Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

March 13, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:25:28

The Unspeakable Truth about Silicon Valley Bank!

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	You guys know I'm your willing slave of philosophy.
	I am your philosophy man-whore.
	I'm your himbo of reason.
	Do you want to do SVB and what might happen this week?
	That's not politics, just economics, really.
	Although economics and politics you could make...
	When you were a tech man, did your company store their money in a bank like SVB? No.
	No, no, I did not.
	I mean, we were mostly self-funded.
	To get the 80 grand that I needed to start up the company, I went to, oh gosh, I talked to my dentist and just people that I knew and all of that.
	So, no, we didn't go that kind of investment route.
	At all. Do you accept SVP stock as donations?
	I don't know how to answer that.
	But of course, I am taking tips.
	If you would like to tip me, if you find what I'm doing helpful.
	Okay, so it looks like you guys want SVP stuff?
	All right. So...
	Hit me with a 1 to 10.
	Hit me with a 1 to 10 on how certain you were there was going to be inflation after the largest expansion of the money supply in human history over COVID. Just, you know, 1 to 10.
	1 didn't really think there was going to be any inflation.
	10... Oh, looks like these numbers are themselves quite inflated.
	Yes. I mean, this was, you know, poking the eye of a blind man, right, as far as all of that, right?
	So, yeah, Silicon Valley Bank.
	All right. Should we do the backstory?
	Hit B for backstory and C for current.
	B for backstory, C for current.
	I want to please you.
	I am your waiter working for tips.
	I want to please you.
	Backstory. You want backstory, right?
	Okay, deep backstory. Okay. So, look, there's a theory.
	More on the left, obviously, than the right.
	So there's this theory, and the theory goes something like this.
	There's all this untapped human brilliance that's kept out of the meritocracy by prejudice, right?
	So there's this prejudice that runs rampant through society, and it excludes all of these wonderfully brilliant geniuses from the meritocracy.
	In other words, it's not a real meritocracy, because the opposite of the meritocracy is the bigotry.
	This, of course, goes counter to the basic argument of the left, which is that, boy, big business just chases dollars no matter what.
	Just all they want is to make money.
	Those capitalistic, money-sucking bastards, they just want to make all the money in their own universe.
	They don't care about anything other than profits.
	Obviously, you can't have it both ways.
	You can't say that there's bigotry that keeps talented people from making money for capitalists, and also that capitalists only care about making money.
	If you're a capitalist and let's say you're bigoted against bald guys or redheaded guys or something like that, right?
	Well, then you're reducing your talent pool, right?
	If you won't hire any guys, like 90% of guys lose hair by the time they get old, right?
	So if you're bigoted against bald guys or balding guys, then you're going to cut, you know, by the time men are in their 30s and 40s, you're cutting your talent stack by half.
	Now if you cut your talent stack, you have fewer talented people to hire from, right?
	And so if you have fewer talented people to hire from, a smaller pool of talented people to hire from, you will...
	You will not have as many talented people.
	And your competitor who opens himself up to a race and colorblind and genderblind meritocracy will end up doing better because you'll get more talented people.
	Like if you're Michael Jackson and you want to go on tour, I mean obviously it's a bit of a time travel here, you're Michael Jackson, you want to go on tour and you say, well I do want backup dancers but I don't want any gay guys and I don't want any black guys, like something, I don't know, homophobic and racist like that or whatever, right?
	Okay, then you get Kevin Federline or whatever.
	I don't know. I'm probably getting confused.
	I don't know who backup dancer Kevin Federline.
	All I remember was that Sheryl Crow sang backup for Michael Jackson.
	After that, it all gets a little hazy for me because once I look at Sheryl Crow in her prime, it's like...
	Wait, I'm married.
	So... So the theory is, and again it's completely contradictory, that there's this massive pool of talent that's out there, but bigotry and sexism and blah blah blah is all just not hiring from that.
	So the whole idea behind DIE, diversity, inclusion and equality or something like that, is to open yourself up to the widest possible talent pool.
	You know, and I'm entirely in favor of that.
	I think everybody should open themselves up to equity.
	Yeah, thanks. So, yeah, people should open themselves up.
	It's a wide... A talent pool as humanly possible and should have a relentless meritocracy based upon having no prejudices about anybody you'll consider.
	You should never fail to consider whoever, right?
	Whatever race, whatever ethnicity, whatever gender, whatever.
	You should never fail to invite everyone to submit to their resume and after that you have a relentless meritocracy, right?
	So... Silicon Valley Bank went 3,000% in this direction, right?
	So you can sort of look up.
	They have full commitment to diversity, inclusiveness, and equity.
	But generally, that means being prejudiced against, I mean, white males or Asians in particular, right?
	And we all know the reasons behind this.
	I don't have to get into this for the six millionth time on the show.
	So, yeah, they went full woke.
	They went full make atonement for past wrongs with preferential hiring policies, and I assume they had some sort of internal quotas or tick boxes or something like that.
	And listen, I admire the people who put their money where their mouth is, like who put their money where their ideals are, because they have a theory.
	They have a theory that That this is the way to go.
	That this is going to make more money.
	And they put their money into a bank that was entirely dedicated to this.
	A lot of the senior financial managers were women and you could look at who their risk manager was and all of that.
	So, you know, they're like, hey, you guys can take my money.
	And because we believe that this is the best, the very best business model that's going to produce the greatest profit and value and profit.
	Return on investment.
	And they put, I mean, Harry and Meghan, I assume, put their money in.
	I think Oprah Winfrey's slated to lose, I don't know, what, half a billion dollars or something like that.
	Now, again, the story's out.
	You get 90 cents on the dollar coming back or whatever, right?
	But the FDIC, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, guarantees deposits up to $250,000, but like 97% of the deposits were larger and most significantly larger than that, so it doesn't really cover this bank much at all.
	I admire, man, you believe in DIE, you believe in this kind of stuff, you believe it's – and you put your money in.
	And so basically what happened was it's a bank that loans out money to pretty large entrepreneurial concerns, usually in the tech field, mostly in the tech field, right?
	Silicon Valley. If you're a real small startup, like my small startup when it first started, Wouldn't have probably got any money from SVB because they are for larger, larger startups.
	And I assume also that they did the DIE in their choice of who to invest in.
	So, you know, man, kudos, man.
	I mean, you talk about putting your money where your ideals are.
	I think it's great.
	I think it's absolutely wonderful that people have put their savings into a financial institution
	that follows their ideals.
	Like honestly, kudos.
	This sounds sarcastic, it's not.
	Straight from the heart, man.
	Good for you.
	You know, you are putting your money into an institution that follows your ideals and
	you know, good for you.
	I mean, I, this is, you know, I wouldn't sit there and say, you know, you should donate
	to me if you think I'm doing good in the world, either now or in the future, and then say,
	well, they shouldn't put their money where their mouth is, right?
	So honestly, they made the case.
	They said, look, we're going to be as inclusive as possible.
	We're going to focus on diversity.
	We're going to have probably hiring quotas.
	I don't know for sure, but I would guess things like that.
	And people were like, man, that's the business model that I believe in.
	That's what I accept. That's what I want.
	And they put their money in.
	Honestly, can you imagine if people did to shows like mine what they did for Their beliefs and ideals, wow, it'd be pretty wild, right?
	So honestly, 100%, 150%, 5,000%, massive praise and kudos for the courage to follow your convictions and to give massive amounts of money over to people who follow the economic theory and the moral theory that you believe in.
	Like, fantastic.
	Good for them. Now, I mean, obviously a minor hiccup in the business plan as a whole, and the minor hiccup in the business plan was, we all know that inflation was coming.
	Inflation, I mean, you don't have to be...
	Neck deep, nasal deep, eyeballs deep in Austrian economic theory in order to understand that after a massive amount...
	Sorry, don't mean after the largest expansion of money supply in the history of humanity by far.
	Like there's not even much of a close second.
	And it also happened under Trump.
	So it's not just COVID and not just Biden or whatever.
	It happened under Trump as well. I did entire shows about that.
	Some with Peter Schiff and some Sola.
	So of course prices were going to go up.
	And when prices go up, of course interest rates have to go up.
	So, I mean, real, real basic.
	I'm sure you understand all of this stuff.
	You know, cash, stocks, and bonds, right?
	Cash, obviously, it gets degraded during times of inflation.
	Stocks are investments in companies, and bonds are fixed return financial instruments, right?
	So, the government is going to pay you 3% on your bond, right?
	Which matures in one year, three years, five years, ten years.
	There's, I think, one municipality in Canada that has a 75-year bond.
	Because sometimes you've really got to screw taxpayers two generations down.
	Like that's the vampiric proboscis through the tunnel of time that you've got to slurp the jugular of the young and hopeful and just wreck them for your own massive greed in the present, right?
	So a lot of banks...
	Bought bonds when inflation was relatively low.
	And inflation was relatively low because it takes about 10 to 18 months, 18 to 20 months maybe, depends on which industry you're talking about.
