Thank you for joining me for the Flash livestream on the 22nd of May, 2023.
And I certainly have a topic, but I am, of course, very keen to hear from you, my lovely friends and companions in the exciting high-propulsion interstellar journey towards the new galaxy called a rational future.
And, boy, you know, I remember reading this Was it a short story or something like that?
I read a short story when I was...
I went through a big fantasy and science fiction phase in my teens, as I think a lot of people do, who are not super happy with their immediate environment.
You go to other worlds, other times, other stars.
And there was really the ultimate tortoise and the hare.
Which was a spaceship that was going to Alpha Centauri.
Of course, it had to go below the speed of light, or it was going to someplace.
And people lived and died, generations lived and died on this spaceship.
And by the time they got there, they found out that fast and light speed travel had been invented some decades after they started on their journey.
So everybody was already there and colonized it.
But I guess they couldn't find it in the depths of space or whatever it is.
Alright, let's get to your questions and comments.
Hey Steph, you've said many times during live streams, I guess I'm about to say it again, you've said many times during live streams that living with your parents doesn't help you save money and that it kills your ambition.
I'm 27, never lived on my own.
Currently making $25 an hour but not nearly enough to have a family by my early 30s.
Not nearly enough to have a family by my early 30s.
Deferge? Deferge?
Deferge? So $25 an hour, let's say you're in the US, so you're making $50,000 a year, which puts you in about the top one-tenth of 1% of the entire world's population.
Man, I mean...
Have we... Have we lost our freaking reason altogether?
Have we lost our freaking reason altogether?
Do you know where there's a hugely high birth rate?
Is in sub-Saharan Africa, where there's an average of seven to eight children.
Just out of curiosity, what do you think the average wages are in, say, Haiti or sub-Saharan Africa or whatever?
How precious do you have to be to say, well, I'm only in the top...
One out of a hundred people in the world or one out of a thousand people in the world in terms of income.
But my God, that's not nearly enough to raise a family.
I mean, please, people, what are you doing?
I want you to imagine opening up a time portal to your ancestors.
Who were struggling with Saracen predations and had to move inland because they kept getting nabbed to be slaves.
Who had the Black Death.
Who had famine.
Who were inducted involuntarily into a navy.
Or yanked off to fight in the Crusades.
Or, you know, my gosh.
And you'd say to these people, well, you see, I only have approximately infinity more money than you have.
I just can't possibly afford to have any children, you see.
Because why?
I mean, listen, I grew up in fairly cruddy little apartments with no car.
We had one old TV that you had to thump the top of and it ripples.
Trying to watch Wimbledon was like trying to find a glass fish in an old fish tank.
And I was just talking about this with a friend of mine actually yesterday.
And my daughter was at a party and good friends with the parents.
So I was talking to him and I said, you know, like, many, many years ago, before I was even married, no, I was engaged, but I wasn't married, before I had kids.
I remember a guy I worked with said that parenting is just ridiculously expensive now because everywhere you go, and this is sort of back in the day, right, more than 20 years ago, he said everywhere you go, it's...
$50 to $75 and a couple of hours of your time.
Because you've got to take your kids to the movie.
And if they want to see the movie, then they want their popcorn and drinks.
And then if they want their popcorn and drinks, there's an arcade there.
And you pay for that. And you go to drive and park.
And then afterwards, they might want something to eat.
And you take a bunch of kids around.
I remember taking my daughter and some friends of hers around for, admittedly, a real splurge kind of day.
Like we went to go and see one of the Minions movies.
We went to an arcade.
We had dinner. And yeah, it's like 200 bucks can just vanish from your life like that.
Now... I'd rather have good memories than sitting on a pile of cash that I could be buried in.
But he said, like, everywhere you go, you've got to go to Chuck E. Cheese and you've got to buy the tickets and you've got to get the pizza and everything.
You go to a trampoline park and it's, you know, a certain amount of dollars and then kids want to stay and you go laser tag and all of this kind of stuff.
Now, I personally am not a huge fan of that kind of money spending when it comes to having kids.
My daughter and I, literally for, oh gosh, six or seven years, the majority of what we did was perfectly free.
In terms of like we had this big role-playing adventure where I talk about it in my novel, The Present.
Stories, right? Where she has this sort of adventure through this world of dragons and monsters and so on.
This was our biggest activity, perfectly free.
Just a game of sheer imagination.
And I used to, I mean, we also had a phase where I would attack her with her pillow and pretend that the pillow was a sword and try and hit her and she'd jump and dive and roll over the bed and so on.
We do the couch is, you know, floor is lava kind of thing where you try and go around the house jumping from cushion to cushion without hitting the ground.
And, you know, there's lots of things that you can do that are free.
And, of course, when I was a kid.
Oh, when I was a kid, you young whippersnapper.
When I was a kid, I mean, I had no money.
I had no money. I had no money.
I remember it was $1.90.
I wanted to go and see the movie Rocky.
And it was $1.90.
It was $0.20 each way on the bus and $1.50 to get in.
Couldn't afford it. I mean, couldn't afford it.
I remember the ice cream truck coming by.
It was five cents to get a Chuck 99, which was a vanilla.
Cone with like half a flake chocolate bar sticking out of it.
I remember once roaming around the house, I found half a penny, right?
So I needed 10 times that to get one of them.
I mean, I wasn't starving, although there were times when I was pretty hungry and I'd have to hang around my friend's place, crossing my fingers, hoping to get some dinner.
And this is, I've sort of talked about this recently.
It's a bit of a habit of overeating that you get when you grow up hungry because you're just trying to pack in for the winter, right?
But my friends and I, we would go and buy dented tins of soup and we'd go and steal someone's mom's pot and we'd go and build a fire and we'd cook up some beans and we'd just sit and chat.
I didn't have a bike that wasn't seven different colors and assembled like some Frankenbike.
We'd go until I was like, I don't know, 16 or 17.
We would go garbage picking and all of that.
And we just had to find ways to entertain ourselves that didn't cost any money.
And this idea that you just have to keep firing money at kids now, it's just wild.
It's wild to me. Especially if you're homeschooling too.
You don't even need a pack of lunch, right?
So, having grown up, very poor.
I mean, obviously not homeless poor, but very poor.
You know, it was a huge benefit, you know.
Creativity comes out of boredom.
And, you know, keeping kids constantly on this conveyor belt of hyperstimulation, which is expensive usually, just...
You know, it takes away their inner life.
They're constantly focused on the outside, on their chasing the stimulus like a puppy after a butterfly, and they don't ever develop any internal resources that way.
So, yeah, the idea that you'd look there and say, gosh, I'm only making $50,000 a year.
I can't possibly have a family.
When I was growing up, my rent, our rent was...
Again, I know it's a different world now, but I'm just trying to figure out...
Our rent was about $300 a month.
We lived in a one-bedroom apartment at times, then we got a two-bedroom apartment.
We had to wait on these sort of long lists.
And I remember in the apartment building where I grew up in, one of them...
I lived in a lot of different places but in one of the apartment buildings was rent checks must be certified after the fifth of each month right because everybody was just scrambling scrambling scrambling and I remember I did a lot of charity work back in the day and it was one of these ones where to raise money for the charity you have to read a book every month and people signed up and then you know I was I read a book every day or two and then people had to you know give me their pledges and it was it was rough for people people just said I can't afford it right So, I don't quite understand.
If you make $25 an hour...
It's fairly good money.
Okay, can you live in a condo right downtown?
You can't. So, I lived in a small apartment in the suburbs.
I didn't live downtown.
And so, you can raise a family in an apartment.
You don't necessarily...
I mean, if you buy on the bus or subway line, you don't need a car if you're in the city.
So, I don't know, man.
This idea that, well, you've got to have a four-bedroom house, and you've got to have land, and you've got to have two cars, and it's like, you know, that all of that materialistic shit is just pushed on you so you don't have babies, right?
You know that, right?
Come on, you don't need me to tell you this, right?
That all of this materialistic stuff, and you've got to have this, and you've got to have that, and if you don't have a, you know, like somebody asked me the other day, what kind of car do you drive?
Well, I'll tell you this, I drive a second-hand car, because I'm not an idiot, right?
I drive a second-hand car.
So, Yeah, I don't know why you would need all of this money and stuff.
So that's sort of one thing that I would put forward.
Adjust your expectations.
You know, the boomer economy is gone, man.
It was eaten up by the endless, grandiose, hyper-selfishness of the boomer generation.
So, you know, that's gone.
And so what? So you're the second or third wealthiest generation in the history of the world.
Ooh, my gosh, what sacrifice.
What a terrible, terrifying, horrible thing.
Now, people had children during wartime.
People had children in the middle of the Great Depression when some places 40% of people were out of work.
I mean... If you're really, really concerned, like you just got to have resources, then, you know, get some land, learn how to farm, or get some livestock, and your kids can work on the farm so that they're not that expensive.
It's like, if you ask my daughter, and we'll do a show on this maybe one day, you ask my daughter, say, well, what are your greatest memories of childhood?
Do you know what a lot of them were?
A lot of them were, oh yeah, I remember that time when We put on some water shoes and we hiked up the river and we caught crayfish and frogs.
And, you know, she remembers when we used to take, when our ducks were little, we used to take our ducks to a local river and we would walk with the ducks.
And the ducks loved feeding on little crayfish and so on.
And she has fantastic memories.
