Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux - SHUN THOSE WHO PROMOTE POLITICAL VIOLENCE!

Sept. 16, 2025 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:46:47

SHUN THOSE WHO PROMOTE POLITICAL VIOLENCE!

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	So without further ado, I would like to introduce Stefan Molyneux.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Thank you so much.
	I appreciate that.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Thank you very much.
	Thank you.
	I'm wireless because there's a lot of cameras.
	We have an A V group, like everyone here was in the A V society in high school.
	So many cameras, I feel I should be protesting that I did not have sexual relations with some woman somewhere, somehow.
	Maybe you.
	Anyway.
	Well, thank you.
	That's a very kind introduction.
	I really do appreciate it.
	Uh to say my name is Stefan Molyneux.
	I run a podcast, which usually translates into not good enough for radio.
	And hopefully I'm I'm more used to doing just a one camera, uh, a red room, and just me.
	So there's a lot of eyeballs here.
	I'll try not to let it goose me.
	I actually wanted them to build a red room up here.
	I'd do the talk and just wave from the top, but apparently that wasn't going to be how it was going to happen.
	So yeah, sorry for those who've got the cameras.
	I just I like to walk a little, so I'll be I'll be moving.
	You'll you won't know where I am.
	I'm the wind.
	So I'm going to do a talk today about what I hope is going to be some very powerful and effective ways for you to take more of an offensive position when it comes to debating, not anarchism versus statism, really, but freedom versus coercion.
	Because what we do, if I may go out on a limb here, what we do as individuals is we fight evil.
	And I know that sounds like a superhero description, but it is.
	Because if the future is going to be free, it's going to be free because we don the silly tights and the capes of philosophy, reason, evidence, empiricism, and win the battle of ideas.
	That is the only way that freedom is going to exist in the future where we can build a bridge to the libertopia we all wish we could live in today, but all we can do is lay down our time and energy in building that bridge to the future.
	And I've been having these kinds of political debates and arguments for about 25 years, and I've made such a staggering number of mistakes in uh, you know, when I say we should take the offensive, uh, I've certainly been offensive to many, many people.
	And uh that's not exactly what I'm talking about, but uh I've made so many mistakes that I thought it's worthwhile circling back.
	Uh you're looking at some of the people I accidentally ran over learning the lessons so we can drive better.
	And so I've developed an argument and an approach called the against me argument, and I'll go a little bit into that, but I don't want to talk for the whole time.
	It's not like the world is what 1500 podcasts, it's not like the world is short of me talking.
	So what I'd like to do is I'd like to just go over the theory of the against me argument.
	And then if you would like to grab a microphone, I'd like to take it for a spin with the devil's advocate position from people in the audience.
	So if you have some, you know, some we all have at least one of these, I have like a dozen.
	The arguments that you just always seem to get stuck on when you're speaking about freedom of voluntarism or peaceful solutions to social problems.
	It sticks like a hairball, you know, you just can't ever quite get that.
	And I'd like to take the against me argument, run that through.
	So you would then bring this position up.
	Everyone who does it can get, if they want, uh I'll hand out a book.
	This is my little incentive.
	Uh so I'd like to just do a little bit of of the theory, and then let's try some role plays, put it to the test and see if it works.
	And if it doesn't, uh full refund.
	So we fight evil, and one of the great challenges with fighting evil is you can't fight evil.
	And the reason you can't fight evil is that the moment that people see that it's evil, it loses its power.
	So if we said, you know what we should do is we should bring back slavery, everybody would say, well, no, no, that's evil.
	So it would never happen.
	So we don't actually fight evil.
	Because you can't fight evil.
	What we fight is evil that people think is good.
	Right?
	That's the real challenge that we face.
	Because if everybody said, well, the initiation of the use of force is evil, statism is evil, we would we would have to we'd lay down our arms because we'd be done.
	So the challenge is to get people to understand that what they think is virtuous is in fact evil.
	The initiation of the use of force, I think we would all agree as the foundation of that property rights and the initiation of the use of against the initiation of the force and for property rights, which are really two sides of the same coin.
	So the against me argument is designed to be a kind of talcum powder.
	And what I mean by that is if you've all seen movies where there's some invisible guy, right?
	Some guy you can't see, and all you see is, you know, like something moving around because he's picking something up or whatever, and then something always happens in the movie.
	There's like some dust or some talcum powder or something, and you see the outline of the guy, right?
	And what we're trying to do is to get people to see the gun that's in the room that nobody talks about, which is the initiation of the use of force that is at the core of the statist philosophy.
	And it's really hard to get people to see that gun in the room.
	It's like going to a bunch of fish and saying you're swimming in water, and they say, what water?
	We don't know, because it's all we know.
	It's our entire environment.
	People can't see it.
	And the against me argument is really designed to show the violence that is in people's advocation of status solutions to social problems.
	Because there are two characteristics of evil that I think are really, really important to understand.
	The first is that it's really, really, really effective.
	I mean, it works really, really well.
	If you want to cow a population, if you want to take their money, if you want to put their children in these lack of concentration camps called public schools, if you want to rule them, the gun works everywhere, always beautiful.
	But it only works if people won't look at it.
	Violence is incredibly effective as a tool of ruling what of course I call the human tax livestock, but it's only effective to the degree to which people don't look at it.
	Because the moment people see the coercion that is at the root of statism, they see that it's immoral.
	And statism as a philosophy falls.
	So the first characteristic of evil is that it is incredibly effective.
	And we all know this, right?
	It's is it six years now that this Iraq war has been going on?
	Six?
	It's longer than the second world war, right?
	It's actually, I think coming on for longer than the f US involvement in the first and second world war.
	And it's it's amazing.
	It's it's the incredible invisible war.
	There's no bodies.
	Six years, so you can look at the mainstream media and you can't see any of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who've been killed or driven out.
	You can't even take a photograph of a flag-draped coffin coming off a plane at Andrew's Air Base.
	That's not legal.
	They'll they change that?
	Okay, good.
	So in year six, you can now maybe take a photograph of a body.
	But what you see is you see these yearbook photos of these guys, you know, that the guys who've fallen like they tripped.
	So when we look at something like a war, you hear patriotism, flags, you know, protection of the realm, defense of the homeland, uh, service to the nation, and this and that.
	So you hear all of these amazing morally eloquent terms, but what you'll never see is the reality of war, which is people being disassembled by machinery and bullets.
	And that's very clear why they would not want you to see that, because if people see violence, they oppose violence.
	So the violence has to be hidden in order for it to work.
	And the argument that I'm going to lay out for you is designed to help you show the hidden violence that is in the statist position, which I and to take the offense, right?
	Because generally, and I'm gonna generalize here, but maybe I think it'll make sense.
	The way that we approach a statist argument, uh, somebody who's advocating a statist position, or when we um propose a voluntarist position, is we'll take one of two approaches.
	There's either the pragmatic practical approach, it doesn't work, right?
	Or there's the abstract moral approach.
	The initiation of the use of force is wrong, the government is an agency which uh is a monopoly of individuals who claim the right to initiate violence in a particular geographical area, and that's very abstract, and that's very hard for people to connect with in a visceral way.
	Because another thing that's true about violence is that there's very few people who want to do it directly.
	People will support it in the abstract as long as they don't connect it with what is actually happening at the other end of the bullet or the bomb.
	But there's very few people who actually want to do it directly.
	So that's what we need to do is to bring these uh this violence that is inherent in the system that we live in to people's understanding.
	When you take the pragmatic approach, right?
	So you argue the welfare state, right?
	What if someone says, oh, the welfare state is great or necessary or good or whatever.
	The pragmatic answer is to say, well, but you know, there were these friendly societies before we had the welfare state, they did a much more effective job, there's private charities, and by the way, the number of poor was declining one percent a year until the welfare state came in in the early 60s, and then it leveled off, and now it's increasing, so it doesn't actually solve poverty and so on, and you end up arguing statistics, which can always be criticized for bias or interpretation.
	You end up having to be the libertarian Google bot research robot, right?
	Where you you sort of like, oh, intellectual property rights, let me go and study intellectual property rights, and and then I'll come back, and I've to become the master of everything, and I have to understand everything, and I have to know every statistic, and here are my charts, and here are my graphs, and here I mean it's exhausting, right?
	And you can't ever become an expert at everything.
	And when you finally do have the ironclad case as to how the welfare state contributes to the problems of poverty, people say, well, but it's a social contract, so I'm glad you did all that research.
	I'm not giving you a degree, and I'm gonna walk away from the argument anyway.
	And and maybe this, I mean anyone you've we've all done that, right?
	So we've all and it's not a lot of fun, right?
	I mean, after a while you sort of feel like, man, this wall is really beginning to.
	Now the second approach is where we take the abstract argument, well, you see, the welfare state uh relies upon the initiation of force against usually legally disarmed citizens, that's immoral, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	And what do people say?
	What uh anyone, what do people say to that argument?
	Well, it's not the initiation of force because it's a social contract.
	You can leave at any time.
	You vote, you can change the system, you can get involved, you can do this, you can do that, right?
	So it's not force because you know when you're in my house, you do a sassy, right?
	I mean, that's what uh that's what people say, that's how they view the government, right?
	And so you don't, and then you can argue about the social contracts, which is a real quagmire, right?
	It's really hard to pin people down on the social contract.
	Uh so uh I have not found those two uh approaches to work, and I've poured an embarrassing amount of time and energy into just those approaches to making these arguments.
	So in desperation, you know, when you're looking over that cliff saying, if I have one more argument like this, I'm gonna jump.
	I started to try and take uh another approach, right?
	Because I like to be so proactive that I wait until I'm really desperate uh before I come up with a new approach.
	So my third approach doesn't rely on any statistics.
	Oh, praise be to the heavens above, I don't have to look up everything all the time.
	And then just have people say, well, those come from the Cato Institute.
	Come on.
	Might as well be quoting from Hitler.
	And I don't have to have all these abstract arguments against the social contract and and go into that quagmire, which never seems to come out particularly effectively.
	So I wanted to come up with a third way.
	And I'll give you an example of of this in action, uh, and then I'll give you a tiny bit of theory, and then you know, grab a mic and let's take this thing for a spin and see how it works.
	So uh in a call and show that I do every Sunday at 4 p.m.
	Eastern, uh a listener brought a friend.
	You know, that's always exciting, because you always gotta start from zero, right?
	And his uh friend, this was a woman who was a teacher, and uh she uh she said, I'm really for the surge in Iraq.
	You know, I think it's gonna work, I think it's good, I think it's gonna be effective, I think it's it's it's I'm I'm really behind it, and I hear that you're not.
	It's like, well, it's not that I'm against the surge.
	You know, a doctor isn't against one cancer.
	Um my old way of arguing would have been, ah, 913 lies started the Iraq war, and it's imperialism, which is really bad.
	And the the troops are paid by aggression against citizens, and and and and and right.
	In other words, trying to move her like the four-ton piece of cheese through the grater of education in libertarian principles.
	Thank you.
	I see other people know that greater, right?
	We've all had our fingers, right?
	Oh, ow.
	But you can't, and you can't push a camel through the eye at the needle, right?
	You can't.
	You just need a big needle.
	Yes, you just need a big needle.
	Uh I don't have that big a needle, so um so I uh I took another approach.
	Uh and and I'll just run through the argument briefly, we'll then apply it to stuff that works, hopefully for you guys.
	But what I did was I said, so you're for the surge, right?