	It takes, let's just say, 18 months for massive increases in the money supply to end up at consumer-level prices.
	And so they took their money and they put their money into bonds when inflation was relatively low.
	And then when inflation went up, the value of bonds goes down.
	Because if inflation is running at 2% and you get a bond that pays at 3% or 4%, you made some money, right?
	But if you get a bond at 3% or 4% and inflation is running 6% to 8%, then suddenly what was an asset is now a massive craterous liability.
	And any body, of course.
	I mean, this is just so blindingly obvious that you're supposed to hedge, right?
	So you're supposed to say, okay, we're going to bet that inflation is going to stay very low, but just in case we're wrong, we're going to put some hedges in.
	That means we're going to make less money, but we'll be balanced out in our portfolio, right?
	So hedging is basic portfolio diversification in the realm of bonds, right?
	Did Silicon Valley Bank hedge?
	Answer, not so much.
	Not so much. So they had this massive asset when inflation was low that became a massive liability, which is all their bonds, when inflation went up.
	And it was just, it was some blogger who's a very influential blogger.
	I don't want to sort of diminish what he does.
	He pointed out, I think that they're...
	Their multiple was, what is it, 150 to 1 in terms of their exposure.
	And even in the 2007-2008 financial crisis, the leverage was like 30 to 1.
	So 30 to 1 leverage means if the value of your portfolio goes down 3%, you're wiped out.
	All right, so... You know, leverage is, you know, obviously, I'm sure you guys know this very briefly, leverage is lending out multiples of your assets, right?
	So if you've got a bank, you've got a million dollars, and you lend it out, and you get 3%, well, you're only making $30,000, right?
	If you lend out multiples, let's say you lend out $10 million, well, then you make $300,000.
	If you have a million dollars, you lend out $100 million, suddenly you're making $3 million, right?
	The downside being, of course, that you get wiped out, right?
	If you have a million dollars in assets, you lend out a hundred million dollars, you lose 1%, you're wiped out.
	You're wiped out. You're gone. You're dust.
	You're toast. You're history. So, obviously, very briefly.
	So, there was obviously a bit of a bank run.
	He was pointing out that they were leveraged.
	I think it was. Don't quote me.
	like 150 plus to one and they didn't really have any hedging for inflation
	increases and he pointed out the weakness of the bank and then people
	started to take out their money and then you've got a bank run and next thing you
	know, it's going pretty far south or as my old business partner
	used to say, they auger it in, just auger it in, you know when that drill bit just
	pulls you into the ground. So let me just, I want to just go back to your
	questions just make sure you you sort of understand Um...
	Can I ask something else that doesn't relate to this, please?
	I would love your help and thoughts. Yeah, you can ask anything you want.
	I'm here for you. I'm here for you.
	Some billionaires like Mark Cuban are asking for bailouts.
	Well, of course they are. I mean, you wouldn't be on the left if you didn't want to avoid the consequences of your own belief system.
	It should be allowed to fail, but no bailout.
	Well, I didn't see a lot of bailouts when I faced financial challenges from being deplatformed, so of course there should be no bailouts, but there is no...
	I mean, you've got to keep the game going, right, if you're in power, right?
	All you do is you, you know, this is what happened in the 07-08 financial crash, is that everybody descended upon George Bush Jr.
	and said, no, you have to bail us out, otherwise the whole financial system is going to collapse, right?
	So, yeah. Peter Schiff says the FDIC doesn't have enough money, so we'll see.
	Well, Whenever has not having enough money been an issue, right?
	I'm convinced that economics students spend one hour learning economics, then the next eight years learning ever more creative ways of forgetting economics.
	No, they're not forgetting economics.
	It's reverse economics.
	It's reverse economics.
	All right. So government needs funds it doesn't have, goes to the Treasury.
	Treasury issues a bond. Bond is an IUU. Bond goes to the Fed.
	Fed prints more money. More money in the economy raises inflation.
	Inflation raises prices. Repeat until the government is unable to service its debts.
	Yeah, so you understand that the failure is not...
	This is not a bug.
	This is the feature of the people who want to crash the system.
	They promote all of this non-meritocracy stuff.
	You should just have a complete and raw and total meritocracy.
	But of course a complete and raw and total meritocracy doesn't result in the kind of, quote, egalitarianism or equality that...
	People find profitable to promote, right?
	So, I mean, women make 86 cents on the dollar, but once you normalize by occupation, hours worked, dedication, sick days, time off, then women make 99 cents on the dollar.
	Like, the difference, the supposed wage gap is less than a penny, right?
	So the people who want to promote division, they want to make the system, they want to make the free market not work.
	And the way that you have the free market crash is you build system based on meritocracy and then you remove meritocracy as a standard and you promote something else, something other than meritocracy as a standard.
	And then, you know, sure as sunrise, that which is built on a meritocracy, when you get rid of meritocracy as the principle, can't sustain.
	Can't sustain. Which is why the Concorde doesn't fly and hasn't for forever, right?
	Let's see here. How big is this crash and why is it relevant?
	Well, I mean, of course, they want to get rid of cash.
	They want digital currencies and social credit system and all that kind of stuff.
	So, yeah, they want it to not work.
	The book of the present might turn into a documentary before your book comes out.
	Yeah, we'll see. We'll see.
	When I took Econ 101, they told me subsidies were good.
	I switched majors. Yeah, subsidies are good for those receiving subsidies.
	You know, I mean, vampirism is good for the vampire.
	It's just not so good for people who want to, you know, retain the blood in their own system.
	Don't forget about lack of productivity due to the welfare state.
	Folks get income without being productive.
	Yeah, for sure. That causes inflation by itself.
	Yeah. By the way, your podcast books, thoughts, and views enlighten me and help me to become strong enough to confront these issues and do something about it rather than remaining quiet.
	Thank you. You helped to save my life.
	I appreciate that. Thank you.
	Remember, the credit goes entirely to you in terms of the action, right?
	Let's say I have some big diet book and you're the one who loses weight.
	The diet book didn't do it. You did.
	So I really, really appreciate that.
	Has the push for equal pay between genders only served to reduce men's wages instead of increasing those of women's?
	I wouldn't say that.
	The push for equal pay between genders is not about equalizing men and women's incomes.
	It's about causing women to feel cheated and hostile and resentful and to dislike men.
	It's an anti-natalism program.
	It is to say, well, the system of freedom is just innately unjust and unequal and men just exploit women.
	No, the wage gap is not designed to be closed.
	The wage gap is designed to provoke hostility from women towards men so that the birth rate goes down, particularly for smart people.
	All right. Hi, Steph.
	Regarding the Silicon Valley bank collapse, some people have said that it's a very idiosyncratic case where the bank was catering to companies rather than households and that it's unlikely for a similar situation to play out more generally since most banks are insured for deposits below $250,000.
	So the majority of households have nothing to worry about.
	What do you think? Well, you know, that saying it doesn't affect me is like saying I'm in a pool, but there's a non-peeing side.
	This stuff has a ripple effect.
	So, of course, yeah, it's not exactly a bank in the consumer sense, for sure.
	But it has effects on the system as a whole.
	Let's see here. What about the current situation now that we went over the backstory of Silicon Valley Bank?
	Well, you know, this is a, obviously it's a learning opportunity and like most learning opportunities, most people won't learn a damn thing.
	Like most learning opportunities, people, like the 2007-2008 crash was largely the result of social engineering, right?
	Desire to equalize home ownership and that was pretty, pretty brutal.
	And will we have economists saying, okay, well, this company substituted something other than a raw meritocracy.
	How did that work out for them?
	Well, unfortunately, there's trillions of dollars in promoting, quote, bigotry.
	So when you have that kind of money involved, the supply of injustice, whether real or manufactured, will never eliminate, right?
	Never eliminate. So, yeah, so the current situation, I mean, I don't know what the truth is, but according to some sources, Janet Yellen has said there won't be a bailout of this bank, and, but...
	There are... An ideology is at stake, so there will be some form of subsidization, whether somebody buys this because they believe in it, or I think that most people would get most of their money back, there'll be some.
	But yeah, is this going to mean that all the banks collapse tomorrow?
	I don't believe so. I don't believe so.
	Let me just get to your questions and comments.
	Yeah, I mean... This theory that there's a bigotry that has eliminated the true meritocracy, that there's a bigotry, that capitalist greed somehow bypasses The economic inefficiency of bigotry.
	So bigotry, which is denying people any opportunities for no good reason, right?
	I mean, I am denied opportunities to become a hair model all the time, but except maybe armpit and a little bit of nipple.
	But that's perfectly fair.
	I mean, I don't have hair, so I can't really be a hair model.
	So... There's no losing in this kind of situation, right?
	For them, right? Because this theory that there's this fantastic pool of talent out there that the greedy capitalists just would rather lose money than access, okay, well, these guys followed that particular theory and opened themselves up and had something other than a raw meritocracy.
