to be creative, right?
	So, there was one CEO. I read his autobiography.
	He was in charge of...
	Jack Welch, I think his name was, in charge of GE, General Electric, I think it was.
	And he noticed that the business sectors...
	This is there in just about every business, right?
	The business sectors that were growing the fastest were getting the most talent because they were able to make the most money.
	The markets were expanding the fastest, so...
	He had a problem in that the businesses that were doing well attracted the most talent and the businesses that were doing the worst attracted the least talent or the most incompetent, so to speak.
	And this is a problem because it means that stuff that's already making money gets all the attention and talent and stuff that's losing money gets none of the attention and talent.
	And so he said, okay, instead of it being some sort of measure of profit or loss, On its own, we're going to measure these sectors relative to the average in that sector.
	So we're going to measure electronics relative to electronics, appliances relative to appliances, and so on.
	And if you're doing better than the average, then you're going to make a fortune, right?
	And so if appliances are losing 3%, on average, and the appliance industry is losing 3% a year, but you made 1% a year, that's fantastic.
	You would get hugely rewarded.
	Whereas if you were just looking at mere profits, you've got some other industry making 5% a year, and this one's only making 1% a year, Then all the people are going to leave that.
	He wanted to make sure that each area that the business was in was going to attract the most talent.
	That's a brilliant idea.
	You've got to come up with that idea.
	You've got to measure it out.
	You've got to convince the board.
	You've got to convince everyone to get on board and all of that.
	You're going to risk losing the talent because Some of the people who moved to an industry because it was the high-earning one, they end up really upset because some of the profits are going elsewhere and some of the bonuses and so on.
	So you're getting all of that across, but he really turned that business around.
	He really turned that business around.
	So the idea that somebody's completely brilliant at mathematics, which is often quite a solitary and antisocial or asocial situation, and of course a lot of kids...
	I mean, I think it's a Robert Louis Stevenson thing, right?
	He wrote all these adventure stories at Treasure Island and so on.
	He wrote all these adventure stories, and one of the reasons he did that was he was stuck in bed with endless ailments and illnesses as a child.
	So a lot of the people who get really good at the intellectual arts do that because they're not out there socializing, because they're ill or weak or something like that, which is not going to give them much physical charisma and so on.
	It's just an extraordinarily rare skill set.
	So the first thing I disabuse myself of is whenever you see the boy wonder stuff, someone's got their hand in your pockets.
	Whenever you say, she's just a genius.
	She's coming out of nowhere.
	She's going to shake up the industry.
	She's going to take on long-established companies and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	And it's like... Okay, she's an eight with blue eyes, you know, and she subsists on protein shakes or something like that.
	So, yeah, the boy wonder stuff.
	Oh, this kid, he's so brilliant, blah, blah, blah.
	So that's number one. Number two, I am extremely suspicious of mainstream pedigree.
	Oh, I see mainstream pedigree.
	I grab my coins and start shuffling off, actually, well, sprinting off in the opposite direction.
	So when I see people, oh, someone says, his father is this.
	And again, Bill Gates is another matter.
	His father was a patent lawyer, helped him negotiate with IBM and so on.
	And so, but again, that was a new industry, right?
	So where there's an established industry, and I think crypto by this point is kind of an established industry, where there's a completely new industry, such as DOS and IBM PCs, and I guess starting with Windows and so on.
	Okay, where you have a new industry?
	Yes, that's a different industry.
	Where the land is unclaimed, you can go and get quite a bit of land.
	But where the land is all claimed, you can't really get the land nearly as much.
	And I would view crypto trading as a fairly established business.
	I think sort of five, seven, eight years ago it was new.
	It's a fairly established business.
	So the idea that someone's going to come in and is just so brilliant and understands things so well, it's like, no, no, no, come on.
	It's a shave dollar, right?
	You're passing dollars and you're shaving off a penny or two on each dollar you pass.
	That's it. That's the whole business model.
	It's not brilliant.
	It's not genius. It's not anything like that.
	Now, coming up with crypto, yes, genius.
	Facilitating the trade of crypto, I mean, come on.
	Facilitating, using the internet to facilitate trade has been around since Amazon 1.0, that godforsaken HTML vomit bag from 1990, whatever it was, right?
	So, But mainstream pedigrees, where it's like so-and-so's father is a professor at such-and-such a university and so on, it's like, no, no, no, no, come on.
	You've got to be kidding me.
	Because, I mean, certainly professors, what do they know about the free market?
	I mean, professors studiously avoid the free market as much as humanly possible.
	So the idea that you're going to have some entrepreneurial genius coming out of some professorship family is beyond ridiculous, and I would never believe that kind of stuff as a whole.
	So, boy wonder genius, stay away.
	A relatively mature industry that some boy wonder genius is going to come in and shake up and revamp and all that?
	Nope. That's not going to happen.
	I mean, again, that's not impossible, but I really don't imagine that it's ever going to happen.
	Now, The third thing that I look for when I'm looking for scams is I look for altruism.
	I look for big windy ESG statements of helping the planet.
	I'm in this to help the planet.
	I'm in this to create equality.
	I'm in this to combat global warming.
	That's just like a snake that's just weaving back and forth to offer you a feeling of virtue with investment.
	The moment that somebody...
	I mean, I worked in the environmental field.
	I worked very hard for a very long period of time to help clean up the planet with the software that I was building and did a very good job of that.
	But I never would have gone to investors and said, you've got to invest in me because I'm green.
	I said, we're fascinated by green.
	We're very, very interested in green.
	Green drives our economy.
	The green of the dollar. Because if you want to do good things in the world, you need to make some decent coin.
	And when somebody says to you, well, I'm here for equity and I'm here for the planet, all I see is money no longer being reinvested back into the company.
	So you've got a company that makes $10 million, one company puts $5 million aside for some social equality stuff, and then the other company pours all $10 billion back into the company, which one's going to win in the long run?
	I think it's fairly clear. It's pretty obvious, right?
	And this is... I mean, he's like...
	Bankman Freed is like a rand villain, you know, spouting off all about his...
	What was it?
	Effective altruism. I'm just here to make the world...
	I don't want to... I just want to live in my car and make the world a better place.
	It's like, no, you don't.
	No, you don't. But because his parents are professors, I assume he knows all of the right buttons to push.
	So that's number three.
	Number four is if he is pushed hard by the mainstream media...
	Now, I, of course, take this somewhat personally, right, as somebody who's been roundly condemned by the mainstream media every single time.
	But if somebody is being promoted by the mainstream media as the next boy-wanderer, as the next genius, as the guy who's got it all sorted and figured out and is going to just ride your ponies all the way to the moon, yeah, well, see, the mainstream media really doesn't have any ability to determine good from evil, competent from incompetent, as a whole.
	So, if the mainstream media is pushing...
	As someone forward and elevating someone and making someone look good and giving you all of those, you know, soft-lit photographs.
	This CEO of Theranos is out for blood!
	And flattering pictures and positive reviews and so on.
	It's like, okay, well, the mainstream media doesn't know how to evaluate a business.
	I mean, if you knew how to evaluate a business, you'd think it'd be a reporter making $80,000 or $70,000 a year?
	No, if you knew how to evaluate a business...
	You'd be Warren Buffet.
	You'd be wealthy beyond words.
	No, no. I am fantastic at evaluating business, so I'm not going to do that for a living, but I'm instead going to write about businesses that other people can make money.
	I mean, come on. That's just...
	I mean, it's like when I was in the software world.
	I was chief technical officer, and of course, as a high up in an industry, in a company...
	I've got these calls, right?
	These calls. I'm sure you've had them one time or another in your life.
	The calls, like the beginning of the movie Wall Street, the calls are like, we've got a stock that's just about to pop.
	You've got to get in on it now.
	I'll take your money, right?
	And it's like, well, if you...
	I mean, I remember saying to the guy, if you know the stock's going to pop, why are you calling me?
	Why are you calling a stranger?
	This makes no sense. Why on earth would you be calling a stranger?
	If you genuinely knew that a stock was about to double, you wouldn't be telling anyone.
	You'd mortgage your kidney to get the money.
	So, yeah, I understand that this is the general pattern where they say a stock's going to pop, and that's because they get a bunch of people to buy it, and then they sell it, and then other people are left holding the bag.
	So, yeah, the mainstream media, or media as a whole, don't even get me started on Kramer, but, yeah, the mainstream media as a whole, they don't have any capacity to evaluate businesses.
	And so why would they push someone?
	Why would they push someone?
	Well, because they... They got the word that this is the guy to push.
	He's the new guy. He's the guy to push.
	Where does that word come from?
	I don't know. But it doesn't come from the deep analytical abilities of the reporters.
	I mean, my God, you've got to be...
	Yeah, go interview this guy.
	He's the next big thing. Here, here's a meal ticket and here's a plane ticket and go interview this guy and he's the next big thing.