If you say, well, what about the time we went and spent X? I'm just like, yeah, that was cool, but the stuff she really vividly remembers.
One of the things she loves to do, even now, is in winter, if we can go and find a pond and clear it off and then just run and slide the length of the pond.
Like, she absolutely adores that stuff, and that's virtually free.
So that's one thing that I would say is everybody saying well you need all of this material stuff in order to have
kids They're lying to you so that you don't have kids and look
having kids is a big awesome deep powerful responsibility You literally have to keep someone alive who's kind of a
death maggot magnet until they're like 10 years old So you got a decade of dragging them back from the abyss,
right?
So it's a huge big awesome responsibility. The possibility of heartbreak is very large, right?
so You understand that the people who say well you can't
possibly raise you can't have kids making 25 bucks an hour
They're telling you that to give you an excuse to defer Finding a woman and having your kids, right?
They're just telling you that so that they give you an excuse to defer that.
Say, well, you know, I'm not making enough money.
I'm not making enough money.
It's an excuse. Going out and finding the right woman, finding the right man, getting married, having and raising kids is a huge responsibility.
And you, me, everybody else on the planet have a bit of a habit of wanting to defer responsibility.
Oh, later, later, you know, like when I have enough money, when I have this, when the planets align, when I meet the right, later, later, later, as opposed to just going and making stuff happen in your life now.
Just going and making stuff happen in your life now.
People just later, later, later, later, later.
When you make more money, when the housing prices come down, when this, when that, when the other, right?
Jeez. Imagine if your ancestors had your standards, you wouldn't exist.
You literally would not exist if people in the past had your standards.
So that's number one. Number two, you're making $25 an hour currently, so that's good money.
You've never lived on your own, which means you should have saved a crap ton of money.
You should have saved a crap ton of money.
Because you're making good money and you've not had to pay for housing.
I assume you haven't paid much, if anything, for groceries.
So clearly you've saved a lot of money, right?
Right, so let's do a little bit of math here, right?
So, you know, $25 an hour, so you've got $50,000 a year.
I know you've got to pay taxes, this and that and the other, right?
But you should be able to save, what, out of that $50,000?
You're living at home, using your parents' car, parents buying your groceries, they're paying for your rent, they're paying for your internet, there may be, you know, so you've got to pay for your cell phones and clothes, a little bit of walkabout money, right, going out money and so on.
But I would be surprised if you weren't able to save probably $15,000 to $20,000 a year.
For 50k salary, we're giving you a lot of, like 60% or whatever.
And let's just split the difference, say $17,500.
You can do that. And let's say you do that for...
Do that for three years, right?
Do that for three years? So that's $52,000.
That certainly is a down payment on some form of property.
So that's sort of number one.
Now, number two.
Number two. If you don't have a hobby that can help you make money, I have no sympathy for your poverty.
If you don't have a hobby that can help you make money, I have no sympathy for your poverty.
Like, honestly, none.
None. And no sympathy doesn't mean I don't care.
I do care. I want you to make money and all of that.
But I had a hobby called learning how to program computers, which I was able to turn into a career that made me some fairly decent coin.
I also had a hobby called reading about economics.
I loved reading business books and so on.
And so I learned a lot about how to run a business.
And I've been an entrepreneur now for...
I mean, I last had...
I mean, other than a few dips here and there into the corporate world, I last had a boss when I was 27 or 28 years old, so 30 years, right?
You know, minus maybe two years over the course of that.
So the last time that I had a boss was 30 years ago.
Now, how is it that I was able, I don't have a business degree, I don't have a computer science degree, do you have a hobby that is adding value to you as an economic agent?
Do you? I mean, do you read self-knowledge so that you can remove from yourself emotional blocks that interfere with you being an effective employee?
You know, you don't want to be resentful.
You don't want to be moody. You don't want to be weird.
You want to be a good manager.
You want to be a good team lead.
You want to work well with people.
A lot of that has to do with self-knowledge and I did workbooks.
I did all of this stuff and then I did talk therapy for 18 months.
20 months, I think it was, at like three hours a week plus another eight hours of journaling and so on.
So do you have a hobby that adds to your economic value?
Basic emotional maturity, overcoming trauma massively adds to your economic value.
Massively adds to your economic value because you're not weird and volatile and reactive and moody and, you know, people don't want to hire you.
They don't want to work with you. They don't want to promote you.
They don't, right? Have you worked on your social skills?
Have you read basic books like How to Win Friends and Influence People?
Are you a positive force in the lives of people around you?
Are you enthusiastic? Are you energetic?
Are you funny? Are you whatever you can do?
Have you added to your economic value?
You're 27 years old, right?
Now, again, I don't want to quote myself as like, well, you just got to do what I do, but I'll just tell you.
I mean, I got my first job when I was 10, and...
I was reading books, like I read a book called Made in Heaven Settled in Court, a book about divorce, and I read that when I was in grade 7, so I was 13 maybe years old, and 12 or 13 years old, I found this stuff fascinating.
And that book really helped me to avoid getting married to the wrong person and other things as well.
So, I mean, is it just like, you know, video games and, you know, useless mind candy shows and silly arguing on the internet?
Or do you have a hobby that adds your economic value?
Now, I'm not saying you have to have a hobby that adds your economic value.
I mean, even sports.
You know, I mean, the fact that I played...
I organized sports as a teenager.
The fact that I played tennis and baseball, I was on the water polo team, I was on the swim team, I was a diver, I was on the cross-country team, and a lot of those are team sports, and they teach you how to work with others, how to be a good winner, how to encourage other people, but also have standards of excellence and so on.
So, do you have these things?
You know, the fact that I had had a lot of sports history and team sports history It means that when my wife met me when I was playing volleyball, well, of course, I'm fairly athletic and really good reflexes and so on.
And I played hard and didn't get sucky or aggressive or anything like that when I lost or when we lost, right?
And I would find ways to be encouraging towards other people without mindlessly cheering everything that everyone does, which is just kind of stupid.
So, even things like, even just how you engaged in some sort of sports and some sort of team activity, anything, anything.
Do you know how the economy works?
Do you know how business works?
Do you know how profits and losses and some degree of marketing, do you know how that stuff works?
Are you reading books? On your own time, anything or doing anything on your own time at all that does anything to increase your economic value.
Do you know how the economy works?
Do you know how money works?
Do you know how currency works?
Do you know who runs interest rates?
Do you know the kind of business environment that people have to work and run businesses in?
Do you write?
Do you read a lot?
If what you're doing as a whole is just bug man consuming digital media or whatever it is, and you're not adding to your own economic value, then I... Honestly, it's like, I don't know what to say.
It's obvious, right?
Isn't it? Isn't it obvious that you have to, if you want to make money, you have to do something on your own time that makes you more valuable, right?
I mean, Don't you have to do that?
I mean, everybody knows that, don't they?
You have to do something in your own time that makes you more economic valuable if you want to make more money.
Say, no, no, no, but I want to get trained by the place that I do my work in.
I want them to train me. I want them to send me on courses.
Well, why would they? Why?
Why? You have to show some initiative on your own.
You have to show some initiative on your own in order for companies to want to invest in you.
So honestly, the people who say, like I'm, as you say, and I, you know, I hope this is tough love.
I really want you to get what you want.
I want you to make money.
I want you to have a family. I want you to have all these wonderful things.
But what the hell are you doing that you're only worth?
You're smart enough to listen to this show.
You say you're only making $25 an hour.
Why aren't you making more? And why aren't you saying, okay, I mean, who's in charge of your career?
I know that we are fishhooks on the side.
We get yanked around when we're kids and university and all of that.
Okay, fine. Who cares about that stuff, right?
When are you in charge of your own life?
If you want to make more money, what do you have to do to make that more money?
What do you have to do to make more money?
What's needed? What's missing for you to make more money?
I mean... When you have some free time, are you exploring artificial intelligence?
Just as an example, like something that's coming on and going on at the moment.
Or it's just like, oh man, I don't really want to do that.
I'm going to play World of Warcraft for nine hours straight and grind my way to a slightly better helmet.
Okay, well fine.
But then don't you dare complain to me.
I'm not talking to you in particular, just as a whole.
Don't you dare complain to me that you don't have enough money to have a family if you're not doing anything to increase your value in the economy.
Do you have a side hustle?
Are you reading books?
Are you following people with entrepreneurial ideas?
Anything, right? Anything.
Are you reading books about inspirational entrepreneurs?
Are you reading books of inspirational business quotes?
I mean, whatever it's going to be that's going to make you enthusiastic, positive and a standout person for someone to hire or invest in or promote or anything.
What are you doing?
What are you doing to add value to people who might give you money?
You know, when I was doing interviews at the peak of what I was doing at this show, I was reading probably three books a week.
To prepare for interviews.
I was watching lots of videos.
I was reading blog articles.
I was doing tons and tons and tons of stuff to add value.
I was doing these in-depth presentations, which we're kind of back on now, spending some time working with a fellow to get the StephBot artificial intelligence program or environment running so that you can...
Ask questions of AI me, right?
Which I think would be very interesting.
And then we're going to go further and we're going to try and turn...
Well, I won't get into all of that because that's a little bit sort of wanted to be a surprise.
But what are you doing?
What are you doing with your spare time?
Are you just consuming other people's stories that don't add any value to you as a person?
And again, I don't mean this to be in any harsh or negative or critical way.
But, you know, if someone says to me, you know, I just, you know, I'm kind of overweight.