	And now we can see that what is the result of the substitution of identity politics for a meritocracy?
	Well, Now, to be honest, I think that there was a little bit...
	I mean, I grew up in England, right?
	So let me sort of make the case.
	So the English class system is too rigid.
	The English class system is too much of a boys' club.
	It's too much of an in-group. And I say this like I traverse the whole length and breadth of the class system in England because...
	I was born on what's called a council because they were born in a welfare estate with really low rent people and it was very low class.
	It was trashy and so on.
	And lots of guys sit and drink in their Newcastle brown ale and their wife beaters down in the back in the bungalows for folks who like to go down slow, right?
	So I saw that.
	I went to boarding school, which was very hoity-toity.
	I went to a public school in a better neighborhood that was more middle class.
	So I've been lower class, upper class, middle class.
	I've traversed the sort of length and breadth and width of the class system in England.
	Yeah, it's way too rigid. Way too rigid.
	And, you know, your accent determines your capabilities.
	And so it's way too conformist and way too rigid.
	And England really only flourished as an economy when that began to be broken down by sort of raw capitalist ability, which was a real meritocracy.
	So I do think, and when I was an entrepreneur, I took the same approach.
	I want to get as wide a talent pool as humanly possible.
	So even people that don't seem or, you know, like I would hire hobbyists, right?
	People who had absolutely, because I mean, what am I going to say?
	I was a chief technical officer, wrote millions of lines of code that I think were pretty damn good code.
	Very robust, very scalable, very good code.
	And I wrote all of that code while never having taken any computer science classes, right?
	So, normally you'd say, well, you've got to get this cut off of education.
	I'm like, no, hey, if you're a hobbyist, I don't care about what you pay.
	If you're a hobbyist, I might like you even more, because a hobbyist does it because they love it, whereas somebody else might just be doing it as a way to make money, which is fine, but they're just not going to have the same drive, desire, and passion as the hobbyist.
	So, yeah, I think it's important to open up.
	pool to as wide a section as possible. Because it's funny, all the people who say,
	well there's bigotry in the hiring process, it's like, but I don't want to
	see anybody without a college degree. It's like, you know, that's just about the
	biggest bigotry that there is, right?
	Because a lot of people can't afford to go to college, find it useless.
	And so this idea that, well, we've got to break down barriers to hiring, but you've got to have a college degree.
	I mean, it's just so bass-ackwards.
	I don't even know what to say about that stuff.
	I mean, it's just completely mental.
	All right.
	Let me just see if we've got...
	This is a great time to talk about Bitcoin and the value of hard money.
	Yeah, you can't do any of this stuff with Bitcoin, right?
	And oh, Bitcoin only does a certain amount of transactions per second.
	Yeah, it's called the Lightning Network.
	Look into it. So, yeah, Bitcoin, the value of hard money.
	Yeah, you... Look, again, I have no problem whatsoever.
	In fact, I encourage, you know, the people who say there are all these barriers.
	Look, I thought there were all these barriers to entry, which is you've got to have this degree.
	You've got to have this grade and so on, right?
	And I was like, no, I'm – hey, if you – you're just a hobbyist.
	You just love computers. You know, come in.
	Show me your code and all of that.
	And we just had a raw cognitive test, right?
	Because I don't care about experience.
	I don't care about education.
	I care about raw intelligence because that seems to be the biggest predictor of success in a complex environment.
	So, yeah, I mean...
	Everybody should absolutely open up their hiring practices.
	And the best way to do that is just have a raw cognitive test.
	I mean, I think Google does this and other of the tech companies do this.
	Just have a raw test of processing speed, of intellect, of all of that, right?
	And hire based on that.
	That would be really to open things up.
	But this idea that you have to go and waste four years of your life getting drunk and sexually harassed in order to run up a couple of hundred grand in student debt in order to...
	I mean, that's the most ridiculous limiter of the raw meritocracy is requiring a college degree.
	And these days, if I was hiring, I would in no way, shape, or form ever hire anybody with an arts degree.
	Like, just no way, shape, or form would I have anything to do with anybody who had completed an arts degree.
	I mean, just... It's just a mess and a monstrous situation waiting to happen.
	All right, so let me just get to your questions or comments.
	I like Bitcoin cash for low-value transactions.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Let's see here. Two incomes for families has the main cause of wage stagnation.
	No, so having more people in the workforce doesn't drive wage stagnation.
	Because more people is more productivity.
	So you get more goods and services produced, right?
	Now, if one person is going in like this, take a sort of typical example, right?
	The man goes into the workforce and he's an engineer who builds useful and important stuff.
	Okay, well, that's adding to the economy.
	Good stuff, right? But let's say that...
	His wife goes into some government HR economy wrecking position.
	Okay, well, that's the problem.
	It's not that there's more people in the workforce.
	That doesn't drive wage stagnation.
	It's just that having people in the workforce who tend to be less productive or who interfere with productivity, that's
	the problem.
	Let's see here. Demolition of an economy is slow and steady.
	Yeah, for sure. You can just look at my presentation on Rome.
	Not going to college is one of my greatest choices.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I do not have a PhD in philosophy or economics or history for that matter.
	Alright. If my girlfriend were working, I would eat much worse quality food.
	Oh yeah, obesity and women working just go hand in hand, right?
	Alright, let me just, what, no tips today?
	Sunday, day of gratitude, day of happiness.
	No tips for anyone today.
	Just pointing it out.
	You can or you can't, of course, as you see fit, but I think I'm providing some pretty good value here and aim to provide more.
	I have, yeah, about another 45 minutes.
	I have a little bit of, I have something else to do this afternoon, but I wanted to drop in and say hi to everyone in particular, my European listeners.
	So, yeah, if people are, like, mad or upset about this SVB stuff, it's like, well, I mean, no, good for you, good for you.
	Man, you've got this theory that there's bigotry that has subverted the meritocracy and this bank has opened itself up to the widest possible meritocracy, then it should work out fine.
	And if it doesn't work out fine, maybe you can revisit the ideology.
	Maybe. Maybe.
	Of course, most people won't, right?
	They'll blame the system or I don't know what, right?
	Looking forward to the audiobook of the present.
	Yes, I am just working through the third draft.
	When that's done, I should be recording by next week.
	I've mostly done the third draft, so thank you for your patience.
	It's going to be a great audiobook. It's such a good book.
	Why, if a woman worked, you would eat less quality food?
	Well, because shopping for raw materials of food, like shopping around the outside rather than the center around the outside, actually making salads from scratch or cooking food from scratch, it's just a lot more time-consuming then.
	Irradiating some... So when you freeze food and then you unfreeze it or you prepackage it or whatever, it loses a lot of its flavor.
	So what do you do to make that flavor in?
	Well, you add sugar, you add salt, you add a bunch of spices and so on.
	So you end up with lower quality food.
	And lower quality food is less satisfying.
	It's more... Particularly the sugar, right?
	So... Jim Cramer said last month SVB was a great buy.
	Yeah. JP Morgan was a fortress.
	Yeah, well, I've talked about Jim Cramer before.
	I mean, if you understand the pattern, it all makes sense.
	All right. Learn much more from entry-level jobs without the social hazards of the college environment.
	Yeah, for sure. For sure.
	Any thoughts on the alleged mothership in our solar system?
	A lot of weird UAP stuff going on.
	I've never heard your opinion on it.
	An alleged mothership? Is there an alleged mothership in our solar system?
	Maybe Jesus comes back, right?
	I mean, you know the story that one of the reasons why Jesus was portrayed as a halo and was doing miracles was this was somebody in a space helmet that had advanced technology that looked magical to people.
	So... I would welcome alien overlords.
	I absolutely would welcome.
	I would welcome with, I would kneel before the alien overlords.
	I really would, honestly. If there were space aliens coming to our system, I think this would be one of the most wonderful developments in human history, if not the most wonderful development in human history.
	Why? Because they're stateless.
	They are free market, capitalist, stateless, anarcho-voluntarists, for sure.
	I've made this case for, like, decades, you know, even before the show.
	Yeah, the only way spaceships show up here is...
	If they're free market, then they would help people understand the value of free market and voluntary human interactions rather than coercion.
	Well, thank you very much for the tip.
	I appreciate that. That's very kind.
	And if anybody else wants to follow suit, it may make you feel better.
	It may actually be a win-win situation.
	All right.
	Let's go.
	Could you expand on what you said about the music producer on your last live stream?
	I am a music producer and have struggled to make money, yet I love it.
	I am now moving into sync, but it takes two to five years to see returns due to institutional red tape.
	So my question is, am I pushing for a career or is that still a hobby?
	Well, you have to have, you have to have, to be responsible in your life, you have to have a cut-off standard.
	You have to have a cut-off criteria, right?
	You have to have a cut-off criteria.
	So I had, when I started this show, I mean, obviously I just started it for a fun season as a hobby.
	I had a long commute and I was tired of audiobooks.
	I thought I'd record as I drove.