	And I didn't say, but this is the fifth surge, and there were four before, and they didn't work, right?
	And I said, that's fine.
	I said, I I I completely respect your right to be for the surge.
	You like the surge, go hug the surge.
	I'm I'm fine with it, you know?
	Take it out for dinner, buy it some flowers, whatever you like, you know.
	I said, and I would never, never think of using force against you because of your opinion.
	I would never dream of hiring guys in costume to come to your house and cut you off to some torture chamber because you like the surge.
	You're free to like the surge, I respect your opinion.
	She was a little surprised.
	Thought you were an anarchist.
	I just wanted to yell at me.
	And so I then said, I don't agree with the surge.
	Do you give me the same respect and consideration to be against the surge as I'm giving you to be for the surge.
	What you're gonna say?
	No.
	I want the guys in costume to come to your because we have to, you know, we you got to use the levers that people already believe in, the ethics, right?
	And people already believe in freedom of expression.
	Right?
	So if I say, look, I'm allowed to disagree with you, right?
	You don't advocate the use of force against me because I disagree with you, right?
	Of course she's gonna say no.
	Of course, I don't think that you should.
	She said, you shouldn't be uh aggressed against because you disagree with me.
	I said, excellent, progress.
	I'm not used to this, let me get used to that.
	I'm dizzy.
	And so then I said, now it wouldn't make any sense at all, logically.
	If I was allowed to disagree with you, but I could not act upon that disagreement.
	That wouldn't make sense.
	That's an illusory right.
	It's like our right to money, right?
	Like i if uh I don't know, I had some daughter in the Middle Ages, and and I said, uh, you are free to marry whoever you want, but you have to marry the man I choose.
	Okay, we understand that would be a logical contradiction, right?
	That you can't be free to disagree with someone but not be able to act upon that disagreement, right?
	That's like having the right to a free press, but not the right to type anything, right?
	I mean it wouldn't make any sense.
	And she said, yes, it wouldn't make any sense if you were allowed, if I said it's okay for you to disagree with me, but you can't act on that disagreement.
	Excellent.
	I'm even more dizzy now.
	Like, how can we be this should be three months down the road?
	And I said, okay, so if you like the surge, you like your surge, no problem.
	Then you should take out your checkbook.
	And you should write, I think he goes by Don as well back then, Donnie Rumsfeld, here's my money, because I'm so down with the surge, here's my cash, right?
	Because you should be free to support the surge.
	So pay the money if you like.
	Clearly, since you have already agreed that I am free not only to disagree with you, but to act tangibly on that disagreement, because there would be no right To disagreement otherwise.
	I'm allowed to not write a check to Donnie for something I disagree with.
	And there was a pause.
	And you know, somebody's brain hangs in the balance, you know, like a pendulum, you know, a big wet thing going back and forth, you know.
	Reason, propaganda, reason, propaganda.
	It's like one of those claw things where you're trying to get something out of the uh, you know, come on, fall here, fall here.
	Actually, there, there.
	So she finally said, well, yeah.
	Uh yeah, that makes sense.
	If you're if you're free to disagree with the surge, then you're free to not not pay for it, right?
	And shockingly, that was it.
	Now, that doesn't teach her voluntarism.
	Obviously, it doesn't teach her the theory, it doesn't teach her all of this lovely stuff that we we we sit and dream and and reason about and think about and talk about and read about.
	But what it does do is it puts her on the defensive.
	And this is the core of the against me argument.
	Right?
	So the welfare state.
	We'll do that one, then we'll we'll do anything that you guys want to talk about.
	Because I know it's really tough to get a room for libertarians to grab a mic.
	It's tough.
	But if you can somehow find it within yourself to want to speak, we'll we'll have some fun.
	So the welfare state.
	Okay, so someone says the welfare state's good, right?
	So I say, well, I respect your decision.
	You'd like the welfare state, I respect, I would never dream of using violence to prevent you from acting upon your beliefs, your values, your virtues, what you consider to be moral just, right, and good.
	Never dream of it.
	Gun is safely in its holster.
	Will you accord me the same respect that I am according to?
	Am I free to disagree with you without violence?
	Am I free to not like the welfare state?
	Without you thinking I should be thrown in jail.
	Am I free to disagree?
	Because if we don't understand that in a free society there's a plurality of solutions, statism is this fantasy, well, it's not really fantasy, let me statism is the belief that there's one solution that sorry, honey.
	That was enthusiastic, I feel that.
	Um statism is the belief that there's one solution, right?
	So we either have to have a welfare state or we can't have a welfare state, we either have to have social security or there's nothing.
	It's it's binary.
	Like economic planning in the old Soviet Union, right?
	There's no plurality of solutions.
	If people like the welfare state, send the checks.
	If people don't like the welfare state, I which I assume is most of us here, are we free to withhold our consent, our economic consent from the welfare state?
	The amazing thing, and I've done this so many times now, but the amazing thing about this, I hope you can get a sense of how it puts you on the offensive, and you don't have to look up anything.
	You don't have to look up anything.
	You don't have to become the master of time, space, dimension, statistics, charts, fields, you don't have to become the PhD in everything, which is our constant temptation.
	Oh, with a little more knowledge, I can change the world with some more numbers.
	So the against me argument puts you in the offensive because you're extending a court a courtesy to people which says you're free to believe what you believe.
	I respect your right to believe what you believe, and I respect your right to act on it.
	Will you accord me the same respect?
	Now, this is a volatile argument to make.
	Just so you know, right?
	It's it's volatile.
	Try this with family members.
	Do you support the use of violence against me for disagreeing with you?
	Because that's really what statism is.
	Am I allowed to disagree with you about the war?
	Am I allowed to disagree with you about the welfare state?
	I'm allowed to disagree with you about social security, am I allowed to disagree with you about homeland security, about the need for a passport?
	Am I allowed to disagree with you?
	Without you advocating the use of force against me.
	Now, a few people will openly say, oh no, force is good against you.
	It will, I mean, shockingly, it happens, right?
	Uh a few people will say, yeah, that's the deal.
	You disagree with me about the welfare state?
	Yeah, I support you getting uh gunned to your temple and thrown into a jail.
	Now, you know, you you can't wrestle with someone who's got a bazooka, right?
	If you're not gonna play by the rules, right?
	I don't like to serve up a tennis ball to somebody with a shotgun.
	No lasers, right?
	If somebody is is going to openly say to you, yes, I advocate the use of violence against you for disagreeing with me, there's no civilized debate or interaction that is possible at all.
	I would never debate with somebody, and I've had that, people will say that to me, in which case it's like, bye-bye.
	Because I'm not going to pretend to debate with somebody who's got a gun.
	I'm not going to pretend to debate with somebody whose final reasonable position is me being thrown in prison for disagreeing.
	I'm not gonna give that violent premise the appearance of a rational conversation.
	That's the withdrawal of consent.
	I am a big fan of objectivism, though.
	So this against me argument really comes down to when you hear a statist position, you don't have to talk the person out of the status position.
	That's a status premise that we have to talk statists out of their position.
	Am I free to disagree with you without you advocating the use of violence against me?
	Because remember we said earlier, violence, the more abstract violence is, the easier it is for people to live with it.
	Right?
	That's why you don't see pictures of bodies in the newspapers.
	The more abstract it is, the easier it is for people to support it.
	So we need to, this is the talcum powder on the invisible man, the invisible gun in the room.
	Not statism is coercion against legally disarmed citizens, which it is.
	But that's uh for most people who don't have the same relationship to between concepts and reality.
	We have this weird special pipeline.
	You know, like most people have a relationship between concepts and reality, like in lower intestine, you know, like it just goes all the way around, takes forever.
	We're like those ads for anti acids, you know, there's one tube and a one tube and a stomach.
	That's all it is, right?
	So we get concepts go straight through us.
	This is a really bad metaphor.
	Um I'm sorry, I just sometimes when you wing it, it goes really well, and other times you're some emodium ad.
	So I'm sorry about that.
	This is why I'm walking around, you see.
	Um, but we have a very visceral and strong relationship, right, between concepts and and practice, between theory and practice.
	Most people don't.
	So, in order for them to understand that what they're advocating is the use of violence, you have to have the eyeball to eyeball.
	Are you actually and honestly gonna sit there and advocate the use of violence against me for disagreeing with you?
	Against me.
	Not some abstract citizenry, not some social class, not some contract from the gods, but against me, would you are you advocating the use of force against me?
	That makes people a little uncomfortable.
	frankly haven't we spent enough time being a little uncomfortable that it's time to make other people feel a little uncomfortable It's tough for us to look like the reasonable ones, right?
	It is, because we're so far outside what people accept as true and real and virtuous, that, you know, we look a little like we should come with tinfoil, right?
	I mean, we do, right?
	So, but when we, when you can say to somebody, I support your right to disagree with me, do you return to me the same mature civilized respect for disagreement without violence?
	We become the reasonable ones, the ones who are giving respect to a difference of opinion and validly and morally asking for the same respect in return.
	And when we point out that ours is the pluralistic and peaceful solution to the problems of poverty of education, of security for the aged and the infirm.
	That ours is the peaceful, pluralistic, positive, rational, empirically valid, moral approach To solving these problems, if we keep reminding people that violence is the very worst conceivable way to solve social problems, then we are the reasonable ones.
	We are the ones who accept plurality of opinions within society.
	We are the ones who will not pick up the gun unless there's a bullet arrowing its ray right towards us, which you know has not happened on my show yet.
	That's why I have my compound in Canada.
	But um we are the reasonable ones.
	We are the ones who will say to people, I respect your difference of opinion, will you respect mine?
	We point out that they're holding a gun.
	And in any debate, the first guy to pull out a gun, he might win in a way.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Right?
	But he loses.
	The battle of ideas.
	Right?
	Anyone who says, well, we have to force people to be good, obviously doesn't believe in virtue.
	Doesn't believe in rationality, doesn't believe in reasonableness, in which case why debate?
	But anybody who debates obviously understands that reason and evidence are the way to go.
	And this argument, the against me argument, it's really scary to do.
	At least it was for me, maybe you're more courageous than me.
	But it's really scary to do because it really puts your relationship with whoever you're talking about.
	Could be some guy on a plane, could be your brother.
	Puts your relationship to a real test.
	Right?
	Because when you stay abstract and you stay statistics and you stay social contract and you stay what Jefferson said, and right, whatever, right?
	You know, the Fed is whatever.
	And I I agree with all of those, right?
	But when you put it down to eyeball to eyeball, are you saying that you advocate the use of force against me for disagreeing with you?
	That is a hot moment in a relationship.
	Right?
	That is a scary moment in a relationship.
	Because what if they say yes?
	I mean, that is a challenge.
	Now, of course, you know, if they say yes, you have an you know, you can give them a little bit of time, it could be the heat of the moment, right?
	I mean, and so on, right?
	But but this argument I have found to be after 20 years of, you know, as you can cleanly see shredding my hair against the wall of other people's uh indifference to statistics and abstract arguments, this I have found to be an incredibly powerful argument and an incredible argument for, especially if you're debating with other people around, right?
	Because other people will then see that you're the one who's allows for plurality and peaceful solutions, and the other person is the one using force.
	That is an incredibly powerful moral position to be in, because when people see the gun, they reject the gun.
	So the entire point of the statist approached is to talk about everything but the reality of the situation, which is someone's getting a gun to their head for disagreeing, whether it's with the general opinion or the opinion of some politician or whoever.