I don't have any muscles and I'm just not strong enough to really participate in even intermediate level sports and, you know, I'm concerned about knee problems and so on.
I say, okay, well, you say I'm 27 years old and I just can't do anything challenging physically.
I say, okay, well, When was the last time that you went to exercise?
Right? I mean, even a brisk walk.
Even a brisk walk.
What was the last time that you went to exercise?
A brisk walk is sort of the beginning.
Do you have a gym membership?
Have you paid 50 bucks for a couple of weights?
For like 150 bucks, you can get enough weights to work out and you can get a weight bench or whatever it is that you're going to do.
It's really not expensive.
I mean, that's like four months gym membership or something like that.
So you can get all of that stuff.
And even when you watch TV, do you like, do you exercise?
I exercise when I'm watching TV a lot of times.
I talk about that again, Arlo with his endoscurally left lifts while they were watching documentaries.
Do you watch trash or do you watch documentaries?
Are you learning about the world?
Are you adding value?
Are you learning how to have a good conversation?
Are you learning how to talk and ask questions of other people?
Are you overcoming any shyness or social anxiety that you might have?
Are you really working hard to make that so that people want to work with you?
Because if when they talk to you, you're like a frozen deer in the headlights trembling with cocaine dust on your snosher, then people aren't going to really want to work with you very much, right?
Are you learning about the idea of sales?
Of course. I mean, I read... I can't even tell you how many books on sales that I read when I was...
And this is before I became a big sales guy.
And that's why I became a big sales guy, because I understood sales.
And, you know, when I was...
Out there doing the technical side of sales presentations, I would just, because I knew a lot about sales, because I'd read about them, I just knew how to overcome objections, I knew how to roll with people, how to provide value, it's not about me making money, it's about the client making money, all of these things.
And then because I was good at doing that, I got to travel the world Doing sales.
And again, I'm not trying to say, oh, I'm perfect and you should do everything I'm doing.
It could be any number of things, any number of things that are adding value, that you're able to add value to, right?
Have you identified in your workplace, have you identified some place where you can save money, right?
So maybe you work in a place and they need to generate images or thumbnails, okay?
Have you learned how to use AI image generators to say, look, here's a way that you can save money.
Are you taking initiative, right?
I mean, I remember, I think I mentioned this before, so I'll keep it brief, but my daughter and I went to a Tim Hortons, which is a coffee and snack place in Canada.
So we went to Tim Hortons, and we said my daughter wanted a bagel, and she said, I'd like a bagel.
And they said, oh, we're out of bagels.
We might be getting some tomorrow, that kind of thing, right?
So we then drove home for half an hour, and the whole drive was me just asking her and saying, okay, what if you were the employee there?
What would you do? She says, oh my gosh, if we were running out of bagels, I'd obviously phone and say, we've got to get some more bagels.
And I said, okay, well, suppose that didn't work.
It's like, okay, well, I would phone other stores and see if they had any bagels and if they could send them over in an Uber or whatever it is.
I said, okay, well, suppose that didn't work.
It's like, okay, well, then I would go to a grocery store.
I'd say cover the, you know, and go to the grocery store and get some bagels and, you know, or a convenience store or whatever it is, right?
Now, if you are that kind of person, right?
If you're the kind of person who's like, hey, man, we're out of bagels.
You got no bagels, right?
As opposed to, you know, you call the manager and say, we're out of bagels.
And he's like, oh, there's been a delay or whatever it is.
And you say, okay, don't worry, man. I'll get the bagels.
I mean, how much are you worth?
How much will you get promoted?
How much will you be noticed? So, I don't quite understand.
You say, I'm not making enough money.
That tells me that you have not, that you're not providing enough value.
Or, you are providing enough value, but you lack the assertiveness to say what you want, right?
Like, I mean, and if you've listened to, my God, if you've listened to this show for more than three minutes, you know that I'm constantly peppering in, and I will do it right now.
I appreciate the tip here, my friend, and I know that I'm adding a huge amount of value to your life, Please send me a tip.
Please donate. Please subscribe.
Please support this show.
I've saved you weeks, months of your life by not having ads.
You don't have to fast forward.
They don't come blaring in in the middle of a big detailed explanation about morality or an excavation or exhumation of somebody's childhood demons.
So I've saved you huge amounts of time.
I'm adding a huge amount of value to you now.
Just telling you how to make more money.
Just provide more value and be assertive in going after it.
So if you've listened to me, I don't scream at people.
I don't rail at people. I'm just like, you know, I know the value that I'm providing.
I hope that you will recognize it and give me a tip or give me some support.
And if you're already a donor, fantastic.
I appreciate that. Thank you so much.
And I'm sorry for...
I'll get caught up to these messages, but...
You know, people who say, like, I can't find a good woman, man.
I can't find a good woman. It's like, okay, well, what are you doing?
Well, I don't know. I set up an app on a dating site.
I set up a profile on a dating site.
It's like, okay, when did you do that?
Like a year ago? How many messages you got?
Two. It's like, okay, well, then that's not working.
So if people are just doing the same thing or, you know, there was a...
I'm sure it's still around.
I'm sure it's still around. It's probably gone all kinds of woke nonsense and so on.
But there was a magazine, Alfred E. Newman, right?
The Mad Magazine it was called.
I'm sure it's still around. And I read that quite a bit when I was a kid.
And I also read a very interesting book on theology.
It was a theologian talking about the morals of...
Mad Magazine, where he took sort of jokes from the magazine and talked about the ethics behind it.
And it was actually a very good book, and it sort of got me interested.
I read that when I was, I don't know, maybe 13 or 14.
And it's one of the things that started pointing me in the direction of philosophy.
And there was a lot of interesting morality...
In that Mad Magazine.
So a couple of them I remember. They used to have this thing.
It's dating... No, it's infatuation, it's love, it's a relationship.
Like, it's infatuation where it doesn't matter where you go as long as you're together with the girl, right?
It's love when, well, you want to go to the mountains, she wants to go to the seaside, and you're just like, I'll go with you to the seaside because I love you so much, right?
And it's a relationship when you want to go to the mountains, she wants to go to the seaside, so you go to the mountains and she goes to the seaside, which I don't quite agree with, but I thought it was kind of clever.
And funny. I also remember there was a, you know, the two types of grandmas, you know, the old school grandma, you know, she was kind of plump and she had an apron on and she was just baking and kind and sweet and the kids were all swarming around her and she was having a lot of fun.
And then there was this sort of half coked up modern boomer grandma who was super skinny and had no time for her grandkids and was just out there chasing clout and status and spending money and all of that.
I just remember thinking, okay, that's...
You know, family versus vanity, that's the big test of youth, right?
Family versus vanity. But I also remember there was a...
I can't remember the guy's name.
Ended with Berg, I think. It wasn't Iceberg.
Didn't take it down to Titanic.
But he used to do these sort of panel cartoons.
And I remember one woman, like a married couple, and the woman was like, Oh, there's a penny.
Pick it up. He's like, I don't want to pick it up.
She's like, Come on, there's a penny. There's a penny.
Go pick it up. And anyway, the last panel was him in traction.
You threw your back out and he was like, hey man, it's fine because I know this is going to be super expensive, but But I handed my wife one penny we could use as a down payment on these medical bills.
You know, this sort of cost-benefit kind of thing was sort of important.
But the one I'm mentioning now is the guy, he was like a 50s, leave it to beaver kind of dad, like a ward cleaver dad, going to his hippie son.
Like, come on, the summer's half over.
You don't even have a job. Go get a job, right?
And then the next panel is like the hippie guy leaning up on a department store counter saying, like, you don't need any.
You don't need any help around here, do you, man?
And then the last panel is the dad saying, well, you don't have a job.
It's like, hey, man, you can't say I didn't try.
It's like, yeah, pretty much can.
Pretty much can say you didn't try.
I mean, this is like a devilish thing, which is you've got something tough, and you, me, everyone, you've got something tough to do, and what happens in your brain?
You've got something tough to do, what happens in your brain is you cast around for an excuse not to do it.
You just cast around for an excuse not to do it.
And you understand that a lot of social media, a lot of people in this world, what they're doing is they're serving up excuses for you to do it.
To avoid it. For you to avoid what you know you need to do, a lot of people serving up excuses.
That is a big deal. That's one of the problems with the manosphere, right?
The manosphere is like, well, you know, there's just these narcissistic, vainglorious, high body count, terrible women out there.
So, yeah, don't get involved, right?
Or, you know, just sleep around, or whatever it is, right?
Alpha male, sleep around.
It's like there was this cartoon many years ago.
No, a... A commercial many years ago, which was, you know, who's the more manly man?
Who's the more virile and masculine man?
And there was this pumped up guy with a real sports car, right?
And he had this beautiful girl on his arm, right?
He's really virile. He's really fertile, right?
And then it panned over to some guy who had like eight kids in a minivan.
He's like, eh, you know, because obviously the more virile guy is the guy who's actually having kids, right?
Virility is not defined by having sex.
Virility is defined by having offspring, having an heir, having children, right?
So, there's a lot of people out there who will say, well, you can't have kids because you've got to have a four-bedroom house, or you've got to have a condo, or you've got to have a car, and it's got to be a nice car.
It's like, you don't need any of that stuff.
For the vast majority of human history, kids were raised on the equivalent of 15 cents a day, right?
