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Oct. 15, 2024 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:20:09
Virtue vs Politics! Stefan Molyneux Interviewed!
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Hi, I am Jeffrey Wernick, and I'm pleased to have my guest here with me, Stefan Molyneux.
If I mispronounce that, please correct me.
That's fine.
Okay, I did good.
Okay, good.
First, I'd like to apologize for us starting actually 10 minutes late.
It's on me, entirely on me.
They were ready.
I had tech issues.
It's totally on me.
Sorry.
This stuff happens, and we apologize for being on late, but here we are.
I was a listener early on to Free Domain.
I characterized myself as an anarcho-capitalist, and there were not many anarcho-capitalist podcasters.
There still aren't many, but I remember that Stephan was, I guess he might have had the most widely listened to podcast among people who might have been self-described as anarcho-capitalists.
And so I listened to some of the episodes.
I wasn't necessarily a faithful listener to any podcast or many podcasts at all, but I did occasionally listen when I found myself with nothing better to do.
No offense, Stephen, but I prefer reading and I was also busy working, but I did find your podcast interesting and probably listened to it more than most podcasts that I listened to, which was Not many.
So, I understand the topic that you want to discuss today is upon peaceful parenting.
I also describe what you do as philosophy.
I think sometimes you describe it as moral philosophy, but I would like to start off questioning you as how do you define Morality and moral philosophy.
I think many people consider themselves moral philosophy, and many people who describe themselves as moral philosophers, other people would describe as either immoral or amoral philosophers.
So the question is, who controls the definition of what it means, what moral means, and who defines who?
Right.
That's a great question.
And the reason that I do that is that morality is the one area in philosophy that is exclusive to philosophy.
Now, philosophy is like the all-discipline.
You have a philosophy of science.
You have a philosophy of morals.
You have a philosophy of politics.
You have a philosophy of self-defense and property rights.
The one thing that philosophy should focus and center on is the primary differentiator in the general spread of human knowledge, which is morals and virtues and so on.
So it's not who gets to define morality, it's what is morality.
So my definition of morality is it is universally preferable behavior, behavior that can be achieved by everyone, At all times, under all circumstances, and does not logically self-contradict.
Now, this is taken to some degree out of science and physics, right?
So if you have...
Well, it's kind of Kantian.
Yes, I'm sorry, I hate to say yes and no, but so Kant would say, act as if the maxim of your action becomes a universal moral rule, but that is not objective, because let's say you're the strongest guy in the village, and you say, arm wrestling is how we should determine who gets the bride.
Well, you'd be happy to have that be a universal rule, because you are The strongest guy, so you're going to win that contest.
Or the tallest guy saying the tallest guy should get all of the wheat or grain or something.
So in terms of universality, for sure, but what I'm looking for is a rigorous, logical universality.
So if you're in physics and you say, I want to Come up with some conjecture or hypothesis about the behavior of matter and energy.
Well, the first thing that you have to do is show that your Or your conjecture, really, your proof comes later, that your hypothesis is logically consistent, right?
So you can't say, well, the basis of my physical theory is that gases both expand and contract when heated.
It's like, well, no, no, they can't do both.
You can't say, well, the foundation of my approach to how the universe works is that gravity is when mass both repels and attracts each other simultaneously.
It's like, well, no, no.
So it has to have an internal logic to it.
That's the first test.
Now, once the physics theory passed the test of internal consistency and logic, then we can start to say, does it accurately describe and predict what occurs in the world, right?
And it's the same thing with a mathematical theory or even a business theory, right?
A business theory can't say, well, we're going to go from 5 million to 50 million by expanding and contracting the business at the same time.
Like, that would be So internal consistency, accuracy in the world is the standard we use for everything.
And why not morality?
So when it comes to internal consistency, we have to say, okay, morality has to accept that there's universally preferable behavior.
And if you argue against that, you agree with it.
You cannot argue against the validity of universally preferable behavior.
Because if someone comes along to me and says, There's no such thing as universally preferable behavior, therefore you shouldn't argue for it.
Well, they're saying that there is that which exists and is valid, and that which does not exist and is not valid, and you should never argue for that which does not exist or is not valid, and you should always argue for things that exist and are valid.
So that's universally preferable behavior.
It's impossible to argue against.
The validity of universal preferable behavior because you'd have to deploy it in order to disprove something.
So once we accept that there is universally preferable behavior, which can't be denied, then the only question is, what is universally preferable behavior?
Now, if we look at the four main aspects of morality, That are consistently upheld and no sane person would disagree with, which I know is not a proof, but let's just do a little shorthand here for a moment.
And you say, well, the big four bands are rape, theft, assault, and murder, right?
So, rape is the violation of bodily autonomy, theft is the violation of property rights, assault is another violation of bodily autonomy, and murder, of course, is the ultimate.
We're talking about basically part of the Ten Commandments, which basically, don't covet anything that's not yours.
Right, and thou shalt not murder, thou shalt not steal, and rape and assault would be included.
Assault is a minor form of physical damage compared to murder.
So then we have to say, okay, so let's just say...
Because we have property in ourselves like we have property in any other asset.
So any violation of us, our body, or our body is a violation of us.
Madison said we have rights in our property and property in our rights.
So in that respect, anything that's a deprivation of our rights...
Of which property, which is our property, is a violation of us.
So it would fall into that principle of, you know, kind of consistent with the Ten Commandments is that if it's not yours, you know, not only don't take it, don't even covet it, don't even desire it.
Right.
So to the extent that that's Possible to do, but that's the obligation.
The obligation is not only to not do the act, the obligation is not to even think about doing the act, because coveting is more than just doing it.
It means even thinking about it and contemplating it and having a desire to do it, and we're not supposed to even have the desires on anything that's not ours.
Right.
Yeah, I mean, it's a lot easier to stop evil in the mind than it is in the hands, right?
So let's look at stealing.
So, if somebody says, stealing is moral, stealing is universally preferable behavior.
It is universally preferable that everyone steal at all times, under all circumstances, everywhere, no matter what.
Okay, so that's a hypothesis, right?
And if that hypothesis or that argument, that moral argument, if what it does is it results in immediate self-contradictions, then it's invalid.
Because self-contradictions, Are exactly what Socratic reasoning is designed to tease out and reject, right?
So, in the same way that science, if your theory contradicts itself, it cannot be valid.
So then we say, okay, so let's look at stealing.
What is stealing?
Well, stealing is the unwanted taking of someone else's property.
Now, you can take other people's property And they want you to, right?
So if you are at a restaurant and they are like, hey, free samples, right?
There's someone out front with a little tray.
They got the chicken and the little toothpick in it.
And they say, Here's your free, it's their chicken, but they want you to take it.
If you take an old couch and you put it out on the side of the road with a sign that says, take me, then someone comes and takes your property, right?
So it has to be the unwanted taking of somebody else.
That's not a taking.
You're being given and you're accepting a gift.
Right.
You're removing the property, but the person wants you to, right?
Yes.
So that's not, I wouldn't consider that a taking.
Okay, but you are transferring property.
It has to be the transfer of property against will.
It's transfer of property based upon mutual voluntary consent.
Right.
And so that's lovemaking as opposed to rape.
There's no coercion involved.
There's a complete absence of coercion.
Right.