	Someone's getting a gun to the head.
	So anybody sees that statism collapses completely.
	And it's our job, I believe, since life is short and we have a long way to go, to be as effective as humanly possible in pointing this gun in the room out over and over and over again.
	Because when it's seen, you beat evil by getting people to see that it's evil, right?
	And what is the government?
	The government should come with a trademark or a slogan, government, free evil.
	That's what the government is.
	Freeful.
	And and we want people to see that violence.
	When they see that violence, they will reject that violence.
	That doesn't mean that they'll, you know, all the way over to our position and so on, but at least they will get that violence is involved in the status solution, and violence is at the core of the state of solution, and we are the ones who want a respectful and rational plurality of opinion, a free market of ideas to triumph in the solving of social problems, which are very large and very serious, and which we need to address.
	So that's it for the uh speech part.
	So uh the next thing is uh if you've had a chance, uh question.
	I wanted to.
	Oh, stretching?
	That was where you wanted to go.
	Devil away.
	Devil away.
	Do you want uh do you want a mic?
	Yes, you can.
	Uh we also I I didn't mention this, so I just wanted to wait for the first volunteer.
	At the end we do a duet.
	Um if you'd ever heard me sing, you might think that was a bad idea.
	Well I've taken my stab at that a few times too.
	So you borrow my sack.
	All right.
	Okay, so uh you have uh now, is this uh an argument that you've had before that's kind of nutty making?
	It's related to an argument that I've had before.
	Um do you agree that the difference between a democracy and a republic is that in a democracy, people make decisions about government policy directly, and in a republic we choose people to make those decisions for us.
	Well, I mean, my first response is to say that the difference between a republic and a democracy is the illusory paperwork.
	But um, let me let me explain why I bring this up.
	Yes, sorry, forget my pet answer.
	Let's actually get into the Now assuming that you think that we live in a republic or some vague approximation of it.
	I understand the elections don't work quite the way they should, and the press doesn't work quite the way it should.
	Um but assuming that we did for a moment, somebody whom you choose to make those decisions might within the scope that you think is proper within government, right?
	Make the decision in a direction differently than you personally would make it.
	Sorry, let me just make sure that's a bit of a cheese crater for me.
	Let me just make sure I get through that one.
	So if if I elect Barack Obama because I like his policies.
	Then let's imagine you elect Ron Paul because I imagine that I elect Ron Paul because I agree with his policies, and then Ron Paul does something that I disagree with.
	Is that right, right?
	It is entirely possible that the person whom you have chosen would make a decision that is different from the decision that you would have made if it were up to you.
	When you say entirely possible, do you mean completely inevitable or is that something that's a little different?
	Yeah.
	Even Ron Paul, right?
	Because then nobody agrees with everyone and everything.
	That's why we need a free society, right?
	Well, let's so uh and just if you can get to the question, I don't want to give a response before.
	The thing that you are proposing, which is that you wish the freedom to act upon your beliefs, which is to say not to pay for those government policies that you disagree with.
	Yes.
	Doesn't that make it rather impractical to have a republic in which the decisions on policies are not made individually but they're made by elected representatives.
	Doesn't that become impractical if you actually wanted to run a government that way?
	Yes.
	Well, I mean the the only way that that's what we call democracy could conceivably work in any free society is and we do this all the time, right?
	If if we have uh uh specific legal triggers where control over our estate or our decision making passes to someone else.
	We we we um have a contract with someone to negotiate on our behalf, a real estate agent, uh a doctor, a lawyer, whoever it is, right?
	And so if if someone has such wonderful ideas like Ron Paul about how we should all live and what we should all do, then people can sign contracts saying, you know, Ron Paul's gonna call me every morning, you know, and he's gonna say, okay, nine o'clock, that's what you're gonna be doing, and then ten, right, whatever it is that that people want to do, that's great, right?
	And then they're they may be bound by that contract.
	And then if Ron Paul suddenly says, you know, I want us to go and invade Cambodia, say, well, let me check my contract here.
	No, no, imperialism not so good, so I'm sorry I'm not gonna do that, right?
	So democracy is a kind of social contract.
	Clearly, I can't enter into a contract on your behalf, right?
	I can't go buy a car and send you the bill, right?
	Unless I'm in Congress.
	But um So if people want a contract with experts and leaders, which we do all the time, I don't go and drill my own teeth, right?
	But uh if they want to do that, that's great.
	Then they can do that on an individual basis with a specific contract with a specific individual.
	But if you like Ron Paul and I like Joe the plumber for whatever reason, there was a Joe Plumber here, wasn't there?
	I saw that in the Am I wrong about that?
	Okay, and not the same, no.
	Then then you you can have that contract with that person, and I'm free to disagree with your contract with that person or to have no contract or to have a contract with someone else if I want.
	Right?
	And so uh I would never interfere if you wanted to to follow Ron Paul's advice on on how things should be done, then you would follow you would fund his foundation, you would obey what he uh says and have a contract with him, but I would be free to disagree with that.
	I would never use force to prevent you from uh following a leader that you felt to be uh very powerful and helpful and important.
	Similarly, of course, I would expect the same respect in return that you would never use force for me choosing another leader or no leader at all.
	Uh we do have a mic, just because I know we're recording.
	Are you gonna has that like a boomerang?
	Oh, sorry.
	Gentleman at the back.
	Um let's let's pretend for a second they were all the classic perception of libertarians, which of course means you're for drugs and guns.
	Um the the hang on, that's this side of the room.
	So uh the it seems to me that both of those issues end up um with a position where the other side feels the moral superiority of saying, yeah, I'm okay with the use of a gun because after all, drugs aren't kids, and it's okay to take away your gun because you're going to use it against me.
	So I I don't see how how that argument that you're that you're saying the against me argument works in either of those cases.
	Okay, moving on.
	Sorry, that might cut out a little bit.
	No, you're you're okay, let's so let's do this.
	Okay, so can you be like the the drugs are guy?
	Okay, give me give me give me the argument.
	Um, I'm happy to let me just take a note or two.
	You just want to go ahead and you want to unleash this anarchy, and we're gonna have kids using all kinds of horrible drugs and ruin their lives.
	And it you're perfectly fine to to go ahead and ruin your own life, but you're going to ruin the lives of others, and so therefore, yes, I would feel comfortable using force against you because you're a menace to society.
	Right, what about the children?
	Absolutely.
	Okay, sorry, I can just see your afro.
	I can't actually see you.
	I keep wanting to call you Hagrid.
	I don't know why.
	Thank you.
	Don't worry, I have my own share of names.
	Kelsey Grammar.
	That's okay, because I I commented to Angela said, when you started talking about the violence inherited in the system, I basically flashed our money pipe.
	Oh, right, okay, right, right, right.
	What is it?
	Somebody said I didn't know Phil Collins was an anarchist.
	That's the last one I ties back to our duet that we're doing.
	Okay, so so the argument is that uh the legalization of drugs results in uh drugs being uh given to children, and that's the initiation of force or poisoning of children, and therefore we should uh uh it's okay to use violence against those who sell any drugs anywhere whatsoever, right?
	That's that's an excellent, excellent point.
	Let me just run that through my own little cheese grader here.
	Talk amongst yourselves.
	Um because the the old me, right, the me who just was a masochist with his forehead, would would have gone to something like this to say, well, but uh children drown in swimming pools, and therefore we should ban all swimming pools.
	And and uh before drugs were illegal, they never went to kids, but now they go to kids because they're so profitable that they get free samples to get addicted.
	And I'd go down that all that route, which leads to a whole big pile of nowhere, at least in my experience, because it requires people to have knowledge of history that they don't have, right?
	So uh I would say that uh people who poison children are initiating the use of force against children, because children are helpless and relatively and they don't have the long-term reasoning skills to consequences of blah blah blah, right?
	This is my form of parenting, so yes, uh uh people who uh who give drugs to children, uh which harm those children are responsible for that uh violence, right?
	Uh but uh you can't use force against everyone because some people do bad things, right?
	That that that is a a collective guilt approach, right?
	That's like saying, well, uh some Mexicans steal, so let's round them up and throw them all in jail, right?
	I mean that would obviously that would be unjust, and people would say, well, yeah, that would be unjust, right?
	So because let's say some crazy nutty people will give drugs to kids and so on, uh then that's like saying let's shut down Halloween because a few nut jobs put razor blades in candy bars, right?
	I mean you can't do the collective guilt thing.
	And so uh uh I would not support that.
	And I I that's not specific to the against me argument, but uh because the against me argument is really for more general social policies, but I would definitely ask if that person believed in collective guilt or whether uh uh individuals should be punished for individual behaviors or whether there's this original sin that somehow s spreads like a squid ink in the social water.
	Uh and I think that the person would probably say, well, no, you can't punish people collectively for the actions of specific individuals, and then you're back to, well, a guy uh smoking pot in his own basement is clearly not poisoning children, right?
	And therefore using force against him would be illegitimate.
	Does that still not sure that's gonna convince the anti-drug crowd because they see the moral imperative and they're poor justified useful force?
	Okay, let's let's do that, right?
	Okay, so so then they would say, Well, you see the moral imperative we'll get back to the against me argument if that initial thrust doesn't work, which is great.
	Then I would say, okay, well, you believe that uh everyone who takes some kind of illicit substance should be thrown in jail.
	Uh should have a force used against them, should be punished violently, thrown in jail where they'll be beaten and all sorts of godforsaken things will happen to them, right?
	They'll get big tattoos, they'll try and break out.
	Um then I would say, well, I disagree with you.
	Right?
	And then I would say, am I allowed to disagree with you?
	Right?
	Am I a l like you would obviously not sell, that's this devil's advocate.
	You would not sell drugs to anyone.
	You wouldn't have them, you wouldn't write.
	Now, is someone, anyone, maybe you wouldn't say you, because you know you look like some creepy drug dealer, right?
	But not you.
	Used to look like the friendly giant, but I'm talking about the drug dealer.
	They say, well, but is someone allowed to disagree with you if they're into recreational drugs, so this or that or the other.
	Are they allowed to, you know, whatever, without you advocating the use of force against them.
	Now, if this person says, yes, anybody who touches weed should be, you know, thrown in jail and and violence and force, then it's not a debate.
	Right?
	It's not a debate, because this person's already got the gun out and will point it at anyone that disagrees with them.
	And then I would withdraw from that debate.
	Because I would say, well, look, you already you've already got the gun out, you're already willing to point it at anyone who disagrees with you, so I'm not gonna pretend that we're debating here.
	Now, if the person is interested in reason and evidence, then you can I'm not saying this is the only argument, right?
	I'm saying this is what my first draw is.
	It doesn't mean that I don't have you know shivs in my shoes and stuff like that, right?
	Uh but that so does that I know that's not a perfect, perfect answer, but it's I think it addresses the issue that this isn't necessarily the MLB on.
	Oh, absolutely, yeah.
	I'm not saying this is the only thing, like throw out every book you've ever read and just use against me, against me, against me, against me.
	Oh, that wouldn't be bad.
	But I mean I think it's a first place to start.
	But yeah, it's not the answer to everything for sure, but I would really, you know, for the really, really uh uh big big issue things, it's where I would start.
	Err.
	Oh sorry, I what I'm trying to do is find the person furthest away from the mic handler.
	I thought you were gonna do like some assaults over the audience and I I wonder if you know you come to that point where they say, yeah, they should use violence.
