Welcome to Keith Knight, Don't tread on anyone in the
Libertarian Institute, Part 2 of my interview with Mr. Molyneux.
Check out his work at freedomain.com.
Also if you subscribe to him on Odyssey, you could find his
complete collection of videos going back more than a decade.
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description below. Mr. Molyneux, What
differentiates a good philosopher from a bad
philosopher? Yes, great question.
Good everyone else, no. So the good philosopher, bad
philosopher. It's something I did a whole.
It's a 22 part history of philosopher series for
subscribers on the show. And one of the things which
seems like a fairly trivial insight in hindsight, but was
kind of mind blowing to me at the time, is that there is no
history of philosophers objectively.
In other words, there wasn't just this meritocracy of who was
really good and who wasn't really good, and they just chose
the very best. Like everybody runs a race and
whoever gets across the finish line, it's like philosophers who
were allowed to speak and philosophers who are allowed to
be taught, and philosophers who to some degree or another serve
the powers that be. So one of the reasons I think,
that we know so much about Socrates is that Socrates
justified the power of the state by saying, hey, if the city
decides to kill me, well, that's fine because the city, I relied
on the laws to survive. I relied on the laws to get my
food and my protection, and the city has protected me from
invasion. And so if the government decides
to kill me, well, I owe my government the life.
And therefore my life is for the governments to do as it pleases,
which I actually think was a complete curse.
I have a whole series of this from like 15 years ago.
This is a curse on humanity because Socrates says that most
men are unwise. Most men are fools.
And people were voting for him. And so he knew that the vote was
not an act of wisdom, but an act of prejudice and sophistry,
which he directly accused Melitas of, of, of inciting.
So he said as his curse, kill me, fine.
I'll just tell you to obey the state and everything's going to
go great for you going forward. So Socrates is allowed because
of that. So a good philosopher in general
has to start with a completely blank slate and no assumptions
whatsoever. You have to return to a state
almost of infancy and say, OK, I have a whole bunch of
assumptions based upon my empirical experience.
I have been told a whole bunch of moral lessons by people who
are probably corrupt to the core.
So what happens if I completely wipe blank my preconceptions and
start building from reason and evidence in first principles,
accepting every step and having to validate every step.
So the general pattern is a sort of four part series of dominoes
in good philosophy is you start with metaphysics.
Metaphysics is what is real, what is real, what is true, what
is objective, what exists, what doesn't exist.
How do I, and that's sort of what is what is.
And then you have to go to epistemology, which is a fancy
word for the theory of knowledge.
So if I know what is real, then how do I know that?
And how do I differentiate what is real from the unreal, what is
true from the false? From there you have to go to
ethics because the whole point of philosophy is ethics.
There is philosophy of science, there's philosophy of of
mathematics, there's philosophy of religion.
But the only thing that differentiates philosophy from
all the other disciplines is morality.
So if you're not doing morality, you're not doing philosophy.
And then the big challenge is you have to overcome what Hume
called the is ought distinction, which is to say, and Andrew
Wilson was talking about this in a recent podcast, you can't get
an ought from an is. You can't get a should from a
fact. You know, if a guy pushes a
woman off a Cliff, she falls to her death.
OK, That's a physical fact. That's a fact of physics and
biology. Why should you or should you not
do these things? And from there, in the current
system that we have, you then have to go to politics.
Politics is a study of the morally legitimated
institutional use of coercion or violence in society.
Now, of course, as a voluntarist or an anarchist, it is my goal
in probably about half a millennia to have a society
which is free of institutionalized coercion that
is justified by the general population out of fear of a lack
of safety. But that's not where we are.
So you kind of have to deal with politics to some degree or
another. So good philosophers start with
the assumption of nothing. And this comes straight out of
Rene Descartes Meditations, which is OK, what if I am in
fact just a brain and a tank being wired up by a demon to
like matrix style, right? What if everything is is just a
fantasy and and nothing is real? That's an important question.
I mean every night we go to sleep and have these most
amazing vivid dreams. I won't even tell you the
costume that you were wearing in my dream last night because it
would probably get you banned from the planet as a whole.
But although the elephant head does look good on you, but and
so every night we have these wild, vivid dreams.
We wake up and we know for sure that they were dreams that we're
now awake. And the the good philosopher
says, well, how do we know that? Assume nothing, right?
The good physicist says, well, the the world does look flat, as
we talked about last time, and everything looks like it.
The stars look like they're rotating around us like some
inverse halogen colander or something.
But what if that's not true? What if everything I perceive is
incorrect? And that way you can build a
certain edifice of knowledge. And many philosophers have tried
this to varying degrees of success.
The most notable being, I would say, Rene Descartes and Immanuel
Kant just said, OK, what if nothing is true and I have to
build everything out from the ground up?
And that's really been my process.
I think it was about 15 or so, no more 17 or so years ago, I
did a 17 part introduction to philosophy series where I said,
you know, with a white board and you know, my primitive 240P
camera. And I said, what if, what if
not? We don't know anything.
What if I don't know if I exist or you exist or the sense data
is real or anything? How do we go from there to
abstract universal moral philosophy?
And it's a big challenge. So the philosophers that I like
the most who respect the most are the ones who absolutely like
you have to grit your teeth. It's, it's like when I used to
do long distance running where when I was in my teens and my
20s, like when you start, you feel like you're going to die
after the 1st 10 minutes. And then after you breakthrough
that you can run, you know, I ran 20 miles once and you can
just just keep going and you just have to grit your teeth and
say I'm not going to stop, you know, just keep swimming.
Just keep swimming. It's going to keep going and
keep going and not divert. Now to me, the best philosophers
are the ones who take that approach.
I know nothing. I'm going to build these
principles from the ground up, and it doesn't matter to me
where they lead. I am not invested in the
outcome. I am only invested in the
process. So philosophers like Ayn Rand
started with metaphysics and epistemology.