Yeah.
So, I mean, I appreciate that clarification.
That's a very good way to put it.
So if we say that there's a moral theory called theft is universally preferable behavior, Can this be logically sustained?
And the answer is an emphatic no, completely.
And this is at two levels.
One is that if theft is the good, then anybody who's not actively stealing must be doing the bad.
Because if theft is the good, the opposite of theft, which is respecting property rights, must be the bad.
Now, there's a general principle, which is a common sense principle.
I call it the coma test, which is a guy in a coma can't be evil.
Because he can't act.
He can't make any choices.
He can't execute on any of his choices in a coma.
A guy who's asleep, a guy who can't be evil while you're in a coma.
Now, if theft is the good, then the respecting of property rights, i.e.
not stealing, must be the evil.
But a guy in a coma isn't stealing anything, he can't steal anything, and therefore he must be evil because he's not engaging in the act of theft.
Therefore he's respecting property rights in that he's not stealing anything, and that's just a kind of common sense thing.
So that's the first layer.
The second layer is, it's like ontologically, by its very definition, tautologically almost, it is impossible for theft to be universally preferable behavior, because theft It's the unwanted transfer of property.
The undecided, unagreed to, unwanted transfer of property.
Sorry, you wanted to mention it?
I think this is a moral argument on why many people say, which I would assert as well, that a free market capitalist system, not the phony system that we have in the US, which is not a capitalist system, There are very few capitalists in the United States.
My definition, anybody that knocks on the door of government and asks for a privilege or a benefit is not a capital.
They're a crony.
So anyone who wants to tilt the playing field outside of the context of the marketplace, to me, is a crony.
So real capitalists wouldn't rely upon all transactions being...
Voluntary and mutually agreed upon.
And if all transactions are voluntary and mutually agreed upon, then there's nothing done by coercion.
Everybody is doing a trade.
They're doing it based upon their own free will.
And they're doing it because they're satisfied with the results of the exchange.
Because if they weren't satisfied, they wouldn't do it.
And maybe sometimes after the fact, they might not be satisfied.
But at least they won't think there was anything inappropriate about it.
They just might have said, gee, I made a bad decision and I hopefully will learn something that the next time I engage in exchange and trade, I'll be smarter than I did the last time.
But the only person I have to blame is myself, not the other person, as long as there's not an act of deception.
And if there's an act of deception, there's usually some recourse associated based upon the documents that are agreed upon at the time the exchange is entered into.
So that makes capitalism, in my opinion, the most moral system in the world.
I agree.
So let's just finish the proof for theft, and the other ones are very easy after that.
So can theft be universally preferable behavior?
No.
Because for theft to be universally preferable behavior, everybody must want to steal and be stolen from at the same time.
But that's impossible.
And many people want to steal, they just don't want to be stolen from.
Well, if I say...
Then you're getting into lack of internal consistency, but lack of internal consistency is a very human attribute.
Well, no, but we're talking about not individual scientists, but a scientific theory, right?
So individual scientists can be bad at science, but that doesn't invalidate the scientific method or the logic of the proposed hypothesis.
So, if, let's say, two guys, right?
Bob and Doug, right?
So, if we say Bob and Doug must both want to steal and be stolen from at the same time, it's impossible.
Because, first of all, they can't just keep stealing from each other because there's, you know, the property, let's say it's a phone.
They keep stealing the phone back and forth from each other.
But if Bob wants Doug to take his property, it's not theft.
If Doug wants Bob to take his property, it's not theft.
Then it's in the realm of a gift or something by the roadside or a food sample or something like that.
So theft is when one person does not want the property transfer to occur.
But if you say theft is universally preferable behavior, then everybody must want to steal and be stolen from at the same time.
But if you want to be stolen from, it's not theft, and therefore the category completely disappears in a giant flailing of self-contradiction.
So you cannot ever say, with any logical consistency, theft is a universally preferable behavior.
Now, The opposite of theft is respect to property rights.
Is it possible, in other words, do no logical contradictions arise from everyone respecting property rights all the time?
Like, let's just take the phone and Bob and Doug, right?
So it's Doug's phone and Bob doesn't take it.
Can both people achieve that without self-contradiction?
Of course.
Absolutely.
So, the fact that respect for property rights It's universally preferable behavior that results in no self-contradiction because it is possible – the guy in the coma.
Is the guy in the coma stealing Bob's phone?
No, he's not.
Right?
Therefore, he cannot be categorized as evil, so it passes just that common sense coma test.
And also, there's no logical self-contradiction in the respect for property rights.
However, if you say theft is universally preferable behavior, there is an immediate self-contradiction in that theft vanishes as a category if everybody wants to steal and be stolen from, and therefore you have a self.
You're saying that this is a valid principle, but the principle evaporates the moment you try to apply it universally.
So, it's asymmetrical, is sort of what I'm saying, that two people cannot both achieve the morals at the same time.
Let's look at rape.
So, I mean, it's a sordid example, but it's one of the few unambiguously evil things, like you could say, well, I'm stealing something back, or, you know, the guy hit me first and therefore assault, or it's a boxing, like rape is one of these things, it's unsavory to talk about, but of course it is one of the few things where there's no moral ambiguity.
So, if we were to say something as evil as rape is universally preferable behavior, then everybody must want to rape and be raped at the same time.
But if you want to be raped, it's not rape.
It's then some, I don't know, weird, kinky sexual thing or something like that, but it's not rape.
If you sign a consent form saying this person is allowed to have sex with me, then it's not rape.
And it's the same thing with assault.
It's the same thing with murder.
So rape, theft, assault, and murder are all completely...
Sorry, go ahead.
Same concept is if there's mutual consent among consenting adults who have the capacity, the mental capacity to know what they're doing, and they mutually consent, then it's okay.
It's not okay when one party does not consent and there's coercion involved.
So it's the introduction of coercion that makes the act evil.
And amoral.
And immoral.
Right.
So when it comes to defining what morality is, morality is universally preferable behavior, and a respect for persons and property is the only ethical system that accords with the need for universally preferable behavior.
All other moral systems do not are not consistent with the requirements of universally preferable behavior.
They all self-contradict to one way or another.
And of course, if you try to enact a self-contradictory goal, you will simply fail, which is why coercion fails, which is why government systems fail, which is why fiat currency fails, and national debts, and government education, and just everything that is based upon asymmetrical coercion.
None of it accords with universally preferable behavior and objective proof.
Of secular morality, a morality that does not need the guns of the government.
It's not voluntary.
There is coercion involved, but many of these things are generally accepted acts of coercion.
Parents accept the school system.
They send their kids to school.
Of course, there's coercion involved because there's a consequence associated with not going.
There's more people homeschooling now, but the reality is if you have to show up If you have to show up or...
When I was a student, when I was in school, I'd try and cut as many days as I could.
I was a good student.
I got high test scores.
I didn't need to be in the classroom.
But why was I in the classroom?
Why did the schools force me to be in the classroom?
Because how much money they get from the government each day is a function of how many people are sitting in the seat in the classroom.
So I was forced to be in the classroom against my will.
It was an act of coercion.
And for me, I was a rebel.
So teachers, you know, on the one hand, they probably would have preferred I was not in the classroom either.
Right.