	And then when people said, you should really accept donations, I'm like, oh, that's a thing I can accept.
	Okay, great. And so people started to donate.
	And I said, okay, my goal is to reach X amount.
	If I reach X amount, and there's a steady growth, right?
	I had the whole spreadsheet, right? When I receive X amount, maybe, just maybe, because I was making a lot of, you know, pretty good coin, as you can imagine, as an executive in the software field.
	So I said, okay, if I make X and I can project making X plus Y over time, Y being the delta of increase, okay, I will give it a shot.
	I will give it a shot. I had the same thing when I was an actor.
	If I remember rightly, it was something like, okay, if I go for three unpaid acting jobs and I don't get them, then I'm not going to do it.
	I'm not. Maybe I'll keep it as a hobby, but I'm just not going to do it.
	You've got to have a cutoff. You've got to have a cutoff.
	What's your cutoff? Just blindly, Groundhog Day, just doing the same thing, crossing your fingers, hoping for the best?
	That's not... Hope is not a strategy.
	It's something you learn as an entrepreneur often quite brutally.
	Hope is not a strategy.
	So you've got to have a cutoff.
	And here's the thing too. The cutoff becomes real, right?
	So I really wanted to...
	Do this full time. This is the greatest job in the known universe.
	Honestly, this is why I thank you guys.
	Thank you for the tips. This is the greatest job in the known universe because it has meaning, power, depth that uses every part of my brain.
	I'm doing the greatest possible good for the world that I can do.
	And that's why I thank you guys just about every time I do a show for the opportunity.
	This is the greatest job in the known universe.
	And thank you guys.
	I kneel before you in semi-prostitutionary ways just to say thank you for this opportunity.
	So I really wanted to do this.
	So because I said, okay, well, when I reach X amount of income, I'll go full-time, it's not passive, right?
	So if you say, I get to do this full-time, then you'll try and drive that income.
	So if you say, okay, I have a cutoff.
	I have to be making X amount of dollars per month from this, or I'll quit.
	That's going to drive you to increase your income.
	It's not passive. It's not just watching the numbers float by like leaves on a stream.
	You're in there arranging and organizing, right?
	So... It's a hobby.
	Anything which can't support a family is a hobby.
	I mean, if you're a man, right?
	Anything which can't support a family is a hobby.
	Like, they used to call it beer money.
	I would just do it for beer money, like a lot of podcasts.
	I would just do it for beer money, right?
	Maybe pay for the cost of doing the podcast or whatever, right?
	But anything which can't support a family is a hobby.
	So, nothing wrong with hobbies.
	I think that's great. You know, I like karaoke from time to time.
	It's not going to support my family, although maybe people would pay for me to stop, but it doesn't support a family.
	It's just a hobby. How long were you married before you started the show?
	Oh, five or six years?
	Something like that. Any tips for someone starting a YouTube channel?
	You're fucking kidding me, right?
	You okay, I don't even know what to say dude Read the room, man. You want me to help you succeed on YouTube?
	You want me to help you make YouTube money?
	You want me to help you get some ad revenue for YouTube?
	Are you fucking kidding me?
	Like, dude, do you know how you appear to other people?
	Do you know how to read a room?
	Do you know how to boomerang how you land off people?
	Learn some basic empathy in reading the room and then you can start a channel probably on Rumble or Locals or something else like that.
	But the idea that you would say, hey man, help me succeed in making YouTube some money, dude!
	YouTube who nuked 13 years of your life and one of the greatest philosophical conversations the world has ever seen in the comments section.
	But please, if you could just find a way to help me make your enemies, people who betrayed and screwed you, if we just find a way to help make them some more money, Steph, I would just be thrilled.
	I started to laugh and it's like, oh my god!
	Oh my god.
	Hey, you know that woman who falsely accused you of a crime?
	I'm just wondering if you could, you know, find a way to help me make her more successful in life, dude, because I'd be afraid.
	Ha! I'm sorry, it's a little funny though, right?
	Please, I just, you know, Steph, if you could just help me.
	Help me. I want you to help me make YouTube some more money.
	Oh, wow, that's something else.
	Oh, wow. That's funny.
	Oh, good for you. Good for you.
	All right. Hi, Steph.
	In your previous... I don't mean to be hostile or hateful or anything like that.
	Honestly, I mean, but...
	It's a little like Read the Room situation, right?
	Hi, Steph. In your previous live stream, you mentioned that the alleviation of suffering isn't a uniquely human aim and cannot therefore be considered a core part of philosophical inquiry.
	Is this a mischaracterization of your position?
	If so, can you talk about the core goal of UPB if it isn't related to alleviating suffering?
	So one way that you could...
	You're very concerned about alleviating suffering.
	So one thing you could do to alleviate suffering is read a free fucking book called UPB. It's free.
	It's totally free. You can get it.
	An audio book. I'll read it to you.
	I'll sit by your bedside and read the entire fucking book to you.
	Just for free. Absolutely.
	No cost. No obligation.
	You can stop at any time you want.
	But you know what I'm not going to do?
	Is I'm not going to explain UPB because the whole point I wrote the damn book and released it for free was to avoid exactly these kinds of conversations.
	It's insulting. And again, I say this with love, and I say this with great care and concern for your happiness.
	Read the book, then ask me some questions.
	Read the book, make some notes, and ask me some questions.
	But don't ask me to explain the entire concept of UPB for free.
	I could be wrong. I could be wrong.
	Nope, haven't even tipped, right?
	So you haven't given me a tip and you're asking me to explain something to you for free
	when there's a free book that you can get.
	Thank you for your attention.
	You are assuming that I'm asking the question because I haven't read the book.
	I have read the book. No, you haven't.
	Sorry. No, I just...
	I mean, or maybe you skimmed it or whatever, right?
	But the idea that UPB is related to alleviating suffering, the core goal of UPB is related to alleviating suffering, it's nowhere in the book.
	To my memory, I could be completely wrong about this.
	I mean, obviously I wrote the thing like 14 years ago.
	But I think I've always talked about how philosophy brings a massive amount of suffering.
	my very first book on truth to tyranny evolution was about, largely about the suffering that
	philosophy will bring to you and that this is an extreme sport that will cause a lot
	of pain before it gives you great pleasure.
	So the idea that you've read my book on morals and then think it's related, well, the core
	goal, could you talk about the core goal of UPB if it isn't related to alleviating suffering?
	Okay.
	So what is the core goal of UPB?
	Say you've read the book. I'm absolutely happy to have you prove, right, what is the core goal of UPB? Everyone out there, you can write this guy, I got your username.
	I'm not trying to call you out, like, you know, show your work on the blackboard, but you claim to have read the book, so where is alleviating suffering mentioned in the book?
	Well, if you say you've done something, I have the right to ask for some sort of evidence, right?
	You've made an evidentiary claim, so I'm asking for evidence.
	So, what is the core goal of UPB? What's the purpose?
	Why did I write the book? All right, well, while he types this, somebody says, thanks for that answer.
	For the longest time, I was banging around in the dark thinking I'd just become a producer randomly.
	I've made a shift in my perspective in the last two years, and your answer puts a lot into focus.
	Time to set cutoffs and work my ass off.
	Thank you for all your work. Yeah, you can't manage what you can't measure, right?
	So, you know, when I would have employees and they'd say, well, I worked to optimize such and such, right?
	It's like, okay, where's the proof, right?
	I'm an empiricist. Where's the proof?
	Well, I proactively energize the managerial matrix towards optimizing some of that, right?
	Okay, what's measurable? I mean, what I did as a coder was measurable.
	Did the code compile, then did it achieve the stated goals in an efficient manner?
	Yeah, that's measurable. Salespeople, I would say the salespeople are measurable.
	Did you make a sale? The marketing people?
	Yeah, to some degree, measurable.
	Which is, we aim to penetrate this market segment and it's going to improve our sales and this is the most important market segment to...
	To improve our sales, that's measurable, right?
	HR, well, not so measurable, right?
	But, yeah, the finance, so accounting department is, you know, we aim to Pay taxes, you know, do everything to stay within compliance and so on.
	Engineering is measurable.
	Yeah. Did it explode or not?
	Yeah, it's all measurable, right?
	And everything always ends up being measurable, right?
	Because if a company doesn't measure anything, then it can't achieve any productive goals.
	How do you know if you're winning? How do you know if you're doing well?
	You've got to measure these things.
	You've got to have a goal. You've got to have a plan.
	You've got to have a plan. You've got to have a six-month plan, a one-year plan, a five-year plan.
	You've got to have a plan. I got a five-year plan.
	I'm making things up as I go along.
	I mean, sometimes, obviously, because it'd be spontaneous, but everything's measurable.
	So when people come up with things that aren't measurable, I just know that they're hiding from accountability, right?
	My job description is to optimize the business processes of delivering X, Y, and Z, right?
	Oh, okay. So you must have measured how long it took to deliver X, Y, and Z before and then afterwards and show how your plan achieved that, right?