	Can you zero it in on to them and say, would you be the person to kill the pot smoker?
	Would you pull the gun out?
	Yeah.
	That's uh that's a fantastic point.
	Um I'll sit there, you finish up here now.
	Uh uh that is that's a completely fantastic point.
	I mean, it it really depends.
	I'm British, right?
	So for me, social confrontations, like I'd I'd rather rip my own toes off, you know.
	Um if you're comfortable with that, that's a very powerful argument to make.
	Because it, you know, then it really is like, would you be willing?
	I think all of us, if we saw someone being horrendously assaulted, would do a lot to stop that, right?
	And would sleep well that night, right?
	Whether it was if we employed some sort of violence, some old lady getting beaten up or whatever, we would deploy some level of coercion uh if we were comfortable and able to do that, and we wouldn't sit there racked with guilt about oh my god, I uh did something that was violent.
	We would recognize that as third-party self-defense based on universal ethics is valid.
	So I think that if we were in a violent situation, we'd be able to say, yes, I would.
	I wouldn't want to be in that situation, I'd rather it didn't happen, but if it did, this is what I would do.
	And I think that that's an excellent, excellent point.
	If you can do it, I mean I you may be a braver soul than me, and in which case more power to you.
	I have a tough time with that one.
	But uh it is that question, would you pull the trigger?
	Because really it does come down to that.
	If you support the use of violence, I support self-defense, therefore I would be willing to pull the trigger if I were ever unfortunate enough to be in such a position.
	So I would pull the trigger and I would regret the situation, but I would not lose sleep.
	And so that is.
	If you support the use of violence, would you be willing to pull the trigger?
	I think that is a very, very powerful argument.
	Uh now I don't have a speech for next year.
	Uh so now I gotta come up with something new.
	Thanks, man.
	Okay, who's uh sorry, I haven't been keeping track of of who's next, so you why don't you just hand me some people and we'll rub some brains.
	All right, uh you're in a crowd, obviously, with people who go through through these sorts of things all the time.
	So you're probably getting very good advocates for the devil here, but while we're at it, uh let's do land property, all right?
	Land property?
	Land property.
	Let's do it.
	All right.
	So uh I think the government should own all property and land.
	I think that all property and land uh needs to be uh owned by the government and preserved for the use of all people, or at least in some sort of fashion that uh results in equality uh across the land.
	Right.
	I don't agree.
	And I fully respect your uh belief uh in this uh socialization of dirt.
	Uh I'm I'm I'm down I'm down with that.
	You want to nationalize the soil, um, you know, that's fine.
	That's your prerogative to believe that I don't particularly agree with that at all.
	In fact, I would violently disagree with that, though without using any violence.
	Um, and and I respect your your right to have that opinion and to advocate that position, uh, would you I mean we assume that this is not a completely closed case, that this is a debatable issue.
	Sure.
	Right?
	And so if we assume that it's a debatable issue, I assume that I have the right to disagree with you and to act on that disagreement, that you would never advocate the use of violence against me for disagreeing with you.
	Absolutely.
	I do.
	Fantastic.
	Then we will leave it open to debate and let the free market of ideas forward.
	But then so if I then so you disagree with the notion that the government should operate land and ensure some form of equality, right?
	So then if you have uh sorry, if you're interested in equality, I don't see how a minority of people controlling all the land results in a equality of rights.
	Well, if you'd like to step me through that sometime, right?
	That's fine.
	If you have a piece of land then that you uh claim ownership over, would you advocate violence against me if my belief is that I can operate that piece of land as well?
	Yes, I mean I believe that you can't have a right without the right to exercise it.
	That's sort of a theoretical pointless thing.
	So if I have property rights and you invade my property uh and harm it, then yes, I believe I have the right.
	Now, of course, I understand where you're going with this, right?
	Which is that if your position is right, then you can initiate the use of force against me.
	Right?
	Because if if everyone owns the land by the government, and then I want my little corner here, right?
	And then the government can initiate the use of force against me because the government owns everything and I'm trespassing because I'm alive, right?
	Right.
	In which case, you would be advocating the use of force against me for living.
	But I mean, aren't we sort of equally advocating the use of force against one another?
	You're saying that you own land.
	And if my belief I so I could almost ask you, would you advocate the use of force against me for my belief that that piece of land belongs to everyone?
	Yes, I absolutely would.
	I absolutely would, and I would pull the trigger.
	debate Uh security.
	We have a uh we have a problem.
	Row four.
	I'd say the guy with the beard, but that doesn't narrow it down too much.
	That is an excellent, excellent point.
	And uh I knew this crowd was gonna be exciting.
	Um but there is a difference in my opinion, right?
	Which is that uh you are granting a select group of individuals a monopoly right over everything.
	Right?
	Whereas somebody who has uh homesteaded or uh otherwise gained control of a piece of property is an individual who has to do something in order to get that property, right?
	You know, just sort of say I want Wyoming.
	Well, no, you never say that anyway, but California, maybe, or someplace that you'd want to be, right?
	Sorry, anybody here from Wyoming?
	Who's armed?
	I want to know if anyone's here from Miami who's armed, because uh just boss and cheap park.
	Just quite a few.
	Okay.
	I knew what you know when I said I wanted that red room, I also wanted it bulletproof.
	That was important for me.
	But uh yeah, so I would say that that if you're going to give people a small monopoly uh over an entire country and the right to initiate force against everyone who's not them, right, then that is not a logically consistent position, right?
	And so I would pull out my universally preferable behavior argument and say, what is different about these people that they get the right to own everything and nobody else gets the right to own anything without their permission, so I would do that kind of backup.
	Because yes, you you I mean that's an excellent point.
	And the against me argument flips, right?
	And and which you just in a very evil way uh completely did to me there, right?
	Because it flips, right?
	Because if somebody's gonna say you also have to say, yeah, I would support the use of force against you if you invaded my home and you know wanted to do nasty things to my cat with a fork or something, then absolutely I would use that, right?
	Sorry.
	Second bad metaphor of the day.
	If I can keep it down to two, it's a massively successful speech.
	That's all I'm saying.
	Sorry, uh, but I want to and we we can talk more about you know, you should really call in.
	Let's do a show about this.
	Call call FDR because we should do this in more depth, because I can't do all of property rights and the initiation of force in this forum because it's really tough.
	But uh but no, call in would do this.
	I'd like to do more of that, because that's that's an excellent, excellent point.
	I support the roads.
	Wow, you must be tired.
	That's my second Monty Python reference, right?
	Now appearing as a central tunnel support in the new Victoria line, right?
	Okay, gravel.
	Um you support the roads, so tell tell me more about that.
	Well, I'm I'm willing to pay for them.
	How are you gonna how are you gonna get around if uh if if you don't own them and support them?
	Okay, so you believe that the roads should be run by the state.
	Well, yes, they are run by the state.
	Okay, but you believe they should be, not only if they are.
	I believe they should be.
	Okay.
	So you believe that the roads should be run by the state, and it is your preference to uh to act on that belief, right?
	Right.
	Obviously, because if you have a belief you can't act on it, it's sort of pointless, right?
	So if you believe that the state's uh the state should run the roads, I fully support that belief of yours.
	Uh I would never dream of using force to prevent you from acting upon your belief that the state should run the roads.
	Right.
	Would you extend to me the same courtesy if I have a different opinion?
	That I am allowed to disagree with you, act upon that disagreement without the threat of violence.
	Well, how are you gonna get out of your house?
	No, no, no.
	We're not talking, we're not talking the how, right?
	We're talking the virtue, right?
	We're not talking the practicality of, well, how would roads exist without, right?
	And I have a just by the by, I have an example in the book uh uh practical anarchy, right?
	Say, I'm sorry, I come right back to it, but just sort of struck me and I can't hold a straight thought to save my life.
	But um and I said, well, imagine if we said roads uh had to be enclosed, all of them.
	And they had to be air conditioned.
	And they had to be landscaped.
	And they had to have stores on either side, right?
	Roads, ways of getting around.
	We would say this can't happen, right?
	But we have malls, right?
	Which is ways of getting around that are enclosed and air conditioned, and right?
	But anyway, so I would say that uh uh if you're if you want to support the roads, if you feel that the state is the best, most productive way to support the roads, I would never dream of using force to prevent you from doing that.
	I would hope that since we're having a civilized discussion, that I am free to disagree with you without you advocating the use of force against me.
	And if I want to find an alternative way or support a different way of having road construction achieved, that you would respect my right to to work to achieve that without threatening me with violence.
	Oh, yeah, absolutely.
	But what about what about um in today's world where the government owns all roads, how are you gonna get out of your driveway?
	Yeah, right, like you uh passing notes back and forth.
	I'm done with him, you take over.
	He looks tired.
	Go for it.
	Well, but see, but but the people will always try to drag us down to the practical consequences of what we advocate.
	And this is nothing new, right?
	So I I would say something like this.
	Let's say that you and I were debating slavery in 1840 or something, right?
	And I said, you know, slavery is a moral abomination, it's evil, and blah, blah, blah, right?
	And and you said uh, well, but if we get rid of slavery, how will they get jobs?
	What will they do?
	You know, I got 500 slaves on my plantation, you tell me what jobs will they have after we get rid of slavery.
	Clearly, nobody knows.
	Right?
	And it's completely immaterial.
	Right?
	So how things happen when a gun isn't being used doesn't really matter.
	Right?
	If we had a system of forced marriage, and I said, you know, we really shouldn't, that's just institutionalized rape.
	We shouldn't really have a system of forced marriage.
	And people said, well, how would my sister get married then?
	I'm sorry she looks like a troll.
	But it doesn't mean that everyone should, you know, like it it doesn't matter.
	It doesn't it doesn't matter what happens when we stop using violence.
	The important thing is that we stop using violence to solve problems, right?
	There's an old joke, uh, you may have heard it before, it's done the rounds of free market thinkers, right?
	Where there are two two Russian women in a lineup uh to, you know, and one of these endless Stalin lineups to buy bread, right?
	And one woman turns to the other and says, Oh, I spend half my life lining up to buy bread.
	And the other woman turns and says, Yeah, but you know what?
	In the capitalist countries, the government doesn't even distribute the bread.
	So it doesn't, but that's the answer, right?
	Well, how would we get bread if Stalin doesn't give it to us?
	Yeah, I I yeah, I totally buy your argument.
	I mean, but I guess the only reason I'm bringing this up is because it's people have argued that to me.
	Well, you know, roads exist, how you know it does.
	Yeah, don't I mean I sorry to be annoying, but but it's always don't go into the practical consequences.
	Now I say this having written a book with some practical consequences, but in debates, you have to get the ethical agreement.
	Without that, it just becomes an argument about the what rather than the why.
	Right?
	Nietzsche said, give a man why he can bear almost any how.
	If we have the moral certainty of pacifism and virtue as the solution to social problems, that is a passionate and powerful message that works.
	How we build roads in the absence of a state will put most people to sleep and tends to be a red herring, which just gets you bogged down in, well, you know, there were tolls in 1830 and the roads worked, and then the government took them over, and that's you know, it's an interesting fable, and it's true, but it doesn't really move people in the way that virtue and and ethics does.
	Of course, if you wanted to be really rude to the person, you say, well, if you're not creative enough to figure out how millions of people with money could get roads, then I'm not gonna explain it to you.
	When I said go on the offensive, this is an example of what I didn't mean.
	Just kidding.
	Uh-huh.