But, you know, so but that that is a generally accepted principle, even though it's an act of coercion.
Like, government is considered, you know, people have a trade-off where they say, you know, I'd rather have this government than I'd have, you know, what they think would be the consequences of Of living under an anarchist system, which they probably don't even understand very well.
They understand the caricature of it, but they don't understand that with respect to anarchy, anarchy doesn't necessarily mean an absence of rules.
It means an application of rules where all the parties who are in that ecosystem agree to live under those rules, and there's free entry and free exit from that if they decide they don't want to follow those rules.
So, they enter in with consent, and there's no party that can force them to consent, nor can they force them to withdraw their consent.
So, these are rules that people mutually agree upon because they think there's a benefit for doing so.
So, they think it's a trade-off that they think they benefit from that trade-off, and when they think they no longer benefit from that trade-off, you know, the transaction cost of exiting that community and going to another community is very low.
But the world accepts a system where the transaction costs associated with deciding to exit a community and enter a new community.
One, there are a lot of restrictions on you entering into a new community, and there's a high cost associated with exiting a community.
Well, unless you vote for a bigger government, then you're welcome to cross the border.
So...
So, you know, so I think one of the questions asked, and also get into audience comment, children cannot consent.
They do not have the maturity needed to do so.
So here we have a system where except hierarchy, where you have Kids don't have the development to, you know, I think many psychological studies show that, you know, our cognitive skills we develop.
Well, it seems to me, I think, most of society never develops cognitive skills.
So that are free of, you know, significant amount of biases.
So I think we're not a cognitively advanced species.
But I think...
What I've seen in scientific studies is that we don't become really cognitively aware, maybe there's a better term than that, until we're in our late teens.
So the question is, when people are developing their cognitive skills, what degree of autonomy should they have?
And to what extent should they have to be...
And what's to say that the parent necessarily is more mature than the child?
Well, I guess we would cross our fingers on that one.
I think the general principle should be you should get maximum liberty based upon your capacity to foresee the consequences of your actions, right?
So when we're adults and we see a bunch of candy at Halloween, we're like, oh, well, I don't want to get a cavity and I don't want to gain weight and I don't want to court diabetes because we can see the consequences of that.
So we're not just based on this mammalian taste good kind of eat as much as you can.
But as kids, they don't really see that.
The future is a bit of a blur.
They live in this kind of hooded moment-to-moment existence, so the parents have to be the future selves of the children restraining the appetites of the children in the here and now because children will just eat until they get sick, for the most part, right?
So as soon as children begin to develop a sense of consequences, then we let them have more and more liberty.
And then, of course, the goal is by the time they reach, as you say, their late teens, they are able to navigate their way through life knowing that there are consequences to particular actions which kids wouldn't experience.
I always told my daughter, The same thing over and over again.
I said, you know, with freedom comes responsibility.
The more responsible your behavior, the more freedom you have.
So as she developed better and better, as she became a more and more responsible person, I gave her more and more freedom.
And I wanted her to have as much freedom as quickly as possible, you know, and I wanted her to demonstrate the responsibility that she understood that freedom and responsibility are two sides of the same coin.
So, you know, in the real world, what happens if I have freedom and I go rob somebody, rape somebody, murder somebody or commit something where I violate somebody, I use my freedom to deprive somebody else of their freedom, then I ultimately lose my own freedom myself.
And so, in society, it works pretty much the same way.
If you behave responsibly, you have a lot of freedom.
If you behave irresponsibly, that freedom is constrained and restrained, so suppressed.
So, ultimately, how much freedom we have, and I think that's If people look at the literature of the founders of America who hoped that we would succeed in this exercise and experiment in self-government, one of the things they talked about, there are several things they talked about, they said ultimately the constitutional republic would not last if people were not virtuous.
So, they thought you can't have self-government with people who lack virtue.
So, you know, you could say, you know, virtue or morality.
But if people lack virtue and morality, then ultimately the consequence will be the exercise in self-government is not going to succeed.
And they also expected people to be well-educated.
So they expected people to be literate, well-read.
Benjamin Franklin said the responsibility of every citizen was to be knowledgeable on politics, economics, rhetoric, and law.
And if you looked at a lot of the stuff that, you know, like Like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington talked about, they were big advocates for what now would be considered, you know, a STEM curriculum.
So they wanted people to pursue science.
I mean, and look at the brilliance of, you know, Thomas Jefferson, who designed and engineered, you know, Monticello.
So he was not just a great writer of the Declaration of Independence.
You know, he was a polymath, as many people were polymaths at that point in time, because they had a different form of education than we have today.
They were taught to think and develop their mind.
You know, now we teach people skills, so they become good employees or mediocre employees.
So probably is a better description.
You were going to say something.
Sorry.
Oh, yeah, I was just saying, if you look at the legal system, the legal system that was developed in the common law traditions of the West was a very complicated legal system with lawyers and advocates and evidence and rules of evidence and chain of custody and all kinds of complicated stuff, which can only work if you have a few crimes.
If you go over a certain number of crimes or a certain percentage of crimes...
The system can't work and this is why you end up with this horrible travesty of plea bargaining where you go to jail for bribing a judge but the prosecution can bribe you with 10 years additional sentence in order to plead guilty and this is why 2% of criminal cases go to trial these days because the system was built for people who are mostly moral with a few exceptions.
And that's why it can be so focused on all of these complicated rules to try and get to the truth.
But when you have an overwhelming sort of tsunami of criminality, then the system completely breaks down.
And so where we lose morality, we lose justice in that sense.
How much of a tsunami of criminality do we have is because of the fact that we have a proliferation of a criminal code where much activity is, I mean, like...
People might not like it, but if I decide I want to consume drugs, as long as I don't do anything bad while under the influence of drugs, it might be bad for me.
It might be bad for my family, but my wife could divorce me.
She would get custody of the kids.
So there'd be consequences.
Ultimately, I would suffer the consequences of my own behavior.
So a lot of people are in prison for actions that might not have a victim other than themselves.
So how much of this criminality is associated with really a system designed to have a lot of criminals?
So, is the goal of a criminal code to prevent criminality or to call many people criminals because they engage in activity that somebody desires that they not engage in from their own sense of morality that they want to impose on other people?
You know, prostitution, the same thing.
If you have two parties willing, you know, to consent, you know, what's What's wrong with that?
So money is exchanged, but it seems to be that they're each getting the value that they negotiate, and it's a voluntary act.
So, I mean, what would a criminal code look like if basically all activities done by mutually consenting adults were legal?
So how much less crimes would we have if that's the case?
Why is it there a right to...
I had a very good friend.
He passed away a number of years ago.
One of my closest friends in my life and a mentor to me.
And I remember one day we were at a restaurant and we were talking about freedom of association.
And I'm someone who my ex-wife is black.
Um, you know, so I would consider myself, you know, someone that, uh, is very accepting of anybody.
I just, I judge the person.
I don't judge any other attribute besides who they are.
Um, not, not, not, uh, not how they, not how the, you know, their, the history of their birth, uh, and their race and religion.
I don't give a, I don't care about any of that stuff.
Um, You know, and yet I told him that people had a right to discriminate.
Like, you know, me as a Jew, if I go to a restaurant with somebody who hates Jews, I want to know that they hate Jews and that I won't go to that restaurant because why do I want to give money to somebody that hates Jews?