	Oh, well, you cut the production time in half.
	Fantastic. Good for you, man. Let's keep going, right?
	But when people say, and you saw this with Elon Musk recently, but, yeah, when people say, yeah, no, I optimize the delivery systems for X, Y, and Z architecture, it's like, okay, well...
	Show me the numbers.
	Show me the measurements. And if it's not measured, then it's just like, okay, well, you're just making up nonsense and noise to avoid accountability.
	And so in the business world, everyone should be fired whose work can't be measured.
	Every single person should be fired whose work can't be measured.
	And, of course, you know, the theory that there's all this bigotry out there and, you know, DEI eliminates that, therefore it's going to improve profitability.
	Okay, that's a theory and it's a fine theory.
	I disagree with it, but it's a fine theory.
	Okay, well, how are we going to measure that?
	How are we going to measure whether your theory is correct?
	Well, productivity per employee before DEI is, you know, X, you get about a million dollars worth of productivity out of your average mid-level, mid-to-high-level tech worker.
	You get about a million dollars worth of productivity a year.
	Depends on the industry, but that's a fairly decent guideline.
	And so we've gone from $1 million to $1.3 million worth of billable productivity after we implemented these standards.
	And the cost of implementing these standards was far lower than the productivity gain that we had.
	So that's your test, right?
	So but of course there's all these people who want to make a lot of money and
	The way that they why they're so aggressive in their ideology is they're not measurable in their output
	Yeah, they they Everybody who promotes ideology in the absence of actual
	measurements is just aggressively Avoiding accountability in order to profit
	profit. They are actually exploiting, right? This is why the left is, oh these
	capitalist exploiters. It's like, well you all are proposing stuff that can't be
	measured and making huge salaries and all of that.
	All right, let's see here.
	Let me get to the answer.
	Okay, so he says, my understanding of the UPB is that its core goal is to provide a universal framework for morality that solves the problem of tribal warfare and in-group preferences while deciding our obligations to one another.
	Solves the problem of tribal warfare and in-group preferences.
	No, I don't remember talking about that.
	I don't know how you can...
	I mean, all of evolution is based on in-group preferences.
	UPB is not designed to eliminate human nature, right?
	In-group preferences is a fundamental function of evolution.
	And, you know, I'm not doing the Marxist thing in any of my philosophy where I just say, well, we can completely rewrite human nature from the ground up based on ideology.
	And if we remove the profit incentive, everybody will still work hard.
	It's like now the profit incentive is what drives us.
	So, solves the problem of tribal warfare?
	Don't know about that. In-group preferences when deciding our obligations to one another?
	No. A universal framework for morality.
	So, here's the thing, right?
	So, UBB, universally preferable behavior.
	Well, it's a universal framework for morality.
	You're basically just using a synonym argument, right?
	Just using a synonym argument.
	Which is, you've just given me some synonyms for UPB, universally preferable behavior.
	Well, it's called universally preferable behavior, a rational proof of secular ethics.
	And you said, well, the goal is to provide a universal framework for morality.
	You know, it's like, well, what's the book The Three Musketeers about?
	Well, it's about these three guys who are musketeers.
	And it's like, that's it. So you can just take the title and set it slightly differently or whatever, right?
	So, yeah, I mean, restating UPB... In a synonym argument, doesn't add anything.
	And then saying that it solves the problem of tribal warfare and in-group preferences when deciding our obligations to one another, no.
	And morality fundamentally is not about our obligations to one another, it's about our obligations towards universality.
	Look, just read it again.
	That's fine. Somebody says, a rational proof of secular ethics.
	If you propose a moral theory, it must be universal.
	Yeah, that which is claimed to be universal has to be universal.
	That's all. If it's not universal, it's not morality.
	If it is universal, you can't create exceptions like the state or whatever, right?
	Somebody says, I understand.
	I recently got my music into a music library for TV ads, etc.
	etc. that is measurable. So I just keep pushing.
	Let's see here.
	So somebody says, I recently got my music into a music library for TV ads.
	That is measurable. So I just keep pushing.
	No, that's not measurable.
	I'm sorry, I hate to be what seems to be Mr.
	Entrepreneurial Objectivity, but no.
	The fact that you got your music into a music library for TV ads, etc., the fact that you organized your music library is not measurable.
	You say, well, but it wasn't before, now it is.
	It's not measurable. It's not measurable.
	I'm sorry, don't mean to laugh, right?
	I've been an entrepreneur for like, I don't know, gosh, what is it?
	Let's say counting this year.
	Yeah, I've been an entrepreneur for almost 30 years.
	Now, I have worked occasionally for small entrepreneurial companies, but in an entrepreneurial role.
	So, yeah, three decades.
	So, again, I absolutely apologize for anything snarky in what I'm saying.
	I really do apologize.
	That's my bad and my failure to communicate on a positive level.
	When I was... 15 years old, I worked in a hardware store and I lied to get the job.
	I said I knew how to fix screen doors, which apparently was a big thing.
	So I avoided fixing the screen doors because I didn't know how to fix them.
	And so what I did was I wandered around the store and I cleaned things.
	I lifted up and cleaned underneath and sprayed this, that and the other and organized things.
	And the boss came by and he said, Hey, what are you doing?
	I said, I'm cleaning. Make the store nicer.
	It's like, do something that's going to make me money.
	Where do you think your paycheck's coming from?
	Boom. Right?
	It should be taught to you when you're five years old.
	It should be second nature.
	It's not. Failure of the system.
	But, I mean, it's a bug, not a feature.
	A feature, not a bug, sorry.
	So, yeah, he said, dude, you clean it around.
	It's not making me any money.
	How am I going to pay you? Right?
	So then he said, I said, listen, could you just tell me where all the stuff is to fix the Screen doors, right?
	Because he would fix screen doors for $10, right?
	And the materials were $2, and my time was $1, so he made $7 off fixing a screen door, right?
	I think I was getting paid four bucks an hour or something, and I could do four screen doors in an hour.
	And so he showed me all the stuff, and I was like, so just remind me, it's been a while.
	And so he just showed me how to fix the screen doors.
	You pull the rubber line out and cut it, and so I fixed the screen doors.
	And then I was worth having as an employee, just wandering around cleaning stuff.
	Well, it's a nicer store when it's clean.
	He's like, but it doesn't make me any money.
	I can't measure it. Oh, there's all these soft benefits and people would rather come into the store when it's clean.
	No, it's not measurable.
	So you getting your music into a music library for TV is not measurable.
	It's not measurable. Okay, so what is measurable?
	Right? Here's your free entrepreneurial lesson.
	What is measurable?
	How do you know if you're succeeding?
	How do you know if you're succeeding?
	What do you measure? When I was deciding whether to go full-time on the show, was I measuring number of listeners?
	Was I measuring number of shows I'm doing?
	Was I measuring length of shows?
	Was I measuring the audio quality?
	Was I measuring the time that I put in to make the shows?
	What was I measuring?
	Yeah, how much money does it make for you to put your music into a library, to organize your music?
	How does it make you any money? And not only does it make you any money, is it the most money?
	Let's say you spend two hours organizing your music.
	Is that the most profit you can get out of those two hours?
	No, I didn't measure all of the above.
	I measured nothing. No, I only measured donations.
	Because I can't live off doing shows without donations.
	I can't live off the length of the shows.
	I can't live off the quality of the audio.
	I can only live off the money.
	Which is why I am loving you by nagging you guys about donations and tips.
	I'm loving you because I can't do it without these things.
	So if you like the show and you want philosophy, someone has to support it.
	So no, you only measure one thing and one thing only.
	Make the money. Now, you can say, so let me sort of give you an example, right?
	So, when I was on YouTube and other places, right?
	I could just upload my show to YouTube and there it was, right?
	Now I have to upload to a bunch of different sites and it's time consuming, right?
	So, let's say that I hire a programmer to automate the upload process.
	How am I going to measure that? And maybe that automating of the upload process saves me one hour every day.
	Okay, so can I spend that hour doing something else?
	Can I write another bit of a book?
	Can I do a call-in show?
	Whatever it is, right? So I have to have some way of measuring the amount of money that I'm spending to get that code.
	Now, some of it is, I'm just sick and tired of it, and I just don't want to do it.
	I've been doing these stupid uploads for like 17 years.
	I'm sick and tired of it, and I'm 57 this year, so my life is, you know, more than probably three quarters over, and I just don't want to spend the rest of my life.
	Click, click, click, upload, upload, upload, copy, paste, copy, paste, copy, paste, right?
	So, that's the question.
	Is it the maximum income you can get for what you're doing?
	Because intentions you can't live off.
	People writing emails saying how much you love your show.
	You can't live off those things.
	To be responsible to what you love, you have to make it pay.
	I'm sorry to sound so crassly materialistic, but I live in a materialistic universe.
	A material...
	I'd rather pay more for the yearly subscription.
	I don't quite understand...
	You can get a yearly subscription right here on Locals.