	I'm running out of vowels.
	No, consonants.
	Yeah, yes, I I knew, you know, you can't make a mistake in a libertarian audience of somebody, oh no, no, consonants.
	You're wrong.
	What is it?
	There's another joke that I just love.
	I think it was a cartoon, and and a guy's uh on his computer, and we've all been there, right?
	A guy's on his computer, and he's, you know, looks more tired than me with a new baby, right?
	And and his wife comes in and says, Honey, my god, it's three o'clock in the morning, come to bed.
	And he's like, I can't.
	Somebody's still wrong on the internet.
	Got the pipe.
	I must fix it.
	Oh yeah, we've all been there, right?
	Don't bother, he's a troll.
	Um so, yes, I am pointing a gun at you during this debate.
	Right, wait, sorry, I'm in New Hampshire, so we're still talking theoretically, right?
	Okay.
	Okay.
	It's kind of a metaphysical thing, isn't it?
	Um, you know.
	And I've won the debate because I'm going to point the gun at anybody who comes to me.
	Right.
	And so what are you going to do about it now?
	Because I don't care about you and your friends who decide not to point guns.
	I point guns.
	Well, no, I mean that that that happens, right?
	I mean, you get people who have this insane consistency, right?
	Who aren't libertarians.
	They have this insane consistency where you you put them to that point where there's a gun at your head and they're like, pfft, rather than admit there might be something wrong with my argument, right?
	I'm just gonna hang in there and you know, go all the way to the shotgun place, right?
	In which case, I think that, you know, one of the most powerful tools in the human canon, so to speak, is moral condemnation, right?
	And I would absolutely let rip with what you're talking about is completely evil.
	What you're advocating is the root of the greatest human evils in the world, right?
	Be they institutionalized violence, wars, prisons, abuses of every kind.
	Your willingness to use violence to get your way is complete stone evil.
	And I'm not gonna participate in that kind of debate because it's not a debate.
	You pull out a gun, you've lost.
	That would be, and you know, we can be ferocious with our moral condemnation, right?
	And that again, that's explosive, right?
	That that's really tough for people to hear, right?
	And and you know, I I'd prefer to do it by phone, because I'm all kinds of courageous.
	Oh, yeah?
	You're mean.
	Because I'm all about the courage, that's why I podcast, right?
	Sorry, sorry.
	Because I know that's not a perfect answer, but to me that would be the most powerful thing to do in that.
	It really comes to issue is uh, well, I hate to go with the extreme examiner putting people on caps.
	You know, it's like he believes in the gun.
	He believes in the gun.
	But I you my argument would be that if enough people had pointed out the gun, then it never comes to be, right?
	If enough people had pointed out that Hitler was more than willing, which they knew from 1923, the beer hall putsch that he was willing to kill for his beliefs and had written all about it in Mein Kampf.
	If people had been fully focused on the gun in the room, the gun in the room never comes to be, right?
	You can't fight evil because the moment people see evil as evil, it vanishes, right?
	It's like a bunch of roaches, right?
	You flip the light on, you know, they all spread, right?
	It's like grew up in government housing time.
	Sorry, does that so you just keep pointing out the moral condemnation and people, you know, you may not you won't change the lunatic who's willing to use guns, but you will change, I think, or at least give something to think about the people who are around in that situation, whether it's a message board or some sort of public place or some debate you're having at a dinner table, it will at least at least you will be in the moral morally superior position of preferring pacifism in the person wants the gun.
	So hopefully we come to ignore that free law.
	Well, I I wouldn't have someone like that in my orbit.
	I mean, you know, we we can't say we want to get rid of the state, but I'm real happy with this gun tot and nut job in my life, right?
	But sorry, go ahead.
	All right, so some things in society are just so horrible.
	And um, you know, issue uh put any issue here.
	And the issue is uh I like that.
	It's very discriminatory.
	Anything.
	Anything.
	And um Pokemon.
	Um segregation.
	Segregation is just it was so terrible, and um there was no way to end it, and uh the government was able to end it, and they did end it, and nothing else was working.
	And um, you know, I know you're big on property rights and stuff, but um I mean it's okay, like we violated some property rights and that.
	Um, but I mean this was something that was so evil, and now all these people in society are more free because they can eat where they want, they can get a job where they want, they can go to school where they want.
	And um I'm just trying to be the reasonable one here, and you're saying that you're willing to live in a society where people can't do what they want, they can't go where they want, they can't they've gotta check a sign on the door and um see if they're allowed to enter because of their skin color?
	Right, right, no?
	And that's that's an excellent point.
	And there is, of course, that question that to write historical bigotries or injustice in societies, are we justified in appointing people to violate particular rights from people we would generally disagree with, like horrendous racists or whatever.
	Well, uh I sorry?
	Point of order.
	Go on.
	If you look at the history of it, you will find that the segregation was imposed by government.
	Right.
	That's what I was gonna say, yeah.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, the uh the first thing, I mean, if if somebody was discriminating, they would force to the right.
	Yeah.
	I I mean I think the important thing is that uh you would I would start with your excellent point, the facts of the matter, right?
	So in Montgomery, uh in the 50s, the bus companies did not want the blacks to sit at the back of the bus.
	They did not.
	In fact, they fought to not have that be the law.
	Why?
	Because poor people take the bus.
	I was a student until I was way too old to talk about, right?
	So poorer people take the bus, and blacks at that time were poorer than whites, and so blacks were the primary customers of the bus companies who did not want to offend and waste half the bus for like three white people and like 20 black people in the back, right?
	So the the bus companies did not want segregation.
	The uh the companies, the restaurants that that catered to the blacks in the South did not want segregation, because it defended their core customers and the whites didn't go to Harlem anyway, right?
	So uh what I would first of all I would attack the premise that we need to violate property rights in order to end segregation, because I would Say that the historical evidence is overwhelming that segregation resulted from a prior violation of property rights.
	And what the government needs to stop doing is to violate property rights, let the free market decide, in which case segregation would end.
	It's like slavery.
	Brazil got rid of slavery.
	How?
	Government stopped catching slaves.
	That's all they did.
	They didn't have any laws, they didn't have any civil war.
	They just stopped catching slaves.
	Because if you've got to catch your own slaves, it doesn't work so well.
	If you've ever had cats, uh no, but if you have to if you can, that's why it's free evil, right?
	Because you can offload the costs of segregation.
	If you're a bigot, you can offload the costs of segregation, which is considerable, to the state.
	So it's a violation of property rights in taxation, it's a violation of property rights in use of your own property that results in segregation.
	And I think we could make a very strong argument, and that's a big topic for another day, that the use of the political process to address prior imbalances, whether it's by uh the the Japanese or by the Irish or by the blacks.
	Uh no workie, right?
	So that would be my sorry, go ahead.
	That's usually the route I go.
	And um, as a follow-up, I say um socially um stores, country upscore great length to um sort of advert advertise and indicate what their clientele is.
	Like uh clothing stores that are you know popular and young.
	Uh crank up the music and you know, to play with the lighting to make it clear to people as they're coming out of that their their intended age that they're trying to market to that you know this is this is not the intended use anymore.
	And uh I'm not saying I suggest that for race issues.
	I'm just saying people already do that freely.
	They say, hey, this is what our product's for, this is who we advertise to, and and because you want that, because that's where we advertise to, we try and discourage other people from doing that.
	Right.
	No, it's just like discos look really bad on bold heads, like the lights.
	So they're really so discriminatory.
	Um is the mic guy here.
	Right here.
	Uh I'm I'm just standing up because I want a free copy of your book, actually.
	Um I'm a fan of of uh the videos you've done.
	I really appreciate how you are able to deconstruct a lot of statist arguments, and so if I if I have to play devil's advocate to raise this issue, please bear with me because this is gonna be a bit of a challenge given my perspective.
	But here it goes.
	Go.
	I I believe in the necessity of collective self-defense and the the current military as it is in the in in the United States, and therefore we need uh a military capable of an aggressive posture to serve as a deterrent as well as nuclear weapons.
	Right.
	Okay, I would give uh a one-to-and again I know you're military, so I'm gonna do it from up here.
	Um just so you don't get to see me crying like that.
	I'm one of the few people not armed in the room at the moment.
	I'm sorry.
	No, I I think you're just lethal in general, right?
	So like you're uh uh you're registered.
	Well, I mean, the first the first thing that there's a logical problem, right?
	And we all I think understand the logical problem of collective self-defense, right?
	Because they say, well, we need uh an army and we need the police and we need the judiciary and so on, because you see, people should have their property and their personhood protected.
	And how do we fund that by violating people's persons and property?
	Right?
	That is just one of those complete short circuit, you know, like reboot, can't figure it out stuff.
	So I would start with that.
	Like if you want to protect property, how do you do that by giving people the right to universally violate property at will?
	I mean, it just doesn't work, right?
	It's like you know, you don't cure a headache with a guillotine.
	And the second thing that I would say is that unless you work for the government, unless you work for the government.
	Right.
	Uh and and the second thing that I would say is that uh you believe in these things.
	You believe that your property should be protected by ceding rights to your property to other people, which we all do with contracts, right?
	When we work for someone, we cede our time to them and our productivity to them.
	And so if you want to sign up with some agency and say, you people can take whatever you want from me whenever you want, whenever you think that you want to, uh, whenever you find it necessary, because it's so important to protect my property, so I'm gonna cede you the right to steal whatever you want from me.
	If you want to sign that contract, I think that's great.
	Myself, I would rather invest in an alarm system, uh, a moat with alligators and flaming shocks and stuff.
	I would rather uh get uh I would rather have you know stupid things that should have been done years and years ago, right?
	Like your your television should be voice activated.
	So if somebody steals your TV, they can't use it.
	I mean, how tough is that?
	I mean, it's ridiculous.
	But of course, because the cops are involved, there's no incentive for them to do this kind of preventative stuff, right?
	Um your bicycle should run off your B.O., right?
	I mean, whatever, right?
	I mean, it would certainly work with me, let me tell you.
	But no, whatever it is, right?
	Like you're you're you're we have fun prints for computers that if you steal them and you you you know don't steal the thumb too, right?
	Then then okay, maybe that's not the retina or the eyeball or whatever, right?
	But there's ways of protecting property that don't involve just giving a bunch of people the right to take your property at will.
	If you want to do that, you know, more power to you, I would never prevent you from doing that through force.
	If you want to sign a contract with some group to whatever, I assume that you would allow me the respect of pursuing all the ways of protecting my property than having your will imposed upon me.
	Well, part of my concern is that the way that people go about justifying this argument leads to the kind of disastrous consequences that we have in our foreign policy today that put the rest of us voluntarily not engaging in that at greater risk.
	We still have people in this country who don't pay taxes, don't join the military, and yet are suffer the consequences of people in in a sense or would be suffering it even if we had a voluntary system based on the mentality of most Americans who support the corrupt system that we live under.
	And you know that that's an interesting point, just to prevent because it looks like some really smart people have answers, so I'll just keep talking.
	Um questions.
	But you know, it's interesting because in the past, and I would say before 2000, 2001, and certainly since the Iraq war, in the past, people used to say, well, but we'd all get the benefit of the shield without paying for it.
	Right?
	We all get the benefit of the shield of the nuclear shield of the military shield, and then the people who wouldn't pay for it, and that's you know really bad.
	But what you're saying is I think what more people are beginning to to understand, right, which is that we now have the negative of what's called the shield, right?