So if people want to ban me because I'm Jewish, I'm happy to know that they don't like me for Jewish, and now I know not to give them my business, and vice versa.
If somebody doesn't want to do business with me, You know, for whatever reason, they have the right to do that.
We have freedom of association.
So I think there's a fundamental right, you know, to discriminate.
I don't like discrimination.
I personally think it's horrible.
But a lot of things I think are horrible that people have a right to do.
Well, and you would want to let the economy punish those who have irrational discriminations, right?
So if I run a business and I say, I'm never hiring a redheaded person because a redheaded guy beat me up when I was a kid.
The last thing I... Okay, well, I've just reduced the talent pool for my business by whatever percentage there are of redheaded people.
I guess it's different in Ireland than it would be in Somalia.
So if I'm discriminating in an irrational basis, and then I say, I'm reducing my talent pool, my business is going to do worse.
And if I want to run an NBA team and I'm never...
There's a market consequence to it.
Yeah, there's a financial consequence to market.
What will happen is if I have a mentality that I don't hire the best, I just hire people because of the way they look and what religion they might be or any other attribute other than are they really the best at what they do for what I need.
Ultimately, the talented people that might come into that company will not stay there.
So ultimately, you know, they'll keep the worst element and they'll be an unproductive business and they'll be a business of a bunch of people who are losers, you know, either being marginally profitable or going bankrupt and, you know, and then the business owner will have to figure out what to do with their life and the employees who lived in that environment, you know, will also have to, you know, live with the consequences of doing that.
Well, boycotts are perfectly fine as well.
And if you find somebody be discriminatory in business, you can publicize that.
It's not defamation if you're telling the truth and the market can punish them and the lack of talent can punish them.
And let's decentralize the punishment of people who are not committing direct violent crimes.
Just decentralize it, make it part of the community standards so that people can deal with it in a peaceful fashion rather than giving power to a small group of people which will always end up being abused.
Correct.
At least I strongly agree with that.
Now, going back to the topic, even though I find this more an interesting topic than Peaceful Parenting.
It's your show, man.
Wherever you want to take me, I'm on the Jeff train.
How did you come up with the name Peaceful Parenting and what inspired you to write this book?
What do you think you have to contribute to?
You know, for me, being a parent is too late.
My daughter's grown up and, you know, so...
But you have kids in the environment.
Everyone has kids in the environment.
There's always kids that you can talk about and parents that you can influence.
So I come from...
A very business background, right?
I was an entrepreneur in the software field for a long time.
Before that, I had various jobs.
I did manual labor.
I gold-panned and prospected up north, which sounds irrelevant, but it's really not.
So I'm used to sort of very practical, solutions-based, prediction-based, actionable things.
So when I was writing business plans in the business world, I was a chief technical officer for many years and a Software company I co-founded, I had to have practical solutions.
I had to say, here's how we're going to market, here's the conferences we're going to go to, here's the price point, here's how it covers the payroll, here's the growth scenario, here's the market opportunities, here's the competition, you know, your standard strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats analysis.
So I'm used to very practical things, and I'm used to working with what is rather than very big abstract things.
You know, because when it comes to ethics, a lot of people are like, well, there's a trolley coming down the road, and there's this, and it's like, you're never going to experience that in your life.
It's not a real scenario, right?
It's like me saying, well, I have a business plan for how we're going to open our first software office on Mars.
It's like, that's not going to happen.
Let's deal with what is in the world.
Let's deal with what we can actually act on rather than these bizarre things.
Academic abstractions.
I mean, I spent time in academia.
I got a graduate degree.
So what are the main advices you would give to a parent?
Right, right.
So, but I'm just giving you why I started down this whole road to begin with.
So, like yourself, I think we're both on the same page, Jeff, regarding the non-aggression principle, right?
Thou shalt not initiate force against others, right?
Now, I love the non-aggression principle.
I kneel before it.
I light candles to it.
I do incense.
I'd make sweet love to it if I could.
I'm very, very much down for the non-aggression principle.
But as a practical entrepreneur, what I have to say is, okay, okay, I want to advocate for the expansion of the non-aggression principle.
What can I do about central banking?
Nothing.
What can I do about foreign policy?
You can advocate for Bitcoin.
Well, okay, I can do that, but in terms of direct changes to violations of the non-aggression principle, I can't change foreign aid, I can't uproot government schools, though I'd love to, so what can I do?
So what I did was I looked at what is the widest violation of the non-aggression principle That we can do something about, that we can act on immediately if we want, right?
So it's not that hard, I mean, to figure this stuff out, at least for me, is I say, okay, well, the biggest violation of the non-aggression principle would be, say, child abuse.
And that's something we can do something about.
You cannot beat your kids.
That you can do, and nobody's going to throw you in jail for it.
You don't have to protest.
You don't have to risk people turning off your bank account.
You can advocate for the peaceful treatment of children, reasoning with children, negotiating with children, rather than initiating the use of force against children.
Because the only way you can reasonably use force is in self-defense, and children, hopefully, are not running at you with a chainsaw.
So you're probably okay with not initiating the use of force against children.
So then I realized, of course, much though I love politics, economics, and law, and all the stuff that we're talking about here, if I want to have the biggest effect on reducing violations of the non-aggression principle, I need to talk about parenting.
I need to talk about how to not initiate the use of force against your children.
And I did a sort of back-of-the-napkin calculation, because I've been doing this for almost 20 years, and I have over a billion views and downloads of my shows.
I think it's about a billion to a billion and a half reductions in violations of the non-aggression principle through what I'm talking about with regards to parenting.
And I could have spent the whole time railing against government education, but I wouldn't have closed any schools.
I wouldn't have privatized anything.
So I really want to depart this veil of joy and pain with having parents Tangible, measurable results, because that's, you know, manual labor, you need tangible, measurable results.
When it comes to running a business, you need tangible and measurable results, because otherwise you can't have a payroll.
So when it came to moral philosophy, I'm like, hey, I love the theory stuff, I love arguing trolley problems, and, you know, you're hanging from a flagpole, and you have to kick in someone's window to survive, and can the hungry guy steal a loaf of bread?
These are all very interesting things, but they don't actually happen.
That much really in our lives.
Getting back to the issue of the violence with respect to parents.
So it is illegal for parents to abuse their kids.
Well, not here in Canada.
Maybe it's, and I don't think in America in most places.
So in America, you are allowed to initiate force against your children.
What should be the consequence if you have...
One is, is mental abuse worse than...
Less, less, worse, equal to in badness and evilness compared to physical abuse?
I mean, well, okay, so let's get to your first issue.
You know, you're focusing on corporal abuse, but, you know, I don't know if kids are more damaged by mental abuse than corporal abuse.
So I think there are many forms of parental abuse, but then the question is, is How does a child, how does a young child get recourse?
You know, and what's that recourse?
I mean, because what's the option?
You know, I have my parents who are dysfunctional parents who still might love me, but they're dysfunctional because they got their own problems.
And so it's not like they are, you know, the consequence of their behavior is evil.
It's not that their intent is evil.
It's the consequence of their behavior is evil because of their own limitations as individuals.
So, you know, but then the question is, if you're not raised by your parents because they behave that way, then what happens to you?
