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Aug. 14, 2023 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
17:34
MY MOST EMBARASSING PURCHASE!
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Time Text
Hit me with a Y if you'd like to hear a not very proud story of mine.
I don't know. It's, you know, because it's not about me and my ego or anything.
Right? You do?
Okay. My only excuse is it was a while ago.
So hit me with an M if you've ever been to Morocco.
Marocmi Amadeus. Have you ever been to Morocco?
Land of the four colors? M. Okay, so some of you have been to Morocco, right?
What are the four colors? The blue of the sky, the red of the earth, the yellow of the sand, and the silver of the water.
There's four colors in Morocco.
It's a pretty place, and I'm glad that I went.
I actually went from a business trip in China straight to Y2K in Morocco.
I spent like five weeks with no English signs at all.
So, anyway, a friend of mine and I went and we had a driving tour of Morocco, which was fun.
Anyway, I get taken to this...
Rug merchant. And the rug merchant is super, supercilious.
You know, he's just like, oh, welcome in, Effendi.
Let me sit you down. Here is some mint tea.
Here are some biscottis.
Let me tell you a little bit about the history of my shop and the wonder of the woven arts of my rugs.
And blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
He's just spent time, sad, generous, nice, bottomless tea and snacks and all this kind of crap, right?
Quick question. I was a young single man living in a one-bedroom apartment at the time.
Did I have even the slightest need for carpets and or rugs?
Just hit me with a yes or no.
Arab salesman.
Oh, yes. The oiliness and the sycophancy that controls you, the subjugation that bullies you, the subservience that controls you.
Yes, it's 100% true.
Right. Okay, so we can all agree that as a young single man in a pre-carpeted apartment that I didn't even own, I was just renting, right?
Can we all agree I had no use for an expensive rug or carpet of any kind?
Right, we can agree with that, right?
A toupee maybe. Right.
Now, if we agree, this is just a logic 101 test, this is an IQ test, right?
So if I had less than no need for one...
Oh, it's horrible.
Now let's just move on to another topic.
I can't, I can't, I can't even, I can't even with this today.
Yes, I'm afraid so.
So, if I had less than zero need, a negative need, for one expensive rug, would I have A, more, or B, less need for two expensive rugs?
Anyone? Just, you know, throw it out there if you want.
But come on, man!
That was a lot of tea! Oh...
Do I still have that rug?
Okay, what's wrong with that sentence?
What is wrong with asking me if I still have that rug?
What's wrong with that sentence?
That's entirely too complimentary to me to what actually happened.
Those rugs, that's right!
More than one rack.
But my friends, they are so pretty.
Look at this, Effendi. It's pretty beautiful.
You take this home and you'll be the king of your...
Right? You might need a spare if you spill something on it.
Now, my friend, he had his own particular emotional problems and so on.
But my friend, did he buy any rugs?
You know, I felt a little bit like, you know, I was a bit smarter in some ways, maybe a little bit wiser.
Did he buy any rugs? He did not.
How many rugs did I buy?
All of them!
Actually, by the way, I've never shown you guys my rug store
but I'm still in Morocco and I just bought all the rugs and the rug store and that guy.
I disassembled him for parts to pay for my ticket home.
I spent...
No...
No, I can't.
It scalds me in my memory.
You know, like the people who decided to go and get a university degree rather than listen to me about Bitcoin.
How much money did I spend on these rugs?
Now, this is 23 years ago, right?
You've got to think of inflation, right?
I can't let it off my chest.
It's just too embarrassing. $1,500?
That's a really, really nice thing to say, Jared.
I appreciate that. It's very kind.
$1,000? Oh, how lovely.
How lovely. I spent over $2,000 on these rugs.
Oh, when you were 19, you sold $300 face cream from a mall pop-up store you couldn't afford.
Yeah, yeah. Oof.
$2,000. But you know it gets worse from there, right?
You know it gets worse than that.
I don't even have them, and that's a story for another time.
Oh, no, it gets worse from here.
No, the rugs were fine.