There's a whole great book called Introduction to
Objectivist Epistemology. And then she went through to
ethics, which I think she failed at.
And then she went through to politics, which she also failed
at because she still justified the existence of
institutionalized coercion such as statism.
But having staying on that ride is really tough.
And then the last thing, not only but also you also get this
free Shamwow cloth. But not not only that, after you
go through that process, you then have the challenge of
saying, OK, I've gone through metaphysics, epistemology,
ethics, politics. I have a robust moral system
now. How does it get applied in
people's actual lives? That is the, to me, the biggest
challenge of all. And I think one of the things
that differentiates what I do from what other philosophers do
is I've now had, over the last, I mean, close to 20 years now.
I started in 2005. So yeah, it's almost 20 years.
I've had thousands and thousands of conversations with people
about how to take abstract moral principles and apply them to
their actual daily practical lives.
And so it's one thing to build this wonderful cathedral of
thought, but people also have to come in and get some moral
instructions and have their lives improved thereby.
And so a lot of philosophers aim for abstractions and just keep
going. They, they don't return to earth
with these abstractions and give practical utility to people.
It's like people who study, you know, theories of diet and so
on, but never write any diet books that can actually help
people. So I've done, you know, the
theoretical work that I think is very important and in terms of
practical application. So for instance, the non
aggression principle is very, very simple to defend and and
universalize. And then the question is, once
you've done that, what happens? Well, what happens with most
people? And this is particularly true in
more liberty minded circles, as they say, Well, you know, the,
the, the central banking is just counterfeiting.
It's like, yes, yes, it is. And what are you going to do
about it, right. And then what are you going to
do about it is the question. Of course, we don't want to go
and, you know, use violence ourselves.
So what do you do? Or, you know, foreign aid is, is
taking money from the rich, poor people of rich countries and
sending it to the rich people of poor countries and it corrupts
other countries and so on. And it's like, yes, that's true.
And and So what are you going to war is bad.
Yes. And so the yes.
And what do you do about it is the challenge.
So again, I was like blank slating because that's my sort
of every morning. It's like grit your teeth and
blank your slate, right? And so I was blank slating and
saying, OK, so once we accept that the non aggression
principle, thou shalt not initiate the use of force, once
we accept that that's a valid moral principle, what are we
going to do? Well, I could complain about
things I have no control over, but that doesn't seem to be like
a very good idea at all. I mean, it is like a lecturing a
graveyard on how to take care of their health.
I mean, it's a little bit past the the issue at hand and you
can't really affect the outcome because it's already in the
past. So what I said was, OK, so
violations of the non aggression principle, what's the most
widespread violation of the non aggression principle that we can
do the most about? What's the most widespread
violation of the non aggression principle that we can do the
most about? Now, of course, I worked in a
daycare as a kid, as a teenager for for many years and so on and
saw various negative outcomes. Of course, I had some negative
outcomes myself as a child and saw other people with negative
outcomes due to violence within the home.
It's like, ah, OK, So what is the most common violation of the
non aggression principle? Well, spanking, I mean 75,
eighty 90% really depends on the ethnicity of parents are still
hitting their children. So that is the biggest violation
of the most widespread violation of the moral of the non
aggression principle that we can do the most about.
Yay philosopher has returned from the heavens with tablets of
practical action. Sorry to put myself in rather
illustrious and heavily bearded company.
So the idea then that we would say let's work on child abuse.
Let's work on violations of the non aggression principle against
children and so on. That was, to me, the most
practical outcome. And so I made the case in many,
many different venues and forums and PowerPoints and speeches and
debates and all of that. And I recently, of course,
finished my magnum opus on this called Peaceful parenting, which
people get at Peaceful parenting.com.
It's free. There's even an AI you can ask
parenting questions that will give you some pretty fantastic
answers. So I think good philosophers
start with a blank slate, work their way to the most broad
abstractions, and then bring them back to earth in practical
and actionable manner so that you can become a moral person.
Because if the purpose of morality is to rail at the
toenails of the gods you can do nothing about, then it's simply
an exercise in paralysis and futility.
But if you can, like, if you say, well, the purpose of of
moral philosophy is to end foreign aid, it's like, well,
good luck with all of that, right?
I mean, you can talk to people and you could, I guess even run
for office. But of course we can see what's
going on right now with people who run for office who aren't
part of the elite, who actually want to change things.
They tend to get some fairly pretty ear clippings from time
to time. And so.
But what you can do is you can talk within your family and
friendships and social circle about not violating the non
aggression principle with regards to helpless and
dependent children. That's something you can do.
And that practical aspect is tricky though, because, you
know, railing against the Federal Reserve and and foreign
aid in the national debt gives you a certain amount of chest
beating satisfaction, but it doesn't actually really do much
to achieve good in society. But if you actually take on
something like hitting children, then you can achieve some real
good. But the problem is, of course,
when you, when you achieve real good, I can tell you this from
some fairly vivid personal experience, Keith, when you
actually achieve some good, you, you get that lovely little thing
called blowback, you know, because you know, if if you're
yelling at you about foreign aid and you don't shift where $1.00
goes, you don't really bother anyone.
But the moment you actually start to change the disposition
of good and evil in society, well, it's funny, you know,
it's, it's the one of my favorite books when I was
younger is The Hobbit. And The Hobbit is a fantastic
book because most fairy tales end.
Oh, we've killed the dragon. Everything's fantastic.
Yay. Look at all this treasure.
There's no more danger for Lake Town.
And everyone's like dancing and singing and that's usually the
end of the movie. But the genius, one of the many
aspects of genius of Tolkien is well, after you kill the dragon,
there's a war against Battle of the Five Armies.
Everybody fights over the treasure.
And so ending evil often creates a power vacuum, and that's a
challenge. If you directly interfere with
the intentions of evil people, they will attack you back.