Right.
So, as far as child abuse not being illegal, well, of course, you and I would not want to take the laws as the ultimate arbiters of morality, but it is perfectly acceptable in most places in the world to initiate the use of force against your children by hitting them, by spanking them, by forcibly grabbing them and sitting them down on a stair in a timeout, by locking them in their room, by denying them food, all things that would be completely illegal.
Against any adult in your environment, but which we allow to be perfectly legal with regards to children.
How many kids would prefer that to the option of what their option was if they don't have that?
Do they prefer that to being in a foster home?
What's the option available for kids who are completely dependent upon an adult if their parents, again, their parents love them, but their parents are, look, I had personal experience.
I mean, I was physically abused and I was mentally abused.
So my father wasn't a bad guy.
He had, my parents didn't have a great marriage.
And, you know, so sometimes somebody has to suffer the consequences, you know, of, you know, so it was a dysfunctional relationship.
And, you know, I think I turned out, you know, reasonably well.
Many people might argue that.
But, you know, the point of it is, if I have to take a look at the options of trying to figure out how to survive in my own house versus, you know, being out there and being picked up by a foster home or stuff like that, I didn't doubt that my parents didn't love me.
I mean, so I was sure they loved me, you know, but they just had their problems.
And their problems caused a problem for me, you know, and it was an effort for me to learn how to deal with those problems.
But still, I think that to some extent it helped shape me to be a better person having to deal with those problems.
So you have to toughen yourself up when you deal with those problems.
And maybe you can turn out to be a person of greater empathy because you know what it's like to live in an environment where there's an absence of empathy.
So, you know, so I understand all this is bad.
The question is, are the options better?
So, I mean, me given the choice, well, I can't say one day I actually, you know, one day when my father was teaching me how to drive and didn't like how I was driving, he left, he got out, he had me get out of the car and And on a highway, and he took off and he left.
So I walked to a local police station, and I asked to be put in prison.
So the police asked me what I did wrong.
I said, all I want to do is I think I'd rather be in jail than go back home.
So, they ended up calling my parents, and my parents came for me, and the police were not sympathetic to keeping me in jail.
They felt I was better off at home, and maybe there was a benefit for me going back home, but I actually did at that moment.
At that moment, maybe I would have regretted it five months later, but at that moment, I felt I would rather be in jail than go back home.
But, you know, I think at the end, you know, later in life, my father and I became good friends, you know, and I harbored, you know, little to no resentment, you know, towards him because I recognize that he's a human being like I am, and we're all flawed, and...
But again, I didn't doubt that he loved me.
You know, he had his own way of showing it, but I didn't doubt it.
And is that better off than being in an environment where you get no love, but you don't get any corporal punishment either?
You know, who's to say which is a better environment?
As a society and for those individuals, what are we better off?
Do we want to fill up prisons with every parent that abuses their kid in any form, whether it's yelling at them with insults or spanking them?
I'm not talking about Physical violence in a way that's really brutal, you know, it might sting for a few minutes, but it's not living a permanent scar on you.
Well, it might be an emotional scar, but again, the question is, really, what's the option to that?
I still want to know, what is the option to just the fact that there are certain problems, you know, where the situation is not great, but the alternative is even worse?
Well, yes, but of course, the foster care system is a statist invention.
There are lots of other options that you can have.
I mean, and we certainly would want to take out children from an environment where they would be killed or raped or assaulted with grievous bodily harm.
And I just wanted to say, like I know for both of us, childhood is quite a ways ago, but I really am sorry for what happened with you as a kid.
That sounds, to want to be in prison is tough.
I have no regrets because I think I think I became a better person because of the challenges I faced in life.
I think that it's given me a sensitivity to things that I might not have a sensitivity to if I didn't go through what I went through.
So I insist, I think it made me a better person.
So it wasn't fun going through it, but...
I think the benefit I've had the rest of my life for going through it, I think, of course, at the time I was going through it, I didn't see the benefit.
But now, as I'm older and I have more maturity, hopefully, I'm able to now enjoy the benefit of living in a challenging environment.
And yes, it could have gone either way, and it's up to us to determine which way it goes.
That's life.
Yeah, but you're like the Samuel L. Jackson character in Pulp Fiction where the bullets just happen to go all around him rather than through him.
So the fact that you flourished, which is really testament, Jeff, to your great morals and resolution and willpower and maturity, but most people don't, right?
Most people do not flourish under situations of maltreatment as possible.
A child.
So you judoed that adversity into a positive, which is to your eternal credit and massive congratulations for changing that direction.
But most people don't.
You know, most people don't.
And so, as far as the solution goes, well, for me, of course, the solution is, you know, advocacy and education.
Not with the goal of saying, well, everybody who touches a child in anger is irredeemably evil.
I understand that people grow up with their own histories.
They believe that what they're doing is the right.
They may never have heard of the options.
In the same way that if I meet a guy who's a big fan of some government program, I don't say, evil!
Evil!
It's a matter of education and listening to people and having them understand that violence is really not the solution to our complex social problems.
It's not the solution for charity.
It's not the solution for drug addiction.
It's not the solution for other forms of social dysfunction.
It's not the solution for the military.
It's not the solution for children's education.
Violence is not the solution.
And it's no more the solution in the house than it is in the city.
Sorry, go ahead.
You and I are having this conversation on BitChute and what's the philosophical principle of BitChute.
The philosophical principle of BitChute is that I view demonetization and deplatforming as acts of violence.
So I think however unpleasant any conversation is, The only way to resolve any conflict, even if you don't resolve the conflict, at least you create a better sense of mutual understanding, is through dialogue.
And dialogue means what we're having right now.
We're each talking and we're each listening to the other person, and that's dialogue.
And I think the only hope for humanity, you know, is dialogue.
So that's what Bitshoot represents, is the fact is that people should never stop talking.
And anything that interferes with people being able to speak and somebody willing, ability to listen to that person who speaks.
To me, it is an act of violence.
And no acts of violence should be condoned.
And the fact that we've become so insensitive to many forms and expressions of violence is a sad statement about us as a species, in my opinion.
Well, I certainly agree with that and very heartfully spoken.
So, Yeah, so I would say that educating people about the use of peace in negotiations is really, really important, and negotiation and nonviolence, and I will say, because I'm not a pacifist, you know, self-defense is fine, but when we talk to people about negotiation, communication, and nonviolence as the way to solve human problems, Well, we have to start teaching that language to our kids as early as possible, right?
Now, of course, you know, like when I have a daughter as well, and, you know, we put her in the baby cage, right?
We put her in the crib, right, which has the little bars, and that's because she would roll off and fall over.
So, you know, obviously a certain amount of care and restraint and all of that is, you know, if your kid is running towards the traffic, you pick them up and so on, right?
So that's all fine.
But the problem is, if we use force, To teach our children, then what happens is they grow up thinking that force is good.
Because, look, force protected me.
You've probably heard these people who were beaten within half an inch of their lives and they say, well, I was a real brat.
I deserved it.
My parents were doing the right thing.
I would have done very badly without that.
And so then they're saying, Force in authority is necessary for life.
Force in authority is necessary for virtue.
Force in authority is necessary for social functioning.
And then if you take that approach to children, they grow up thinking, well, we have to have a government, otherwise everything will be chaos.