I mean... People who say, well, I only make $50,000 a year puts me in the top one out of a thousand people in the known universe.
Oh, man, I can't possibly afford to have kids.
You understand that a devil has dangled this materialistic requirement for having kids.
A devil has dangled and said, well, that's not enough money to have kids.
Now, if you were desperate to have children...
What would you do? You'd find a way.
You'd find a way. You'd find a way.
I wanted to keep doing philosophy even when, like, just about everyone abandoned me when I moved to a couple of different websites, right?
I just wanted to keep... So I just found a way to do it.
I just found a way to do it. Again, thank you for your tips.
I appreciate that. Just, you'd find a way.
So... A significant majority of the media that's flowing at you is excuse-driven media.
What they're doing is they're handing you, and this happens on social media, this happens in commercials, this happens in movies, this happens...
What they're doing is they're serving you up a whole series of excuses for immobility.
A whole series of excuses to say, not now, not yet, not ready, right?
I saw this guy posted on social media the other day.
He said, don't fall in love from the ages of 22 to 29.
Trust me, your career will thank you.
And it was a decent looking guy and all of that.
And I went over, this guy must have the most amazing career that he's willing to give up love for like 10 years straight and give up children and this and that.
Because every year you delay having children, it's just one less year you get to spend with your grandchildren, right?
So I looked over, what does he do?
And he's like, well, I advise tech companies on how to efficiently optimize their real estate portfolios.
Right now I'm scrolling through social media and I'm putting a rent calculation together on a spreadsheet.
Oh my god.
Not exactly finding the cure for polio, are you?
Not exactly solving the unified field theory problem, right?
It's like, well, I got a spreadsheet that helps people shave a couple of pennies per square foot off their...
Oh, sorry.
I looked at his...
Sorry, I looked at his spreadsheet and I was just like, this is what you're giving up love for?
This is what you're giving up family and kids for?
Just screw around with spreadsheets so that you can save people a couple of grand a month or a year?
Well, you know, that money is important.
That money helps hire people.
It's like, yeah, it helps hire people who can go and have kids while you're scrolling through social media and doing some crappy goal-seeking algorithm on your spreadsheet to try and lower people's costs of real estate slightly.
It's like, oh my, this is what you're giving.
You're giving up eggs for Excel.
You're giving up offspring for spreadsheets.
Rather than spreading a woman's cheeks, you are spreading sheets on the computer.
I mean, it's really the saddest thing.
It's the saddest thing I've seen.
Your career will thank you.
No, your career won't thank you.
Because money can't thank you.
Everyone who considers themselves irreplaceable is replaced approximately six minutes after they're dead.
What's it? Bela Lugosi died, literally died, in the making of Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space.
And they replaced him with his wife's chiropractor.
That's how irreplaceable Bela Lugosi was.
So... Yeah, people will just serve you up excuses.
And there's a huge market for...
No, man, I'm not ready.
I'm not ready, man. I'm not ready.
I'm just not ready. Later, later.
I gotta... I can't...
I'm still living at home.
I'm not making enough money.
I'm gonna... Later.
The quality of women is too bad.
The quality of men is too bad. I've run the female delusion calculator and the man I'm looking for is like one in 500 guys, one in 100 guys.
is a right okay one day I will write the story of how much unbelievable fiery
nuclear shit I had to walk through to keep this show going One day I'll write this.
And then people say, well, you know, but I can't have a family because I'm only in the top one out of 500 people making money on the planet.
I'm like, sorry, you're talking to the wrong guy.
You're just, you're talking to the wrong.
There'll be other guys who are like, oh yeah, you have 25 bucks an hour.
You can't have a family. You know, maybe you should go back to school.
Just more delays, more delays, more delays.
You're 27 years old.
You're top 1% of IQ, in my opinion, because you listen to this show.
I give you guys top 1%.
No question. Top 1%.
Not just in terms of IQ, but also just in terms of the moral and philosophical clarity that we get through these conversations.
It's not nearly. She didn't say it's not quite enough.
Making $25 an hour, not nearly enough to have a family by my early 30s.
Never lived on my own. So you understand that you are making the equivalent of at least $100,000 a year because you're staying with your parents, right?
Now, maybe you have a good relationship with your parents.
You know, there's nothing wrong with a multi-generational family unit.
Nothing wrong if your parents got, you know, a couple of bedrooms and you get married and you can find a way.
You know, we all lived in these tribal environments and scenarios.
It wasn't like everybody got to move away and live on their own back in the Stone Age.
So we kind of evolved to be close proximity and so on, right?
It's not nearly enough.
I'm making $25 an hour.
My bills are all paid for, but it's not nearly enough.
What are you talking about?
What are you talking about?
Do I have a PhD in philosophy from Harvard?
I'm the biggest philosophy show in the world.
It's not nearly enough.
I'm making the equivalent of well north of $100,000 a year.
It's not nearly enough to have a family.
So the, what, half a percent of people who make $200,000 a year, they can have families and everybody else can go pound sand?
I mean, I don't understand what you're talking about.
I genuinely don't.
Anyway, all right, let me get caught up with your comments here.
Sorry about this and I appreciate your tips.
Let's see here...
Yeah.
Thank you.
Let me get to your comments here.
Alright. Hey Steph, I just started an ethics course.
It's a mandatory elective in my program and the first discussion question we get is the trolley problem.
I can tell that this course is just designed to destroy people's ability to comprehend universal and objective negative moral principles.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.
The trolley problem is giving you the sense that philosophy is useless and pointless, and that way it scares you away from philosophy for the rest of your life, so bad people can manipulate philosophy, particularly moral philosophy, for their own ends.
So, I mean, one of the questions that I had, and I wrote about this in my novel, Almost, you can get it for free at almostnovel.com, one of the first questions I had was, When I heard, you know, I had a professor talking to me about, you know, the simulation theory, Cartesian metaphysics back then, our brain could be in a tank controlled by a demon, and I said, okay, hang on, hang on, hang on.
Before we get to all of this juicy, weird, freaky stuff, how do you know what is true and what is false?
How do you know what is true and what is false?
Well, we're speculating here.
It's like, no, no, no. How do you know what is true and what is false?
Well, the whole point is we don't know, right?
It's like, okay, but if you don't know what is true and what is false, then isn't philosophy just a nonsense?
Well, no, it's up to you.
It's like, no, no, no. You told me you don't know what is true and what is false, and I found it very frustrating.
Like, honestly, it's like you go to a medical school and they say, Well, we have no idea what is healthy and what is unhealthy.
We have no idea the difference between health and disease.
We have no idea what illness is, whether it needs to be cured, whether it exists at all.
How much money would you pour into that?
A medical degree, if the first thing they told you is that they have no knowledge about health versus illness, whether people are ill, how they get ill, how to cure them, they have no knowledge of any of these things.
Now, give me $100,000 for a medical degree, right?
I understand what you're saying, Steph, but the inflation and housing costs in cities now is insane!
So that's another excuse.
Yep. Yes, it is.
Yes, it is. Yep.
Inflation and housing costs in cities is insane.
So don't live in a city. I mean, you understand.
You understand, for me to go to university, I spent 16 months in a fucking tent, okay?
Like, I'm sorry, you're talking to the wrong guy.
For me to be able to go to college and university, and also I was sending money back home, I was a gold panner and prospector.
I spent a lot of that time Humping drill bits in waist-deep snow in minus 30 to minus 40 degree weather.
Like, I'm sorry.
You're just talking to the wrong guy.
The rent is too high.
I almost got beheaded in the wilderness on more than one occasion.
I had to carry around a flamethrower in minus 30 degree weather and use it to burn through the permafrost so we could drill down to the bedrock to get the gold samples we need to try and find a mine.
Like, I'm sorry. You're just talking to the wrong guy.
You're talking to the wrong guy.
Excuses? I'm sorry.
I don't care. I'm sorry.
I mean this with absolute love and respect.
I know this sounds like mean or something like that.
I mean, you've got to go elsewhere if you want me to pat on your head and say, but it's okay.
You can't really do it.
It's too difficult.
It's too tough. So here's the thing, man.
You understand that because there's a lot of headwind, yes, my gosh, inflation.
Yes, some of the women are crazy.
Okay, they're more obviously crazy, which means you can find them and discard them more easily.
They've got blue hair and giant glasses and tattoos.
It's like, yeah, just step over, right?
The girls were still crazy in my day They were just more camouflaged Now you're complaining that the crazy girls are out in the open Oh no, I can see the crazy people.
That's much worse than when you couldn't see them.
It's like, no, it's not. It's really not.
You know, you're like some zebra.
It's like, you know, there are these giant lasers shooting up that are lit up, searchlights and lasers lit up from the back of the predators.
Man, we could really see the predators.
So my life is much harder than you when you couldn't see the predators at all.
It's like, eh, I'm sorry. Again, just talking to the wrong guy.
So yeah, there's a lot of people who get discouraged.
Oh man, you know, it's really tough.
The rent is high. They get discouraged.
Okay, so they're out of the marketplace.
Which means if you come in with positivity and enthusiasm, you're going to stand out even more.
Right? A lot of people are discouraged.
They sit home playing video games and whacking off or whatever.
So they're discouraged. They're not out there doing stuff.
They're not building their value.
They're just giving up. Okay.
That opens up massive opportunities to you.
Yeah, the treasure is hard to find.
It's a lot of money in it. And the more people who give up looking for the treasure, the more likely you are to be the one to find it.