	And the report, okay, I'll go. The idea that they're evaluating things, it's like there's this giant machinery, you know, there's giant machinery in the world and the people who are the typists are not generating these things themselves.
	So that's important as a whole.
	So yeah, anytime you get the star, anytime there's A mainstream pedigree, somebody from the ruling classes, somebody from the elites, and so on.
	Whenever the mainstream media is behind them, all of these things.
	And whenever there's no particular...
	Like, how do you know...
	Like, Bankman Freed, I don't know huge details about it, but what was his big innovation?
	Why was he... Well, he was just pushed, right?
	Oh, you've got to trade, and this is the guy to go to.
	And why?
	What was so special about what he was doing?
	Also, I mean, of course, you do have to be suspicious about fantastic rates.
	Kevin Bacon, right? So, I mean, people are saying, why is Bankman Freed still out there when Bernie Madoff was arrested almost right away?
	But Bernie Madoff confessed.
	Bernie Madoff confessed.
	I listened to a whole book on Bernie Madoff.
	So he confessed right away. When he just couldn't keep it going, he confessed and all of that, so...
	That's sort of a different matter.
	But don't worry. I'm sure that the prison cameras will keep him safe.
	That's all going to be just fine.
	So, yeah, these are just a couple of things that I would suggest.
	You know, just really be skeptical.
	Really be skeptical.
	And if somebody can't explain to you...
	I always used to have to boil this down.
	It was a very useful exercise.
	In the business world, it's called the elevator pitch.
	The elevator pitch is you're in an elevator and you have five floors to make your pitch.
	How are you going to convince someone to invest in you, in your business, and so on?
	The elevator pitch is really important.
	If somebody can't explain to you What the differentiator is, why is this guy going to be successful, and also how is this guy going to stay successful?
	How is he going to stay successful?
	Because becoming successful is one thing, but staying successful is really quite another.
	How is he going to stay successful?
	Is he going to have the right board?
	And so with Theranos, I'm certainly never tempted by anything to do with that, because, I mean, how is this magic occurring?
	How on earth is this magic occurring?
	How can you possibly run 500 or 1,000 tests on one drop of blood?
	How are you going to do that? How is that possible?
	And you also have to explain how businesses in the existing space, right?
	There are a lot of blood sampling businesses, a big business, right?
	How is it that they've not figured this out?
	How is it that this young girl has figured things out that people who've been in the business for decades and decades and decades haven't even remotely figured it out?
	So, you know, it's all sizzle, no steak.
	When it's sexy, when it's trying to appeal to your wonder, just business geniuses, and they can just walk on water and so on, oh yeah, no, they're prepping to take you to town.
	And that's kind of important.
	So, yeah, there's a couple of just tips that I would strongly suggest if you're thinking of investing.
	I'm not obviously giving any investment advice about anything whatsoever.
	I'm just telling you some of the ways that I look at These kinds of things.
	And, I mean, if you've read the Ayn Rand novels, I mean, Robert Stadler is, well, he's not unknown in sort of modern scientific circles, I think, in sort of allegorical ways.
	So here's how to avoid these things as far as I approach them.
	Obviously, do your own research and make your own decisions.
	I'm not recommending, or not recommending anything in particular, but just my approach.
	All right. Let me tip over to the questions from you, my friends.
	And again, if you have...
	It's a live chat, baby.
	Let's see here. Have you seen the documentary on Rumble?
	Died suddenly. If so, what are your thoughts?
	I have seen the documentary.
	As a guy who's made a couple of documentaries myself, you can find those at freedomain.com slash documentaries.
	I do find it when it's a really clear narrative that's one-sided.
	I... I appreciate some of the artistry and what goes into making it, but I really need to see the counter-arguments.
	And that's, you know, one of the things.
	So, hoaxedmovie.com, hoaxedmovie.com.
	Spoiler, I'm in it. But hoaxedmovie, Mike Cernovich started off with a big criticism of himself, which you can see when you see the movie.
	And he brings in counter-evidence, counter-examples, and so on.
	So, and that's what's nice about a debate.
	So there were people at the beginning of the pandemic, and I find this unforgivable, and so I just really am emphatic about this very strongly.
	So the people at the beginning of the pandemic who said everyone who's going to take the vax is dead in two years.
	Okay, that's monstrous.
	It's absolutely monstrous.
	It's a terrible, terrible thing to be wrong about.
	Now, there, of course, there were the other people who said, well, if you don't get vaccinated, you'll be dead in two years.
	And that's also a terrible...
	Remember the winter of disease and death and all that Biden, right?
	So it's just...
	It's terrible. So I don't...
	While I look at things, and I've looked at a wide variety of documentaries on, you know, pro and anti and left and right and so on, I find documentary that, you know, when you've made a couple yourself, you have a different view of sort of how they're put together and what's going on.
	So... When it's neatly wrapped up in a bow and it's one-sided and it's obvious, look, I don't know what kind of weird calamari they're pulling out of people.
	I do know that there were athletes who dropped dead suddenly.
	There's confirmation bias.
	If you're looking for people who drop dead suddenly, it gets spread around and suddenly something which may be unusual suddenly becomes extraordinary.
	And so I listened to all sides.
	I thought it was interesting. I would have much preferred them to have skeptics to counter the arguments.
	I don't like the stuff.
	It feels kind of manipulative.
	It feels that way to me.
	Kind of manipulative if you're just getting one side.
	Because then it's like, I'm certain.
	It's like, well, you're only certain because you haven't heard the other side.
	Alright, what's your vision for the future of the show, and how can we help you get there?
	Well, I do want to get back into doing documentaries.
	Really, really enjoyed those, and really like being out there chatting with people, so I would like to do that for sure.
	And I'm working...
	Oh man, I just passed 60,000 words on my new book.
	Oh man, it's so good.
	It's so good. I just get goosebumps, honestly.
	It's the wildest dialogue I've ever...
	You know, it sounds kind of precious.
	I've ever been privileged to witness because the characters are really, really vivid in my own head.
	So I'm working on that.
	So yeah, some documentaries...
	You know, obviously travel and speaking engagements are pretty dicey.
	There's a lot of violence and threats and so on.
	And that's just the nature of the beast.
	And so on. Happened to my ancestors.
	Happened to me. Happens to lots of good men and women throughout human history.
	But yeah, I definitely really, really enjoy working on the books.
	And if you haven't listened to The Future, you can get it for free, freedomain.locals.com.
	You can just use the promo code UPB, all caps, 2022.
	And you can get it for free.
	And you really should try it.
	It's a great book. All right.
	How can you help? Well, I mean, supporting the show.
	You know, documentaries are pretty expensive.
	It's pretty expensive. Film crew, sound crew, post-production music.
	It's pretty expensive stuff.
	I think it's worthwhile.
	I think it's worth it. And I'm very sort of pleased with the work that I've done on the documentaries in the past.
	But, yeah, it's not cheap.
	And the travel, of course.
	So, yeah, if you want to help out the show, freedomain.com forward slash donate is the best way to do that, and I would really, really appreciate that.
	Of course, again, I know it's tough for everyone.
	It has been, and basic points just went up another half point today.
	But if you can, if you can, you know, Christmas is coming, and I promise not to do any...
	Mariah Carey. I can't promise that.
	Who can, really? If you're in the shower and you're feeling it.
	But yeah, freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show.
	I appreciate that. All right. Questions for tonight.
	What have we got here? Have I had a coffee?
	I have had 12. No, actually, I can only do two cups of coffee a day.
	After that, it's no longer pleasant.
	I just get a little too wired. All right.
	When we talk about ideology, why do people think it is a historical construct?
	How do we make people understand that it is a philosophical construct?
	I do not understand that question.
	Please feel. Please rephrase.
	Hi, Steph. I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.
	Approximately five years ago, in one of your recent shows, you said that people with personality disorders can't be fixed.
	I have worked really hard and made a lot of progress.
	Can you elaborate on what you mean about can't be fixed, and to what extent you mean?
	When I hear things like this, it makes me feel discouraged, and it would really help my growth to have your insight.
	Well, okay, so first and foremost, diagnosis is a term that is borrowed.
	So diagnosis is a term, as you know, that is borrowed from the medical literature.
	Where you do a differential diagnosis, you attempt to eliminate particular causalities to symptoms and so on, and then you narrow it down to what is actually the physical ailment.
	You know, like the simple experience is you have an ear infection, and they put you on some antibiotics.
	The antibiotics don't fix it, so they put you on other antibiotics, which hopefully do fix it.
	They know it's an infection. They try, oh, it's this bug.
	They give you the antibiotics. It doesn't work.
	So there's kind of a diagnosis that goes on.
	And they can puff air into your ears to check for liquid and so on, that kind of stuff, right?
	And so this is the show House, right?
	House MD with, oh, the almond-faced woman and the British guy.
	So you can sort of watch one of those shows.
	Now, diagnosis is a physical, an act of physical activity.
	Examination of body, of fluid, of symptoms and so on to come up with the actual course.