And it's like, but that comes from the fact that they were treated with violence as children, and they've internalized it and said, violence is good in the service of a social good.
Violence is good in the service of Moral growth.
And we need violence because if my parents didn't beat me, I would have just run into traffic and then they grew up thinking, well, without a government, everything would be chaos.
Nature red in tooth and claw, dogs living with cats, you know, the old jokes, right?
So that's why, well, that's the mentality that politicians...
Feed.
I mean, what they sell is fear.
That's the product.
They sell is fear, and they're the answer to the fears.
So they want us to surrender our freedoms, and the best way to get us to surrender our freedoms is to instill fear in us, since the bottom of the Maslow Pyramid is the need to survive.
So as long as they keep us at the level of the bottom of the pyramid, where we're always concerned about our survival, And our survival depends upon them, okay?
Then they make themselves a lot more important.
When we're an advanced species, you know, where we're at the top of the Maslow Pyramid, then they become irrelevant in our lives because we're fulfilled and we're enlightened individuals.
And we understand that ultimately this is our personal responsibility.
And so once we have that sense of personal responsibility, then we don't want to...
Then we don't want to engage in coercion against other people, nor do we want to be coerced.
But if we live in fear, we embrace coercion because it's the coercion that protects us against our fears.
So ultimately, that's what they need to sell.
They need to sell.
There's always the boogeyman out there.
There's always the enemy, the terrorist.
Somebody's got to be caricatured in a way that makes them Somebody that we should be fearful of.
And they're adversely impacting our life.
They're the scapegoat.
And the only people capable of solving this problem for us are the people and politicians.
And that's why these campaigns, negative campaigning works much better than people talking about the things they're for.
So, you know, we got to put tariffs on because China is evil.
You know, every person entering the border, you know, was hand-selected, you know, by Maduro as a rapist or a criminal or a drug dealer.
And that's why they're being sent to invade the country, to overthrow the government.
Or Democrats telling us that we can't make decisions for ourselves and we should be deprived of free speech because then our democracy can't be preserved because misinformation gets in there and they need to be the gatekeepers to make sure because we don't have the capacity of taking care of ourselves.
Ultimately, the way the politicians describe us We really should not have the right to vote.
If we are that dumb, if our judgments...
One day I was at an event, and I was sitting next to some politician, and I was trying to speak to them about school choice.
And the politician told me, you know, well, what I'm worried is, is the fact is that, you know, in my district, I think the parents would make bad choices.
So have you ever thought about the fact that you're a consequence of that bad choice?
You know, if you're telling me the parents, the same parents who you think can't choose a school well, they're the ones that voted you in office.
So how confident could I be in your opinion, given the fact that you're acknowledging that you're in office because you got picked by people who you think suck at making decisions?
So that's our political process.
Our political process is the politicians think we're stupid.
They think we make bad choices.
And yet they're the ones who are the product of those bad choices with the power of coercion over us.
Think about how perverse that is.
Well, and people don't really choose in a political sense.
They're just bouncing off fear and greed, right?
So, well, if this person gets into power, it's going to be the end of democracy, and it's going to be the end of the world, and there'll be World War III, and we'll all be nuclear shadows on the sewage plant wall, as opposed to, well, but if you vote for me, if you vote for me, I'm going to double your income.
I'm going to give you free stuff.
I'm going to, you know, there's just bribery and threats, bribery and threats, which goes back to bad parenting.
Sorry, Jeff, go ahead.
We already know right now that this is the last election we're ever going to have in the history.
Ever, apparently.
Both parties, both candidates agree with that for different reasons, but this is the last election.
So at least we'll never have to worry about making a decision again in the future about who represents us.
So we might be better off if that was the case.
I don't know.
But people should go out and register and vote now because This is your last chance at ever voting in an election ever again in your life.
Anyone who believes that, call me and I would like to make a bet with you.
Text me, whatever, and I'd like to bet with you that there will be subsequent elections.
So I want to know how many people will back up This claim that they're making, including Elon Musk, that there won't be another election if Trump loses.
Either way, I don't care.
I just want anyone who's making a claim that After this election, there'll never be another election.
I want to do a friendly bet with you.
I don't want to do anything illegal, but a dinner or something like that.
I want to see how many people are really willing to collateralize that bet and risk something of value to them with that statement.
Well, to defend Elon, and I don't want to speak for him, of course, I think his argument is that there will be other elections, but there'll be so many people in the country that have been imported or Incentivized in through a lot of free stuff who were going to vote for the Democrats, that it's kind of like California.
Used to be Republican, now it's, you know, almost completely Democrat and will be pretty much until the end of time.
So his argument is not that there won't be any elections at all.
His argument will be that they're importing so many people who are going to vote for the Democrats that there's no functional chance for the Republicans to win in the future.
I think that's his argument.
I heard that argument that basically we're going to, that somehow all these people we know are...
Trump is talking about how well he's doing with the Hispanic community, so he seems to be doing reasonably well with all these people that supposedly only vote Democrats.
Apparently they don't only vote Democrats.
And from what I see, long-term studies show that when people, you know, that the second and third generation, they tend to represent, they tend to be not any different than any other cohort.
So it might be true of those who are coming in now might have a tendency to be more Democratic and Republican, but their kids, but that doesn't mean their kids and grandchildren will be different.
It doesn't mean that they'll have, you know, a permanent majority.
And I challenge Elon Musk's point of view that what made California a one-party state was illegal immigrants because California became a one-party state before there was a huge influx of illegal immigrants.
So it's just...
Well, no, but there was the amnesty...
It's a factually incorrect statement.
But there was the amnesty under Reagan.
And illegal immigrants, you know, don't vote.
You know, and that is a myth, you know, and I guess he thinks that they'll all be made legal.
But, you know, to be made legal, there needs to be, you know, the president cannot legalize illegal immigrants.
So it has to be an act of Congress.
You know, to do that, and I have not seen there to be that type of majority that the public will find accepting the fact that we're going to take 20 million people who came here illegally and we're going to all in one year make them all citizens.
You know, I doubt that that will be something that Kamala will be able to implement on her own.
And we should have better trust for the American people.
I mean, so Elon Musk's statement basically says we don't trust the American people at all.
So we got to trust an authoritarian leader, you know, rather than the American people, and that the American people are that stupid that basically, you know, all these policies will be implemented and Congress will bless all these policies and the people who do that, you know, will end up getting reelected over and over again.
I'm very skeptical of that.
Skeptical.
Ultimately, people vote their wallet.
People are not that.
There's a small group of people who will vote party no matter what, and then there's a lot of independents that will vote what they view as their self-interest, and that's including the The immigrants that come in and become assimilated and their values become not much different than anyone else's values.
So I think these statements are just untrue and there's no evidence.
And to take one state and generalize the whole country for one state, you know, based upon a very poor evaluation of the data, You know, it's sort of like anecdotal.
I think Elon Musk, I think, is smarter than to apply anecdotes to situations.
You know, so I heard what he had to say, and I think it's as dumb as his statement that you can have freedom of speech without freedom of speech.
If there's no freedom of reach, there's no freedom of speech.
So, you know, if you can say something, but nobody's allowed to hear it, then what's the point of having freedom of speech if the fact is that you're, you know, it's like you and I having a conversation.