	So, yeah, if you love something, if you love something, you have to find a way to make it pay.
	I mean, I love philosophy so much that I have to put myself out there, ask for tips, ask for donations, and the vast majority of you won't pay.
	It's a little humiliating from time to time, I'll be honest with you, right?
	Because, you know, I'm in the prostrate position of begging, but I put myself through that humiliation because I love philosophy, and to be responsible to philosophy, and to my commitment to philosophy, and the good that I can do in the world, I have to find a way to make it pay.
	And, you know, y'all will most, again, maybe not on this stream, but, you know, most people listening to this, the vast majority of people don't donate.
	And I am giving you years of your life back.
	Honestly, if you listen to a lot of these shows, I'm giving you years of your life back because you don't get ads.
	Because that's the other way, right?
	I would do it, is to try and find ads.
	Either ads for my own merch or ads for other people's stuff or whatever, right?
	I paid many times, but then was insulted, so I don't want to simp.
	How were you insulted?
	Did I insult you? How did I insult you?
	I'm more than happy to hear it and if I was wrong about it I'll apologize.
	Not for the money because if I did something wrong then I would want to be aware of that.
	Do you consider my subscription payment?
	Yeah, for sure. Yeah, absolutely.
	Yeah. Yeah, maybe it's an extra hour you can spend with family, so it's not necessarily always about money.
	Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
	Absolutely. So for me, like, automating what it is that I do as much as possible, right, I've got it down to kind of a fine art now.
	Like, before I used to record separately, and then the video, I'd have to layer them together sometimes to be out of sync, and I've sort of got the whole thing set up, and I had spent quite a bit of money and learned quite a bit to get this whole thing set up that I can just trim the start and the end of the video and publish.
	You know, it's... Got down to a fine art.
	So now I have the opportunity to write a book, right?
	So yes, it keeps me enthusiastic.
	So if I have to spend an hour doing all of the stupid technical stuff, then I find that I will lose motivation, lose happiness, lose joy, lose energy, lose efficiency, and so on.
	So yeah, it doesn't always have to be directing material.
	It can be about your enthusiasm as well.
	But in the end, it has to pay for itself.
	From my experience, you should be getting paid almost instantly for just about any business venture.
	Get clients and orders before even registering a business.
	Yes, the first $10,000 is the tough.
	After that, it's so much easier, right?
	All right, let's see here.
	A tip means to ensure prompt service.
	A tip guarantees this content stays alive.
	Yes, you said I was a terrible person for disagreeing.
	No, no, I didn't. No.
	Actually, you don't have to donate.
	You can keep your money. Yeah, it's funny because you say that I insulted you and then the only thing that you say about this is I said you were a terrible person for disagreeing.
	No, I absolutely never said that you were a terrible person for disagreeing because that's never an approach that I would take.
	That's never an approach I would be interested in.
	So this is what's called projection, right?
	So, well, you insulted me.
	And now you actually insulting me because you're publicly saying that I called you a terrible person just for disagreeing with me.
	So I won't say you're a terrible person, but it's a nasty thing that you're doing, which is publicly calling me out and saying, well, Steph, you just said I was a terrible person just because I disagreed with you.
	And that's very insulting, but you feel insulted.
	So listen, you are absolutely excluded from donating.
	Please keep your money and please don't donate.
	That's totally fine with me. All right.
	Okay, cool. So I measure the money.
	The library obviously will only take my music if they think they will make money for them and serve a client need.
	This is the way I have discovered to make my passion pay in the best way, but I'm having to unlearn a lot of bad habits that have me go down the wrong paths with my music.
	I sub, and this info is why I sub to you.
	Well, good. I don't really understand anything about what you're saying, but yeah, it's got to be measurable, man.
	You've got to be responsible.
	It sounds like such an internet, I guess, past dad close to granddad now.
	But you've got to be responsible to your passions.
	You've got to be responsible for what you love.
	If you love the girl, make her feel special.
	Make her feel treasured and make her feel loved and make her happy and all these wonderful things.
	Be responsible to your heart.
	If you're really attracted to the girl, ask her out.
	Right? So, if you really care about what you're doing and you're passionate about what you're doing, you can bring happy music and wonderful things to the world.
	Be responsible. You know, John Anderson, when Yes was standing out, I mean, he spent most of his time not writing music or singing.
	He spent most of his time on the phone trying to get them gigs so that they could find a way to do it full-time.
	Be responsible for what you love.
	And a lot of that responsibility to what you love is boring, grindy stuff that just kind of has to get done.
	But because of that, you can get other things done.
	Alright, let me just see here.
	Oh, load the messages.
	How's that for a definition of wisdom?
	Wisdom is the knowledge of things that never change, should not change, change only slowly, or change in cycles.
	Well, it's funny because, okay, how do you measure that?
	How do you measure that? Oh, I'm in pursuit of truth and blah, blah, blah.
	Okay. So I measure to some degree, and some of this, of course, is theoretical, but I've done all the math.
	Again, I've got the spreadsheets. I've done all the math, right?
	How many people can I convince to stop hitting their children?
	Right? How many people can I convince to stop hitting their children?
	That's measurable. Well, how much truth can I bring to the world?
	That's not measurable. Now, of course, when people donate and they say, you know, hey man, you really improved my relationship with my kids and I stopped hitting my kids and I'm now reasoning with my kids, okay, that's measurable.
	That's measurable. That I've provided enough value that they're going to send me some money.
	Or people, oh, you saved my life.
	Okay, that's measurable. Of course, the number of people I can help really improve their lives, maybe even help keep alive, that's wonderfully measurable, right?
	So I did this math on the Taylor Swift tweet.
	On the Taylor Swift tweet, which was voted the worst tweet in the history of Twitter, my Taylor Swift tweet...
	Created 60,000 babies.
	According to some very conservative math.
	Some very conservative math.
	So, a small to medium-sized town worth of people I created with one tweet.
	Or helped create with one tweet.
	I mean, again, it's measurable.
	Can you measure it down to the last detail?
	No, you can't. But would you give up a Twitter account in order to bring 60,000 people to life?
	Yeah. Yeah.
	Yeah. So for the people, maybe they got deplatformed because they helped Trump get elected or whatever.
	It's like, okay, well, you saved probably a quarter million people or maybe a half a million people because there were no wars for four years.
	Okay, would you be willing to give up your platform in the return for helping to save a quarter of a million lives?
	Well, yeah. Yeah, of course, right?
	So, okay, definition of wisdom, how do you measure it?
	How do you measure it? If you can't measure it, it doesn't matter.
	If you can't measure it, it doesn't matter.
	It's irrelevant. It's wasting time, it's spinning wheels, and it's avoiding accountability.
	And philosophy can't be served if we avoid accountability.
	You avoid accountability.
	You avoid accountability by steadfastly not measuring things, right?
	You know, is my marriage successful?
	Well, my wife and I love each other.
	We look forward to each other's company and be married for 21 years.
	Yeah. You guys have heard my shows with my daughter.
	Do you think that my parenting is successful?
	Yes, I think it is. There's limits on it because she's going to have to wander out into a bit of a crazy world, but, you know, that I can't control as much, right?
	So is it measurable?
	Am I still on the air, so to speak, This is going to be my 18th year.
	The 18th year, saying the most wild truths known to man, the most explosive and provocative and essential truths known to man.
	Millions of people with better relationships, millions of children not being hit or beaten.
	I won't even say the number of people who say, Steph, you saved my life.
	But it's not zero.
	I'll tell you that straight up, right?
	massive measurable positive effects in the world.
	Alright, if you're listening then you're demonstrating that you find value in the
	content.
	Yeah, so donating is not finding value in my content, it's finding value in yourself.
	It's finding value in yourself.
	Are you worth the self-esteem of supporting someone who gives you something for free?
	Are you worthy of reciprocity?
	Or are you a taker, right?
	Are you a taker? Because, you know, everybody who listens...
	And it's not a big donation pitch. I'm just sort of pointing out the reality, right?
	Everybody who listens and who doesn't donate...
	Is riding on other people who donate.
	The show would not exist.
	If you don't donate, if you consumed a bunch of content, and listen, if you're broke, consume the content and feel no guilt.
	Totally fine. I don't want anyone to laugh at dollar.
	I don't want you to go hungry.
	I don't want you to not be able to pay rent.
	If you're broke, 100%, don't donate.
	Enjoy. Maybe when you make some money in the future, you can donate.
	So I'm talking about the people who can damn well afford it, right?
	So, if you don't donate, you're saying that you wish to remain in a child-parent relationship.
	You don't want an adult-adult relationship.
	You want to stay in a dependent child-parent relationship, right?
	So, children don't donate.
	They don't contribute to rent.
	They don't contribute to the food cost.
	They don't pay for heating. Children don't donate.
	So, you're trying to turn me into a parent to recreate a childhood so that you can receive, but you're not a child.
	And so, pretending that you are a child in a relationship by being consuming without reciprocity Which is what children and babies really do.