And because you're in the right and they're in the wrong, it'll
usually be lies, slander, and reputational attack or physical
violence. And so to do good means angering
evil, and they're going to have something to say about what you
do. And so I think the good
philosopher gets people to enact virtue in their daily lives in
measurable and objective ways. And of course, if we can do our
part in ending child abuse, most of the other evils in society
will fall as well. How can we differentiate smart
people from ignorant people? Well, so IQ is obviously an
imperfect measure, but it's the best we've got and it's the one
that is by far the most correlated with success in the
world. And of course, if people can
come up with an intelligence test that better predicts
outcomes than IQ Das, I would be the first to sort of champion
it. So IQ is kind of the best thing
that we've got for intelligence at the moment.
Now, IQ and I, I did like in a series of interviews with
people, it was, gosh, what was it, 17 for world experts in the
field of IQ to sort of help understand this because I wanted
to know how to be fair and how to be just right.
You want to know how to be fair and be just.
So I don't want to blame people for things beyond their control,
right? You don't want to blame people
for being short or of their eye color or things that are really
beyond their control because that would be unfair and unjust.
That would be like blaming a kid for being lazy because he
happened to be born into a poor family and, you know, he just
didn't have much money. Now you can if, if an adult
doesn't have much money, maybe they're kind of lazy.
But you wouldn't blame a kid for that, right?
So I wanted to figure out what was under people's control and
what wasn't. And so you want to, as a
philosopher, your goal is to increase people's wisdom because
wisdom is somewhat of a choice. Now in the research seems to be
fairly clear, IQ was about 80% genetic by your late teens.
It, it even goes up somewhere from there.
But that, you know, let's sort of take the baseline of 80% now
that still gives you 20% to work with.
That's a lot, right? That that's, that's more than a
standard deviation of intelligence, like 100 to 85 or
100 to 115, give or take, right? So to determine whether somebody
is intelligent or not, there are a couple of tests that I use.
And again, just because they're not intelligent doesn't mean
they can't become wise, although intelligence can help.
Although the argument is as well that intelligent people can talk
themselves in and out of 20 different positions in a day.
And I know I've certainly been in that in that camp as well.
So there's a couple of things that I do.
So when you make a generalized statement and somebody comes
back with a specific exception, that generally is somebody who
is not not thinking. Now, just if somebody doesn't
think, there's two reasons. Either they can't think because
they're just not smart, or they can think but they've chosen not
to, which means they lack self criticism.
So that's one thing. And, you know, the typical
example is women. Women are generally shorter than
men. It's like, well, I know a guy,
his girlfriend's taller than he is.
And it's like, I'm afraid the giant addition that you are
making to the conversation may be visible only to you.
Or as the old saying, wisdom has constantly been chasing you, but
you've always been slightly faster.
So that's one example. Another example, of course,
which is very common is the response of an ad homonym or a
personal attack to a moral statement.
Now this I'm going to introduce this because nobody on the
Internet has ever seen this before.
I'm one of those rare travellers who's seen this incredible
resurrected dodo bird of the ad homonym.
So if you say there's a general statement and you and somebody
says, well, only an A hole would say that it's like, well, maybe,
but that still doesn't deal with the facts of the issue.
So when someone is triggered, intelligence gives you the
option to intercept your lizard brain responses, right?
So you have it depends on how you clock it, but generally you
have about a quarter second to intercept an aggressive impulse
and reason with it and and so on.
And for most people, whatever their mental reflexes are, it's
some longer than 1/4 of a second because people just they act
out, they get aggressive, they get mad and so on, right.
I mean, in a perverse way, I was proud of what was voted of mine,
the the worst tweet in the history of Twitter.
And in, in, in the modern parlance, being called the worst
guy is, you know, people. We retweet Stalin and Hitler.
But no, my tweet was voted and fairly overwhelmingly as the
worst tweet in the history of Twitter, which was a little
surprising to me. It went something like, I can't
believe this is five years ago, but I said, wow, Taylor Swift is
turning 30. She's so young.
She looks so young. I hope that she'll think about
having kids because by the time you're 30, like 90% of your eggs
are dead. As a woman, I hope she'll think
about having kids. She looks like she'd be a fun
mom. Now.
That was actually very positive, I think, against Taylor Swift.
Well, except her politics and her radiating childlessness to
the NPC crowd. Well, OK, maybe have a couple of
things against Taylor Swift. And her fans wait, no, let's not
get drawn down the Taylor Swift side side side quest.
So the people went completely nuts.
It did. It's a scientific fact that 90%
of a woman's eggs are dead by the time she's 30.
That doesn't mean she can't have kids.
She's still got five years until it's geriatric pregnancy.
But people went were completely mental about and we're just, you
know, nobody's going to have sex with you in cell.
It's like, OK, I'm happily married for 22 years and but OK,
and, and what am I going to do? I'm going to I'm going to have
sex with everyone but you in cell.
You know, like this kind of stuff, right?
It's like, oh, really bitter, angry, dangerous, sociopathic
women might be withholding sex for me.
Whatever am I going to do to get through the day?
So that's another example of people who are just triggered,
people who don't express doubt. Also a certainty is I used to
call them the period people because I grew up in sort of a
very poor welfare, fairly crappy, trashy neighbourhood.
And it was full of people who were like, you know, it's just
like this period, you know, and the, the period was like, blah,
blah, blah, blah, period, you know, end of discussion.
It's like really for me, the only end of discussion is
probably about 15 to 20 minutes after I'm dead.
I'm sure I'll have some like, hey, you know how your
fingernails grow after you dye and your hair.
Well, I will continue to have debates and discussions.
There'll be some scratching on the coffin roof.
I'll, I'll continue going on for a little while.
So for me, the end of discussion is the end of life.
But for these people, it's like boom, period, end of discussion.