Somebody says, people make $7.25 an hour here and have families.
Very poor in this part of the U.S. though.
Yeah, listen, go talk to the Appalachians, right?
Go talk to them. Some of the poorest parts of America.
Go talk to them and say, I only make $50,000 a year and $100,000 a year when you take into account my parents are paying the bills, I can't possibly have children.
I mean, honestly, just try it.
Somebody there, oh, is this the same person or is it a different person?
Let me just see here. I understand what you're saying, but the inflation and housing costs in cities now is saying, okay, but what you haven't done is told me, oh yes, no, I have read a lot of economics, I've read a lot of entrepreneurial stuff, I've read a lot of business books, I watch documentaries on business, and I've viewed MBA videos.
Everything's online. Everything is online for free at the moment.
Everything. College courses, MBAs, it's all online and free.
Again, I had to buy my own books.
I had to go to the library in order to find out what was going on, right?
You all get it for free on your phones, huh?
Oh, it's too hard. And again, I sympathize.
I do. All right.
Somebody says, during my call in July, you described my story as one of the worst stories of abuse you've ever heard.
That call changed my life.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
You saved my life.
I have not seen my family since August and haven't spoken to them since December.
I still receive hateful texts from my mom, but I'm struggling to take the last step to block her number.
Why? When do I draw the line?
First of all, thank you for your very kind words.
I put it right back on you.
I put it right back on you.
You saved your life. I may have given you some good feedback.
I may have given you some good principles.
I appreciate that. And I'm not trying to say it was all you.
I get that I had a hand in it.
But you're the one who has saved your own life.
And please don't ever forget that.
Don't hand over to me the salvation of your own soul.
That is wonderful.
So, good for you. Blocker number?
I don't know whether you should or shouldn't, but if you're just getting nothing but hateful texts, then the reason that you would not block her number is because you're used to obeying abusers, and abusers don't want you to block their number.
So you are used to obeying people who do you harm, and you don't want to block her number because she doesn't want you to block her number, you're used to obeying her.
It also is kind of giving up hope and so on, right?
Let's see here. If you have never repurposed a video game, space or furniture into something else with your siblings and friends, then you have been overstimulated or overscheduled as a child.
Repurpose a video game. Yeah, I mean, I enjoyed video games and I wrote code for video.
I wrote my own video games, wrote code for video games and all of that.
So, again, if you're just consuming without adding to your own skill set, then I don't, again, I don't understand, right?
Bought my young single digit niece X Christmas and birthday gifts, both in December, lots of things, mostly from discount stores, more than $50 total 20 years ago on minimum wage.
It seems a lot better to just live in a small community and offer value and trade value.
The hype of spending city life isn't it.
Yeah, maybe go check out the bears.
Thank you for the tip.
Again, you know what I'm providing here is huge value that you're not going to get anywhere else.
I'm not trying to say this with any hostility or negativity or you suck or, you know, how lazy can you be?
I'm just trying to shake you out of this hypnosis of people saying you can't until, you can't until, you can't until, right?
One guy has put a million miles on his Honda Accord from the 80s.
New tires were items but original engine and transmission.
Looks its age but runs fine.
Yeah. Yeah.
So, all my neighbors with kids give them souped up battery powered cars and scooters.
My kids are always using their feet to push like the Flintstones and there's no way around them wishing they had those damned gadgets.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, we used to, because we used to, when I was a kid, we used to go garbage picking in England.
I remember we went garbage picking, or we would go to somebody in their backyard if they had a pram.
Are you done with the pram? Are you using it if the kids were older?
We'll take it off your hands, and we take the pram wheels, we'll build our own go-karts, and, you know, that kind of stuff, right?
So, lots of things you can do.
Had material things growing up?
What I did not have was love.
Oh, yeah. I mean, the poor little rich kid is a very important and real phenomenon, right?
Of course, no one tells the low-quality people not to have children.
They have tons. Only the smart people are told not to and don't.
Sad! Yeah, it merits the idiocracy stuff, right?
I really shouldn't complain.
It isn't bad at all. I quite like Steph's response to this.
Reminds me of a previous live stream where he gave some life business advice called Find A Way.
Yeah, Find A Way. Find A Way.
People in the past, though, didn't have the option to not have kids.
What are you talking about? Is it like way distant past?
Yeah, okay, I get that. Well, of course they did.
They just wouldn't get married or whatever, right?
But, yeah, there have been condoms available since like the 18th century.
They used to use sheep's bladders and so on for that.
Three to five years, house prices will collapse.
No excuse if you have savings not to buy cheap then.
I'm not sure about that because they'll just keep stuffing more immigrants into the houses, right?
Yes, I should have saved more.
Terrible with finances. Yes, I should.
Oh, so you blew the money that you were saving by living at home?
See, this is what I mean when I say it.
Again, it's not a criticism or anything like that, but if you blew your money, making $50,000 a year and living at home, which is the equivalent of $100,000 a year, Or so, maybe less, whatever.
And you blew the money?
Terrible with the finances? So you spent the money that you should have saved?
But that's not my issue.
My issue is, do you have a hobby that adds to your economic value?
I'm not saying you have to.
You can do whatever you want.
I'm just saying the cause and effect, the consequences, right?
cause and effect and consequences is that if you blow your time on hobbies or
Past times or whatever the way you don't have any economic value add to you then you're gonna not make a lot of money
Somebody says I'm in the same guy says I'm in Canada also, you know
Yeah, Canada's a big place.
Lots of places. I remember there's a place called Timmins.
It's one of the largest cities in North America, even though it has a tiny population because it just goes on and on forever.
The city's owning because they wanted to snag as many people.
I remember you could buy a house there some years ago, $40,000.
You could buy a house. Somebody says, dude, I'm 45, making six figures and struggling to make my way through a population of single moms, raised by single moms, appreciative of single moms, and dating single moms.
Trust me, you don't want to wait to be me.
If you've got a good girl, quit the wine and start making babies.
Yeah, I'm sorry to hear about that, man.
45 is a tough time to start trying to have a family.
It really is a tough time.
All right. People buy tiny homes, park on a property.
Town passes, laws banning them.
Host prices out of reach.
People buy tiny homes, park on a property.
I don't know what that means. Oh, like, do you mean like trailer parks?
I don't know what that means. Hey, Steph, I'm an avid reader, but I see that some productivity experts say too much reading can hinder your professional life.
Do you think there can be too much reading?
I mean, specifically nonfiction.
Well, of course there can be too much reading.
If you read instead of sleep, you'll go insane.
If you read instead of exercise and you never exercise, then you will go to potty physically.
It can be too much of just about anything.
It can even be too much virtue.
There can be too much virtue, too much honesty, too much truth, right?
arguably Aristotle, Socrates and Plato a little overindulged on the virtue side of things and cost
one of them their lives and almost the other two as well.
Does listening to Steph count as increasing my market value?
Bye.
you Well, today it does.
Listening to me doesn't do much, but if you act on it, yes.
All right, let me get to your comments here.
Just before midnight, checking mail at an old place.
Good excuse to spend an hour on my feed.
Yeah, I mean, like, I used to stand.
I just haven't quite got around to setting this whole thing up for standing.
But, you know, when I do call-in shows and so on, like, I'm walking around now.
now I just want to keep moving I want to keep moving so thank you for this
Steph says, Tipper, thank you so much.
I appreciate that. And again, tips are very welcome and you know how much value I'm adding.
This is a life-changing thing if you want it to be.
And I'm not even screaming or taking my shirt off, so whatever.
Thank you for this, Steph. I love this conversation slash topic.
I've got a gym membership not too long ago.
I've been in therapy for a while.
I signed up to a local course to up my communication skills and often try to up my skills.
This has added fuel to that fire.
I can always do more. I spend too much time playing video games or board games still.
You know, some video games you're planning with other people, and board games I play Catan with some friends online and with my family, and that can be fun.
Mostly it's just an excuse to chat and shuffle dice, but...
Never thought about how when you ask for tips, that models the behavior of asking for what you want.
Oh, no.
This is why people get mad at me for asking for donations.
It's like, no, the show needs donations.
The show needs donations.
I mean, I got a bill for bandwidth that just would blow your socks off, right?
I mean, the show needs donations.
I want to do documentaries.
They're expensive. And the show is a business that needs to have income in order to have expenses.
You know, I'm hiring someone this year.
I'm hiring somebody else later this year.
I just need support.
And I... I know that I deserve it.
I know that you can't get this anywhere else.
I know how hard I work to provide value to you.
And if not you, then other people are subsidizing you.
And that's fine. Again, if you're a student, if you're broke, if you're younger and you don't have any money, No problem.
And enjoy the show and so on.
But just recognize that other people are paying for what you're consuming.
That you are a free rider, right?
That you respect property rights and exchanging value for value.
But you're like, I don't feel like doing it.
Other people can carry the weight.
And that's just a...
You think that passivity costs me?
Well, sure. I mean, it costs me.
I don't get your support and donations.
But it costs you a lot more than it costs me.
Right? Just letting other people carry the load.
Other people fund the show.
Other people do what they need.
Right? So...
All right. But yeah, when I'm asking for tips, when I'm telling you what I want and what I need and what I deserve and doing so in a non-hostile and non-abusive way, yeah, absolutely.
I'm absolutely modeling.
You understand that me asking for your support is the same as you asking for a raise at work or you asking for a job or you asking for training or you asking for promotion.