	It's not that we're getting some benefit without paying for it, it's that we're being blamed for stuff we don't even support.
	And that is a very different perspective than used to be around in the past.
	And I think that's only too to help us.
	So you are the wind.
	I thought I was gonna be dodging.
	All right, so I have a quick comment.
	Sorry.
	I have a quick comment before a question um to the uh guy who supports the roads.
	Um Mr. Atlas, Michelin man, right.
	Um when people bring that stuff up with me, when I'm saying that I don't think that governments should run the roads or anything else, um they'll say, okay, well, in your world, how would it work?
	And uh before it or instead of getting into any of that at all, what I say is I would be a hypocrite if I were to start saying how I think this stuff should or could be run, because the whole idea behind what I think is that there's no one man who can actually run the world.
	And it's yeah, yeah, no, that's an excellent point.
	It's much more effective.
	And and so it's it's hypocritical to even get into that.
	And that's uh that's a point that can be made and it's pretty well accepted.
	Yeah, just so for people to understand, because uh the we talked about this the other night.
	If if one person could figure out how everything would work in a free society, it would actually be a great argument for a dictatorship.
	Because one person, like it's the same thing with economic planning.
	If one person could figure out what everybody wanted from every conceivable good now and in the future, that person should run the economy, right?
	But it's completely impossible for any one person to come up with even a tenth of a percentage point of the all the solutions that millions of creative and intelligent involved and engaged people acting in their own self-interest could come up with.
	So it's sort of like if everybody asks you to solve all the problems of a free society, say, if I could, I should run everything, but I can't, and that's why we can't have a government.
	I can't, and neither can anybody in the government.
	But we just know that violence is still not the way to go.
	But sorry, go ahead.
	All right, and this is something that that struck me in the first example that you used with regard to the Iraq war.
	Um and and I and he touched on it pretty well, but um but it was basically that you're saying the the against me argument is you are within my world perfectly free to uh send money to goons who want to go over and kill brown people.
	Right.
	Um and I would never even dream of initiating force against you to and and and would you extend me the same courtesy.
	Right.
	Um however, I sort of doubt that you or anyone else in this room thinks that it's morally all right for people to be going over and shooting brown people with guns.
	And that we would actually be within our rights under the moral structure that we adhere to to defend those people or help them in their defense.
	Yeah, no, and this is it seems sort of disingenuous.
	Yeah, this is this is where I get really sleazy.
	So um this is important.
	This is a transition point.
	There is a th you're absolutely right.
	There is a reality that of course, if somebody says I support the surge, as I said at the beginning, you should send your money to Donald Rumsfeld, and and I would never dream of but of course if you're paying someone to put out a hit on an Iraqis, that's not a moral thing, and we understand that you're participating in a corrupt in the you're a corrupt participant In the evil of the initiation of force.
	Of course, the reality is, and we all know this based on basic economics, that if people did have to send checks for the surge, there would be no surge.
	We all understand that it's easy to play fast, loose, and tuft with other people's money in guns, right?
	But if if uh it's like uh I get this example in practical anarchy about the drug war, which I think is correct me if I'm wrong, and not that I have to tell you to do that because you're a libertarians, but um it's about 20 billion dollars a year being spent on the drug war, is that right?
	Is it more?
	What do we got?
	40?
	No, I hear a 40, 50, 50, 50, only 50 in a yeah.
	72 billion.
	It doesn't include collateral costs, it's merely taxpayer costs going to the various.
	Okay, we're gonna say 100, because my math sucks.
	Um let's say it's a hundred billion dollars.
	Yeah, we don't know what's going on over there, right?
	Yeah.
	But of course, yeah, we all understand that if it's a hundred billion dollars, right?
	Let's say half the Americans don't care that much about the drug war, right?
	And so if you all have to send uh write a check for your support of the drug war, immediately half the people are dropping out.
	Right?
	So a hundred billion dollars is going to the other half of the people, right?
	That's their bill, right?
	Now, how many of those are going to drop out when they see the bill for whatever be $50,000 per household or something like some horrendous sum, right?
	They say, well my God, $50,000, suddenly I don't care about pot that much, right?
	So more and more people drop out until the last guy gets stuck with an absolutely monstrous bill and somehow finds it within his heart to be tolerant, right?
	So we know uh it is a bit of a sleazy tricky argument, which I don't think is bad.
	It's not like status are always up front, right?
	But um when when we talk about, you know, fund it yourself, we know that it's not going to happen if people fund it themselves.
	What will happen is we will get roads, we will have uh um what I call dispute resolution organizations, we will have productive and positive ways of resolving disputes.
	We won't have empire, because empire is catastrophic for the economy as a whole.
	It of course, as we know it only profits a small class.
	So it's a bit of a sleazy argument to say I fully support your right to pay for something that would never exist unless you could force me to pay for it too.
	So it's uh it's a bit of a bait and switch, but it so it works logically and morally, but it's not quite as upfront as it could be.
	Uh I've got a question here.
	Uh well, if you could just address the the both parts because I would like to have uh well, let me just go ahead and say uh I think that guns are just dangerous, and they they need to be taken off the streets, you know, they're killing children.
	And uh this person says he wants to advocate the use of force to have those guns taken off the streets, and this person says that force should not be used, take them off the streets.
	How do you address both of those angles?
	So the argument is guns are dangerous.
	Guns uh magically pop off the shelf and kill children because that's just what they do.
	They're possessed or something.
	Uh and some someone is saying we should use force guns to oppose guns.
	We should use cancer to kill cancer, okay.
	We should use guns to to get rid of guns, and another person is saying we shouldn't use guns to get rid of guns.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Uh well, um I would say that uh obviously the we have to start with basic reality, right?
	Guns don't kill people, right?
	People kill people, and so on, right?
	So the problem is not guns, the problem is people shooting guns.
	And it's a similar argument that uh friend Hagrid had at the back there, right?
	Which is the collective guilt thing there, right?
	Where he said that uh the elves and the no, wait, what was it?
	Just kidding.
	But but uh so obviously the people who uh who use guns illegitimately or in an evil or or corrupt manner should be should have sanctions against them and the people who don't, right?
	But it's not the guns that are the problem, it's the people who use them to commit crimes and so on.
	It's the magic bullets.
	That's right.
	Right.
	But uh so I would say we we wouldn't want to classify uh moral sanctions against people uh who are responsibly using guns for self-protection or sports or hunting or whatever, right?
	So that would be bad distinction, no collective guilt, right?
	So uh the other thing that I would say is that if you want to live in a uh uh a community that has uh no guns, then you should be perfectly free to live in a community that has no guns.
	And what that means is some developer will buy up a whole bunch of land and will sell you your house on the condition that you promise not to put guns in there.
	This happens, right?
	I mean, they when I bought my my wife and I bought our house, uh they said uh you can't uh put your FDR logo on the garage.
	Shocking.
	So I put it on the roof.
	Um it's the mere space station guys, we get them, we get everyone.
	But uh so you you use you would uh have a conditional sale of the property that says you can buy a house in this neighborhood, but you just can't have guns in it, right?
	And that's you know, if if people want to do that, uh nobody would, right?
	Because we all want to have we everybody kind of wants the umbrella protection of guns around, but a lot of people don't want guns in their actual house, right?
	This is an argument from Harry Brown, right?
	He says, if you if you don't have a gun in your house, but the criminals don't know who has guns, you get that umbilical protection because they don't know, right?
	But if you wanted to live in a gun-free neighborhood, you would make that choice to to live in a place or convince all your neighbors to get rid of their guns or have them sign a contract, then you would be perfectly free to do that.
	And I would never dream of using violence against you if you wanted to live in a gun-free neighborhood.
	But uh, if you wanted to use guns against people who were peacefully possessing guns, that is the initiation of force.
	And I would I would hope that you would extend extend the same respect to other people who want to have that uh tool in their life as I would extend to you who don't.
	Would that be?
	Yeah, it's almost as a bad idea.
	Uh average times to gun through house Iraq.
	Oh, no, so basically, well, so basically, if if I don't want to have guns, I should move someplace where guns are gun free zone.
	If you don't want to have guns, nobody should force you to buy guns, right?
	I mean, that's the basic thing, right?
	And then second, if you want to live in a neighborhood without guns, then go to it, right?
	Then then if there's enough market demand, then developers who always want to sell houses will sell you know magical gun-free houses, right?
	Maybe with land mines, I don't know, right?
	But but they'd magical gun-free neighborhoods, and then you would go and move there, and then you should you should be perfectly free to do that.
	And uh but you can't force other people who merely have chainsaws, guns, power tools of every kind, nail guns, anything you could use to kill people, that's you know, you can't cast that wider net and shut down Home Depot, right?
	Thank you.
	Okay.
	Responsible using chairs.
	You're responsible use of chairs, that's right.
	I mean, hell, uh my podcast could be a problem.
	They suck the oxygen out of a room.
	Anyway.
	I just have a question about um see if I can get my thoughts together.
	Uh people uh tend to be pragmatists.
	Um you know, the the argument that you're using on morality, someone that's open to reason, they're gonna make that aha connection.
	But someone that stands to benefit from that uh that force, um they're not gonna they're not gonna quite it's gonna be like two magnets or the same thing.
	Yeah, the opposing holes, right?
	Yeah.
	So how do you show them how they can personally benefit from what this this moral approach to to eliminate that resistance, but do it in a way that you don't have to look up all those thousands of facts and figures and trying to cry.
	How do you present this to a bureaucrat?
	Well, you know, that's an excellent question.
	I mean, the the against me argument is is again pretty volatile.
	It's either gonna make you a great friend or a great enemy.
	There's not gonna be a lot in the middle, right?
	But I think that's okay, right?
	Time is short and we want to do as much as possible.
	Uh I I don't know, but do we have I uh you're not even gonna raise your hand.
	Do we have any bureaucrats in the room?
	Anyone who works for No?
	Okay, well, we might.
	We don't know, right?
	They're incognito.
	But the the fascinating thing.
	Yeah, I I don't know if you guys talk to a lot of bureaucrats.
	Uh I do get some who who call into the show and and I'll talk with them.
	And it it it it is amazing.
	Um I'm not gonna say I have my finger on a huge pulse, but I definitely do get a lot of people who interact with me uh through three email, YouTube and all that kind of stuff.
	They hate the government.
	Bureaucrats, teachers.
	Oh my god, get a teacher started on how much fun it is to be a teacher these days.
	And this is very different from when I started.
	Uh way back in the Mesozoic era, right?
	But but this is very different.
	When I first started, uh bureaucrats loved working for the government.
	Ah, you know, you don't have to work that hard, it's you know, you get great benefits, you know, you get six weeks off in the summer, and so I was slaving away as a waiter.
	But but it's really changed.
	Uh, you know, uh statism is is fantastic in the beginning.
	It's like heroin, you know, because it's like it's it's just you know, you you you get you get all of these people trained in the private sector.
	Like when you first socialized medicine in Canada, you had all these people who'd grown up in the free market.
	All these doctors who subtly got socialized with all of their amazing free market habits.
	Right?
	They already were hard workers.
	They really cared about their patients.
	They really fought to get the best possible care despite the bureaucracy.
	Right?
	So you get socialized medicine with all these free market trained doctors, it's fantastic.
	It's like why NASA did something for the first ten years, and then nothing of any use afterwards.
	But then what happens is you get a whole new generation of people coming in, the next generation, who had nothing to do with the free market.
	And they suck.
	Right?