	They're tracking a physical thing.
	Now, diagnosed with regards to mental issues, it's a checkbox.
	There's no physical test.
	There's no blood test.
	There's no biological test.
	It is a bunch of checkbox with a whole bunch of overlapping stuff.
	And you can look at, I mean, gosh, Thomas Sarr's Peter Bregan writes about this, gosh, the epidemic of madness is also really good.
	So the basic idea, and I'm really paraphrasing here, is that we have vastly expanded our, quote, treatment and, quote, diagnosis of mental health issues over the past years.
	Very briefly, the story goes something like this.
	I mean, madness has always been a huge issue in society, how to cure it, how to deal with it.
	I'm not calling you mad. I'm just talking about the general history of mental health issues and all that.
	And people have tried a variety of things.
	There was, of course, the theory that it was demonic possession, which didn't obviously get solved by priests.
	There was the theory that there was a kind of epilepsy.
	There was a theory that if you put them in ice water and so on, you could beat crazy out of people, and usually crazy is beaten into people.
	That didn't work out very well. You could put them in ice-cold baths.
	You could inject them. I think there was high doses of insulin.
	There's also been electroshock therapy.
	I mean, just a wide variety of things.
	And in general, I believe, just in complete armchair, amateur opinion, I happen to believe that most of these mental ailments can be traced back to child abuse and suffering that is unacknowledged, unprocessed, and unconscious sometimes.
	So, What happened was, I think it was in the 60s, some guy, a reporter, went to a psychiatrist and said, you know, I hear the word bang and thud in my head.
	That's it. And the psychiatrist said, oh, okay, well, you're hearing voices, it puts you in an asylum, right?
	Or a mental health institution or whatever you want to call it.
	And then after that, the reporter was perfectly normal.
	He spoke perfectly loosely.
	He said, this is what I'm doing.
	It's just kind of a joke. I'm reporting on this.
	Ask me anything you want. I'm perfectly sane and all of that.
	But he wasn't let out.
	They would not believe that he was sane, even when he admitted everything that he was doing.
	So he wrote these articles and he said, like, this is ridiculous.
	Like, if I say I have a giant tumor and then I go in and, you know, they can't find the tumor and so on, they'll say, well, you're not sick.
	There's some objective measure, right?
	But he couldn't convince the people running the mental health institution that he was saying and all that.
	So just from that one statement, he just ended up being kind of trapped in this system for a while.
	So he wrote this article, and this was a great sting to the pride and professional reputation of psychiatrists and so on.
	So then one of the psychiatrists, I think he was running the hospital, he said, okay, come on, come on, you send me some more people, I'll figure them out.
	Like, same afternoon.
	I interview them for 10 minutes, I'll figure out who you're sending in, who you're fooling me, right?
	And the guy said, okay, I will.
	And then a certain amount of time later, the psychiatrist gleefully published an article saying, oh, it's this guy, this guy, this guy, and this guy, and this woman too.
	Totally, this was sent by this reporter, they're not crazy at all, blah, blah, blah, right?
	And then the reporter said, I actually didn't send anyone.
	I didn't send anyone. You vouched me insane when I was sane, and you vouched these people sane when you have told them or you've been told that they're insane.
	So it's really soupy-goopy stuff, my friend.
	So I'm just, you know, from my perspective, and of course you can see the DSM-1 was like 60 pages.
	The DSM-4, I think, was the last one.
	It's in the thousands and thousands.
	I mean, you should hear the process about how they come up with these definitions of mental illness, arguing about, oh, you should include this, oh, don't include that, oh, you've got to be crazy to include that.
	No physical tests.
	It is all a war of words.
	Now, that's not to say that suffering is not real.
	That's not to say that mental anguish and mental problems are not real.
	They're very, very real.
	I'm not trying to say that at all.
	But the diagnosis stuff?
	Now, as far as I know, and remember, I have zero accreditation or expertise in this area at all.
	Nothing. Nothing. Don't take anything I say as any kind of gospel.
	But my understanding is that characterologic personality disorders, where you lack an observing ego to compare your actions to, is very tough to treat.
	Now, as far as I understand it, people with the more extreme forms of personality, those personality structures will tend to mellow over time.
	But if you have been working really hard and you've been making real improvements, first of all, fantastic, good for you.
	Unbelievably great for you.
	And you should be so proud of that.
	I would kneel before you if you could see me because that is just an incredible task to take on.
	And the respect that I have for you for taking on these challenges and learning how to become more rational and more solid, more sensible, and to deal with that is fantastic.
	I like to think, if you listen to the show, maybe philosophy can have a tiny little bit to do with that.
	I mean, philosophy is about organizing your thoughts and connecting you to reality and trying to be consistent in your approach to things, and it promotes empathy because we're all people with feelings and we should take that into account.
	So... When I say my understanding is that personality disorders can't be fixed, I don't want to make this like some sort of, well, if you can be fixed, clearly you don't have a personality disorder because that's not a rational statement.
	But I would certainly like to say that I'm thrilled.
	If you are an exception to the rule that I've heard about, fantastic.
	You should be incredibly proud.
	And please don't take anything from me as far as what you are or are not capable of.
	So, all right.
	So let's see here. Well, there are studies, I think it was in Finland, they set up schizophrenia, which often hits in late teens, is considered to be somewhat manageable by medication, but somewhat, like, can't really be fixed.
	But there's whole areas, whole treatment protocols in, I think it's Finland, and I'm sorry if I got this wrong, where people who have schizophrenia are fixed, as far as I know.
	So, yeah, it's pretty wild.
	All right. Yeah, Cassie J's, the red pill, has that kind of balance as well.
	Yes. Yes.
	Yes. Scott Adams says that the clot worms are simply because of refrigeration of corpses.
	I don't know what Mr.
	Adams says. You could be right.
	I would hesitate to explain that away because...
	I mean, look, it's tough.
	I would assume that the pathologists who deal with this stuff, the undertakers who deal with this stuff, would be aware of that as a variable and would be seeing something new.
	On the other hand, there is great...
	There's great fame available to people who take up a narrative without ambiguity.
	Right? Just be aware of this.
	There's great fame and prominence.
	You get invited to be in documentaries.
	You get invited to speak at conferences.
	You get a huge number of readers to your substack.
	You get prominence, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	If you present, like, if you appeal to one side or the other of any particular debate and You can make that case as if there's no ambiguity.
	I'm not accusing anyone in particular, just as a general principle.
	Then you can get great form.
	You can get great rewards out of that, both financial and emotional and status and all that.
	So I do think that it's important to have debates about these things.
	I'm enormously...
	I'm very angry at the people who said, oh, the vaccines are going to kill you.
	That's just awful. Just awful.
	And I'm also, of course, very angry at the people who said 100% safe and effective.
	Because neither of those two positions is correct.
	All right, let's see here.
	Hey, Steph, I started receiving child support payments in my 30s because the government couldn't track him down earlier.
	Is it moral to accept them?
	Well, that is a very interesting question.
	So you had children with a guy.
	It could be one, it could be more.
	I would just say children for the sake of convenience.
	So you had children with a guy and you couldn't get a hold of him.
	Oh, so... The government found him and is now getting the child support payments out of him?
	Is it moral to accept these?
	Well, so as far as I understand it, the government is going and deducting its source right there, taking money from his paycheck and giving it to you?
	So my question would be this.
	Look, taking government money, not taking government money, we're all in this soupy stew together.
	Or you can't drive on roads because they're built by the government.
	You can't use water because governments run the sewers and you can't use electricity.
	So we all have to have some level of accommodation with the system that is.
	So that's sort of my first opinion about that.
	So here's the thing.
	The question is...
	Not what you want, not whether it's right or wrong with regards to the government, because it's all very cloudy as far as that stuff goes, right?
	I mean, you pay taxes, you get money back, it's all very cloudy.
	But the real question to me is, what is going to be the best approach to prevent your children from recreating the mess you made?
	And it is a mess to have kids with a guy who bolts as a total mess, right?
	So, how...
	Is your decision to take this going to affect your children?
	Your children are going to be looking at you, and what are they going to get out of that?
	Now, whatever is going to transfer the most responsibility, transfer the most ownership, transfer the most avoidance of this kind of mess, I believe it's probably the best thing to do as a parent.
	I don't know the answer.
	Obviously, if you want to call in, we can talk about it more.
	I don't know the answer to this, but I would not focus on the government, I would not focus on your ex, and I would not focus on yourself.
	Whatever decision you make that is going to be the best for your children in terms of how they're going to approach life and the challenges of life, whatever decision you make should be guided, must be guided, I think, by what is best for your children.
	And I can't answer that, of course, right?
	There's a book recommendation here, Get Me Out of Here, My Recovery from Borderline Personality Disorder.
	I have no idea. I can't recommend or not.
	Somebody says, if the clots were the result of routine refrigeration, then there would be reference to them in the literature for training pathologists and morticians.
	Yeah, again, is there or is there not?