They were nice rugs. No, kidding.
No, they didn't get lost in transit, but you're getting close.
I will ship them.
You tell me, I will ship them.
So they met me at the airport.
The rugs met me at the airport.
And he was an honorable guy.
They've overcharged me a little, and that's pretty much the most expensive mint tea I've ever had in my life.
It was a little bit more expensive to ship, but that wasn't the major issue.
Hit me with a why if you've ever flown into a country with expensive rugs.
Just out of curiosity, have you ever done this?
Spoiler, it's not free.
There's, well, so customs, right?
So customs was like, because I can't hide them.
I've got these giant rugs with me.
It's not like I can put them on as two pairs of pants and pretend I'm a cowboy, right?
I mean, no, no, I had, look, I paid for them and I had the receipt and I had all of that, right?
And you know it's the sunk cost fallacy like once you've already paid two thousand bucks
for rugs you don't need and you've also paid for their shipping and now somebody's saying
oh yeah you owe another eight hundred dollars in import duties.
Now you know I have great respect for our friendly neighborhood government workers right?
Bye.
Thank you.
So, I go over to the separate place, and he was a nice guy.
And I don't have the worst sense of humor in the world.
And he said, you're going to owe some duties on these rugs.
And I said, not if you buy them.
My friend, Effendi, I have also brought some mint tea in my chest bags, and I will...
So I... He said, you owe duties on these, and I'm like, I can't.
He's like, what, you can't afford it?
And I said, no, I can't.
Like, I emotionally can't.
I have no spine.
I have no excuse.
I have no reason for these rugs.
They followed me like a curse, like I disturbed some...
Mummy's tomb. I can't pay.
It's too painful.
It's too horrible. You know what these mugs are?
These are mirrors that I look into and see a jellyfish.
I see a man with no spine.
I see a man whose price is three cups of mint tea.
I can't.
If I pay this, I'll never be able to ask a woman out.
I'll have to pee sitting down for the rest of my life.
I can't. I mean, I'm supposed to be high T, I'm bald, and I can't say no to a salesman so oily, if you give him a hug, he'll hit the ceiling.
Legend says they are at an art exhibit at the Toronto Airport.
Did you immediately regret buying the rugs?
Oh yeah, absolutely immediately.
They followed me like a haunted trailing ghost, like I had murdered my own self-esteem and the ghost of my murdered self-esteem was following me with chains and ghastly cries about my own pathetic spinelessness.
Oh my god. Oh. He said so.
You're not going to pay? I said, please don't make me.
I can't let go of the rugs, but I can't pay the tariff.
The tariff will be the last shreds of my self-esteem, and I will never be able to hold my head up high in public again.
It will be the end of my bloodline.
I will have no self-respect in the future.
And listen, 30 people work for me at my company, and I won't be able to negotiate anything because my exposure as the only hominid able to walk upright with A jellyfish for a spine.
Maybe I can make some money at a circus for being the only invertebrate vertebrate, but I can't.
Anyway, so he ended up laughing.
Yeah, whole new world. Yeah, so you can say that your self-esteem was carpet bombed.
Yes, yes.
Glad you told this story.
It's colorful, but not as colorful as the tears on my rug.
Okay. And I was like, you know, I could have just flown with these rugs right over this carpet and not paid any tariffs at all.
So anyway, I poured out my tale of woe to the customs agent.
And he said, that's very honest.
It's very heartfelt. Okay, fine, go on through.
Can you believe it? Yeah.
Never paid the tariff. Natural 20.
Yeah. That's when I began to think that laws maybe weren't as absolute as I thought.
Well, there's been a few times in my life where I've been paid...
I've never been an official comedian, although I've done stand-up once or twice, but I've never been an official comedian.
But... Occasionally...
I mean, I remember once being in serious trouble at the border.
It doesn't really matter, at a border.
I remember being in serious trouble at a border for reasons that don't really matter right now.
And this surly border agent came in.
I was taken off to a little dark room on its own and surly agent came in and I just looked to him and I smiled and said, I can't say I love what you've done with the place.