	They consume without reciprocity.
	So, yeah, you're still trying to deal with childhood stuff by bringing childhood relationships to adult relationships.
	And I'm saying, don't do that, right?
	Because it won't work and it's going to keep you kind of immature and all of that.
	And again, I say this with all great...
	I want the very best things for you, particularly because you're a listener to this show.
	I want the very best things for you in life.
	So, are you worthy of...
	Reciprocity, right? Are you worthy of approaching this as a rational equal?
	Yes, he's providing great value.
	Yes, I can support it a little, right?
	As opposed to expecting everyone else.
	You can't universalize that. If you don't donate and everyone didn't donate, there'd be no show.
	There'd be no show. So, can you universalize it, right?
	Somebody says, Steph, if you're starting a business, how do you say you have previous projects when you don't have any?
	Should one make pet projects and say you actually sold it to a real client?
	I wouldn't start with lying.
	No, I'm not a big fake it till you make it kind of guy.
	I don't. You just be honest.
	And you say... I said, look, I don't have any previous experience.
	I have no portfolio.
	I've loved this since I was five years old.
	I have no experience.
	But here's the thing, right?
	So I could have no experience because I suck or I could have no experience because I'm just starting out, but I'm also the greatest thing ever, right?
	And I will give you a great break on price.
	I absolutely promise I will give you the very best thing and you'll be happy.
	And if you don't like what I do, total refund.
	But why would you go with me?
	Because I'll give you better stuff and I'll be cheaper.
	Because I'm aware that I don't have a history.
	So I've worked 10 times as hard for this because you're my starting project.
	And so I will provide 10 times more value for half the price.
	And if you don't like it, you can get a refund, right?
	That's my commitment to you. So, yeah, just be honest.
	Always address the elephant in the room.
	Always address the elephant in the room.
	Because the people who want to avoid the elephant in the room are people who want to exploit, right?
	I have a question about divorce.
	Being that most women initiate divorce due to the incentives they get from divorce, like alimony, is it reasonable to say that men simply chose wrong since a lot of women are corrupted by the power of the state?
	I'm so sorry. I have yet to publish this.
	I answered this. It was a great question I saw on Locals.
	I answered this yesterday morning, so I will publish that either tonight or tomorrow.
	Steph, that's a lot of babies to support, LOL. Uh, I feel like I might have spawned a small town too, just by spreading your vids in my circles.
	I still see that Taylor Swift tweet floating around the internet sometimes.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	And this was also a tweet that I have, I mean, if this helped contribute to my loss of the Twitter account for a couple of years, I have no problem with that.
	Because it was a tweet out of love.
	I said she'd be a great mom, she just has to remember these biological facts, and apparently biological facts make people lose their shits.
	All right, um... We measure things that never change all the time across various disciplines.
	Economy, history, physical sciences.
	Things that never change all the time across various disciplines.
	We measure things that never change.
	Everything in time changes.
	I mean, except physical laws, right?
	Physical constants. The economy changes.
	History certainly changes. The manifestations of physical sciences change.
	Stars come into existence.
	Planets form. Stars explode.
	So I'm quite sure what you mean by that.
	Hi, Steph. This is from your book, UPB, on the part of the purpose and the danger, which answers the question, why bother?
	It says, one must demonstrate, sorry, one demonstrable effect of a rational science of morality must be to reduce your chances of suffering immoral actions.
	It is by this criterion that we shall also judge the moral rules proposed in part three.
	I hope this provides evidence that my interpretation of your book wasn't wrong.
	One demonstrable effect of a rational science of morality must be to reduce your chances of suffering immoral actions.
	Yeah, but what's that got to do with no in-group preferences in tribal warfare?
	It is by this criterion that we shall also judge the moral rules proposed in Part 3.
	Right, so an effect is not the same as a purpose, right?
	Right. One demonstrable effect.
	So this is a way you would judge the effect, one effect of a particular theory.
	But the purpose is not the effect.
	The effect is something that...
	The purpose of the statue is not a shadow, but the shadow is an effect of the statue.
	All right. Donating to staff is an investment in oneself because the donation pays for future content and therefore future solutions to future problems.
	Well, that's very true as well, but donating to staff is saying that you and I are equals, right?
	I provide value and you return value.
	If you consume value without providing any value in return, again, the value doesn't have to be financial.
	I can say this a million times. It doesn't have to be directly financial.
	The value could be that you share the ideas.
	I consider that a wonderful donation.
	You don't even have to quote me.
	If you convince one person in your circle to stop hitting their kids or maybe pull them out of a toxic school environment or stop verbally abusing their kids, you have donated, right?
	But it's an investment in yourself because you're saying, Steph and I are equals.
	You're not looking up at me like some statue.
	It's not a parent-child relationship.
	You're saying, well, we're equals.
	He's providing value, so I should provide value.
	Because if other people are providing value and you simply consume that value...
	Then you're saying that you're in a parent-child relationship.
	It keeps you in a childlike state of mind when you're an adult, which is not going to be good, not healthy, right?
	Somebody says, my first regular donation was because I quit smoking cigarettes and drinking beer.
	It was not much at the time, with the help I got from your work, and split the value saved with you.
	I did not have much money or income at the time, but if I could find the money for beer and cigarettes, I could find the money to donate.
	Oh yeah, of course. I mean, a lot of people are, oh, I bought, you know, Elden Ring for 80 bucks, but I don't have 10 bucks for Steph, or I smoke weed, or whatever it is, right?
	So... Stephanie, tips for finding a working business model.
	Do you do market research to launch your new products?
	How do you launch new products when you work on your tech company?
	So I have always, as you know, I'm good.
	Well, you don't know that I'm good with technology as a whole, but you know that I'm good with language.
	So I would always go out with the salespeople to talk to the customers and demonstrate the product.
	And so I had constant feedback on what was missing.
	So I'd show all the features and they'd say, well, what about this?
	I'd say, well, it doesn't do that, but let me add it to the list.
	Or, you know, they'd say, well, I can't imagine ever using that.
	And so you've got to constantly refine your product offering based upon what the market wants.
	So as a whole, I would always be out there with the salespeople.
	I gave the presentations because I knew the technology and could answer all the tech questions.
	And so I built the business case and was always out there.
	So I got feedback. This is one of the reasons I love these live streams now and do them so much as I get constant feedback from you guys about what's important to you based upon these questions about what people donate on.
	When I was a director of marketing, what I did was I bought...
	Access to a database of businesses and what industries they were in and we targeted particular industries with mail outs and I even got to the point where I could offer a reasonable business case as to how quickly the software would save them money.
	You know, give me $10 now and I'll save you $20 this year and then $20 forever more.
	So I wrote a whole program to analyze all of this data and produce an entire document which then could be mildly edited by the salespeople and sent out to everyone We sent out thousands and thousands of these saying, here's my understanding of your business, here's how much money you're making, here's in what areas, here's how our software could make this more efficient, and here's how you could save money based on this.
	And my goal was always to make the price back at the software within the year, and it's all gravy after that.
	All right, let's see here.
	A couple of minutes here.
	Thank you for clarifying the difference between purposes and effects.
	Perhaps I won't be the only person who makes this confusion regarding your work, and it just might be worth clarifying for future readers.
	Perhaps it is just me. I appreciate that.
	Thank you. I will certainly think about that, right?
	So, you know, the purpose of a car is to get you from A to B. One effect is that it wears out the road.
	One effect is there's a slipstream behind it, and one effect is you need to fill it with gas or whatever, right?
	But the purpose of the car is to get you from A to B, and everything else is in effect.
	I'm finding it ironic that the importance of paying for content has to be explained to people who subscribe to the free market ideas.
	No, no, but it's not. It's because we're all raised in government schools.
	Government schools exploit you and aren't reciprocal.
	And they exploit your parents, right?
	Threatening them to jail if they don't pay, right?
	So it's not because there's anything wrong with the listeners, right?
	It's just that... You are exploited in most of your childhood, if not at home, then certainly by schools.
	And you're just not taught this stuff, right?
	Women are slightly less good with this kind of stuff because the value that they bring is unearned youth and beauty and fertility and the value that men have to bring is hard-earned money and resources, right?
	So women are a little bit less used to this kind of reciprocity.
	But it's helpful for women, of course, to think about reciprocity.
	How much is your talent for sale?
	E.g., if we paid you $1,000, would you consider making an hour show discussing a contentious political subject?
	No, my talent has never been for sale and never will be for sale.
	I mean, people have offered me significant sums for private call-ins, and I say, sorry, I don't do private call-ins.
	We can do a call and show for release.
	And if you find it valuable, you're welcome to donate to me afterwards.
	But I don't take hourly rates.
	I don't rent out my talents for sale.
	I want to focus on what benefits you guys.
	And that's my major goal.
	Again, it's not the end of the world if people want to do that kind of thing, but I also have to follow my own conscience.
	And if I'm paid for a particular work, then I might be more focused on the money rather than the virtue and value for what it is that I'm doing.