	I really don't know.
	I really couldn't tell you.
	But I like to see people who are in strong disagreement having an open debate.
	And it's quite tragic, of course, that people shun debates about topics that they consider unworthy or bad or politically incorrect or something like that.
	So, yeah, where there are significant differences of opinion about very important things, the more debates, the better.
	But, of course, the problem is a lot of people on the government side of things, why would they debate?
	I mean, they're already getting their paycheck.
	They can't really get fired.
	They're almost going to face inevitably no consequences for bad decisions.
	So why on earth would they debate?
	Would they bother debating?
	Alright, thanks. Yeah, I just bought this book, Body Keeps the Score.
	Let me see if I can copy of it.
	And I don't mean to plug it, but it seems right up your alley with what you talk about a lot.
	I was just wondering if you ever read it and if you have an opinion on it.
	That's all. What's the book?
	Let me get it right here.
	This is totally impromptu.
	though I didn't plan this.
	The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der...
	The sticker's covering the author's name.
	I can mail you information later.
	No, so the book is The Body Keeps the Score.
	So this is the argument, as far as I understand it, and Gabra Mattei, M-A-T-E, has a book probably on the same lines about how...
	The author's name is Bessel van der Kolk, MD. Go ahead.
	Bessel van der Kolk, okay. Yeah, so I think the argument is that, you know, stress and difficulties and problems, I mean, there's upwards of 90% of ailments are stress-related, for sure, and I've heard even higher numbers than that.
	So the idea that if you suffer trauma early on, it can have significant effects on your health down the road.
	Well, we know this, of course. I mean, the bomb in the brain stuff that I was doing 12 or 13 years ago.
	Severe child abuse that is not dealt with can take 20 years off your lifespan.
	It's an environmental toxin of the first order, which is why I really strongly encourage people to deal with childhood trauma.
	Yes, I certainly have heard the arguments, and I think that they're very important to try and deal with.
	If you've got childhood trauma, it's very, very important, in my humble opinion, to really work on trying to Deal with that, to process that, and to get yourself into a safe or less stressful environment.
	Thank you so much.
	I'll read the book, and I'll email you my thoughts on it.
	Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. Bye.
	This person wrote, As a teacher, I've seen many people with successful careers, but who are failing as parents.
	From doctors, financial experts, and entrepreneurs, they had created an impressive, lucrative, respectable career.
	But their work ethic, drive, discipline and so on was a way of keeping themselves away from self-knowledge.
	It's as if they thought they simply had to become wealthier versions of their own bad parents or perhaps maintain the same income level of their own wealthy but still bad parents.
	Don't envy wealth.
	Don't envy titles.
	Don't envy someone's career or accomplishments.
	Without self-knowledge it's meaningless and the children pay the ultimate price.
	Self-knowledge and virtue is what gives you the foundation for a happy life, one that can also lead to wealth, but wealth without self-knowledge and virtue is just self-destruction, or if you survive, destruction of the family.
	Yes, one of the things that conditioned me as a parent, as a father, was the experience of seeing a lot of successful people in the business world who were just unhappy.
	Very successful people. I was in one meeting, a very high-level meeting, and there was an eruption of caustic laughter at the other end of the board table, of the business table.
	And one of the Men was laughing at the expense of the other man.
	You could see it was kind of mean and kind of cruel.
	And it turns out that the other man was so lonely that he'd ordered a bride from, I don't know, Eastern Europe or Russia or something like that.
	And it just was going like really, really badly and so on.
	And that's just wild, right?
	Just these people were very wealthy and very successful and so on.
	And yeah, just lonely and caustic and working with...
	Just the most terrible situations from a personality standpoint.
	You see the people who are very successful.
	One of the most successful and brilliant programmers I ever knew was going through a brutal divorce when I knew him.
	It was just awful.
	It was just awful. He planned to go on a world trip and he couldn't because of his ex-wife and her machinations.
	It was just appalling.
	Just terrible, terrible stuff.
	I saw a lot of people who had a lot of money.
	I knew a fellow whose son was completely off the rails, like just heading to jail off the rails.
	Oof, you know, I mean, wouldn't trade that for the world.
	You couldn't give me enough money.
	I mean, I mentioned this the other day.
	Matthew Perry in his biography was saying that a friend of his is basically broke and diabetic and never made it as an actor, and so I need to hit this.
	I'd trade lives with that guy in a moment if it meant I hadn't been addicted to all these drugs.
	He's sort of 60 Vicodin a day or something like that.
	Do you consider Austrian economics to be philosophical?
	Sorry, do you consider Austrian economists to be philosophers as well?
	I mean, honestly, I know this sounds like a bit of a cop-out.
	Everyone's a philosopher because everyone has justifications or reasons or meaning behind what they do.
	Why are you doing this? Well, because of this or this good thing or this good thing.
	Why did you hit me? Because I thought it was the right thing to do as a parent.
	Why did you ignore me? Well, I wanted to work for the family.
	I thought it was the best thing to do. Everybody has justifications according to abstract principles for whatever it is that they do.
	So, everyone is a philosopher.
	Austrian economists? Yeah, I would say so, for sure.
	I mean... They certainly have interesting liberations from correctness.
	I mean, one of the things I read, gosh, many, many years ago, was an economist saying, and it was just like a throwaway comment, and it was an economist saying, well, of course, an economist can't tell you whether it's better to save or spend.
	And I was like, huh? No, no, no.
	Saving is better than spending.
	Because saving, you've got a cushion, and you can invest, and it's good for the economy, and blah, blah, blah, right?
	And he said, well, of course economists can't tell you whether it's better to save or to spend.
	And that really sent, like, it just knocked me out of my chair, almost.
	Like, I was just like, whoa! Because, you know, I grew up with a very penny-wise, pound-foolish, hoard your stuff, a penny saved is a penny earned, you know, just save, save, save.
	This was how I grew up, and it's a bit of a Protestant thing, and it certainly is something that influenced my relationship to money, and in some ways good, and in some ways not so good, but I think overall for the better.
	And just this idea that it's just costs and benefits.
	There's no solution. There's just trade-offs.
	Now, with morals, that's a different matter.
	But yeah, in life, one of the things that people will try to do to control your behavior is they will say to you, well, it's just good versus evil.
	It's saints versus Nazis.
	It's people who are just inclusive versus those horrible, ostracizing, exclusionary, blah, blah, blah, right?
	And to do that, and to implant that, you know, any criticism of group X is just bigotry and blah, blah, blah.
	It's like, oh, really? Are we going to have whole groups in society you can't question or criticize?
	That doesn't seem quite right. It doesn't seem too fair.
	It seems like a bit of a losing game.
	So... They will try to program you through extremes.
	And one of the great things that economics does is it says, well, there aren't solutions.
	What's the solution to the problem of poverty?
	Now, steadfastly resisting solutions, well, no, there are no solutions to the problem of poverty.
	There are costs and benefits. There are trade-offs.
	You can give money to the poor.
	And that helps them in the moment.
	But the problem is, you then are incentivizing people to be poor, and because you're giving money to the poor, rather than, say, investing it in a business, there will be fewer jobs for the poor in the future.
	You know, you can give money to moms who have kids, single moms who have kids, give them money.
	Okay, yes, but then you weaken the family, and you promote irresponsible sexual relations, and so on, and so you end up with more down the road.
	And of course all of this was perfectly well predicted by the Austrian economists in the 60s, well, gosh, back to the 20s with Ludwig von Mises' work on socialism.
	So there is a moral element to Austrian economics in that there is no perfect answer, there is no perfect solution, there are only trade-offs.
	And because there are only trade-offs, you can't use force.
	There's no trade-off in terms of like if someone's coming at you with a chainsaw and you have to kill them to save your life.
	I mean, that's not a cost-benefit analysis.
	That's, you know, if somebody's initiating the use of lethal force against you, you damn well have the right to protect yourself and kill them to save your life.
	So, Austrian economics is very powerful in In pushing back against government programs.
	Because government programs hold out this demonic delusion that we have.
	We have the solution, folks. We have the solution.
	Pay more taxes? Control the weather.
	We have the solution, man.
	Oh, there's a low birth rate?
	Oh, no, mass immigration.
	That's totally the solution.
	Well, I don't...
	There's costs and benefits.
	So, if people were better trained in Austrian economics, When people came at them with a simplistic solution, oh, women are underrepresented in the workforce?
	Oh, well, we'll just pass a law that women have to be hired.
	Well, that's saying that there's one perfect solution with no trade-offs.
	All right, so I remember an economist, I think this was in a book called The Undercover Economist that I read, I don't know, like 20 years ago or whatever, right?
	And he says, you know, people say, well, you know, it's far better To buy a house than to rent an apartment.
	Because buying a house, you're gaining equity.
	You're gaining an asset.
	It's yours. And he's like, hell.
	You're just comparing the pluses of ownership with the minuses of renting.
	You're not comparing any of the pluses of renting to the minuses of ownership.