I say, Stephen, you and I are going to have a conversation.
You're here.
You can talk, but I'm muting you.
So nobody hears any.
The audience doesn't hear anything that you have to say.
You can talk.
You know, all you want, but you're muted.
And, you know, would that be considered freedom of speech?
Well, Elon Musk, that's Elon Musk's definition of freedom of speech.
So, I think it's an asinine, stupid, moronic comment.
And I think his comment about California is equally moronic.
But I guess he's gone all in on this election.
And I'm all out on the election.
I don't care who wins.
So my Bitcoin will be worth more no matter who wins.
And I'm confident of that.
And so I take responsibility for myself.
And I don't worry about what Washington can or can't do for me.
I'm more concerned about what it wants to do for me.
To me, or for me, but if people were really realistic about the situation, now we're getting a little off topic, I'm sorry, but really, how much has the tax code changed from Trump to Biden?
Are Americans paying significantly higher taxes?
No.
I think their capital gains went up, if I remember rightly.
So, yeah, capital gains went up a bit, but ultimately, people are not paying significantly higher tax code.
The tax code doesn't look very different.
No, but it's the spending, right?
I mean, deficit spending is just deferred taxation, so if you don't raise the taxes...
But Biden, over four years, increased the deficit less than Trump increased it, and as people have been scoring, as third parties have been scoring, who will add more to the deficit in the coming four years based upon the economic proposals?
Reasonably responsible.
It doesn't mean they're right, but people who are considered reasonably neutral third parties who evaluated the proposals have said that Trump will add about $7.5 trillion to the deficit, and Kamala will add about $3.5 trillion to the deficit with the proposals that they've made.
So, you know, if we're taking a look at spending...
Sorry, I'm not sure if we're still...
You've raised about 30 points, so I'm not really sure if we're having a dialogue or not anymore.
Sorry, go ahead.
All right.
So, with regards to the deficit, I, of course, criticized Trump at the time for the deficit spending as well.
To be fair, he did get hit with COVID, and it was pretty hard to keep the economy going when the governors were shutting everything down.
So, that's one issue.
With regards to, you say, well, but the immigrants in a couple of generations, they might be more conservative, but you understand that the conservative or the Republican Party is not very well satisfied with, well, but maybe in a hundred years, you might get some votes back.
I mean, that's not something that any responsible party would be We'd be down for.
Regarding legalizing 20 million people in order to win the election, you don't need to do that.
I mean, if Trump won by 70,000 votes, you don't need 20 million people to swing the election.
You just need enough.
because, you know, they're often quite narrow, which is almost partly by design.
So there's that aspect.
With regards to California, it wasn't an influx of illegals.
It was Reagan's amnesty, which he later regretted, that tended to turn the state pretty solidly blue and has remained there forever.
And with regards to illegals voting on unvoting, well, there's no ID requirements.
So who knows who's voting?
I mean, I think they're actively blocking measures to have people show.
I mean, you had to show ID to do just about anything, particularly over COVID. So, with regards to illegals not voting, I mean, yeah, I get that that's the law, though.
There does seem to be some trying to get people signed up pretty quickly, but in the absence of a strict voter ID requirement, And again, I'm not a big fan of voting.
I'm not a big fan of government IDs.
I mean, I understand all of that, but just from a sort of practical short-term standpoint, the argument is that without strict voter ID requirements, then it's going to be very hard to keep people who are not allowed to vote from voting.
Yeah, but I think...
I'm not convinced that it was Reagan's amnesty that that was the complete reason why or a major reason why California has been basically a democratic haven.
But let's not dispute that point.
I think with respect to the point I tried to make with respect to If we take a look at the size of government and spending, again, Trump's proposals have been scored at adding $7.5 trillion to the deficit.
Kamala has been scored at about $3.5 trillion.
It's a proposal that we have with respect to Social Security and Medicare and their impending bankruptcies.
The Democrats want to increase taxes.
Republicans want to do nothing.
Regarding the tax code, I don't think if the Democrats got in power, I don't think there'd be substantive changes in the tax code because if there were Many people who would identify as Democrats would not accept significant increases in the tax code.
Because somebody votes Democratic or Kamala and voted for Biden and voted for Clinton, if a Democrat came in and Kamala said, I want to increase taxes to 70%, that everybody's going to go along with that and think they're going to win again.
When they run for office and they think that even people who come in illegally are going to be really happy to have their taxes taxed at that rate.
So the middle class is not going to allow that type of punitive taxation.
This is why I think we haven't had significant changes in the tax code.
We have had some changes.
Tax rates are a little bit higher.
The first three years of Trump's administration, he added more to the deficit than Obama's last three years.
So even before COVID... Trump was averaging over a trillion a year in deficit spending, so he was a big deficit spender, more so than Obama was in the last three years.
So, I mean, I just...
So I trust more.
One is we supposedly have a decentralized system.
So we have more states governed, I think, by Republican governors than Democratic governors.
So, you know, believe me, I don't like the policies of, I mean, I was a Reagan supporter.
So I was a fan of Ronald Reagan.
You know, the only time I've ever voted in an election was in 1980 when I voted for Reagan, but outside of that, I've never voted.
You know, I've never donated to a Democrat.
You know, I don't support Democrats.
I don't vote at all.
I have no interest in voting, but I have an interest in good policies, and I don't want to instill fear in people.
And do I think that we will move towards a more socialist system?
Look, we have right now, we have now populist parties.
We don't have capitalist parties.
We have populist parties.
Who would ever thought, you know, now that we have, you know, a Republican Party that wants to talk about having these type of tariffs?
You know, we basically have parties advocating, you know, industrial policy.
So, you know...
You know, you were going back and you said you focused in on the issue of how to reign in big government.
For me, the best way to reign in big government is money.
People, I think people should all, what's the benefit of holding Bitcoin?
Get the money out of the banks.
The banks are the main instrument for surveillance.
The banks are the main instrument of how government funds itself.
The big part of what the money that you go into deposit funds government because government banks hold a lot of government securities.
They hold more government debt than they do lending.
So if you want to deprive the government of money, keep your money out of banks.
So I think that would shrink government if more and more people just kept their money out of banks and put it into, you know, I don't like the other crypto.
I think they're all shit coins.
But, you know, Bitcoin is different than I think people should keep.
You know, their money in Bitcoin and starve the government through starving the banks.
So I think that's the most effective way.
And even the, you know, people like Ben Franklin and others, Thomas Jefferson believed that, and James Madison, that as long as we have a fiat regime, that tyranny is inevitable.
So the question is, if we want to avoid the inevitability of tyranny, it's through the money.
I mean, I'm very sensitive to people being good parents and people being moral individuals.
And people being decent human beings and people living by the non-aggression principle and people living in a way that you talk about as being internally consistent behavior.
And I think you've been a great spokesperson on those issues.
And I think we've got to keep focusing on those specific issues and really avoiding politics because I think politics brings out the worst in people.
Not the best in people.
I think the work you do in philosophy has an opportunity of bringing out the best in people, not the worst in people, which is why I'm happy to have you as a guest and advocating not only peaceful parenting, but peaceful in all attributes of human life and engagement.
So what more do you plan on doing to advocate the fact that, you know, Your perspective on moral philosophy and how you can continue to influence more people.
