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Sept. 10, 2024 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
16:08
To HELL With Fairness!
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Alright, so the concept of fairness has been floating around a little bit here and there on the forums and in my inbox.
So, I need to tell you about fairness.
Because fairness is a huge problem.
So, let me tell you about a conversation I had many years ago with a friend of mine's daughter.
Now, this woman was working in an office and she had trained a younger employee.
And she herself had a tough childhood.
She had a temper and so on.
And the younger worker kept getting the lion's share of the work.
And so she went to her bosses and she was like, Hey, this younger worker, the person I trained, she's 10 years younger than me.
I trained her and she's getting the work.
You got to fix that.
It's unfair.
I'm better at what I do.
I'm the one who trained her and she keeps getting the jobs that are meant for me.
That's unfair.
And she got really angry.
And I had a tough time understanding that.
And I was very open at having a tough time understanding that.
And she said, well, I'm better at the work.
And I said, OK, so let's say you're technically better at the work.
So what?
Well, then people should give me the work.
And I said, but you're not as much fun to work with.
Right?
You're not as much fun to work with.
So what you're saying to your... by going to your bosses and complaining about unfairness, you're saying, I can't compete with someone 10 years younger who I trained.
Like you're saying to your bosses, I'm incredibly insecure about the value that I provide.
I cannot compete with a woman 10 years younger that I trained.
And you have to fix this because people are being unfair to me because I'm better at my job.
And therefore, what are they supposed to do?
Are they supposed to go to people handing out work and say, you are not allowed to give the work to this younger woman who's more pleasant to work with, but you have to give the work to the older woman who's unpleasant to work with because she's kind of volatile and blames other people for her own inadequacies.
Because she had a problem with anger.
Now, the concept of unfairness and the concept of rage or the experience of rage go hand in hand.
I mean, we see this all over the place on the left.
All inequities are due to bigotry and there's rage and you got to fix things.
Right?
So, you have to look at your life and you've got to find this petty, petulant demon called unfairness and rip it out by the roots.
It will choke and destroy your life like weeds on a rose bush.
It's unfair.
It's unfair.
Well, unfair, the word unfair, the concept unfair, comes from helpless childhood.
It's a younger sibling word in general, right?
Aw, no fair, right?
He got more cake than I. That's not fair.
Unfair.
Because you can't get your own piece of cake, you can't buy your own piece of cake, so you have to rely on an authority figure.
The phrase unfair is a demand for a powerful, coercive authority figure who can make things fair.
So, if you say things are unfair, you are saying, I'm helpless, I can't compete, I can't survive on the merits, Of my own abilities.
And I need someone with power to step in and use aggression or force to transfer resources to me.
Nobody wants to give me those resources of their own accord.
I can't compete.
I can't get what I want.
I'm helpless.
And helplessness summons a kind of totalitarianism.
Right?
Unfair is a demand for totalitarianism.
The phrase unfair is the phrase of someone who wants someone else to bully on their behalf.
It is a bully phrase.
It is a call to bullying and of course there are lots of bullies in the world who'd love to step in and push people around and force people to do this that and the other.
It's unfair!
Like the women in the 60s, it's unfair I get paid less.
Well, do you work as many hours?
Do you produce as much output?
Do you quit to get pregnant?
Do you quit when you're married, right?
Is there a reason why you're paid less?
No, it's just unfair!
Okay, well then what happens is the government forces employees to all be paid the same regardless of productivity and the decay of the economy is set in motion.
It's unfair!
What is your life like if you take the word unfair out of your vocabulary?
You refuse to believe in it.
Listen, if there's anyone who can have an excuse for the word unfair, it could be somebody like me.
It was unfair I was surrounded by cruel people.
It was unfair that I was raised by a violent single mother.
It's unfair what happened to me in the business world.
It's unfair what happened to me in the academic world.
I was really good at academics and business.
It was unfair I got deplatformed.
It was unfair!
It's unfair I got kicked off various platforms.
It's unfair!
I didn't do anything wrong.