	And once you're trained in any decent economist, right?
	I mean, it's the old statement. The FDR said, I'd like to meet a one-armed economist one day so he doesn't forever say, on the other hand...
	Because that's a fact, right?
	The ambiguity, complexity, and no-perfect-solution nature of economists and economics pushes hard back against people who dangle some perfect solution in front of you in the form of a government program, right? So they say...
	Well, we'll just lock down and wear masks, and that will control the spread.
	Okay, let's say even if it did control the spread, and I'm not sure that it did, but let's say that it did.
	Okay, so you're comparing the benefits as if there are no minuses.
	Well, this controls the spread of airborne viruses.
	It's like, okay, I got it.
	But lockdowns, alcoholism goes up, drug use goes up, depression goes up, suicides go up, lack of preventive care goes up, access to health goes down.
	A lack of preventive care goes up, access to health care goes down, and you can just go on and on and on.
	So if people say, well, this is the solution, we have to lock down, as if there's no minuses.
	There's no debate. Wherever there's no debate, I don't believe anything.
	Wherever there's no debate, I don't believe anything.
	I mean, other than the evidence of my senses and, you know, reason and so on, empiricism.
	But no, if there's no...
	So whenever people say, well, the answer is lockdown.
	The answer is this. The answer is, well, to solve problems, you've got a welfare state.
	Okay, well, what are the downsides?
	There aren't any. Well, then, it's a power grab.
	You're just trying to program. You're trying to take away my free will by pretending that there's only one rational solution.
	There's only one productive solution.
	I remember saying in a debate some years ago with a communist, and I said, look, The amount of money in the welfare state going to the poor is vastly bigger, many times bigger than the entire GDP of the world when Marx was writing the Communist Manifesto.
	So Marx argued that redistribution, ownership of the means of production and redistribution would solve the problem of poverty.
	And now, many times more money is flowing to the poor than the entire GDP of the world that Marx wrote in.
	So clearly this is not the case, right?
	If I say $10,000 will solve the problem of poverty, and then when a million dollars is being handed over, the problem of poverty has not even remotely been solved, but in fact has gotten worse, then clearly my initial argument was incorrect, right?
	Because if $10,000 doesn't solve it, then 10,000 times that doesn't solve it, right?
	And, I mean, there's Kind of irrefutable.
	And an Austrian economics approach to this, and there were, of course, many Austrian economists who roundly criticized the welfare state, saying that it was going to incentivize poverty, and it's the same thing that Charles Murray argued about in losing ground, which then became, to some degree, policy under Clinton and so on.
	So you can't just come up with solutions, because the temptation when you come up with one-sided solutions that are perfect and will solve the problem absolutely is then, well, you might as well use force.
	Whereas if you say, okay, well, the costs and benefits, you're simply providing the benefits without providing the costs.
	You say, oh, well, if you buy a house, you end up owning the house.
	Yes, that's a plus. For sure, that's a plus.
	But if you don't buy the house, you have all this money available to start your own business, to invest, to go on a world trip, and nobody can tell you.
	An economist cannot tell you at all whether going on a world trip is better than buying a house.
	Can't possibly say that.
	Can't possibly tell you that.
	Should you go to college or tour Europe?
	Nobody can tell you that.
	There's costs and benefits. Nobody can give you that answer.
	Nobody can give you that answer.
	Value. Value is subjective.
	I mean, one of the problems that happens with poverty is that smart, wealthy people who've worked their way out of poverty look back upon poverty and say, my God, if I was in that situation, I'd be so depressed and unhappy.
	I've got to save these people.
	I mean, the lack of empathy for the poor is ridiculous.
	Listen, I'll tell you this, and I grew up in significant poverty.
	I've been all over wealthy, middle class, poor, poor, poor, all that kind of stuff.
	I've been a rambling guy.
	I've seen all the classes, even the super, super rich classes I've spent some time in.
	So it's actually quite simple.
	Some people prefer being poor.
	Now, obviously they prefer being poor and be given money too, but no, some people prefer being poor.
	And I can't disagree with them about that.
	Because listen, man, there are some fantastic benefits to being poor.
	You don't have the stress of losing your money.
	You don't have the extra hours of work that you have to do to become wealthy.
	And if you grew up poor, you don't have to change your entire social class if you become middle class or wealthy.
	You don't have to figure out how the other half lives.
	You don't end up isolated because you're coming in with sort of soot-stained hands into a white-glove garden party.
	You're not Stanley Kowalski at the Algonquin Roundtable.
	So there's lots of benefits to being poor.
	Your time is your own.
	Your social class is set.
	You don't have to adapt. You don't have to change.
	You don't have to confront yourself.
	You don't have to face the envy of people you grew up with who are poor when you become wealthy.
	You don't have people rolling their eyes and say, oh, you're too good for us now.
	You don't have people who constantly want to come to you and have you give them money.
	Hey, man, I hope you did really well.
	I hope you're doing really well. I just knew that, right?
	So there are a lot of benefits to staying poor.
	Now, you don't get to save Twitter from activist investors, but there are lots of benefits to staying poor.
	And you don't have to challenge yourself.
	If you were raised by poor parents who beat you down, Then you don't have to challenge them and grow past them.
	You know, breaking through that ceiling of the expectations and lives of those around you, it's really hard, man.
	It's really hard.
	That glass ceiling of you've got to abandon everywhere you came from in order to do better, oof, you know, it's really hard.
	It's really hard.
	When I began to become successful in the business world and had my Little smidgen of success in the podcasting world.
	It was not the easiest thing from a sort of historical standpoint, from an early friendship standpoint and so on.
	And honestly, you just end up with a little bit less in common each time, right?
	There's a great line from Gertrude Stein about her brother.
	She said, little by little...
	We never met again. Little by little.
	I mean, you have this, of course, right?
	You have this if you grew up with a bunch of singletons and then you get married.
	And they're still out there trying to find the right person and having bad dates and so on.
	I mean, yes, it's not that the train tracks just immediately go 90 degrees, but they start to separate.
	They start to part. And it's really huge.
	I would just prepare you for that.
	It's really huge when you have kids.
	Man, it's really huge when you have kids.
	Holy crap. When you have kids, I mean, you have babies and you've got no time left for yourself, like none.
	And you just can't get up and go and you're tired and you're just a bit of a resource black hole.
	You just need people's help. And I mean, I mentioned this before, like I had a friend.
	He'd been a friend of mine for like 20 years.
	And the guy inherited a car.
	And wouldn't get his license.
	I lived out in the burbs.
	So if we wanted to meet the guy, we'd have to drive for an hour and a half with a baby in the winter sometimes.
	And it's like, just at some point, I was like, no, man, no.
	Well, I can't make it out there to you, man.
	It's like, well, you just get a license.
	Well, you know, it's complicated, it's difficult, and I have to pay insurance and blah, blah, blah.
	It's like, okay, well, then save your money.
	Save the friendship or save your money.
	I'm not going to drive.
	For an hour and a half, in the snow and ice, with a baby, every time we want to get together.
	Like, I'm not going to do it. So, you have kids, and, you know, if you have other people who have kids, you have even more in common, you hang out together and so on, but, you know, you just part ways.
	You just part ways.
	People who don't sort of keep up with you in the generally decent life journey, you know, get some skills, make a little money, get a wife, get a husband, have kids, you know, Get some reasonable degree of success and so on.
	I mean, that to me is a reasonable life arc.
	It's not for everyone, for sure.
	It's not for everyone. And I mean, there were times, even after I was in the business world, where I had almost no income.
	When I met my wife, I was writing The God of Atheists.
	I was writing Almost. I was taking one of Canada's most prestigious writing courses.
	I had an agent.
	I was working on query letters.
	Like, I was really trying to make a go of it as a novelist.
	And I was dead ass broke as far as income went, right?
	And I chose that.
	I mean, think of a monk, right? Monks choose poverty.
	They're happy with it. And they would consider wealth to be a temptation.
	There are lots of people Who prefer being poor.
	Now, there's some people who have, you know, if you have some mental handicaps and so on, then you're not going to make a lot of money.
	And look, perfectly charity for those people, absolutely, of course, right?
	It's not their fault. And we should have every shred or ounce of compassion and affection and respect for people in this way.
	But other people, you know, if people don't want to make, like let's say they're capable of it, and they choose not to make money, I choose not to make much money.
	And I'm not talking about the people, like I remember many years ago being out in California and being on a bus with a guy who was like, oh yeah, I'm on disability.
	Where are you heading? I'm going surfing.
	I'm like, oh dude, come on, right?
	I mean, I'm not talking about that kind of predatory stuff.
	I'm just talking about people who, they don't want to work more than 30 hours a week.
	Hey, I got no problem with that.
	I have no problem. I don't consider that a problem at all because I can't tell someone objectively whether working 30 hours a week Is good or bad?
	I can't tell them that. I can't possibly tell them that.