I've been modeling this thousands of times over the course of this show, right?
That I'm asking for what I want directly.
Knowing the value that I have to offer.
Now, I can't withdraw my services from you if you don't support, right?
So you can quit, I guess.
Well, I guess if nobody donated, I'd quit.
But I'm modeling you asking for what you want in this life.
And what you deserve, what you've earned.
I mean, if you're providing a lot of value, you deserve a raise.
And if you are solving a lot of problems and saving your money, your employer money, you deserve a raise.
You deserve a promotion. Asking for, I mean, I'm here directly, eye contact, eyeball to eyeball, audio to ear.
I'm saying, this is what I deserve and this is what I want.
I deserve support. I want your donations.
Of course I do, right?
And so, your response to this, here's the thing.
Like, if you want to know, why do people get so mad about And some people do.
They get really mad about me asking for donations, right?
Well, it doesn't cost me.
I'm going to continue to ask for donations because I know the value that I'm offering and I know I deserve it.
And if you're consuming this material at some point, you know, whenever you can afford it in a reasonable manner, you should absolutely support the show.
Of course you should, right?
You don't want to exploit people.
You don't want to rely on the hard work of other people.
You don't want to be a free rider because...
What does that say about you?
What does that say about your integrity?
What does that say about your sense of value for yourself?
What does that say? You're trying to put...
Like, when you don't support me as a whole, you're putting me in a parent relationship and you in a child relationship, right?
I don't ask my daughter for donations because she's a kid, right?
So, like, you owe me resources, I don't owe you anything back is putting me, rather than in an equal-to-equal relationship, it's putting me in a parent-child relationship or an authority...
Subjugation relationship. In a sense, a master-slave relationship.
And I'm always trying to break you out of that stuff, right?
And have you reach reasonable levels of wise maturity.
And reasonable levels of wise maturity is this guy's busting his ass, blew his reputation, blew income, to tell the truth to the world, to tell the truth to me.
He's adding massive amounts of value.
I should support him.
Of course, right? I mean, otherwise, it's like, well, other people should...
Support it. I'm just going to consume and I don't have to exchange value for value.
Well, that is a child's perspective and it's perfectly appropriate when you're a child.
It's not appropriate when you're an adult to be in a child's state of mind.
And that child's state of mind is going to be enormously costly for you.
Because you're in a state where other people should provide you resources.
You don't have to reciprocate.
Okay, what's that going to do in your dating life if you think that the woman owes you time, attention, kisses, sex, whatever, and you don't have to reciprocate with any value?
How attractive are you going to be if you're in a child's relationship to resource distribution, to resource exchange, right?
It's just not going to be attractive, and it's not going to...
Bring healthy people into your life.
Being entitled, right?
If you just feel like, well, I don't really have to provide value.
I've been at this job for a year.
They should give me a raise. They should give me a promotion.
And you don't sit there and say, okay, how am I going to get this?
How am I going to prove that I have value?
How am I going to exchange value for value?
You're just sitting there passively, like Jabba the Hutt in quicksand, just waiting for good things to come your way.
Are good things going to come your way?
Nope. No, I'm literally trying to massively teach you how to Get and sustain increased value in your life.
You know, if you provide a lot of value to your employer and you can make a case for that, you go to your employer and you say, you know, I've been working hard here, I've been working overtime, I've provided a lot of value, here's a list of all the things that I've done and how much, like, I would like a raise.
I think I deserve a raise and I would like a raise.
Yep. Yep. That's what I'm doing.
I'm providing a huge amount of value.
I try and squeeze as much value into every show as I can.
Like, as wide a different set of topics as I can.
I try to squeeze as much value into every show.
So, yes, I deserve, I absolutely, completely and totally deserve support.
And you know that. I mean, I'm not telling you anything you don't know.
You're just trying to find, I'll do it later, I'll do it another time, blah, blah, blah, right?
You know that I deserve support.
You know that I've done the right thing.
You know that I've never backed down from something I know to be true.
I've never apologized to the mob.
I've stood my ground despite all slings and arrows of outrageous lies and so on, right?
And, you know, other forms of blowback, which we'll talk about perhaps over time.
But yeah, I'm modeling.
I'm providing value. I know how much value I'm providing.
And yes, I deserve your support because that puts us in a relationship of equals.
And that's a way for you to practice both receiving and providing value in a relationship so you don't exploit others or get exploited by others.
All right, let's see here.
The red pill on Manusphere is just feminism for men, without the support of the government.
Bye.
Thank you.
Yeah, the red pill of manosphere is just feminism for men.
I think that it's a lot to do with We're being exploited by women, so we're either going to avoid women, which is the MGTOW monk stuff, or we're going to exploit women in return, which is the game player sleeping around stuff, right?
So we're being exploited by women, so we're either going to avoid women or we're going to exploit them in return.
As opposed to, how can I learn to get out of exploitive relationships?
There is exploitation. There's always been exploitation in the world.
And there always will be.
So given that exploitation is a fact, how do you avoid it as much as possible?
How do you avoid it as much as possible?
The way that I try to avoid exploitation is to remind you of my need for your support, right?
To donate and so on, right?
So that's how I try to avoid it.
And... I have a rule.
I mean, social situations, I have a rule that I actually learned from one of my old bosses many years ago who would say to me, oh yeah, you know, my wife and I, we meet new people and, you know, we'll spend, you know, maybe 10, 15 minutes asking them about themselves.
But if they don't ask anything back, we just move on and write them off.
Just make sure things are reciprocal.
I have only...
Sorry, I just...
My daughter played me some song about Valhalla where some guy was singing deep down here in the bottom of his throat.
Let's see here. I've only ever kept in touch with one of the people I worked with in my past.
Even the nicest, friendliest colleagues became strangers in a matter of months.
Family will not... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
I mean, there's some people I actually hired who are still working at the business that I founded, and good for them, and we used to get together from time to time, but, you know, things move on and people move on, right?
Lots of gurus there selling courses and books on how to be alpha and pursue excellence.
Yeah, yeah.
And, of course, by telling young men not to have family, you get the collapse of society.
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yes.
Well, and you don't fight for the future if you don't have children.
Some of the challenging topics that I took on, I took on precisely because I became a father.
And I didn't want my daughter being blamed for things that weren't her fault.
So I pointed out alternative explanations for things, social differences and economic differences.
I don't want my daughter being blamed for things that aren't her fault.
So if they can get you to not have children, they can get you to not fight the good fight.
This chat is very eye-opening.
A lot of things you're saying shows how society in general has sold us all this BS and lies.
Yeah, sure. But, you know, they can't sell you this stuff without you wanting it, right?
You can't...
You can't be sold...
Like, you know, nobody can make you feel bad without your permission.
Get out of the city. No six-figure job in a small town?
How much for an apartment or condo in a small town and work your way to running a local shop or work online or both?
Steph is dropping bright pills left and right.
It's shameful how much time I've spent whining and making excuses when I could have found a way to get what I want.
Yes, and again, sympathy, right?
The whining and making excuses is...
I hate to sort of put it this way.
Oh, you know what?
I will ask you.
Hit me with the why if you want a very harsh pill.
Hit me with the why if you want a very harsh pill.
Let me know. Let me know.
Okay. All right.
I warned you. I warned you.
I'm going to tell you this and it's going to change your life and you will be unhappy for a while and then you'll be
happy For a while, right? Okay. Somebody says it's shameful how
much time I've spent whining and making excuses But I could have found a way to get what I want. Okay
Why why I assume you're a dude, right?
Why were you whining and making excuses?
And everybody knows. You'll know this the moment I say it.
Why were you whining and making excuses?
Why? I'm going to go down and get the answers here.
Oh man, you'll kick yourself if you don't know this, but when I say it, you'll completely understand your life and the world as a whole right now.
Why were you whining and making excuses?
Why? Why were you whining and making excuses?
Tell me. I'm just waiting for people.
The same reason cats meow around humans as adults not taking responsibility for his actions because someone benefits from his excuses to avoid the work needed or hoping whining would work like a baby.
Easier than facing the truth of having to blame ourselves for bad choices.
No! That is not why you were whining and making excuses.
You were whining and making excuses because you mistook yourself for a woman.
You know. No hate on women.
No hate on women here.
I live with two wonderful females.
You were whining and making excuses because you looked into the mirror and you saw a pretty girl.
Because you weren't raised around men.
You weren't raised in a masculine environment.
And you looked around and you saw, my gosh...
All of this whining and making excuses, that really works.
It really works.
I see all of these people whining and making excuses, and it really, really works.
Man, whining and making excuses is incredible.
It's magic. You get resources by complaining.
You don't have to work for them.
Of course I'm going to be infected.
Of course I'm going to be infected by whining and complaining.
Now, love women.
Women are absolutely wonderful.
Men love men.
Men are absolutely wonderful.
As a man, when was the last time you whined and made excuses and somebody rushed in to fix it for you?
Just... When was the last time?
Hit me with a why if, as a man, you've whined and complained and people have rushed in to fix the problem.
Never! Nope.
Nope. No.
No. A woman crying in public has an entire crowd around her saying, how can we make it better?
A man crying in public, everybody parts around that guy like he's just lost the...
And this woman says, as a woman, whining has never been an approach I've used.
But as a woman, you've made it about yourself.
I mean, Paula, I love you to death.