	Technically, they suck.
	The doctors, like the older, you you want to go and can't.
	You'd find an old doctor, like some guy who's 900 years old and he like remembers what it was like to be care about patients.
	You get some younger doctor, they uh uh get you in and out, here's some pills, right?
	So it's the same thing is true with bureaucracy, right?
	Bureaucracy gets worse and worse, exponentially worse and worse as time moves forward.
	And I've actually found it quite easy to discuss how government sucks with people who work in the government, and I found it actually quite easy.
	I mean, the toughest are the abstract intellectuals, because they just live in complete fantasy land, right?
	They're just riding unicorns into the sunset into the happy land of violence equals virtue.
	Right.
	I'd like them to write unicorns, but not that way.
	Um third worst metaphor of the day, I think we I think we got three.
	The sad thing is that actually would be a violation of the unicorn.
	So uh so I find that uh dealing with them with teachers, right?
	I mean, wouldn't wouldn't teachers love to have an environment where they weren't they didn't have 12,000 bureaucrats and and an indifferent and hostile union and uh uh alienated single parent uh kids uh uh who didn't care, right?
	They they hate public schools, at least the teachers that I've talked to, they hate the system.
	Now, that doesn't mean that they'll immediately go, yay, you know, let's go to the free market, but you are definitely starting with some real traction that people within the government, especially those who are not, you know, those are the top, you know, they're just a bunch of jackals and predators, but the people who are the peons in the government, they really don't like the environment that they're in, at least the ones that I've talked to.
	And if you talk to them about, you know, the the reason you got into teaching or the reason you got into whatever it is you're doing in the government was to actually teach kids or to whatever, right?
	And helping them to understand how the free market could give them back the idealism and the achievements that got them into that field in the first place can be a really powerful incentive for them.
	Of course, you know, some 55-year-old teacher of two years from retirement who's just hanging around.
	Of course, they know they're gonna lose out in a free market system, but you know, you you play you lose, right?
	So does that does that help?
	I mean, I just I would take that approach rather than do the gun thing, which is so volatile.
	Uh I would try and help them to understand how a free market system could get them back in love with their career rather than just fighting all of this sludge that's in the government at the moment.
	we got her right here I really think there should be a social services backed by the police force for all these bad parents out there.
	For instance, as a family up the street from me, that homeschools has bred like bunnies and has turned their household into a John Waters style porno child ring involving their children.
	Of course, I have no money to pay for this, but my ideals are so lofty that all the other people with money should, of course, pay for this.
	Thank you.
	And sadly, that's all we have time for today.
	Thank you for coming.
	Thank you for coming out.
	Off I go with my unicorn.
	Um, so I'm just trying to you you had like a multidimensional interstellar problem there, and I just want to make sure that I so John Waters was doing kitty porn in some house up the street.
	I I think I got some of that.
	So basically you're talking about really really bad or abusive parenting that's going on in your neighborhood.
	Is that right?
	And and and we should uh um uh we should uh have social agencies that can use force to uh repair these parenting problems, is that right?
	For the children.
	For the children, for the children.
	Well, um I mean it's one of the reasons why I certainly do appreciate the invitation here.
	I know I'm I'm a little controversial, and it's not actually that easy to be controversial in the libertarian community, so I I consider it quite an achievement.
	Um the non-aggression principle applies to to children, and and in many ways, in my view, it applies the most to children than to anybody else, right?
	You can leave a country you don't agree with, you can't leave a family if you're a kid, right?
	You can't sort of uh hitchhike off.
	So if uh if if parents are abusing their children, I personally have no problem with people going in with force to to extract the children, right?
	We we would extract hostages from terrorists, right?
	And if parents are that nasty and abusive to their children, and I'm not talking, you know, like they yell at them or anything, right?
	Oh, that's not great, but if they really are just doing nasty, nasty things to their kids, yeah, I'm uh no, I'm I'm signing up, I'm with you, right?
	So I wouldn't have a problem with that.
	I don't think that uh uh being a parent gives you the right to initiate force uh against your children.
	And again, I'm not talking uh, you know, of correction or whatever, right?
	But I'm you know, when they're really bad.
	So I would I would be down for that.
	Now, was that what you were talking about, or was it something that was difficult?
	Well, it was I would not be able to do that.
	Take away the mic.
	Sorry.
	Oh, someone has to pay for it.
	Right.
	Sure, sure.
	Uh well, I uh I don't want to fob you off on an essay, but but uh no, I I I do have an essay, and it's in the practical anarchy book.
	I do have an essay, uh, which is how a stateless society protects children, which is it actually protects children rather than what happens now, right?
	What happens now is they go and embody tag the kids, right?
	I mean, we all know these tragic stories where the parents are just complete nut jobs uh and the children get uh really harmed or even killed.
	And you know, you it's the dismal trail of child protection services for the past 12 years, right?
	Uh and and nothing gets done, the children don't don't get protected.
	And there's lots of ways in which a state the society can uh really can protect children.
	And uh this has to do with the fact that in a free society, the what I call dispute resolution organizations, which is just my theory, it's not an answer, it's just a framework that could work, right?
	W uh uh crime uh arises uh to a large degree from child abuse, right?
	There's very, very few people who are raised in a happy, loving, secure environment, who end up, you know, criminals, right?
	And and if they are, it's probably because they've got some uh ill schizophrenia or some brain disorder.
	So uh crime is very expensive uh for a society.
	Uh at the moment, the state uh uh doesn't have any incentive to really reduce crime, right?
	Because crime is it it serves two benefits for the state.
	The first is that it scares the crap out of everyone, and so they run to the state, right?
	Look, jackals.
	Okay, I'm with you.
	Uh and the second is that uh uh it allows uh the governments to uh expand crime fighting, whatever the security uh agencies that they have, police and so on.
	Whereas in a free society, crime is really horrible and very expensive to dispute resolution organizations to those who do protect your property and personhood.
	So my you know, the what I would do is is if I ran one of these things and somebody wanted to sign up with me, I'd say, great, you know, uh, you know, uh I'm happy to have you sign up.
	You have kids, great, I'd be happy to to extend the protection to your children, the insurance against theft and violence to your children, but you've got to take a parenting class or two.
	And uh, you know, we we really have to make sure that your kids are growing up well.
	Because if your kids grow up badly and then they end up attacking all these other people, that costs me uh a whole lot.
	So I'm gonna be proactive and intervene and try, you know, and without being invasive or intrusive, because people wouldn't want that as part of that contract.
	But the agencies which protect life and property would have a much greater incentive to proactively work to prevent child abuse because of the huge cost to society down the road.
	Uh and and that's just not the case in the current system.
	We have these agencies which, as we saw from this great presentation on the FDA, do the exact opposite of what?
	Or the government's supposed to protect the rights of the children and the health of the children.
	And you've got the welfare state, which contributes to lower IQs in children.
	You know, I mean, if there was somebody was feeding a drug to kids that lowered IQ by 10%, we would have those people thrown in jail.
	But a social agency which does the same thing gains massive support from people who don't know what it's really like.
	Of course, public schools are incredibly damaging towards the intellectual and emotional and moral development of children.
	Um I could go on and on, right?
	But we have, and then the agency, the the problems which result from these, the agencies don't even protect the children anyway.
	So we have both the reality of destruction uh of children and the illusion of the protection of children, it's the worst possible world.
	So in a free society, children would be, you know, as Whitney Houston sings about and I won't, uh, you know, the greatest treasure, the the future of the the wondrous of the world is what they are, but unfortunately the way that we deal with the protection of children is the exact opposite of what should happen because, as we all know, violence always achieves the opposite of what you want.
	Uh so I know that that's a long-winded answer, and you can have a look at the essay, and uh if you disagree with anything in the essay, you just let me know.
	Whatever.
	My point was that we do have to start explaining people about steamers for us to prepare.
	Yes, but I think that if you were playing devil's advocate position, like should we use force to protect Children, I was in agreement with you, so I don't think that would be a huge debate.
	Now, if if they then said, and therefore we need a government, then that would be another uh approach.
	And then I I sorry, and I know I skipped around your point, but you hit one of my trigger points of which there are only about 12,000.
	Um but uh what I would say is I don't agree with the existing way that governments educate and protect children.
	I want to explore alternatives which are much more productive.
	And uh would you agree that I have the right to do that without you suggesting that I be thrown in jail?
	And if they would say, no, you have to go with child protection services, or I support you being thrown in jail, then you know, canon of moral condemnation comes out, I back away from the debate and hopefully leave them looking not too good.
	If they agree, then we're you know friends and and uh to help the children and all this happy and and good.
	I understand if I stand up I get a book.
	I I I was understanding is a complex term.
	I was debating education on health care, but Steph, as a Canadian, you know that health care is too important to be left to the marketplace.
	And we need socialized medicine.
	The government needs to take care of all of us because it's just way too important.
	Sure, sure.
	No, I understand that.
	Um, I mean that that there's two very brief arguments that I would have against that.
	It's like, first of all, we need food more than we need medicine, right?
	Can we we agree on that?
	Like we can live without medicine briefly, he if we're not really sick, but we can't live without food for more than a day or two, right?
	So food is more necessary than um than uh health care.
	Uh water is more uh necessary, uh shelter, particularly in Canada, particularly this time of year, though here as well, is more necessary than healthcare, right?
	So if you're gonna look at the list of things that are necessary for human beings that the government should provide healthcare, be like number 10 on your list.
	So let's get the government to run all the housing, all of the food production and distribution, let's get them to run uh uh everything uh gas, uh oil, uh uh uh we'll get them to re tire everyone's cars in the winter.
	Let's get them to do all of that, and then let's get to health care.
	Now, if somebody actually wants to say that the government should run all the farms and has never heard of Chairman Mao and has never heard of of uh the the famine that killed 10 million in the collectivized farms in Russia in the 1930s, then they're too uneducated to have a debate with and you should not bother.
	But but but that's absurd.
	I mean, we're already getting food at the grocery store, we're already getting water, uh we're just you know getting really crappy healthcare, it's really expensive, and I want it to be cheaper.
	I want it to be free.
	Yeah, no, absolutely.
	Uh absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	Well, what what I would I would ask that person is I would say, uh, what do you do for a living?
	And give me some some response.
	Uh I'm a doctor.
	Oh, great.
	Look down at your hands.
	No, I mean, so let's say the guy was a lawyer, right?
	And he said, I think we should have free health care, I would say, well, tell me what legal services you provide for free.
	Right.
	If if everything that doctors provide should be free, then you should lead the way in the free provision of services by not charging anything for what you do.
	Right?
	And then once you've done that and you've got everyone else to do that, then that's you leave by example, not by argument, right?
	That's my general approach, right?
	So I would say, and if the person says, Well, I I can't work for free, it's like, well, then don't talk to me about free health care, because there's no such thing, right?
	But um uh of course, uh uh uh uh if you say the health care is too important to be left to the market, and I say, well, let's put food into the government control.
	You say, well, we already have this great supply of food, and this like, but that's the free market, right?
	So how can you say that health care uh is too important to be left to the free market, but food, which is even more important, must absolutely be left to the free market.
	Like again, that wouldn't make sense.
	But again, the against me argument I'm sure you could go into is like I disagree with you that violence should be used in the provision of health care.
	Am I allowed to disagree with you without being thrown in jail, blah blah blah.