And it's like, OK, so I just kind of, I kind of move on, move
on from that as a whole. People who don't expose
themselves to contradictory opinions, you know, the echo
chamber stuff. And This is why, like people on
the left have, you know, good and bad points, but in general
they tend to be less robust because they're exposed to far
more echo chambers. Anybody who's not on the left is
just, you're just swimming against the current and you just
get stronger. Like you just get stronger
swimming against the current. So of course I'm a, you know,
very much a free market guy and a reason and evidence guy and
objectivity guy. And so I mean, in high school it
was fairly lefty in, in England and Canada and other places and
in university outright Marxists and so on.
And so I've just, and then I was in the, the theatre world.
I went to the National Theatre School.
I wrote and directed plays. And I mean, in Canada, the man,
the, the theatre world is, I mean it, it makes Lenin look
like Ayn Rand. So I guess, you know, depending
on government money and and NPCS that kind of way.
And they're not interested in exploring the human condition,
which is what good ads should do.
They're just interested in promoting division, hatred and
resentment. So it is a monster so assailing
against the currents. You just end up kind of robust.
So when you hear people repeat NPC talking points and they just
don't have any idea that there's another perspective or opinion,
then they're just not intelligent.
Because to be intelligent is to be skeptical, right?
Because if you haven't noticed, if you haven't noticed that the
world is full of pathological liars in power, I don't even
know what to tell you. You know, that is that that is
the old thing, like 1 fish turns to the other and says, eh, what
is a little chilly today? It's like water.
What water? I just float, right?
So if people haven't noticed that there are pathological
liars in power and that there's a massive incentive for people
in power to lie to them and therefore they should have
scepticism. You know, what's the old thing
about it's pretty easy for a woman to be attractive to man,
just put on a sun dress. And so you don't trust the
government. I mean, you're sad, right?
So anybody who hasn't noticed that, like, I really don't know,
Hey, mainstream media doesn't always tell the truth that
they're not super objective. And if you haven't noticed that,
honestly, I wouldn't even know. It's, it's like there's a cruel
meme about the boom boomers where they say, you know, when
you're arguing with the boomer, I can say this, 'cause I missed
by one year, one year, I know I may look like the crypt keeper
to your younger audience, but I missed by one year.
I'm still pre boomer by one year.
But you know, when you're arguing with the boomer, you're
arguing with the television. The television can't hear you
and it doesn't care. And so people who don't have
inputs and people who get aggressive when contradicted or
when counter information comes up, people who cite specific
exemptions to general rules as some intellectual work of
achievement and so on. And also, honestly, I view
people who don't read fiction as a a problem because one of the
things that's highly correlated with the development of empathy
is the reading of fiction. Because fiction is your chance
to try on another person's life for science, especially first
person fiction. I wrote a novel not too long ago
where I switched between first and third person in a way to
kind of disorient. This is how the person looks
from the outside, but this is what they're thinking on the
inside. And people who don't read
fiction generally don't have as much empathy.
And it's not just my opinion. Studies have been done that the
reading of fiction generally helps foster empathy because
you're then curious about how other people think and feel.
And a lot of debate has to do with empathy.
And because the opposite of debate is violence and violence
is the opposite of empathy, right?
So if you and I are debating, we're negotiating to try and
find the truth to the mutual benefit, right?
If you, you know, if we're driving to Vegas and I'm going
the wrong way and you tell me to go the right way, you haven't
harmed me. You've helped me.
I mean, the purpose is truth. So we empathize with each other,
with reasoning, the people who use ad homonyms.
And you know, there's all these terrible stories online at the
moment after the second what seems like an assassination
against attempt against Trump. You know, there's lots of people
saying, you know, I had this friend of like 10 years or 20
years. We were talking about the
assassination and my friend said, I can't, it's a damn shame
they didn't miss. And it's like, oh, oh, that's
what's that Knock, knock Trump to Harris.
Knock, knock. Who's there?
Owen, Owen who Owen to right. So that level of, to me, just
straight up sociopathy. I, I, I, I wish that somebody I
disagree with politically got killed.
Well, of course, that's most of human history.
Most of human history is killing people who disagreed with you.
And whether it's hitting them on the head with their club or the
jawbone of an ass, or it's putting them in concentration
camps or sending them to war. I mean, a lot of, you know, a
lot of Republicans in the South. And so the wars wipe out the
soldiers and, and so on. So you way to wipe out your
political enemies. So empathy is that we are going
to be happy to reason with each other because we know that the
only only alternative to reasoning with each other, the
only alternative to reasoning with each other is outright
violence. And that will destroy society as
a whole. And so I look for people who are
interested in in fiction and not just, you know, I have a
prejudice more for 19th century fiction is sort of my favorite
time because there was genuine examination of the, the human
condition and, you know, deep thoughts without the politics
creeping in at all times and under all circumstances, no
matter what. And so I look for people who are
interested in in fiction poetry as well is a way to enter
somebody else's dream state and imagination to have a self and
an other. So there's lots of cool things
that I use to try and figure out who's worth really talking to.
I've already 1 of zoomed in your bookshelf to look for fiction in
the back to make sure we can talk.
Sorry, go ahead. You know what fiction is
actually on this side. I promise it's here as far as.
Oh no, it's left wing fiction. Sorry.
Go ahead. So my favorite thing to do is to
really get a quick idea of where someone stands on a given topic
and ask them to steel man the opposition.
And if they can't do it without straw manning.
When I specifically ask for a steel man, I know that I'm
wasting time with a person. So thank you so much for giving
me those to add to the ideas of how I can communicate to people
and find out who's worth spending time with.
One of my favorite contributions you have given the world is your
ability to analyze propaganda. I had never seen this before.