	I can tell them, for instance, if they want to put their kids in daycare, I can say, yeah, well, daycare, you know, there's some pretty strong evidence that it's pretty bad for kids and so on, and you probably don't want to be bounced into an old-age home when you get old, and why have kids in order to...
	Like, I just had a call with a woman whose mother...
	This is amazing to me.
	Her mother, when she was 10 months old, her mother put her in daycare So that her mother could go and work where?
	In a different daycare.
	I mean, do you get that?
	Her mother put her in daycare so that she could go and work at a different daycare.
	And of course, she said, her mother would take all her paycheck from working at daycare and give it to the other daycare to take care of her kid.
	Well, I can say that's probably not a good idea.
	So there's some moral things and so on.
	Like if somebody says, well, what are the costs and benefits of cheating on my wife?
	It's like, no, you don't cheat on your wife.
	You made a vow. Your wife married you on the expectation of monogamy, so you don't cheat on your wife or your girlfriend if you're in a monogamous relationship.
	So the idea that poverty is a huge problem to be solved in society, I don't get it.
	I don't get it. Like a friend of mine's mom, when I was growing up, she worked part-time as a bookkeeper.
	She had a little apartment.
	She owned nothing. She made very little.
	I'm sure she got some sort of government pensions and so on, right?
	But she enjoyed playing canasta.
	She enjoyed cooking for her son and his friends.
	And yes, I would go over there sometimes on Thanksgiving and she would have this food and it would be pretty heavily salted.
	She was Scottish. And then we would play cards or we would play Trivial Pursuit or something.
	And it was nice.
	It was very nice. And she lived in this tiny apartment.
	And she worked, I don't know, 20, 30 hours a week.
	Maybe 20, probably. Nothing much, right?
	Now, what's wrong with that?
	It's not a problem to be solved.
	You turn it into a problem to be solved if people can make money portraying it as a problem.
	You turn it into a problem to be solved if you start paying people for it to be a problem.
	What's wrong with being poor?
	Because you're poor, you're rich in time.
	You're rich in horizontal social connections.
	You don't have to challenge your upbringing.
	You don't have to vault out. And you don't have to risk nearly as much failure if you kind of stay living small.
	And I worked, you know, I worked in restaurants for a long time when I was a teenager into my early 20s.
	And there were, I worked at this restaurant, seafood restaurant downtown.
	There was a guy there. I was, I don't know, 22 or something like that.
	And there was a guy down there. He was like in his mid-30s.
	Seemed pretty old to me at the time.
	And he was just a waiter. He's like, yeah, I go from high-end restaurant.
	It's what I want to do, man. I love it.
	He wasn't like a waiter trying to be an actor.
	He wasn't like a waiter to pay for school.
	He was just like, I'm a waiter. I love it.
	It's the life for me, man. I'll be a waiter until I die.
	Couldn't be happier. And I met a lot of people like that.
	A lot of people who look at the boss with pity.
	My God, are you kidding me? He's got to work nights, weekends.
	He gets yelled at by customers.
	A lot of stress. No thanks.
	I knew people who worked retail into their 30s and may have worked...
	I mean, when I was working at Pizza Hut, there were women in their 60s who were waiters and they made pretty good coin.
	What's wrong with that? I mean, it's healthier for you than a desk job, I think, being able to walk around all day.
	So, yeah, just this idea that poverty is just this...
	Of course, if you weep and wail and cry over poverty and we want to help you and we've got a few money, then suddenly people are like, oh, yeah, no, it's a huge problem.
	It's like if a kid falls...
	I remember reading this poem.
	I'm paraphrasing it enormously.
	It was a poem when I was younger. Like, the kid falls by the pool, gets up, everyone looks at him with their hand over their mouth, then he bursts into tears, because everyone thinks he's really injured.
	He's like, oh my god. Right?
	Freaks out, because he thinks everyone's seeing something terrible.
	I mean, so... People call me up, and it's like, I'm poor, right?
	So? What's wrong with that?
	Why I don't like being poor?
	Well, you like it relative to the alternative.
	Otherwise, you'd have done the alternative.
	Empirically, what you're doing is what you prefer to do, right?
	I mean, you understand that, right? Empirically, what you're doing is what you prefer to do.
	And a single mom gets pregnant.
	She has unprotected sex.
	She gets pregnant. She has a big liability.
	My argument is, well, I hope the sex was good.
	Because, you know, unprotected sex is better than a condom, right?
	So you had something that you preferred.
	You rolled the dice, and unfortunately, the day the dice came up, you had a baby, or fortunately, depending on whether you wanted it or not.
	But people who study history, I studied history.
	What did I study? I studied English literature, I studied dramatic arts and playwriting, and I studied history.
	And then graduate degree in history of philosophy, give or take.
	And I vaulted into the workforce, and what job skills did I have?
	Well, fortunately, I'd been a computer programmer hobbyist for many years, so I was able to do that.
	I didn't get any of that for my education.
	Nobody was interested in my education when I was working there.
	I think the fact that I had a graduate degree showed intelligence.
	It's like one of these annoying IQ tests, because you're not allowed to take the real one.
	You've got to take this six-year nonsense one.
	But... It's like I really enjoyed it.
	I loved my time in university.
	I had a great time in university.
	Particularly graduate school.
	Graduate school was paradise, man.
	I had to work on my own stuff. I got to read books all day.
	I got to write all day. It was glorious.
	I got to have seminars and debates with people.
	I acted in plays.
	I was just going to the gym.
	I played squash all the time.
	It's fantastic. Well, it's tough getting a job afterwards.
	Yeah, but I had a lot more fun than if I'd taken engineering.
	It's just costs and benefits.
	And crawling out from these have-tos, you have to go to college, it's like, well, there are costs and benefits.
	There are costs and benefits.
	I mean, you look at what seems to be a horribly disastrous marriage, it's like Harry and Meghan Markle, right?
	Well, she's charming, she's charismatic, she's pretty.
	So he went for looks, and also, you know, he's kind of a lost guy, it seems to me.
	And she gave him, you know, the woke cause, right?
	The people who were kind of lost.
	I wrote many years ago, rage is boredom spread thin.
	Causes are ambition, ambition spread even thinner.
	So if you don't really know what to do with your life and somebody tells you, well, we have to achieve equality, oh, okay, that's what I'm going to do with my life.
	And that just becomes your focus, right?
	You don't, you're just moving chess pieces around to try and create equality.
	It's nonsense and it's dangerous with the state, for sure.
	And, of course, the government school system is promoting massive amounts of inequality because schools are paid for by local property taxes, which means, in general, the schools in the worst neighborhoods get the least money in many ways.
	I know there's some exceptions to that, of course, many, but it's a terrible system.
	So he got a pretty woman With a cause.
	He's got a cause. He's now going to fix the world and make everything equal and everyone equal and he's going to oppose injustice.
	So he doesn't have to be a moral guy.
	He just has to have a cause.
	And a cause is a great excuse for people to get angry.
	And once you can get people angry at the wrong things, they can't fix their lives.
	Because fixing your life is getting angry at the right things.
	It's an old Thomas Pinchot quote, right?
	Once they can get you asked the wrong questions, they don't care about the answers.
	So That's a bad marriage.
	Now, from my view, it's cost-benefits, right?
	It's cost-benefit. Okay, she's pretty, she's charming, she's talented, she's charismatic, and she comes with all of these causes.
	And he gets to feel like a really virtuous guy for pursuing all these causes.
	Okay, well, so you get these benefits.
	Now, the cost is, I would assume, that you're pretty unhappy, but, you know, what can I tell you, right?
	Somebody goes and spends all their money on some expensive vacation, they come back and they can't afford whatever they need, right?
	Chip a tooth, they've got to go to the dentist, they can't afford it, right?
	It's like, well, but you enjoyed your vacation, right?
	You enjoyed your vacation.
	When I was 12, 13 years old, oh, God help the people in my apartment building because I read voraciously.
	And there was a charity, which people had to pay 25 cents for every book you read over a month or two.
	And, of course, I just read and read and read, and people had to pay quite a bit of money.
	But it was all real, all valid.
	So I did that sort of charity work every year, twice a year, I think, sometimes.
	Anyway, so I was chatting with this one woman who was like, oh, that's a lot of money.
	You're going to be very successful.
	You're a good reader.
	That's important, right? And we fell to chatting.
	It was an Indian woman, and she was a single mom.
	And she had two really, really nice daughters, and we were great playmates.
	And she was telling me about her sister.
	You know, her sister was a party girl, and her sister traveled and all of that, and was constantly broke and all of that.
	Whereas this woman, she worked a job.
	When her kids were in bed, she did night school, and she ended up moving out of the apartment because she bought a little house and so on.
	I would chat with her sometimes.
	I used to play Monopoly with her daughters when I was like 12, and it was great fun.
	And I would chat with her sometimes.
	And this idea, you know, she'd say, well, you know, my daughter's going to be sorry.
	Sorry, my sister's going to be sorry.