I'm glad you're here. I really am.
But when a general statement is made about a woman and a woman immediately says, well, I don't conform to that general statement, you're not processing the general statement you're making about yourself.
And in fact, you are complaining right now.
You are complaining and saying, well, I'm not part of that general statement, as opposed to trying to understand the male perspective and why it's infecting men.
Right? You are now saying, well, I don't do that.
You've made it about yourself and you're complaining that I'm generalizing and you're not part of that generalization.
So, I'm sorry. Again, love women, but that is a typically female response.
And I say that with love, respect, and affection and all of that.
But, no, you look into the mirror and you see a hot young thing and you imagine, well, gee, you know, if I'm sad, if I'm upset...
Some good things will happen.
I've seen it. I've seen it everywhere.
I've seen it all over the place.
People, they whine and they complain and they get stuff.
They get stuff, right?
I'm a woman on Tuesday, so we'll be making the most of it tomorrow.
Nice. Tim says, I was working construction once, stepped on a nail and got zero sympathy.
Yeah, watch where you step.
I've told you this before, right?
This was my sort of big introduction to this when I was, I don't know, 12 or 13 years old.
I was in a gym class.
We divided the gym class into two.
There was a big divider in the middle.
The guys did wrestling and the girls did dance, right?
The little boys. I think the boys did wrestling.
Girls did dance. And...
You know, like everyone who wrestles.
I caught an elbow to the face.
I got blood in my mouth.
I thought my tooth was loose.
And I remember we had this Scottish gym teacher who had like foul, fetid tobacco, chewing tobacco breath and so on.
And he comes up, yanks my mouth open, wiggles my tooth.
You'll be fine. You're fine.
You're fine. Right?
And... I remember, I wasn't on this soccer team, but a friend of mine was on this soccer team, and he had this Eastern European soccer coach, and he took a heavy kick to the nuts, man. He just got wackadoodled in the castanets, right?
And he just went down like a sack of wet cement, right?
And his dad was like, ah, with balls the size of that, you have to be able to walk it off.
Yeah, that's the sympathy you get as a man.
I think that's the sympathy you get.
Rub some dirt on it. Yeah.
Absolutely, absolutely.
So, and there was a gap, right?
There was a gap between the boys and the girls.
Like, just a little edge where they hadn't full...
And I remember, 13, right?
What are the girls doing, right? And this was, you know, like I was given one round off because there was blood in my mouth.
I was given one round off from wrestling, right?
And I went and looked around where the girls were.
And I saw this girl. She stumbled.
All the other girls caught her.
And all the teachers rushed over.
Are you okay? Are you all right?
Yeah. Do you need to sit down?
Are you okay? Do you need some water?
I'm like, you can hate it or not.
It's just a fact. I mean, it's just a fact.
It's a fact. Eggs versus sperm, right?
Yes. So...
We race around women and we see women whining and complaining.
And we think that's going to work because it works for women.
And again, I'm not talking about all women, tons of exceptions, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But, I mean, in general, right?
In general. Why do women complain about the patriarchy and men don't complain about the matriarchy?
Because women complaining gets resources.
as men complaining get scorned.
Women and children first has been the case in rescue situations throughout all
of certainly Western history.
Women don't get drafted.
Women get far more out of government than they pay in taxes in terms of money.
Women generally are deferred to.
They get the first of the line.
You get a seat in the subway.
There's massive amounts of deference to women.
And women have safe jobs if they have jobs at all.
They don't work construction.
They don't want oil rigs and so on, right?
And when I worked up north, there were a couple of women around, but they didn't go into the bush in the same way that the men had to.
I mean, they did some gold panning in the warehouse back in the base, but, you know, they didn't go out humping these giant 80-pound sack of drill rods around.
Boy, that's phallic, isn't it?
Hello, welcome to my massive 80-pound sack of drill rods.
It's plural in a rather octopus-like fashion.
I can impregnate an entire cheerleading squad by holding at his knees.
So, Yeah, they couldn't do the work, right?
And so the men went out and did the work.
So, yeah, women don't get drafted, get much more money out of the safer jobs.
95% of workplace deaths are men and injuries and so on.
And with all of this deference, women and children first, they don't get drafted and so on.
They genuinely, genuinely believe that they have been exploited and victimized throughout history.
Now, why do they say they've been exploited and victimized throughout history?
Because it works. They get resources.
They complain. They get resources.
So the reason why men complain is we forget that we're men.
There's lots of benefits to being a man.
Lots of benefits to being a man.
We don't bleed for five days a month.
We don't have to deal with the loss of significant male attention and deference as we age.
Because You know, if you're always ignored, then when you...
I feel so invisible over 50.
It's like, hello! Welcome to being a man from 50 seconds of age until approximately 14 minutes after your death, right?
So, I just feel so invisible.
Hello! Men look into the mirror of society like vampires look into glass and we see nothing coming back, right?
So, yeah.
So... For women, complaints get them resources.
It's called nagging. And look, it's not all women, tons of exceptions, right?
So, again, no complaints, it's just a fact.
I mean, it works.
Because women...
Well, let's say complaining works in a situation where women choose their mates.
When women are assigned mates or they're, you know, whether this is assigned or you have to marry so-and-so, then women's complaining doesn't matter, right?
So when women complain, men have to bend to their will in order to minimize the complaints, right?
And again, some women, right?
My wife is not a nag. She doesn't, she barely complains and all of that.
The joke is that I sort of do it more, which is kind of funny, right?
So... Now, with the state, right, women's complaints have reached hysterical levels.
People say, oh, you know, feminism.
So feminism is bought and paid for, right, because when women complain, the government gives the money.
Government gives money to women who complain.
And so complaining through the state metastasizes excuses and complaints.
They metastasize, right?
So, I mean, you literally have women, they choose some ridiculous, idiotic, addicted thug to be the father of their children, right?
And they literally will stand and stomp their feet and say, who's going to pay for my kids' braces?
Who's going to pay for my kids' food?
Who's going to pay... Like, it's everybody else's job to feed their children.
It's like, what are you talking about?
Why didn't you get married to a guy who's going to stick around and be a provider?
Well, you fooled me! So, I mean, women can just say stuff.
And men are like, oh, okay, well, here's $5,000 a month to feed your kid, right?
It means I can't have kids, but, you know, yours, right?
So, I mean, the women who say, well, he fooled me, right?
I mean, it's literally like a zebra saying, if they could speak, you know, well, I didn't see the lion coming.
It's like, you realize that over tens of millions of years, you've evolved to figure out when the lion is coming, right?
You've got the scent, you look for stuff in the grass, right?
You stay in a circle around the weak and the old and the helpless and the young, and You've evolved to detect and avoid predators.
That's the only reason that you exist, right?
So, of course, women put a vast amount more of resources into having children than men do.
And therefore, over millions of years of evolution, women have evolved to Detect the CAD, right?
CAD detector is women's primary job to figure out who's going to stick around and who's going to run away.
Women have evolved to pursue exactly that evaluation.
And a woman who says, I had no idea that the alcoholic with a long criminal record wasn't going to stick around.
I had no idea. I had no idea a guy might...
Leave me when he found out I still have five active Tinder profiles.
You know, like, of course women know this stuff.
Of course they do. They've entirely evolved to figure out who's going to stay and who's going to not stay, right?
And so giving women responsibility is very tough for men.
And again, it's a beautiful part in a free market, in a small tribe, in a sort of private situation.
It's a beautiful thing. Women, of course, have also evolved to spend a lot of time around babies, infants, and toddlers, which means that they really have to stay – they have to be very sensitive to that mindset.
And I know that for myself, when I was around my daughter when she was very little, you really have to attune yourself to that mindset, which means you kind of have to devolve a little bit, and then you grow back up and all of that.
So, yeah, it's – that's why – why do you complain and whine?
Because you've seen it work. And you haven't gotten the principle, right?
It doesn't work for men. It doesn't work for men.
And it shouldn't work for men.
And again, women are wonderful.
They have all of this beautiful stuff.
They bring life into the world and so on.
I would rather be a man than a woman, to be honest.
See, for a man, you get the incredible benefit of gaining value later in life.
Like, would you rather inherit a lot of money when you were 15 or when you're 30?
Well, of course, if you inherit a lot of money when you're 15, you're probably going to blow it all, right?
And so men have the incredible advantage.
We have the incredible advantage of gaining value later in life so we're not quite so immature when we are at our maximum value state, right?
So I'd rather be a man than a woman, although I respect and love women enormously.
But one of the...
I mean, there's no upside forever, right?
There's no upside in everything.
So women have a lot of challenges and a lot of complaints and that are, you know, really...
I don't have to worry about endometriosis, man.
Talk to some woman who's got endometriosis and it's like, yep, I'm in hell, right?
And it's really tough.
Female plumbing is complicated and dangerous and, you know, not exactly engineered very efficiently and so on.
So, yeah, it's really tough.
A woman has to, you know, very few men are loved just for the possibility of sexual access or pretend to be loved, right?
You don't have to worry about a woman using you for your body if you're a man, for the most part, right?
I mean, she might want to use you for your money, but she's not going to...
So women always have to try and figure out who's pretending to be attracted to me just to get in my pants.
Men don't have to worry about that.
If a woman likes us, generally it's because we are, right?
So... Yeah, no smear tests, no periods, no waxing, and no menopause.
Menopause, I mean, that can go on for a long time for women as the heart flashes and you've got to watch your bone density and sleep is an issue, so no.