Mr. Molyneux goes line by line in certain articles and really
walks you through the manipulative language that's
used. So I want to go through a couple
of my favorite examples. In April of 2014, the sitting
president and graduate from Harvard University, Barack Obama
said it's not a myth, it's math referring to the gender wage
gap. Apparently he actually believed
this. So women earn $0.77 on the
dollar for every dollar a man makes.
Therefore there is a gender pay gap.
This gap between the genders is proof of sexism.
What, if anything, is wrong with that logic?
Right, I'm going to zoom out for just a second about because I,
there's a couple of threads I want to talk about with regards
to propaganda and apparently that's just all about me.
So I'll, I'll do that and, and I think it'll make sense.
So let me ask you, where are you in the birth order of your
family? I am the youngest, my brother is
the oldest, my sister's older than I am, and I am the third
child. We all share a father.
My mother only has me. OK, got it.
Now what's the age gap? And this won't make sense.
Just give me, just bear with me for a SEC.
He is 37, she is 34. I'm 28.
OK, so when you were a kid, a little kid, and of course
there's, there's quite a substantial age gap.
I'm a younger sibling as well, my brother's two and a bit
years, 2 and a couple of months older than me.
So when you were a kid, it was hard to get resources relative
to your siblings, right? So, so if they had the toy, you
couldn't, if you had the toy, they could get it from you.
If they had the toy, you couldn't get it from them.
And so when you're a a little kid, you have to complain when
you don't get your fair share, right?
So there's, there's older people that the parents get whatever
they want, the older siblings get whatever they want.
They have the cool toys, they get to stay up later, they get
more allowance, they get more privileges, they get more
freedom. And it just, there's a certain
amount of resentment then it's not unhealthy.
It's perfectly, it's how we've evolved.
There's nothing wrong with it, but there's a certain amount of
resentment that comes from being a younger sibling.
And mothers have to be very sensitive to this and equalize
things. And they have to equalize things
sometimes using force, right? They have to literally, if, if
the older kid snatches the toy from the younger kid, the mother
has to take it and pry it out of the hands maybe and, and give it
back. And of course we don't say to
kids, well, there's a whole bunch of food there.
And, and we've got a one year old, A5 year old and a 10 year
old. Well, you'll just go and get as
much food as you want and we'll just let it be a meritocracy.
It's like, no, no, you have to take food and make sure that the
youngest kid gets it and and so on, right?
So forced redistribution, resentment of people who are
doing better than you, complaining and appealing to
authority to get resources from the more competent and
successful and give them to you is a childhood experience.
So propaganda, I you won't believe how I'm going to bring
this in for a landing. Nobody knows what the heck I'm
talking about. Trust me or don't, but I will
bring it in for a landing, right?
So what is it that politicians are continually saying to people
the rich aren't paying their fair share, fair share
corporations don't pay enough in taxes?
You're being ripped off. And what they're doing is
they're trying to appeal to a childhood mindset where things
are unfair through no fault of your own.
You're not getting enough. It's not your fault that you
happen to be born last and there are all of these older siblings
who are getting more and it's unfair and you need to appeal to
authority to take from people who are more successful the more
competent in your childhood. It would be your older siblings
and give to you. And without that you just can't
survive. So what they're doing, this is
so common in propaganda. It's one of the reasons why
leftism and classism and this kind of division stuff works is
they're trying to get you to regress to a state of childhood,
which is envy, resentment and helplessness, right?
I mean, this maybe, maybe I'm alone in this pettiness.
I don't think I am. But I very clearly remember as a
kid, my, my brother had the right to stay up 5 minutes
later. I mean, this is sad.
I'm not proud of this. But you know, it's just the way
that I was and I've dealt with it completely.
But I remember sitting in my bed and I knew I was probably about,
I don't know, four or five years old.
And I knew that 5 minutes was me counting to 300, right?
This is how sad. But you have to be this way as a
younger sibling. You have to because otherwise
you don't get enough resources. And so 05 minutes, is it fine
1/2 I won't do the whole 300 for you, but I would, I would sit
there and I'd, you know, I'd, I'd have my covers off my toes
to make sure I didn't miscount. And it would be like it's been 5
minutes, it's bedtime. And like this is how petty and
he right. Oh my gosh, it's it's now as a
kid, you have to gauge your interest that way.
You have to say, look, there are people doing better through no
fault of my own. And no, you know, it bothered me
that the older kids, you know, oh, you're just a little kid.
It's like, oh, wow, you did the amazing moral task of having to
drop out of mums for JJ slightly earlier than I did.
Wow, what a, what a thing to be achieved, right?
So it just so as a kid, this resentment of people who are
doing better and taking more and the appeal to authority to make
things equal is how younger siblings survive.
Now, I've only done a cursory examination of this, and you of
course would be an exception here, but a lot of people on the
left are younger siblings. And when the government comes to
you and says injustices are being done against you, those
with more power taking more, and we're here to make it equal.
Well, that why is that such a common experience for people?
We all go through childhood, right?
We all go through childhood. We and all younger siblings have
to fight like heck to make sure we get our fair share through no
fault of our own. We happen to be smaller and
weaker and younger and so on, right?
And so when the government comes along and says there are people
who are unjustly taking from you and we're here to make it right,
well, that is men are stealing from you women.
And we are here to make them give you back what they've taken
from you. We're here to make sure you get
your fair share, which through no fault of your own is being
taken from you. Why is that so believable to
everyone? Well, because it's an essential
part of how siblings survive. And most people grow up with
siblings and there are a lot of younger siblings.
So you, you see this all the time in the election years where
it's like the rich aren't paying their fair share.
Well, why does that seem believable to people?
Because one cursory look at the data, it's like, no, no, no, the
rich aren't paying their fair share.
They're paying way too much. You know, when the top, you
know, 5% of earners are paying 50% of the income tax, that's
ridiculously unfair. But why is it that people are
like, there is a greedy part, which is like, oh, I can resent
people and get stuff for free and I get all of that.