Well, I mean, of course, I've been pro-Bitcoin since 2011.
I think I did my first show on Bitcoin.
I've spoken at a number of Bitcoin conferences.
I would rather replace the phrase orange man bad with Trump with orange money good.
And so I've really focused on that and how Bitcoin could end war, how Bitcoin can end up the predation on the next generation known as deficit spending.
And the hard money that's decentralized is really our only chance And it's a technology race, right?
Because the technology of Bitcoin and decentralization and places like BitChute and so on, that's racing against centralized social credit scores, 15-minute cities, CDBCs, the Great Reset, all of this terrifying anarcho-tyranny that seems to be technologically thundering across the landscape like the four hellish horsemen of digital death.
And so, yeah, keep focusing on wherever you can focus on decentralized solutions, wherever you can focus on non-violent solutions, whether it's parenting or crypto, Bitcoin in particular.
I'm really not a huge fan of the other ones either.
The king is the king and shall not be enthroned.
So, yeah, I think focusing on that, ways that you can practically enact virtue within your own life, honest conversations with people about the violence they don't even know that they support.
I want to give people the free will to choose between good and evil rather than propagandizing, rather than being, you know, in the matrix of propaganda where they can't really make any decisions other than going with the herd and the flow.
So, yeah, just continue to have these kinds of conversations, continue to talk to people about truth, reason, and virtue, and hopefully that'll be carved on my tombstone and people will occasionally drop a flower or two in the centuries to come.
How do you think people like you and I and people where we might have differences and, you know, subtle differences, but the overall themes I think we're in general agreement on, how can we all collaborate together, cooperate together to have more an impact on On our respective countries and the world.
You mean other than by doing what we're doing and have these kind of conversations?
I think this is great.
I think this exchange of ideas and perspectives is really important.
And, you know, everybody who sees this, you know, if I'm too controversial to share, that's fine.
I don't particularly care.
Just share the ideas, share the arguments, share the data, and we can hopefully, you know, we have this incredible technology which Absolutely unguessed of it are youth.
I would have just faded like a comet seen by no one a million years ago through the intellectual landscape, but because of this technology, I can speak and be listened to by tens or hundreds of millions of people over the years and last forever and So, we have this incredible technology which should fill us with absolute deep and giddy joy every day.
It certainly does for me to have these kinds of conversations.
So, you know, enthusiasm, have a life that people want some part of.
You know, don't be the fat guy on the diet book cover who doesn't want anything, makes people not buy the diet book.
You know, have energy, positivity, enthusiasm, virtue, clarity, and look at not...
Not telling people that they're wrong, but encouraging them to have a better life through truth, reason, and virtue.
And I think that's really the best.
After that, it's just in the hands, you know, you can be as engaging as possible, you can be as entertaining as possible, you can really try to connect with people, but it really does come down to their choices, which are fundamentally beyond.
We can influence a little, but foundationally, whether they choose virtue over vice is up to them.
And I have Only myself to control.
I cannot control anybody else.
And as long as I feel I've done the best job in promoting philosophy and virtue and truth and reason and all those good trivium virtues, then I can sort of rest relatively content with a good conscience.
And if evil arises from other people listening and I've done my best, that's not a responsibility I can take on.
Excellent answer.
I want to just ask a couple more questions.
Are you working on a new book?
Yes, so I actually started off in the art world.
I was an actor at the National Theatre School here in Canada for a couple of years.
I've produced plays, written plays, I've acted, I've played Macbeth, and so on.
So I'm working on a novel.
I'm really, really interested in So, for many, many years now, I've taken call-in shows with people, and they can talk to me about anything, but what they most want to talk to me about is when their life has hit significant problems.
And what I do is I go through their childhoods, I go through their histories, and we try to unpack which turn they made.
You know, which turn they made, like I was talking with you, the turn that you made to become a better parent, despite having been badly treated.
So, we go back to the origin story and where, you know, if you're a couple of degrees off in a very long voyage, you can end up in a completely different continent.
So, it's all those little decisions at the beginning of things.
So, I'm working on a novel where a man and a woman's life are terrible and then it's in reverse.
So, it starts at the end and then we go back and we see the decisions that are being made that have them end up in that bad place.
And then the last chapter in the novel is...
The first time they make a bad decision so that it really tells people the end, like you can then taste the recipe by looking at the recipe book and make better decisions thereby.
So the philosophy is about prevention, not cure.
It's like nutrition.
Like if you're having a heart attack, you don't call a nutritionist because the nutritionist is going to say, you got to get to the ER, man.
I can't help you.
If you call me 10 years ago, maybe I change your diet and help you, right?
And so I really want to remind people that it's the small decisions you make today that is the quality of your life in 5 or 10 or 20 years and trying to get people to remember that and focus more intently on the little decisions they're making now rather than trying to wrangle the big messes that come down the road.
That's what I'm working on at the moment.
Well, that's why I like listening to your podcast when I first got exposed to it.
Now, you have a Bitshoot channel, so people can find you on Bitshoot.
What's the name of the channel you have here on Bitshoot?
Yeah, it's free domain.
So you can, for people to find me, I'm on a variety of social media platforms.
You can go to freedomain.com slash connect, and you can find every place that I am.
It's still a variety, though I have been significantly wiped.
The shadows remain, and the mammals still run through the feet of the giant social media dinosaurs waiting to evolve.
So a lot of your content has been removed from other platforms?
Oh, yes, absolutely.
I went through that.
I was in the election cycle in 2020, so yeah, I was yeeted off the planet for the most part.
Do you have an archive of all this stuff?
Yes.
Actually, on BitChute was synchronized with my YouTube channel, and there's a bunch of other places where...
FDR podcast is where people can go.
If they're looking for a show, they can look for it.
If there's a video, which there usually is, it'll be linked underneath the show notes.
I haven't listened yet, but there's been a couple of other podcasts that you've been doing with some regularly now.
Keith Knight, is that who...
Yeah, no, I mean, I'm dipping into doing other people's shows.
I used to do that a lot more than I worked on my own stuff for a while.
So yeah, I did a great series of interviews, I think, if I do say so myself.
I did a great series of interviews with Keith Knight, and I worked with the Lotus Eaters as well.
And of course, now with this wonderful conversation.
So yeah, I'm happy to chat with people about all aspects of philosophy anytime virtually day or night.
Well, I encourage people to read.
One is to go to FDR stands for Free Domain Radio.
Is that what the FDR stands for?
Yes, I dropped the radio, so now it's just freedomain.com.
But it's still FDR, you referred to it.
Yes, yes, it is.
I should probably fix that at some point.
I encourage everyone to become a lot more familiar with Stefan's work.
I find it very, very interesting.
I've enjoyed this conversation very much.
I'm happy to really have met Stefan now after having been somebody who was a listener of his podcast and now get to know him not actually in person, but face-to-face to some extent, and I appreciate this conversation.
I apologize for talking as much as I did.
I put it down to enthusiasm, and I I appreciate that.
Yes, I'm a little too passionate, a little too enthusiastic.
I don't mean to be rude, but I think sometimes I am.
No, it's not rude.
It's enthusiasm.
I have no problem with it, and I appreciate the conversation.
So, have a great day, and thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you so much.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
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