	Is it possible to do call-in shows that don't get published then?
	No. No, I do publish call-in shows because I have to be responsible.
	And if I do a call-in show for someone...
	And it doesn't get published, then I've lost time because I don't get any donations out of that, and it doesn't help the world as a whole, right?
	So my goal is to help the world.
	That's the goal. One thing that is required for that is donations and support and so on.
	So if I do call-in, then it's just a consultation for no pay, right?
	That would be irresponsible to the resources I need in order to do what I do.
	No, you can't do a call-in show that doesn't get published, so...
	How do you think someone should pursue a business idea if they lack the technical skills to create or bring it into existence?
	Well, then you need to gain resources and hire someone to provide a proof of concept, right?
	You don't need to build the whole thing. You need to provide a proof of concept.
	And then you would go to an investor and say, here's the proof of concept.
	And when you go to an investor, remember to remind them that it's difficult for other people to reproduce it, right?
	So you might want to patent it or whatever, right?
	I thought you said there are many call-ins that have never been published.
	Well, sure, I may choose to withhold a call-in show afterwards.
	I may choose to withhold a call-in show afterwards, but I never go into a call-in show with the idea that it's never going to get published.
	Because I don't take donations for call-in shows, but I may choose.
	And sometimes it's just like, oh, I mean to publish this later, and then I just forget.
	I get busy or whatever, right?
	But yes, there are some call-in shows that I did not publish, but it wasn't anything decided ahead of time.
	Somebody, thank you very much for the donation.
	Somebody says, I'm four months sober and couldn't have done it without the influence of your show.
	Thank you so much, Steph. I appreciate that.
	And that's like, it moves my heart more than I can possibly express.
	I think that's completely wonderful.
	Welcome back to yourself. Welcome back to your natural mind.
	That's a beautiful thing to see and fantastic.
	And also, by the way, the call-in shows, please call me on these kinds of seeming contradictions.
	I really want to explain them, so please, please bring those up.
	And also, I would recommend, if you're addicted, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Gabor Matei's book, M-A-T-E, G-A-B-O-R-M-A-T-E. He was on the show a couple of times in the past.
	It's a great book about addiction.
	All right. I think I have like just another two minutes.
	Is there anything that I can swing in just before the end of our chat?
	Lost two BMI categories in 10 weeks.
	Wow! Good for you.
	Good for you. I think that's wonderful.
	Let's see here. Why did you choose not to publish shows?
	I felt if it was too triggering for some people, I would not want the trauma of someone to trigger others.
	So there were times when stuff came up.
	Often it wasn't in the email that was sent, but there would be times when stuff that would come up that was simply so disturbing that I would really be concerned about it triggering other people.
	And I hate to say like I've got the mental ninja, but you know, I've had a lot of experience with this kind of stuff.
	So I wouldn't put it out for those particular reasons.
	In the Realm of Hungry Ghost, plus one.
	Yeah, yeah, it's a wonderful book.
	It's a wonderful book. Can you respond to my $10 question about America being run by a monarch versus shadow government?
	Yeah, I mean, Democracy the God That Failed, is it Hans-Hermann Hoppe, H-O-P-P-E? Yeah, it's a good book.
	It makes an interesting case for monarchy.
	Like a monarchy can't run up as much debt because he needs to hand the kingdom to his son or daughter and so on.
	But, you know, I'm a voluntarist and a monarchy is not a voluntarist situation.
	It's a coercive situation. First of all, it's never going to happen.
	Secondly, even if it's the lesser of two evils, it's still evil and it's not something that I would particularly want to work towards no matter what.
	What do you think about people clinging on to childhood or childhood habits, essentially not being able to grow up?
	Yeah, so people don't cling on to childhood or childhood habits fundamentally.
	What they do is they want to avoid the pain of not getting what they deserved as children.
	And so they kind of circle around back there, hoping that somehow they can avoid the pain of not getting what they wanted as children.
	Perhaps you could offer those triggering call-in shows to subscribers who confirm their consent to receiving such material.
	Yeah, but I mean, you know, once things are out, they're out, right?
	So it's a possibility.
	I would sort of think about that.
	But yeah, I mean, there was some seriously dark stuff there that I was not sure about the appropriateness of putting that out to even subscribers.
	So I'll think about it.
	I'll think about it. Argumentation ethics is interesting, but it's now UPB. Old Hans Herbert Hoppe.
	I think I understand argumentation ethics.
	I think it also came out of Murray Rothbard to some degree as well, so...
	All right. I love the call-ins.
	Yes, I've got some fantastic call-ins coming up.
	One is about entrepreneurial stuff in the music industry, and another is a woman who actually had to be rescued from sex trafficking.
	That was really, really a wild show.
	I just wanted to also clarify that I'm a subscriber, and I don't tip more because of financial limitations on my part.
	I appreciate work. Be happy to pay more when possible.
	Okay, I appreciate that, and I'm sorry for commenting that you weren't a tipper.
	That is totally fine. If you're a subscriber, I really, really appreciate that, and I appreciate the pushback.
	I appreciate that. Thank you.
	I probably, somebody says, I probably would have been institutionalized 10 years ago had I not found you, Steph, and decided to make the changes and find the solutions you've guided so many others over the years.
	Thank you, sir. Well, oh my gosh, you know, given that my mother was institutionalized, the fact that I've saved someone from institutionalization or philosophy has and your own self-work has done that, that puts a spring in my step and a songbird in my heart.
	Thank you so much. Thank you so much.
	Thank you so much. Let me ask you this, just as I head out here.
	So somebody asked me, it was a question like, oh, you like the band?
	Yes. What are your favorite songs?
	Would you be at all, at all, interested if I did particular breakdowns of songs, their mechanics, why they're cool, why they're great?
	Not just the philosophy of the lyrics or anything like that, although I've done that.
	You can find that at the subscriber section.
	Just do a search for the wall. Are you interested in musical breakdowns?
	Because there's really wild stuff in music that's well worth unpacking to do with how they affect your emotions and all of that.
	Okay, you would like that? Boy, okay, that sounds very positive.
	You want to do Queen first?
	Yes, it's a more philosophical band than Queen, but Queen's one of the weaknesses has always been lyrics.
	I've fallen in love for the first time, and this time I know it's for real.
	Okay, is it the first time or is it this time?
	Okay. You'd be interested in that in movies?
	Okay, I've done tons of movies in the past.
	You can do all of that. So yeah, I'd be interested to see how technical you can get.
	Okay, yeah. I mean, I was a violinist for 10 years.
	I was in an orchestra. I can read music.
	I do understand quite a bit about music.
	So if you are interested, I've done a review, an analysis of Bohemian Rhapsody.
	You can look for that at fdrpodcast.com.
	Do you still play a violin? I do not.
	I do not. Play some Vivaldi's Summer.
	Oh, that's a lovely tune. What made you stop?
	Girls. Right, so.
	Do Yes in Genesis? Home by the sea.
	Yeah, Genesis was a real brainworm for me.
	That song, just when I thought I was going all right.
	I found out I'm wrong when I thought I was right.
	It's always the same. It's just a shame.
	That's all. I actually had to reprogram my brain.
	That brain was stuck in my head when I was making mistakes in my life and I had to change it just when I thought it was going all wrong.
	I found out all right when I thought it was wrong.
	I had to reprogram that lyric in my head to get out of that brain loop because it was really kind of toxic.
	Do Insane Clown Posse, please.
	Can you do Little Uzi?
	I'm sorry that it's cold for your genitals where you live, but The Knife by Genesis, one of my favorite songs.
	Genesis has got some pretty good lyrics.
	Pretty good lyrics. Peter Gabriel has also got some fantastic lyrics.
	Enjoyed your past movie analyses?
	Yeah, you know what we could do?
	We could do this, right? If you want.
	We could do March 31st, the Dungeons& Dragons movie come out.
	I'm sure it's going to be like anti-male wokeness and all of that, but I'm going to go see it anyway.
	Like, I'm sorry. I'm just going to go and see it.
	I'm a big fan of Chris Pine.
	Just because, you know, he stole my abs and we share the same hairline.
	So I'm going to watch it.
	Maybe we could all watch it and have a conversation afterwards, talk about the movie, because that would be fun to have a chat.
	So, yeah, let me know what you think about that.
	Maybe I'll set up a sort of live stream that we can all chat about with all of that.
	Alright, I will put down, I'll do some music analysis, because music is one of my eternally great passions in life, and I don't really share as much as I should with regards to that, but yeah, I'll do music analysis.
	Alright, lots of love.
	Thank you guys, everyone, so much for a wonderful afternoon of conversation, and...
	If God wanted music, he wouldn't have us make it.
	So have yourself great. If you're listening to this later, freedomain.com slash donate.
	Yeah, do the right thing. You'll feel better.
	You'll feel great. I promise you.
	So thank you so much, everyone.
	Have yourself a great evening. Lots of love from up here.

▲