But why is it that it's so believable for for people when
the government comes along and says, and you know, this is from
as relatively mild a case as the gender pay gap to something
that's completely egregious, which we talked about in the
last conversation, which is, you know, the communists coming
along and saying that factory was stolen from your ancestors.
We're going to go kill the factory owners and give it back
to you. Well, that's appealing to a
parent in a sibling dynamic on massive, you know, hyper
ideological steroids. But I think that when we have a
an incredibly common experience, like resentment of the
successful and the appeal of authority to equalize.
Why is it because that's how most of us survive, you know, in
in a human evolution when people had no birth control and you
know, the same sex drives as we have now.
Well, what happened? Well, you had, you know, 581012
kids. And so the majority, the vast
majority of us are younger siblings, not youngest, but
younger siblings, right? The vast majority of us are
younger siblings and younger siblings.
We have to appeal to authority, complain, be resentful, look,
look for equalization, and be perfectly happy when forces used
to get us resources because we don't survive otherwise.
You think, of course of limited food.
There was limited food throughout most of our
evolution. Things would touch and go for a
lot of of kids and you really had to fight like hell and you
had to appeal to authority to take things away from the more
powerful and give them to you. So to me, a lot of propaganda is
having people through the language of parenting regress
into a helpless, resentful and dependent upon authority state
of mind to get people to regress to childhood.
And it's very tempting because that is the mindset,
particularly for young people. You know, there's this idea that
people become more free marketed conservative as they age, but
that's because we get further away from childhood.
Whereas when you're young, getting you to regress to a
childhood state of mind is pretty easy.
So when you go to women and you say, well, men are taking stuff
from you and it's unequal and you're underpaid and so on,
there's a certain amount of greed for the unearned for sure.
But there's a lot of girls who had older brothers who did, who
just took stuff from them and got more time, attention, who
had more privileges because they were older.
And there's just this resentment.
And I think it's pretty easy to strip mine.
The numbers, of course, are, are easy to debunk, right?
I mean, we can just touch on them briefly here.
Women with the same amount of education who've been in the
workforce for the same amount of time as men actually earn more
than men. Women take less high paying
degrees and careers. The student loan debt crisis is
largely women taking economically unproductive
degrees. If you look at the highest paid
professions like oil engineering, petroleum
engineering is like the highest paid profession.
There's almost no women. Computer science for a long time
there before AI was highly paid, very few women.
And so women tend to go for lower paying occupations.
And it's not because of the patriarchy, because when women
get more economic and political freedom, they tend to go even
more for traditionally female based occupations.
And if you look at the top 20 female occupations from 100
years ago, it's pretty much what women in a free society are
going into now. Women prefer dealing with people
and men prefer dealing with things.
And dealing with things tends to be more economically productive
than dealing with people, which tends to be hourly.
Whereas if you deal with things and you manufacture stuff, you
tend to get economies of scale, but you don't get for women.
Men work longer hours, we have higher testosterone, we have
generally more drive and and we can ignore our feelings in
pursuit of a an objective a little bit more than women.
And of course the other thing too is but you can get male and
female economic equality for one generation.
And one generation only, and then there's no people left.
Yay. Equality followed by the
extinction event isn't. And we've seen this a couple of
times before, right? Because the only way that you
can get men and women outside of just ordering women to do
economically productive things and maybe hitting them with
massive doses of testosterone is to give up on childbirth.
Because childbirth and raising children.
I mean, not only did I work at a daycare, but my daughter's
almost 16. I've been a stay at home dad for
16 years and that's just one kid and she's great and easy to get
along with and not a boy. So I get that's a little
different too. So childbirth and raising kids
takes you out of the workforce. I mean, if you want to raise
kids, well, you got to keep them out of government schools.
You got to, you know, spend all your day with them.
And so you just can't be out there working and, you know,
building some feminist empire if you want to raise kids.
So, you know, that's another factor too.
That's when women get pregnant and have kids, they have to take
time off to give birth that we, we want the kids breastfeed
because breastfeed because that's the best for their
health, particularly their immune system.
It's also better for the mothers.
I mean, the, the fetus leaves behind stem cells that help
repair the damage and injury to the mother decades later.
So it's better for everyone's health.
And a lot of women don't go back to their workforce because they
want to stay home or they prefer staying home.
And so we can get, I guess, men and women to parody, but only if
we stop having kids. And, you know, I mean, I guess
I'm somewhat of a fan of equality of opportunity,
equality of outcome leading to the end of the human race.
So that one set of women gets to taste pure economic equality,
and then there's no more people. You know, seems like a bit of a
high price to pay. Next propaganda analysis.
Men commit a disproportionate amount of crime because the
patriarchy has entitled them to take whatever they want.
Blacks commit a disproportionate amount of crime because
institutionalized racism has forced them into poverty and
forced them to commit crimes. What, if anything, is wrong with
that statement? Right.
Well, I mean, I do think that men commit a disproportionate
amount of crimes that are violent and obvious out there in
society. But the big question is if you
include things like abortion as a crime, if you include abuse
against children as a crime. And now it's not just physical
abuse. I mean, maybe this is slightly
contentious to your audience. And I I fully accept that and
slightly contentious to myself, if that helps at all.
But verbal abuse against children is violation of the non
aggression principle. In other words, if you keep
telling a child you're stupid and selfish and an A hole and a
jerk and, and you just keep putting them down.
Well, verbal abuse against adults is not a violation of the
non aggression principle because you're talking to an already
formed personality that's perfectly free to leave.
But if if you were to kidnap someone and brainwash them, the
brainwashing would be part like you, you kept them up, you know,
for three days straight and bombarded them with propaganda
and so on. Well, that would not be violent
abuse except for the confinement.
But children are confined by the state of nature, by the fact
that they're children. So verbal abuse against children
is a violation of the non aggression principle.