Wouldn't a man who complains immediately realize it doesn't work and that would be the end of it?
Well, no, because if you're whining and complaining is you avoiding the struggle of manhood, then you're not failing, right?
So if you want resources as a man and you go whine and complain to your boss, your boss will probably not give you resources.
If you want resources as a woman and you whine and complain, you probably will get some resources in general, right?
And then if you can't even do that, then you become an ideologue and you run to the state, right?
So... I walked outdoors during minus 40 degree weather, including blizzards, thundershowers that had me soaked to the skin in seconds.
Such was the job. Yeah.
Yeah, for sure. For sure.
I find great pleasure in providing to women.
I can't imagine not wanting to do that.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what do we work for?
We work for women. We work for children.
We work for our civilization and the continuity of our culture.
I mean, it's beautiful. Hemorrhoids during pregnancy is rough.
Yes, that's right. That's right.
Imagine if they had to, you know, tear open your butt to have some watermelon-sized dump.
I mean, the episiotomies and, like, they literally have to saw the woman's vagina to help the baby out sometimes.
sometimes it's really tough.
Cramps I sympathize with.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Being a girl would be cool, but it would be god-awful if I didn't have a good guy as a life partner.
Well, imagine being half your size and physically weaker for the rest of your life and with something on your person that most dudes would love to get their hands on, right?
It's not a very relaxed existence in a lot of ways.
Modern women's built-in CAD detectors clearly aren't working on the whole.
What if they've been reprogrammed to function as?
Oh no, the CAD detectors are working fine.
Oh yeah, CAD detectors are working fine.
Yeah, CAD detectors are working fine.
No issue with that.
They're just ignoring them, right?
A government program can't erase millions of years of evolution.
It just can't do it, right? Steph, in the last call-in show, you told the guy to grovel to get the 9.5 woman he dumps back.
Why do you think male groveling works sometimes?
Wouldn't the woman think you're a simp?
So, a woman wants to know how committed you are to her so that she can trust you.
Will you still love me tomorrow?
So, a woman really wants to know how committed you are so that she can trust you.
And... You know, I remember when my wife and I were first dating and we were talking about marriage and I said, like, divorce is not a thing.
She agreed, we're not going to get a divorce.
And I said, plus, you know, even if you did divorce me, it'd be kind of tough for you to date a guy with me still hanging on to your leg, crying and screaming the whole time.
Who's that? Why is he attached to your leg?
Oh, that's my... Husband, he's like, you know.
So if you absolutely completely and totally show the woman how devoted you are to her how much you love her and and
you know Groveling and cry good pleading to get her back is shows
how much power she has over you and that's a way that she can
Trust you, right?
All right Women also don't really know if men will stay with them as
they get older They need to trust their husbands. Oh, yeah.
Like the idea that women are exploited by monogamy.
No, no, no. Monogamy exists to serve women.
Oh, come on. If you haven't, like I know there's a bunch of people watching here.
I know for a simple fact that this is gold stuff.
If you haven't donated on this show, or if you're listening later, freedomain.com slash donate, or you can donate here as well.
This is life-changing stuff.
It helps you love and appreciate the opposite sex and all kinds of beautiful stuff.
So... Yeah, monogamy is totally there for women, because a man can have two or three rounds of children, right?
Right, a man can have children at 20, he can have more children at 40, he can have more children at 60, and depending on his longevity and his Mick Jagger-ness, he can have children in his 80s, right?
It's all by the Greek style, right?
So... Men can have multiple families.
Women can't.
20 to 40, that's their round, right?
After that, they're done, right? So, a man who is a great provider, which is what a woman wants, right?
A man who is a great provider can dump his wife when she hits 40 and can start a whole new family.
Right? That's the advantage.
That if you're a man, spreading your seed, you get, you know, a woman gets one round of bat, a man can get three or four rounds of bat, right?
So, yeah, monogamy is absolutely there for the benefit of women.
And then women are like, I'm so oppressed by marriage and monogamy.
And it's like, yeah, all right, well, you know, this is my novel, The Present, which you should absolutely check out, my novel, The Present.
I'll give you guys a link to that right now.
But, yeah, my novel there is like, yeah, it's all...
It's all nonsense until the money runs out.
Like, when the government money runs out, then we can start to...
Get to the facts. We can start to get to reality, right?
But you can't interrupt a gambling addict when he's just winning all the time, right?
You've got to stop gambling and every single hand he wins, right?
Every single hand he wins.
You can't interrupt an addict when he's in the throes of his success.
I mean, you can, but they won't listen, right?
They won't listen. And you have to wait until they hit rock bottom.
I mean, I had this thought.
Well, okay, tell me, let me just sort of catch up with you guys here.
Let me give you this link.
You've got to listen to this audiobook.
It's fantastic. If a man complains to avoid manhood, does that mean they actually know it doesn't work, but they do it regardless as a method of deluding themselves, living in fantasy land?
Well, a woman complains a lot of times to avoid responsibility.
And again, I know this sounds like a big complaint.
It's not. It's just an observation of reality.
A man complains to avoid manhood, he's avoiding responsibility, right?
And avoiding responsibility is not good for women or for men as a whole, but men and women do it in different ways.
Monthly supporter, says someone, don't have funds to donate what I wish I could, and I need to think on where my money should go, like it does here.
Look, I hugely appreciate that.
Monthly supporting is great because it's a little easier to predict what the income is and try and work with that.
Somebody says, hey Steph, my baby girl was born yesterday!
Oh! Wow.
She actually can say, you think I was born yesterday?
My baby girl was born yesterday.
Congratulations. I'm currently in hospital and it's middle of the night and I just tuned in.
Besides absolute exhaustion, caring for a newborn really clears your mind of all human drama and bullshit.
Kind of therapeutic in a way.
Congratulations, my friend.
You are embarking on an absolutely wonderful and amazing and beautiful journey and fantastic.
Fantastic, fantastic, fantastic.
Let's see here. So much money is being thrown around here at the moment in Australia.
Oh yeah, it's in Australia where they just found out that the government pressured social media companies to suppress information about COVID. If you guys haven't read The Present, I would highly recommend it.
I wish I had done it sooner. Same with The Future.
Yeah, you know what? Let's give you...
Let's give you The Future too.
Let's give you The Future as well.
The Present and The Future.
This is normally for donors, but here you go.
You've got a public site... This is normally for donors, but you should absolutely get this book.
This is my abstract.
It is the vision of the world as it should be and as we're aiming for.
So I will give this feed to you, and you should listen to this as well.
You can just put them in your podcatcher right now, and you're getting all there, right?
All right. Let's do the last couple of questions here.
Oh, I went a little too far up there, didn't I? Yes, I did.
Lots of congratulations.
Congratulations, yeah, that is absolutely wonderful.
Love her, love her, love her, and your life will be made glorious thereby.
Just wonderful. All right, let me just...
I'll throw this on here as well.
Right.
I have risen from philosophy minds to enjoy a live stream.
Then back to work on StephBot.
Oh, yes. So, yes, this is a fellow I'm working with who is trying to upload me to the cloud so that he doesn't have to put up with any more productivity meetings with me.
He's like, hey, man.
If I can fake you, I don't have to talk to you.
I think that's the major motive. Look, I can understand that.
As soon as he fakes me, I won't have to talk to me anymore either.
I understand. I do understand.
How do you know you won't be talking to Jared Bott?
Because Jared, I'm a fairly enthusiastic person.
I have nothing on this volcano, this geyser, this eruption, this supernova of enthusiasm known as the Jared.
I get regularly third-degree Richard Dreyfuss close encounters burns from turning my head while he's being enthusiastic, and it's a beautiful thing to be in the presence of.
All right. Oh gosh, have we already done an hour 40?
It's easy to get there working with you.
You massage that.
You massage that and it will work.
All right. Will this version of Steph be able to restrain from taking his shirt off?
Come on, I've done it three times in 18 years, but yeah.
Make new account and put the StephBot on Twitter.
Will the StephBot get banned?
We'll see. Will there be a flesh Steph versus StephBot debate in the future?
Oh, that's funny. Yeah, that's funny.
That would be an interesting idea. I wonder who would win.
All right. FreeDomain.com forward slash donate if you're listening to this later.
And I hope you understand none of this is meant to be negative to men or women.
Just talking about particular. Can we make Steph Bot take his shirt off more?
What are you going to see? Some lines of copper and gold, right?
Thank you very much for a great and wonderful evening and a great chat.
I absolutely appreciate it and I hope you guys have a wonderful evening.
I will see you Wednesday night for Wednesday night 7pm Eastern Standard for Wednesday Night Live and still aim for Friday this week.
And yes, we will...
I've got a great interview.
I'm back doing the interview circuit a little bit.
Got a great interview coming out this week.
I hope that you will enjoy that.
Freedomain.com slash donate.
To help out, if you would like to join a really robust Freedomain community, you can get there through...
Thank you, Tim.
I appreciate the tip. And, of course, you can go to freedomain.locals.com.
I guess you're already here, but you can come here on a more regular basis.
I just published yesterday to donors my latest Q&A with my daughter, which was a blast and very, very enjoyable.
So I hope you will check that out.
And have yourselves a wonderful evening.
Lots of love from up here, unless you're further north than me, unlikely, but then it's lots of love from down here.
And it's a good night from me, and it's a good night from him.