	This was a sort of big refrain.
	My sister's going to be sorry. All these people bringing these conversations back to life like 52 years later.
	No, 42, 40, oh my god, I should be able to do this math, what's wrong with me?
	44 years later, thank you, I'm back, 44 years later.
	So, now, but I, you know, my feeling was, it's just cost and benefits.
	And now, I'm not saying I was some big Austrian economist, I'm not trying to sort of paint backwards versus, oh, he said, but I figured all this stuff out when I was 12.
	No, no, no, because, I mean...
	I knew I had to study for tests, but I didn't like studying for tests.
	So sometimes I just accept a worse mark.
	Say, well, but I had fun not studying.
	I didn't like studying for the test.
	And she's like, my sister's going to be sorry.
	My sister's going to be sorry. And I did remember, I remember thinking, you know, okay, so in 10 years, the sister's going to be, I don't know, this woman was like 30 or whatever.
	Her sister was a little older. So in 10 years, her sister's going to be in her 40s and...
	Probably won't be quite as much in demand on the party scene.
	And then what, right? Well, she's going to go to...
	I do remember thinking about this at the time.
	So the sister, the party girl, if she's out of money, she can go to the hard-working woman and take her money.
	Through the state, or she could beg or cajole or threaten or whatever she could get.
	You can transfer the money that the responsible woman has saved.
	Now, the party girl, the responsible woman cannot transfer the fun from the party girl to herself.
	It's a really terrible thing.
	Everything that you create, that you consume in the moment, and fun is one of those things, can't be transferred later on.
	You can't transfer it later on.
	It's very lopsided.
	This is the problem with the state, one of the many problems with the state.
	So the state can go to the responsible people and take their money and give it to the irresponsible people.
	Now, the irresponsible people have more fun.
	But the fun is consumed in the moment.
	So if you've saved up money, the government can take it to buy a meal for someone else.
	But the meal that was eaten a week ago can't be taken and given to anyone else because it's been consumed.
	It's been destroyed. It's not saved.
	It's not accumulated. It's not capital.
	It's not savings. So the responsible people accumulate resources that can be transferred.
	The irresponsible people accumulate resources, which is having fun and the memory of fun, that can't be transferred.
	It's completely lopsided.
	Right? The responsible sister can't say to the government, okay, you can take a thousand dollars from me and give it to my irresponsible sister, but I want three months worth of fun from her in return.
	Well, she can't get that because the fun is in the past.
	The fun is consumed. So, experiences versus capital, or spending versus savings.
	The people who spend cannot have the fun of spending transferred to others, but the people who save can have that money transferred to them.
	This is the lopsided thing, and this is why society gets progressively more irresponsible when you have the forcible transfer of wealth.
	It's really tragic. But yeah, don't...
	I don't feel sorry for the poor.
	At all. Alright, we've got some more questions.
	What book of yours would you suggest for someone just starting in morality?
	Well, I would start with On Truth, The Tyranny of Illusion because you need to know the barriers to morality and then I would go to UPB, Universally Preferable Behavior.
	Essential philosophy is probably, if somebody's not familiar with philosophy much at all, essential philosophy is the way to go, because that's the most concise UBB. Alright.
	Would you say hatred is our involuntary response to evil if we are virtuous?
	No. I wouldn't say necessarily.
	It depends. It depends.
	It depends how much power evil has.
	If evil has great power, the rational response is fear.
	If evil is acting against you in a manner that you can respond to, then the appropriate response would be anger.
	If evil is helpless, then I think that the most common response would then...
	I'm not telling people what to feel. I'm just saying what I think the most common response would be or could be sort of rationally explained.
	If somebody is evil and has no power to hurt you, I think we generally tend to feel pity.
	I talk about this with regards to my own mother.
	I feared her when she had power over me.
	I was angry at her when she was threatening my interest but I could do something about it as an adult.
	And now, when I think of her, as I do from time to time, I think of her, I feel pity.
	It's a desperately sad, desperately sad situation.
	It's really tragic how her life has turned out and how her life is.
	If she is, in fact, still alive, I don't know for sure.
	But whatever happened, and I've heard little bits and scraps here and there, but it's an awful life.
	It's an awful life. The price that you pay for vanity and violence, which are two sides of the same coin, the price that you pay for vanity and violence is so enormous.
	I genuinely...
	Socrates says that evil is simply a form of ignorance.
	If people really knew how badly they would do by being evil, how unhappy they would be, how alienated they would be, how miserable they would be, how empty they would be, how hollowed out they would be by doing evil, if people knew the consequences, they wouldn't do it.
	I view Bankman Freed As a bit of a victim of larger power players who wanted to get hands on cash and viewed him as a good vehicle for doing that.
	I mean, I know he's an adult and I don't have any issues with him being arrested or charged, but I'm just saying that I view him a little bit as a patsy for, in particular, what seems to be like tens of millions of dollars in campaign donations before the election.
	He's a kid who was used as a laundry proxy.
	I don't know for sure, but this will come out in the trial if he even makes it that far, but So, if my mother had known what the last half of her life was going to be, she would have absolutely reformed the first half.
	And this is the argument for hell, right?
	If you really knew about what hell was like, you would never be tempted, really, to do evil.
	All right. Let's see here.
	What are one or two of your all-time favorite movies?
	Movies, movies. What's funny, you know, I looked this up some months ago.
	There was a I think it was Brazilian film.
	Certainly, I think it's a Spanish language film called Sin Compasione.
	Was it Spanish or Portuguese? Sin Compasione.
	I saw it at the Toronto Film Festival decades ago.
	Unfortunately, it's only available in the original language.
	I don't think it's been translated. Sin Compasione was...
	The most amazing adaptation of Crime and Punishment that I've ever seen.
	It was incredible. And again, I think you can only get it on, I don't know, it's like Blu-ray or something, or maybe just a DVD or something, and it's not translated, and I saw it with subtitles.
	And boy, if anybody ever finds that, just please let me know.
	I would be really, really grateful.
	Sin Compassione was a fantastic movie.
	I still remember this decades and decades ago.
	I saw it. I was dating a girl who was big in the film industry and we got all the tickets we wanted to the International Film Festival in Toronto.
	And I remember seeing that.
	Oh gosh, I remember seeing Once Were Warriors.
	It was an absolutely terrifying film.
	But yeah, favorite movies?
	I used to like Room of the View.
	I recently re-read the book and didn't like it as much because of its rampant anti-Christian bias.
	But I used to very much like Room of the View.
	I found Fight Club to be really quite deep and quite powerful.
	Horrifying in many ways.
	In a completely nihilistic movie, of course, but I found that to be quite powerful.
	All right. Let's see here.
	Thoughts on Stephen Franson?
	I find his point of view incredibly valuable.
	Not sure why. It gives me cognitive dissonance that two people I like and respect don't seem to get along.
	Stephen Franson, did he used to be a listener?
	I think he's got a YouTube channel.
	I have no idea. I honestly have no idea what the story is with Stephen Franson.
	If you find him thought-provoking and you find him interesting, more power to you and enjoy his work.
	I have no idea. I think he used to be a member of the Forum many years ago.
	I couldn't, you know, you could put me up against the wall with a cattle prod and I couldn't tell you what happened, so...
	What do you think about nihilism and pragmatism?
	I've heard some nihilistic people talk about pragmatism as a way to live the life.
	Nihilism is the attempt to jam the human mind into the body of an animal.
	It's an attempt to jam soul into mere meat.
	Our capacity for abstractions into the mere pursuit of power and pleasure.
	The pursuit of power and pleasure and the avoidance of pain is how all living creatures operate.
	Human beings, this is what is meant by the Christian concept of the soul, but human beings have a higher calling and a higher purpose.
	We have the capacity to abstract, to reason, to be moral, to compare proposed actions to ideal standards and communicate Nihilism is that there are no values, and nihilism is the scar tissue that is caused by such a severe degree of abuse that the soul is virtually driven out of the body.
	It hangs on by a thread, by nails, bloody nails.
	Nihilism is the impact crater of massive amounts of child abuse, and in particular Sexual abuse and verbal abuse, and maybe the combination thereof, in my view.
	I can't prove this in every instance, of course, right?
	But nihilism is when evil has acted against you so overwhelmingly that virtue appears to be a bitter lie.
	And it is how evil transfers.
	Evil makes you hopeless for good.
	And this is the black pill, right?
	Evil attempts to make you hopeless for good by exercising such power that you can never think of opposing it or acting against it.
	And nihilism. When the big enough crater hits you, Lucifer's hammer hits you right in the fields and you are tortured physically, sexually, emotionally for many years as a child, then the impact crater is called nihilism.
	Pragmatism is a way of stealing from people.
	Pragmatism arises from vanity, as in a way does nihilism.
	So nihilism and pragmatism share a belief in outcomes.
	There are no values, so anybody who plans on values is a fool.