Because what are you going to do?
You've got to just roll the dice.
Either they're going to come down on you or they're going to laugh.
But you've got to roll the dice, man.
Go down with a grin if you can, right?
So... Well, it also shows that, you know, it shows some courage.
But no, I was just... I was honest with this guy.
And honesty can get you a fair amount of distance, I guess.
But... Yeah, it's...
It was not my proudest moment at all, right?
So in this guy, this guy, this oily Arab salesman who managed to milk money out of men by massaging their mint tea gland, was the sale about me?
Nope. The sale was about him.
Now, it worked. And I think it worked because I grew up in England and tea is just something you have to be nice and polite about.
I don't know. Maybe that's why he did tea.
Maybe it's a big Moroccan thing.
I don't know. Whatever, right? But, yeah, for the price of about 45 cents of tea and snacks, he got two grand out of me.
Now, I have no regrets for that purchase, right?
I have no regrets for that purchase.
Why not? Because you've got to screw up to get wise.
How did he get you to buy the rugs?
Reciprocity reflex, yeah, for sure.
And you understand, in our relationship, I'm the Arab salesman, right?
Because he taught me that if you're very generous, reciprocity works.
So what did I do?
No ads. Everything's for free.
Books are free. I'm generous, right?
Valuable lessons. It helped me to make the business decision about this show, which has served, I think, all of us well.
Low these 17 plus years.
Also being a waiter, because, you know, tips are voluntary, but...
Did he keep calling you, my friend?
I think...
I think I learned the Arabic phrase for big-nosed, white-skinned, foreign sucker.
I think that was the phrase.
Something about also revenge for colonialism.
I think that was also in there.
Yeah, maybe his lessons were worth it after all.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Thank the rug salesman for the existence of this live stream.
Yeah, absolutely. 25 years?
He's probably still alive. It's probably still alive.
No, honestly, I mean, I know it's a pathetic story in a way, but I learned a lot, and it was very instructive, and yeah.
You need to hire that guy. Maybe.
But here's the other thing too.
The other thing I learned was never try to beat someone at their own game.
Right? Never try to beat... So this was his job.
Right? So he probably had a deal with all the people who gave driving tours that they were going to drop off these European sucker fish into his oily domain and then he was going to milk them dry.
And, you know, my driver probably got a cut, and, you know, I'm sure they did some secret Arab-Muslim handshake or whatever it was, and, you know, fine, more power to them, right?
That was just the driver who, I swear, was dozing off.
I actually could not sit in the front seat after a while, because I just woke up, we'd be driving like...
And I'm like, dude, are you a sonar bat?
Like, how are you navigating?
Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.
Like, what is happening here? I don't know how we're alive.
How is it possible we're alive? I mean, if he was a young guy, I'd assume we were going to die, but he was a middle-aged guy, so I assume he'd done this before.
So, yeah, so...
I learned a lot from that interaction.
And I have no issues with it.
He didn't force me to do anything.
He just was very persistent in the asking.
And I was, as a lot of tidy-whities are, a little over-compliant.
I remember my Arabic driver telling me all about Cat Stevens and all of the other people who converted to Islam.
Very interesting. Maybe I'll talk about that whole trip one day.
It was a very interesting trip that I learned quite a lot about the world because I'd never been to that part of the world before.
But I'd always wanted to go to Morocco.
Yeah. Do you have those people like you don't know how they're driving?
Yeah. They're fiddling with the radio.
They're checking in that Mariana Trench between the seats looking for their yearbook photo from 1973 or they're checking their mail or playing a video game with their feet or something.
It's like, how are we going to live?
How are we going to live? And these are the people, they drift into your life to remind you of your mortality and have you appreciate every breath you take.
Muscle memory, yeah, yeah, for sure.
And they're smoking with the other hand.
Yeah, yeah, I've been a while since I've been.
I had a pilot in a small plane who was texting the whole time.
Nice. Hopefully he wasn't texting for instructions last summer.
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