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June 18, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
07:27
Full Responsibility!
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The problem is that people with intelligence and honesty won't believe you.
And I'm not saying that you're sitting there, you know, rubbing your hands and consciously lying to me, but you have to really think before you communicate and make sure that you're telling as much truth as possible.
Now, if somebody says to me, if you'd have said to me, I felt uncomfortable, I didn't want to, I was having trouble with generosity, I blah, blah, blah, I chose to have a cup of coffee out rather than...
Hey, I got no problem with that.
The fact that you didn't subscribe is not the problem.
I appreciate you starting to subscribe.
And my gift to you for your subscription is that you got to tell the truth.
And there's nobody really who's going to believe you if you say, I couldn't do five bucks a month because that would have broken me down financially and I would have ended up living on the streets.
I couldn't do it, right?
So if you blame your finances as to why you're not subscribing, nobody's going to believe you.
Now, listen, don't get me wrong.
If you're a homeless guy and you're listening to this somehow, right, whatever, right, then I get that.
But that's not you, right?
And that's not really a thing.
So don't make excuses that are not true.
Sorry.
I just want to be blunt with you.
I want to be honest with you.
So, don't tell me that you didn't subscribe because your finances were unstable or whatever it is, right?
If it was a priority to you, you would have subscribed.
It was not a priority to you, which I'm fine with.
I mean, obviously, philosophy is a very high priority for me.
But if it's not a high priority for you, high enough to make it a priority in order to spend three or five or ten bucks a month or whatever, right?
That's fine.
Then just tell me it wasn't a high priority and I let other people pay for the value that I was consuming and I appreciated not having ads in your show and I just, I was a free rider, okay?
I was a free rider.
It happens.
It happens.
But don't say it's because of some external factor.
Like, I didn't have the money, or my finances were unstable, whatever that means, right?
If it was a high enough priority, right?
I mean, so let's take a silly example, right?
I just really want to be frank with this because I want you guys as a whole in general, and I have this standard for myself, and I fail it from time to time.
So I'm not speaking from any place of, you know, infinite floating on a mountain superiority.
So if you were sick and the life-saving medicine was $5 a month, let's say you needed to take it for a couple of years, would you die?
Right?
Of course you wouldn't.
You would find a way to pay the $5 a month in order to survive.
Now, just for the less intelligent among you, I know this isn't most people, I'm not saying that I'm equivalent to life-saving medicine.
This is an extreme example to show you that if the doctor said, well, you're dying, and this medicine for five bucks a month, you have to pay that or you're going to die, would you say, ooh, you know what, my finances are too unstable right now?
No.
You would find a way to pay the $5 a month to get the medicine to stay alive.
So when people tell me it's impossible, I couldn't do it because of my finances, I just know that's not true.
Now, that is not to say you have to subscribe or donate.
That's not the conversation.
The conversation isn't, well, you have to donate, subscribe.
The conversation is about don't pretend.
That your free will is constrained by something it's not in fact constrained by.
So when people say, well, I can afford a cell phone, I can afford an internet plan, I can afford a place to live, I can afford a car maybe, I can afford coffees out, I can afford dinners out, I can afford treats and this and that and the other.
I can afford desserts, which you don't need and a kind of poisonous anyway.
I can afford all of these things, but Steph, I can't afford to support philosophy.
You can.
Again, this is not an argument that you should.
But don't tell me you didn't have a choice.
My finances were too unstable.
That's not true.
You chose to not own your choices.
Because if you give yourself excuses in the past, you're going to give yourself excuses in the future and you're going to limit your choices.
Do not give yourself access to excuses.
Excuses diminish you.
They diminish your free will.
They diminish the honor and glory of your existence.
And excuses keep people of great integrity away from you.
Because people with great integrity, people, and by integrity I simply mean you don't make up excuses, right?
People with great integrity don't like spending time around people who make excuses.
Because it's kind of infectious.
We all have that undertone, that tendency, that desire, that drive to make excuses.
Kids are born that way.
We have to outgrow it, right?
It wasn't my fault.
Or, you know, the guy last night, every time I found this kind of annoying, and I called him on it like half a dozen times, I actually had to tell the...
Because every time I'd ask him a question, he didn't like it.
You know, there's this impatient sigh, right?
So, that's kind of unpleasant to be around, right?
So, be somebody who owns every choice.
If you didn't subscribe and you didn't donate, that is fine.
The issue that I'm talking about here is not, oh my God, you've got to go and subscribe and donate.
Don't get me wrong.
I'd be happy if you did.
But the issue here is when I hear excuses that are false.
When I hear excuses that are false.
And some excuses are genuine, right?
Like I was late to the job interview because I got T-boned by a drunk driver.
Okay, that's a valid excuse, right?
But I couldn't afford five bucks a month.
Is not true.
Now, just own it.
Don't give yourself excuses.
Don't diminish the glory of your free will by making up a situation where you just had no choice.
I couldn't subscribe because I would starve or be homeless or whatever it is, right?
I couldn't make my car payments.
I'd lose my car.
I'd lose my job.
Right?
But that's not true.
Everyone in this conversation, everyone listening to this, You can afford five bucks a month.
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