Okay, you understand?
Have you ever heard me say it's unfair?
I mean, I'm not speaking theoretically here.
I have every reason and excuse in the known universe to complain about unfairness.
Do I do it?
I do not.
I do not.
I don't want an authority To use aggression of force to fix my life.
I don't want to whine and complain and beg and plead and threaten and bully because things are unfair!
Aw, no fair!
Why is the cheerleader that I want to go out with going out with the handsome jock?
It's unfair!
Everybody wants to win the race.
It's unfair that one person wins the race.
Okay, so what are people supposed to do about the fact that other people win the race?
If other people win the race, there's only two possibilities.
You suck, or you didn't train hard enough.
That's it.
That's it.
Maybe you're not suited to that sport.
You know, maybe you're a 200-pound guy who wants to be a jockey.
Right?
Maybe you're a 5'2 guy who wants to be a basketball player.
Well, sorry, you're unsuited to the sport.
You suck at that sport, through no fault of your own.
Okay, then choose a different sport.
Be a wrestler, not a jockey.
So, unfair, unfair.
Or, so if you're 5'2 and you say it's unfair and you want to be in the basketball team, it just means that you can't be good at basketball and other people who are good at basketball have to lose because you suck, right?
You know, it's unfair that this guy has a great singing voice.
It's like, well, either you have a good singing voice, you just need to train it better, or you don't have a good singing voice, in which case what?
You're supposed to sing and the band's going to go out of business because nobody wants to come and hear you squawk away?
No!
Unfair, man.
It's unfair that he's really good-looking.
It's like, okay, then work to improve your looks.
And if you can't improve your looks that much, then work to improve the quality of a character.
Right?
Work to improve your virtue.
Work to be a great guy to date.
Right?
It's unfair that I started losing my hair in my early twenties.
On top of everything else, right?
It's unfair.
It's unfair that I got cancer when I'm a healthy, healthy guy.
It's unfair.
So?
What do I do?
Well, I work to get better and then what I do is I work to make sure I stay as healthy as possible.
So having cancer can make me a healthier person than if I'd never had cancer.
It's unfair.
Okay, so what?
So what?
It's unfair that I had a tooth that was fused to my jawbone, and no matter how much oral hygiene I did, and I'm pretty good at that sort of stuff, I couldn't save the tooth.
It's unfair!
Yeah, okay, so what?
I work to take better care of the other teeth.
I mean, the unfair stuff is...
You know, and I don't mean to be all kinds of sex based here, but come on guys, man to man, right?
To the ladies.
Okay.
I apologize in advance, but man to man, unfair.
It's kind of girly.
It's kind of girly.
What does it mean for a man that things are unfair?
I mean, compared to what?
We get what we earn.
We get what we negotiate for.
We get what we're willing to settle for.
You understand that the whole basis of socialism and Marxism is unfair.
Things are unfair.
The capitalist is taking too much money.
He's exploiting the workers.
It's unfair.
It's like, well, if you feel like you're being underpaid, ask for more or start your own company.
Unfair is like an environmental toxin.
It's immaterial.
It's a plea and a beg for bullying, coercion, violence, and really the destruction of your capacity to compete.
You know what?
There's a near infinity of people in the world who are better than you and I at just about anything.
Hopefully you can find that one thing where you can be world-class or top of your field or whatever it is, but even that's unlikely.
Right?
How many people out there are better athletes than I am?
Pretty much an infinity.
How many people out there are better singers or better drawers or better?
I mean, you could go certainly better at fixing things around the house.
Like it's a virtual infinity.
And you're better than other people at some things.
And you know, how many people are better at video games than I am?
Well, a near infinity.
So, of course, I aim to be a great philosopher, I aim to be a good writer, I aim to be a great parent and a good husband and, you know, obviously I'm aiming to be as good as I can be at these things, which obviously is pretty good.
It's pretty good.
But when you say things are unfair, you're saying I have no capacity to compete or get what I want and I need an external authority to force resources my way.
Unfair!
So, this concept of fairness or equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity.
