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June 11, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
07:51
How Would We Convince Most People to Not Take Free Stuff?
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how would we convince most people to not take all of the short-term handouts?
So the promotion of hedonism exists in order to displace morality.
And I mean, I've been thinking a lot about how I grew up.
And the way that I grew up was I was offered all the hedonism in the known universe.
In return for not focusing on any moral absolutes at all.
That's the devil's bargain.
Go have fun.
Go have fun.
Go enjoy yourself.
Don't you worry your pretty little head about moral absolutes.
That's a fantasy.
Morality is a press, if you see, and feelings and dopamine and serotonin, they're all liberating, right?
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law is the message of Satan.
And I was offered all of that.
I was offered all of that.
I took it a little bit.
And then I was like, this is shredding my soul like brie on a cheese grater.
So you can't convince people not to take shorthand benefits.
You can convince them to not go in that direction.
But once they're in that direction, right?
It's the famous cry of the welfare mom, right?
Who's going to feed my kids?
Who's going to feed my kids?
Right?
How are my kids going to eat?
You know, or like, and I don't mean to laugh because, you know, it is human life and all of that, but if some of the USAID cuts, they say, oh, this girl in Africa died because it's like, okay, so our taxpayers in, say, America, are the, you know, eight remaining taxpayers in America, are they now foundationally responsible for every life on In every country on the planet forever and ever, amen.
Like if you're just working and trying to provide for your own family and trying to save and taking care of your aging parents, you are also now responsible for every life on the planet.
In other words, if some girl in Africa dies because there's some cuts to American foreign aid or USAID spending, and I don't really believe in much of it at all anymore.
It's basically just a way of laundering money.
And I talked about this, gosh, I mean, the round trip of the foreign aid dollar.
I talked about this, I don't know, 17 years ago on the show, just about it.
Foreign aid is just a way of getting money back into pockets in the host country.
In this case, it would be America.
So if a girl dies in Africa because of cuts in U.S. spending, what does that mean?
Well, of course, to the sentimental and to the emotional, it's like, oh, we should take care of everyone.
But that's an addiction, right?
People don't categorize pathological altruism as the most dangerous addiction, but it sure as fuck is.
You know, how many men have ended up in jail or suicidal or they have taken an alternate path to the future called being underground?
How many men have had their lives destroyed because they want to save some woman?
Captain Save-A-Ho is the coarse phrase for it, right?
How many men have had their lives destroyed?
How many women have had their lives destroyed because they can fix the drug addict, the alcoholic, the violent guy, the abuser, or whatever, right?
The most dangerous addiction in the world, bar none, is pathological altruism.
Addicts put immediate emotional satisfaction above long-term survival.
Now, the problem, of course, a heroin addict puts his own immediate emotional satisfaction for reasons of child abuse, as Dr. Gabor Matei has gone into in great detail, which I sympathize with, but we still have to deal with people as adults.
At least the heroin addict destroys only himself and those around you.
The pathological altruist combined with the infinite power of the state destroys entire civilizations.
I mean, when I meet someone who doesn't have a grim sense of facts and reality, you know, well, if someone dies because someone else doesn't spend money, Well, what is the local African government's responsibility?
What are the local leaders' responsibility?
What is the woman's responsibility?
What is the family's responsibility?
Apparently, it doesn't exist at all.
It does not exist at all.
They are, in the view, in this mindset, not that they are, but they are in this mindset, you know, fools who can't manage their own affairs and therefore, like children, need to be given.
And this is what?
This is the way that you get...
Bad things happen.
If someone else doesn't give people resources, bad things happen.
Well, that's women.
They didn't evolve to give resources directly themselves, right?
Sustainable resources.
they evolved to nag men into giving resources.
And so that's what happens with...
So with regards, like some woman's got three kids by three different men, what's she going to do about the welfare state?
Now, if the welfare state, and it will, mathematically that which cannot continue will not continue.
So the welfare state will absolutely completely and totally collapse.
Like everybody fix that in your mind.
The current system is being detonated.
It is not ending of its own accord, right?
The current system is being detonated by very specific choices, which we've gone over a million times.
When the money runs out, the women and in particular the children will be happier, right?
So how do women with a bunch of kids and no husband, how do they take care of their kids?
Well, they either find a guy who's willing to pay or, which is much more likely, they all get together with a bunch of other women who also have A bunch of kids and no husbands, and they all take care of each other's kids, and then they all work, and they all produce things, and they live in a collective, and they're not as isolated anymore.
The welfare state breeds intergalactic isolation.
You ever get this sort of feeling?
I think William Shatner talked about this when he went into space, just how terrifying space is.
Like, imagine, you know, you're halfway to Mars and you would just get this freaky sense of just how far away you were from...
Like, holy crap, it would be so weird and eerie.
If you've ever been...
I mean, I got this feeling sometimes when I was working in the bush up north, which is actually a lot less fun than it sounds.
But when I was working in the deep woods up by Nikina when the...
And I just, I'd be deep out in their bush and I'd be like, I am so far away from civilization.
It's insane.
You know, they always put these science fiction stories, the outer rim, you know, the lawless rim, the lawless outer rim, the outer planets, the outer arm of the galaxy or whatever.
This is all the, oh, the Nathan Fillion sci-fi stuff.
And all of that, the Firefly stuff, right?
All out there, there's no rules, right?
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