So if you include spanking, if you include other forms of
coercive discipline such as confining to the room or even
timeouts, or using physical size and strength to confine
children, if you include verbal abuse, then women commit more
aggression than men. I mean, certainly in domestic
violence cases, it's 5050 even with the bias against men
reporting against women. But if you include abortion and
child abuse, women outstrip men with regards to violence by far.
Like this. Not even close.
It's not even close. The vast majority of men will go
through their life without committing a violent crime, but
the significant majority of women will commit a violent
crime against their children, and it's only by ignoring
children that we can pretend that men are just more abusive.
If you look at coercive transfers of resources, well,
women pay about half into the state that they get in benefits.
So that's a coercive redistribution of resources from
men to women. Men pay about half into the
state as they get out in terms of benefits.
And so that's another if you if you look at some of the family
court systems and issues where women coercively transfer
resources through the power of politics from men to women.
At the aforementioned student loan crisis where women are
forcing largely men to pay. If you look at the fact that
like 90 to 95% of the infrastructure maintenance is
men, which is a far more dangerous occupation than taking
complaints about racism in an HR department.
Nice and air conditioned slightly more.
I mean, I've done, you know, difficult and dangerous physical
labor over the course of my youth and that there weren't any
women out there at all, right? So letting men, men are like
what, 95% of workplace deaths or men and so on, right.
So letting men take on all of that burden is not particularly
great as well. So and of course the other thing
too is that when men talk about this kind of stuff, they just
get attacked and laughed down and aggressed against and so on.
So I think in particular, modern society has tempted women into a
fair amount of aggression and corruption under the guise of,
you know, once you can teach people to be resentful, the use
of violence then becomes legitimate.
With regards to blacks and a violent crime, I would sort of
refer you to the IQ interviews that I have done.
It is common throughout black communities across the world.
Tragically, blacks have a very high incidence of child abuse.
I actually was talking to a woman, a black woman about this
on a show recently. And she actually was so preyed
upon by the black men in her community when she was a girl
and a teenager that she actually starved herself, became anorexic
in order to become less attractive.
And according to the reports that I've read and, and
interviews that I've perused, half of black women report being
raped by black men before the age of 18.
Now saying that white people or other people are all responsible
for that is bizarre to the point where I, I don't even know what
to say, right? Because you can say people have
agency, right? So blaming everyone else is not
great. So, you know, fixing the, the
black family experience, fixing the 3/4 of black children who
are born and raised or raised without a father around or
without married, our parents would do a lot.
And that used to be way better. The back in the days of Jim Crow
and genuine segregated racism, institutionalized racism,
government program called racism.
Blacks were married at a rate of 80% and blacks were getting out
of the poor and into the middle class at very, very high rates.
And then the government comes along to help, which is to
create a dependent underclass. And, and of course, you know, I
think there's some fairly sinister people involved in
pushing rap and nihilism and so on, on the black community and
so on. So it's not just white racism.
And with regards to the pay gap, you know, it's a fairly
traditional argument, but if women are just as productive as
men, but you can get them for $0.77 on the dollar, then just
build an entire corporation of women and you'll completely win
in the marketplace. So all women need to do is just
hire other women and, and they'll be fine.
But, and then the last thing that I was sort of saying just
in terms of credibility is that I really don't generally take
much advice from people on economics who've never created a
single job. You know, I've, you know, I've
interviewed 1000 people over the course of my career.
I've hired over 100 people and, and negotiated raises for people
who work for me. And so I've actually gone out
and created jobs and had to work with young, old, male, female,
old, racist and and so on. And for the people who are
complaining, I would just be like, OK, well, how many women
have you hired? How many jobs have you created?
And, you know, not counting a government grant.
And, and I hired some people in a non profit like that actually
in the free market, right. And, and if they haven't, it's
like, you know, it's it's cute. It's it's nice.
It's like telling, it's like a, you know, when my daughter was
little, she would talk about the restaurant she wanted to make.
I actually incorporated this into one of my novels.
You know, wouldn't it be great to have a restaurant in the tree
with birds flying around and, and, and so on.
And, and it's like dinosaurs. And, and yes, it would be, I
completely agree with you. And it's a sort of fun fantasy
to talk about. And so but but you wouldn't go
build that restaurant. You know, when I got older, I'd
say, yeah, but the birds would poop on on the food.
I mean, we have ducks. I know what that's all about.
So for most people, when they're talking about this stuff, it's a
childhood regression stuff. They don't have any actual
experience creating jobs and and managing people and they have no
skin in the game and it's all just theoretical.
They've never actually done it. I honestly, it's like my
daughter talking about her fantasy restaurant.
It's it's fun and it's cute, but it nothing to do with reality.
Next, the free market is inefficient and exploitative.
We need to focus on people, not profit.
Yeah, inefficient. Well, I mean, it is inefficient
for thieves. It is inefficient for people who
want something for nothing. So I I get that, you know, it,
it is more efficient for people to steal a factory than to build
a factory. So I get that it's inefficient
for corrupt people who want something for nothing.
But, you know, again, to me, this is all just incomplete
childhood stuff because it's not reachable by reason.
So when you're a baby and a toddler, people should be
providing you resources. You should not have to provide
any value or earn anything, right?
I mean, nobody says to an 18 month year old baby, well, you
can have your lunch, but first you have to mow the lawn or you
have to wash the dishes or like there's no so, so this idea that
there are these benevolent entities that just give you
stuff and you don't have to provide value.
That's how we all start out in life.
And it's our first couple of years, You know, arguably you
could say up until the age of, you know, 5 or 6.
So our first half decade and you know, first impressions count
for quite a lot in life for a first half decade.
We do live in a socialist paradise.
Like why is it that the old Marxist statement from each
according to their ability to each according to their needs?
Why is it that that resonates so much with people?
Because that's our childhood. From each according to their
ability is the parents hunt and grow food to each according to
their need is the babies need resources.