	That's to say that you know the truth about values, you know, and you're saying, because I've only experienced the power of evil, there's no good out there.
	Which is like saying, because I grew up speaking English, there are no other languages.
	And the fact that you...
	The fact that if you grew up under extreme power of evil, like really evil caregivers, evil caregivers, a bit of an oxymoron, evil parents, evil people who preyed on you as a child exorbitantly and extravagantly in a truly destructive manner, I mean, who better to fight for good than those who understand evil the best?
	I say again! Who better to fight for good than those who understand evil the best?
	And if you were raised by evil, you know evil very, very, very well.
	And you know its soft spots, you know its vanities, you know its weak points, you know its vulnerabilities.
	Now, you may choose to walk away from the fight, and I completely understand that.
	Completely understand that. I have no negative opinion about that at all.
	No one else can say what other people should or should not take in terms of punishment.
	But the idea that You end up saying there are no values because your world was run by evildoers as a child is to say that there's no possibility of virtue.
	Of course, that's one of the gravest effects of child abuse is to strip from you the belief in goodness, virtue, love, trust, bonding, respect, wisdom, honor.
	They can They can't blot out the sky, but they can paint your eyelids pretty black, right?
	And nihilism is a way of protecting the evils of the parents by saying, well, they weren't evil, there's no values, there's no virtue, there's no goodness.
	Pragmatism is based on the deluded fantasy that you can travel through time.
	The pragmatism says, well, we should do things based upon the positive outcome of those things.
	The hell do you know about positive outcomes of things?
	Well, we should have a welfare state because it will reduce poverty.
	Funny story. It turns out that doesn't really happen.
	Well, we've got to have a government because we've got to protect ourselves from invasion.
	Well, what if the government facilitates that invasion?
	See, the idea that you can make decisions...
	On anything other than morals.
	It's the great temptation.
	It's a satanic, devilish.
	It's an evil temptation.
	Or it's a temptation that's evil if you act upon it.
	The idea that we can judge a proposal by its practical outcomes is to say that we can travel through time and we can understand the free will decisions of millions and millions of people, maybe hundreds of millions of people, we can travel through time And we can truly understand the free will choices of people in entirely different situations than exist now.
	Entirely different situations.
	So are we going to put the welfare state in?
	Because we know how people are going to act in 5, 10, 15, 20, and 50 years when there is a welfare state and we're going to judge that before there's a welfare state.
	So before we change the incentives completely and we punish people for working and we reward them for staying home, And we punish people for being married and we reward them for having children out of wedlock.
	I know how people are going to act in 50 years when the incentives completely changed.
	That is, not to put a too fine a point on it, fucking mental.
	It's fucking insane to imagine that you know the free will choices of people years or decades from now when the incentives have completely changed.
	It's vanity beyond anything I can literally conceive of.
	I cannot conceive of that level of vanity.
	Put the welfare state in.
	It's just one example.
	It could be any number of examples, right?
	We're going to join the Allies on the front in World War I, says America.
	Thus, paving the way for the Communist takeover in Russia.
	The hyperinflation of Germany, which was used in part to pay off the debts, the destruction of the middle class in Germany, the rise of Hitler, the disasters of the Second World War, which led to the Cold War, which led to, I mean, the idea that, oh yes, we're going to just send hundreds of thousands of troops, we're going to send all this money to Ukraine, like, the idea that people have any clue what the effects of these choices are going to be.
	If people could see the future, they would own the world through wise investments.
	People who can't even pick a stock think that they can truly know the decisions of tens of millions of people decades into the future when all the incentives have completely changed.
	And this is why you make decisions based on principle, not on outcome.
	The argument from morality, not the argument from a fact.
	There is no argument from a fact.
	There's no argument from a fact because you can't tell the future and you can't know what everyone's going to do.
	If you did, you wouldn't be able to make a choice.
	The whole point of that is that you want to be able to make a choice.
	You want to be able to make a choice.
	You are not determined.
	Your choice is not determined. You live in a free will universe.
	But so do all the people.
	You're changing all their incentives.
	And all those people are going to make choices in the future.
	And the idea that you can know what people are going to decide decades from now when all the incentives have changed That's a mental illness.
	Nobody who believes that should be anywhere near any levers of power whatsoever.
	Anywhere near any levers of power.
	Coercive power, of course.
	It's deranged.
	They don't really believe it.
	They just want to control money and buy votes.
	It has nothing to do with solving poverty or fixing the world.
	It's all nonsense. Pragmatism says, well, we should just choose the approach with the best outcome.
	It's like, you don't have a clue what the best outcome is.
	Look, if you want to solve the problem of poverty and you're a pragmatist, then you believe that you can know what the best outcome is.
	Okay. So if you know what the best outcome is, you'll know which company is going to do the best in the future.
	Just invest in that company, make a bazillion dollars, and solve the problem of poverty by giving your own money away.
	All right. Do you have any thoughts on Max Sturmur?
	I don't really have any particular thoughts that would be of value with regards to Buddy Max.
	All right. Let me just see here.
	Go back here.
	Anybody? Last call for alcohol.
	Last call. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.
	Sounded vaguely Johnny Cash?
	Not really. I don't know why.
	Why do people want to listen to Johnny Cash sing about self-mutilation?
	It's a mystery. All right.
	Last call. Last call.
	Questions, issues, comments, problems.
	Happy to hear your thoughts.
	Otherwise, I retire to my writing studio and continue with one of the wildest books I've ever written about how we get.
	Steph, I'm trying to grow my business.
	What is your greatest advice for growth?
	So the greatest advice for growth, I hope that you guys get this.
	It has been my business plan for all these 17 years and will remain so for the number of years that the universe and or God graces me with.
	Just aim to provide as much value as possible.
	Take joy in the success of your customers.
	You make a commitment, keep your commitment.
	Exceed people's expectations.
	If they expect one widget, give them two widgets for the same price.
	Like when I do calls, I never want to repeat myself.
	I mean, there'd be some themes and so on to repeat.
	I never want to repeat myself, and I want people to be blown away with the value of that call.
	I talked to this woman for two and a half hours yesterday.
	You can get it at freedomain.com.
	Sorry, freedomain.locals.com.
	It's a premium one. She has one of the most selfish mothers I've ever heard of in my entire existence.
	Now, I talked to her for two hours and 40 minutes.
	What I want from her, and this is not about me, it's about you, just remember that, right?
	But I want from her to be, like, blown away by how much value she got out of the conversation.
	I want to exceed her expectations about the value that she could...
	She was going to think, oh, well, I can figure this, this, and this out.
	It's like, no, no, no, we'll figure that out, and ten times that.
	I aim for every conversation to be as life-changing for the other person and for me and for the people who are listening as humanly possible, and not to repeat myself, if at all possible.
	I introduced her yesterday to the concept of the heating up baby.
	You'll understand it if you listen to it.
	So really exceed people's expectations.
	Deliver more than you promise.
	Deliver when you're going to promise.
	And if people know that you're there for them, if people know that you're there to make their lives easier, that you take pleasure in pleasing them and making their lives easier and better, well, I mean, that's about the best you can do in a free market environment.
	It's about the best you can. Yeah, you know what?
	And you'll pay a price to that. You'll pay a tax on that.
	Some people will exploit you from time to time.
	So what? Who cares?
	So what? It's like being open-hearted.
	Yeah, some people will attack you from time to time.
	But what's the alternative? Haunt your heart like you're going to live forever?
	Die anyway with your dead heart in your hands?
	No, thank you. I loved the heating up baby analogy.
	Yes, thank you. Why is overpowering witch mom and weak-willed wet blanket dad such a common couple dynamic?
	Because they choose each other. Because they choose each other.
	Because they're both doing this repetition compulsion of their childhoods.
	I mean, an overpowering woman will not choose a strong man.
	I mean, this sort of Dominique fantasy is a bit of a fantasy, right?
	Dominique and Howard Rourke in The Fountainhead.
	So, yeah, and the weak-willed man will choose a domineering woman so that he doesn't have to inhabit his strength, and the domineering woman will choose the weak-willed man so she doesn't have to inhabit her own vulnerability.
	Because he was punished for strength as a child, and she was punished for vulnerability, and the scar tissue means they're perfect puzzle pieces of self-obscuring forever, usually.
	I think we're done.
	Yeah, I think we're done. All right. Thanks, everyone, so much.
	What a glorious set of questions and comments.
	I hope that you got value out of this conversation.
	And, you know, just think of the value.
	I mean, my gosh, I was talking about the corruption in the FDA like 12 years ago with Dr.
	Mary Ruwart. So if you have gotten value out of all of that, I... I strongly urge you, invite you.
	I would beg you if I had any pride.
	No, I have no pride. I'm begging you.
	Freedomain.com forward slash donate to help out the show.
	I'd really appreciate it. And I don't think you can get this kind of stuff anywhere else.
	I really don't. And I really, really thank you for your time and your input this evening.
	Lots of love from up here.
	I will see you Friday. Take care.

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