June 28, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
05:45
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| Time | Text |
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| All right, uh, somebody said, If I support my own mother having smacked me, is that La Trauma? | |
| I find it very easy to justify it from her position. | |
| I wouldn't necessarily say that that's trauma, but it is an abandoning of principles, right? | |
| The non-aggression principle, thou shalt not initiate the use of force against human beings, applies to all and in particular applies the most to children. | |
| Children are helpless and defense and legally, economically bound to their families almost without exception. | |
| And so I don't have to feed everyone in the world morally, but if I, or if someone, let's just say, so Bob, Bob doesn't have to feed everyone in the world, but if Bob lures Doug into his basement and locks him in his basement, now Bob is responsible to feed Doug because Doug can't get his food any other way. | |
| So children are, in a sense, ensconced, embedded, or trapped. | |
| Trapped is not the right word because it's just a biological reality. | |
| A baby has no choice but to go home with the parents for the most part, and no choice but to stay and not leave. | |
| And children as a whole can't leave their families. | |
| So if you're not allowed to belt strangers, which you're not, morally that would be immoral, then of course you're not allowed to belt children. | |
| The non-aggression principle is the most necessary when there's a greater disparity of power. | |
| So for instance, if you are a 98-pound weakling who's not particularly smart, saying it's really important that you don't go to a biker bar and start fights doesn't mean that much, right? | |
| Because you're not going to go out and start fights. | |
| Again, you can think of exceptions, but there's a general rule. | |
| If you are the small, bespectacled, goofy-toothed kid, then saying don't be a bully is probably unnecessary. | |
| If you're the big, kind of brutish and aggressive kid, saying don't be a bully makes more sense, right? | |
| So where you don't have power, then morality is less important. | |
| We don't say to a slave, you should choose your occupation because the slave can't choose his occupation, right? | |
| We don't say to the slave, it's really important to exercise free will because the slave is ordered around and dictated to. | |
| We would focus more on the morality of the slave owner and saying you should free your slaves and so on, right? | |
| So morality is most applicable to those who have the most power. | |
| And there's no greater power disparity in the world, in the universe that we know of, than that between parent and child. | |
| So another example would be if you're the boss and you ask your secretary out and you control her career, we have a problem with that. | |
| We don't have as much of a problem if two co-workers ask each other out. | |
| But if a direct manager asks out his direct employee, that's a conflict of interest and we have higher moral standards for him because he has power over her. | |
| So being hit by your own parents is an egregious violation of the non-aggression principle because they have so much power over you. | |
| Therefore, we have the highest moral standards for them. | |
| All right. | |
| Quick question. | |
| And you know whatever I hear when people say quick question is quite the opposite. | |
| But anyway, quick question. | |
| Under UPB, there are three tests to check if the standard of morality is correct. | |
| Put two guys in a room test, the coma patient test, as well as the everybody being able to be moral at the same time. | |
| Are there more ways to check? | |
| Excuse me. | |
| So very briefly. | |
| So if you say stealing is universally preferable behavior, okay, think of, again, Bob and Doug in a room. | |
| Can they both steal from each other at the same time? | |
| Not really. | |
| And they certainly, after they've stolen from each other, then what, right? | |
| Whereas not stealing, they can both not steal from each other at the same time. | |
| And they can have a continuous moral state of not stealing, which means that they're doing something not evil. | |
| So the coma patient test. | |
| So the coma patient test is a way of dismantling positive moral obligations. | |
| There are no unchosen positive moral obligations. | |
| There's thou shalt not, there's not thou shalt. | |
| So if you say, well, you have to help the poor. | |
| Well, can you do that when you're sleeping? | |
| No. | |
| So does that mean you're evil when you're sleeping? | |
| Because if helping the poor is the good, then not helping the poor must be the evil because it's the opposite, right? | |
| And you're not helping the poor when you're sleeping. | |
| So the coma test is, if you say, well, you've got to help the poor, it's like, okay, well, what about a guy in a coma? | |
| Now, a guy in a coma is not assaulting, not murdering, not raping, not stealing. | |
| So he's certainly not immoral. | |
| So that's another test. | |
| So UPB test is that, is everyone able to be moral at the same time, right? | |
| So if you say helping the poor is the good, then the person who's helping the poor is doing a good thing. | |
| However, it's asymmetrical, right? | |
| It means that somebody must be on the receiving end of helping the poor. | |
| If you say giving money to the homeless is really good, then the homeless person who's receiving the money can't be good because he's not doing the good. | |
| So can everyone be moral at the same time? | |
| Can everyone not steal at the same time? | |
| Yep. | |
| And in eternity, can everyone not rape, not assault, not murder? | |
| Yes, absolutely totally possible. | |
| But the best way to check is to look for logical consistency, which these are sort of tests of as a whole. |
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