	But there's lots of different approaches to that, but uh yeah, because it's a tough question, and I think you guys are gonna have to pass through the valley of the shadow of socialized medicine in order to come out from the other side, because that does seem to be what's where it's going.
	But uh so you know, stay healthy.
	Government pays it.
	The government pays it, right, right.
	Right, it's free.
	So I just discovered I'm a violent lunatic.
	Um so uh are we devos advocating, or are we just talking now?
	Well, I don't understand.
	From from what you're saying, anyway, so I guess you can be pulling a shiv out on me, but um I I I'm pleased to hear that you support property rights and that you support covenants and restrictions and so forth on the deeds of the property, because uh I'll tell you what I believe.
	What I believe is that people should have the right to mutually agree to that kind of uh a property owners' association or government.
	And then, And then I and then I can choose, and then I can choose to remain within the boundaries of a government, yeah, uh if I if I so wish.
	Right.
	Well, uh I love the way you snuck in that little completely opposite term there, you know, I believe in consensual love making and rape.
	And right.
	Well, uh because a contract is between individuals, right?
	We can understand that, right?
	Uh a government is not a contract between individuals.
	It can be.
	Well, if it can be, then it's not a government, right?
	I I would assert that if you enter into a uh a covenant as part of a property owners association, then you are no more or less uh forced into that move than you are uh when you decide I'm gonna go and subscribe for that constitution, that form of government.
	Yes, okay.
	That and that this is a great argument.
	Uh anyone heard this one before, you know, like it's uh you're born into it, you can leave if you want, if you stay.
	It's it's actually if you I've got a uh series on YouTube called The Trial and Death of Socrates, where I act out the whole thing.
	No.
	And uh here I'm Athenians.
	But uh it is an argument as old as Socrates.
	Uh Socrates makes the exact same argument, and it is it is a very effective argument despite being completely not true.
	Uh and I won't I won't go into a huge amount of detail.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Sorry, it's not true.
	Next.
	Uh right, but okay, there's uh a contract is voluntarily signed by individuals.
	Uh they have to be of legal age, right?
	A four-year-old can't sign a contract.
	We've tried with my daughter.
	Uh no pooping on daddy's arm.
	They can sign a contract, but well, but legally, we would generally understand that that you have to have some sort of age of adulthood uh and you can't apply by the government.
	Well, I think even in a free society, there'd be very few can agencies that would approve of a three-year-old signing a contract, right?
	So there is no contract that you sign with a government, right?
	And we are born into a contract, uh this sort of pseudo-social contract, we're born into it, and and you can't sign a contract when you're young, and therefore the contract is not binding when you're young, right?
	And and you can't be evicted from your property if you have not uh signed a contract that you're violating.
	But if I if I take your example of property owners association, the property has to pass to you.
	So you can either choose to accept that property or you can choose to leave.
	No, and that's an excellent question, right?
	So let me just make sure everyone understands the argument, right?
	So if I buy uh going back to the gentleman at the back, he said no gun ownership.
	So I'm in some place where uh I buy the house saying no guns, right?
	And I don't have guns on my property, right?
	And then I die and I have a kid who then inherits that house, then that kid is that kid bound by that contract which says no guns, right?
	Well, if the kid isn't bound by the contract, then you can't guarantee no guns for everyone in the community.
	And if a kid is bound by the contract, that's an argument for the social contract, like you're born into a country and therefore you have to humana humana, right?
	Well, the difference is that in this example, there's one house.
	If the kid doesn't like the contract, there's one house he can't live in.
	Right?
	No, no, one house.
	Oh yeah, if but but he's not gonna go buy another house in that community if he doesn't if he wants guns, right?
	Right, right.
	But there's so there's one there's one place that he can't live, right?
	One in that community.
	Well, one house that he's inherited that he can't live in, right?
	But that's very different from an entire country, right?
	An entire country that you can't live in if you disagree with something that the government is doing.
	But we have hundreds of property owners' associations with hundreds of country.
	Right, but what I'm saying is that if there's one house that I can't live in, that's a very different proposition from saying here is five million square miles that I can't live in anywhere.
	Right?
	I mean, I'm not saying that this is a clincher of an argument, but those are very different things, right?
	Like if I say you can't come and stand up here, that's very different from saying you can only stand here, right?
	It's different in scale.
	Semantically, it's not really that much different.
	No, it is.
	It is it is different because what you're saying in the first instance is that there are property rights to this one house, right?
	That are not overlapping with any anyone else's, right?
	But in the second instance, you're saying there are two conflicting property rights to an entire country.
	So there's the house that people live in individually, right, that they have property ownership to, But then there's this other layer of property rights, right?
	This this uh magical penumbra of property rights called the government owns everything, which are directly in conflict, right?
	Because if I want to live someplace uh and not aggress against anyone else, then I have the right to do that according to classical liberal property theory, right?
	But if there is another set of property rights that the entire government has, or basically a small group of individuals has that is in complete conflict, then we have two opposing sets of property rights.
	And I think the person who's one has to overthrow the other for that land.
	Well, no, because the government is the ultimate arbiter of those property rights according to until you revolt against it.
	Yeah, and in which case you would generally get a new one.
	I think that the person who says there's an individual property right to a house, and then there's an overall number of property rights that is held by a small minority that is for everything that can be completely in conflict, they have to make that case.
	I would never assume that case to be made just because it sounds familiar and we've heard that argument before.
	So my I would put the owners of because that's an extraordinary claim, right, to say that 300 million people own stuff, right, and then 500 people also own everything, right?
	Uh and and those property rights can be in complete opposition.
	I would be very interested to hear someone step me through the logic of that argument, because I don't think it can ever be sustained, but uh that's a big question.
	So if you wanted to call into the show again, I know I don't want to bore everyone who's not interested in the intricacies of property theory, but all right.
	I don't want to take everyone's entire day, but maybe we can do one, two.
	We got two more, two more, two more.
	Two more.
	And then we've all spoken or fallen asleep.
	Sorry, I know that was not a perfect answer, but uh it's a huge topic.
	And yeah, yeah.
	Uh in your original argument, when you said uh would you like kill me in um defense of like your beliefs?
	Uh what if I were to say uh well you believe in anarchism and anarchism is chaos, and more people would die in anarchism than if I killed you right now.
	The shoot Hitler argument, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Um, I haven't argued with someone like that for a while, but I certainly know that they're out there.
	Um, so uh I would say that um you know, can can you step me through that, right?
	I I'm a big one for play dumb, right?
	And and sometimes I'm not playing.
	Well, no, this won't work.
	No society that survival.
	Yeah, there's no societies that survive on a free market society, and yeah, why don't you all move to Somalia or ancient Ireland or Iceland or whatever, right?
	Well, uh the first thing that I would do, there's a whole chain of reasoning in what you said there, right?
	As I'm sure you're aware, right?
	Anarchy is chaos.
	Like that's a huge logical leap, right?
	Uh and uh um uh uh chaos equals death.
	Therefore you're advocating death, therefore it's a self-defense of the future people you're gonna kill to shoot you now, and so it's a big back to the future argument that blows my mind, right?
	But uh I would say to the person, I don't understand what you're saying, because I really don't, right?
	And and I I really I learned this from uh uh a guy I worked with in business who would get these big convoluted answers from salespeople as to why they didn't make the sale, right?
	You know, well, you know, there was raining and then there were frogs coming down from the sky, and right.
	And he would say, like, I don't understand.
	Explain it to me like I'm three years old.
	Like, and there's nothing wrong with playing dumb, because statism is such a bizarre thesis when you break it down.
	It is it is a bizarre magical theory that there's this golden gun somewhere in the world, that if someone who's just good and great enough picks up that gun and waves it around, we end up with utopia.
	Right?
	I mean, that that's it's such a bizarre theory, right?
	I mean, you might as well say that uh arragun from Lord of the Rings would make the perfect king and let's do that, right?
	And so I would say to that person, I would say, okay, so tell me what you understand by the word anarchy.
	And if he says chaos, it's like, well, that's actually not true, right?
	It's not it's not the meaning of the word, right?
	Because we already have the word chaos, and we're not that redundant in the English language, somewhat, but not hugely, right?
	So it's not a synonym.
	So I would say, well, what do you mean by chaos?
	And if he thinks anarchism is, you know, Mel Gibson with a Viking helmet riding around shooting people for gas, right?
	Then I'd say, well, that's uh a good movie idea, maybe we can talk about that, but that has nothing to do with the theory and practice of uh non-violent society, right?
	So I wouldn't go into the argument, I would just explore what that person meant.
	And you'll come across one of two things, right, in my opinion, in my experience.
	One is that the person hasn't thought at all, right?
	Hasn't thought at all, even a little bit.
	And they're just using prejudicial terms, right?
	In which case they're probably not going to start thinking now, right?
	Because you know, best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, right?
	And if they haven't thought by now, they're not about to turn that corner.
	The other is that they have thought about it, but they've just made mistakes, in which case you can help step them through those mistakes.
	But uh so I would uh you know question every premise that that person is putting forward and see what their level of understanding and curiosity is, and then you can hopefully have a fruitful discussion that will get them you know put the safety back on, right?
	So that is that useful.
	But to play dumb, you know, so I don't I don't you know the Columbo, you wouldn't know, you're too young.
	Uh the Columbo thing, you know, it's like I don't understand, you know, I don't follow, you know.
	If you can get an old raincoat, it's so much the better, right?
	But but have something on underneath.
	I found that out pretty early.
	That's important.
	I don't understand.
	Debate's over.
	Sorry.
	Um we had one more.
	Sorry.
	My comment is back to the property and like can contracts pass on to your kids essentially.
	And I would say they can't, but in the free market, I don't think it would be I think the very simple solution is that if you have a property like where the there's gun control uh assigned to the the that neighborhood, it would just be in the contract that any transfer of the property, whether it be willed or you know, sold, they would have to accept the contract.
	Yeah, and sorry, just to to it's it's very much like a rental unit, right?
	In in in which sense this is the traditional argument for statism that the government owns everything with just renting, right?
	But uh so in that case, right?
	Like if if my mom leaves me a condo, uh, I don't get to go in there and start a grow-up, unfortunately.
	Uh but I I don't get to go in there and start, you know, uh Hell's Angels biker or shoot the ceiling parties, right?
	Because they have noise restrictions, uh, which are a condition of ownership, right?
	It's not free and clear of perpetual ownership.
	You can do whatever you want with it, right?
	The same thing with bullets.
	I can have a bullet, but I can't put it in somebody else, right?
	So uh it would be very much like you're renting the property, and the condition of ownership is guaranteed as long as you don't have guns in the house, and that would be a condition of ownership, like uh in any other kind of rental situation.
	Exactly.
	So I think that would be probably the closest.
	People do mistake that kind of voluntary rental situation, which is a condition of ownership that is voluntarily entered into and could be transferred like any property, they confuse that with statism as a whole by giving a few people the magical power to to create a renter's ownership of everything, which is you know wonderful if you can get people to buy it for you, right?
	But it's just it doesn't hold any water logically or morally, so thank you.
	Well, I guess I guess we're done, and thank you so much.
	I'm I'm glad that we wasn't just talking, so thank you.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	And thank you for such uh thank you for such great questions.
	Uh uh, I knew that uh coming to speak to libertarians was gonna be a challenge, and you guys had uh by far the best questions I've ever had from this kind of conversation.
	So kudos to you as well for your uh thinking and uh and reasoning skills.
	Thank you.
	I'm blown away.
	It was excellent, thank you.

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