Equality of opportunity is freedom.
Equality of outcome is tyranny.
And fairness is saying that we must have an equality of outcome and any deviation from equality of outcome is unfair and must be remedied with force.
Right?
I mean, this is the mentality of people who force others into sexual activity.
Well, there's a certain amount of sexual activity in the world.
I'm not getting mine.
It's unfair and therefore I can force redistribute resources called sex.
That's brutal and evil.
It's unfair that I lost my money on the stock market.
It's like, well, you bought things that are risky.
Unfair is the abrogation of self-ownership.
The word unfair is the abrogation of self-ownership.
If you can't compete with someone 10 years younger that you trained, that's on you.
And it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Because you seethe in the concept or the fantasy of unfairness, which is the plea for totalitarian coercion to redistribute resources.
Because you seethe in the concept of unfairness, you're hypersensitive and raw to differences in outcome.
But differences in outcome are the exact definition of quality.
And this is what's so hypocritical, is that everybody wants quality in what they consume and everybody wants egalitarianism in what they receive.
Everybody wants egalitarianism.
The people who are bad, right?
People who are bad at work want extra pay because of unfair Without the extra responsibility.
The workers want to be paid like the entrepreneur without assuming the risk and stress of the entrepreneur.
It's a form of theft, right?
So, you want a meritocracy when it comes to, hey, who's building your cell phone?
Do you want the best engineers to design and build your cell phone or do you want things to be fair and for crappy engineers to build half your cell phone?
You don't want that.
In fact, you'd be really angry and frustrated and outraged If your cell phone keeps breaking because your demand for fairness had shitty engineers working on your cell phone.
Or your heart valve in surgery.
Right?
So you're angry no matter what.
You're angry if things are unfair because you want things to be fair and you want to get free stuff.
But then, if other people take your standard called fairness and use it to have shitty engineers work on your cell phone, then you're also angry because your cell phone doesn't work.
This is what I mean when I say it's foundational.
It's a foundational building block for constant rage.
Fair.
Things gotta be fair.
If things are unfair, I'm unhappy.
But then I'm also really unhappy if things are fair.
Because then my cell phone doesn't work.
And my electricity doesn't get delivered.
And my paycheck doesn't get sent.
Do you want fairness in payroll management so that even people who are really bad at getting your pay to you also get their shot, man?
No, because then 20% of the time you don't even get paid.
Oh no, I'm enraged that I'm not paid!
But no, that's the result of you being enraged that things are unfair.
There's simply no way out of this maze.
You want the quality based on inequality.
And you also want fairness based on equality.
So you want the quality that only inequality can provide, right?
Having the best people for the job.
You want all of that.
And you also want equality of outcome.
So you want inequality of outcome for quality and you want equality of outcome for fairness.
And the more you dial up the equality of outcome, the more you get crappy goods and services, which enrages you.
The more you get better goods and services, the less equal.
The outcome for the workers and all, right?
So it is a recipe for permanent chronic rage, which is the left, right?
I mean, so we don't want to partake in that kind of stuff, right?
So yeah, honestly, you got to take this concept of unfairness, which comes from a thwarted, often a younger sibling kind of immaturity.
It's not immaturity when you're a kid, a little kid, but you know, you got to grow out of that stuff real quick, right?
Real quick.
So yeah, don't get stuck in the permanent childhood of demanding equality.
And fairness because you're setting yourself up for a recipe of chronic rage, probably chronic health problems that come with the chronic rage, chronic dissatisfaction and you'll never be loved.
Like it's a high price to pay because you're irritable and stressed and tense and so you can't be loved, you can't relax, you can't enjoy life and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It's unfair that no one wants to work with me.
People are assholes because they don't give me the work.
It's like okay then people don't want to work with you because you're calling them assholes.
So, you know, the most resentful employees are the ones who don't get hired and don't get paid much because nobody wants to deal with their resentment.
So it actually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
That which you fear comes to pass because you fear it.
All right.
Hope this helps.
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Talk to you soon.
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