The toddlers need resources that they cannot earn themselves and
should not try. I mean, you don't take a A2 year
old hunting and give him a bow and arrow because he's going to
shoot himself or you in the leg, right?
So I just look back to people now, This is why I talk to
people about their childhoods, because until you can resolve
childhood trauma, you can't really reason your, your brain
is too starved and avoidant, intense and stressed and you're
in PTSD and so on, right? I mean, it's like trying to give
someone a complex mathematical proof while they're running from
a bear. Like they just can't concentrate
on it. They can't think of it all,
They're shut up. I'm running from the bear.
Like there's just this panic and stress and so on, right?
So as far as efficiency goes, I mean, I don't particularly care
about efficiency. I care about virtue.
And virtue is not very efficient at times, right?
I mean, so I, I focus more on on virtue than efficiency.
But well, for sure the free market is efficient.
And we touched on this last conversation.
The people best able to maximize resources end up with most of
the resources. The people who can put the best
use of capital to increasing wealth tend to have the most
capital. People want to invest in them
and lend the money and so on. So efficiency is important,
exploitive. Well, that's one of these
subjective things, you know, I mean, I guess everybody would
like to be paid $1,000,000 an hour, I suppose.
And, and everybody would like to have all the hot men and women
in the universe throw themselves at their feet.
And you know, what does it mean if that doesn't happen, right.
The idea that there is an abstract value that exists
outside of what you can negotiate is completely bizarre
to me. Like, what am I worth?
I'm worth what I can get people to pay me.
I mean, there's no yes. But in my minds, I, you know, I
should be a movie star and the lead singer of The Rolling
Stones. And like, well, I guess if I can
get The Rolling Stones to put me up front as a lead singer
because they want to commit career suicide, I guess you know
that I could be very, very briefly the lead singer for The
Rolling Stones. Maybe I could do that opening
part if you can't always get what you want with the Alto
children's choir. But, and so you get what you
negotiate. That's all.
You know, I don't have a right to your time.
I don't have a right to be on your show.
You don't have a right. But we talk about it.
We negotiate and, and here we are.
So it's called entitlement. It it's a psychological, huge
psychological problem. Entitlement is the belief that
you are worth what you estimate yourself to be worth rather than
what other people accept you to be worth.
Right. So, you know, like the obese
women who say men should find me sexy.
It's like, no, that's not your call.
That's not your call at all, right?
I mean, it's what you can negotiate.
When I was there in the free market, I mean, I'm still in the
free market, but when I was a corporate executive in the
software field, yeah, we would try to get investment.
So we would try to get people to buy a product.
We would hire people. And it was all about what we
could negotiate. I mean, I wanted to sell my
software for $10 million a pop, but I could only get $1,000,000.
Do I say I've been ripped off for $9 million?
It's like, no, the 10 million is a fantasy.
What you think you're worth is a fantasy.
Everybody's the main star in their own production, and we
should be. But I, you know, how many
eyeballs do I deserve? As many as I earn.
How many donations am I worth? As many as I can earn.
And this idea that there's this abstract value that you have
that exists only in your own mind and people are ripping you
off if they don't take it well, that's what rapists think.
I'm not calling everyone who believes this a rapist, but the
rapist is like, I deserve sex. No, you don't at all, right?
You deserve what you if you can get a woman to have sex with you
voluntarily, fantastic. If you can't, leave them alone.
So this idea that capitalism is exploitive and it underpays
people and it's like you are what you negotiate.
You're worth what you negotiate. Now as a kid, that's a different
matter, right? You don't negotiate as a kid,
you're just given resources. So again, it's all of this
incomplete childhood stuff and this resentment.
And I, I, I should get more than I am contributing, which is
exploitive, right? I mean, if you can contribute
$1,000,000 to a business, you can ask for some portion of that
in salary. But if you only give $50.00
worth of value to a business, you can't really ask for
anything because they, right? So you have to provide value and
you have to negotiate for it. And other people have to agree
voluntarily with your assessment of your value.
And you generally will meet somewhere in the middle, right?
You want more, they want to pay you less.
You meet somewhere in the middle and that that's all you're
worth. And This is why this is not
anything specific to me. This is sort of a Mesian
argument that there's no such thing as subjective value.
Value is always subjective. So when people say I'm exploited
and I'm underpaid and women should get paid more and these
people should be paid this and there these people, it's like
there's this abstract standard of fairness that exists
independent of what people can negotiate.
And there just isn't. It's, it's just a fantasy and
it's just a a complaining bludgeon to try and get
resources by nagging. Two of the biggest propaganda, I
guess you could say operations that I have come across in my
life are one, the COVID narrative.
Turns out that there was no correlation between states that
had severe lockdown policies and mask mandates with states that
had either no policy or those policies to a much lesser
degree. So that COVID narrative was a
complete propaganda. Second is the food pyramid.
In Class I, this would be elementary school in Arizona.
You always had the Constitution on the wall, the American flag
on the wall, the presidents on the wall, and the food pyramid,
which said the primary thing that your diet should be
surrounded on is bread, pasta, and grains.
Of course, since this has been embraced, American obesity rates
have skyrocketed. Check out the carnivore diet.
Help me lose 110 lbs. So the question is, it's not
that. Well, maybe the majorities are
all wrong, but we don't have to worry about the majority.
They're ignorant. The experts, the majority of the
experts in these fields, at least the ones that we loudly
heard from, were wrong on these issues primarily.
How is it that so many experts could be so blatantly wrong
about something? Yeah.
I mean, I think in the future they'll look back in our time
and say all the gravestones should have been pyramid shaped
because that's what's killing most people.
It's absolutely appalling. And I mean, there's a lot of
politics involved, as, you know, in the, in the food pyramid.
I mean, there were a bunch of heart attacks in, in the 50s and
in among people in political power.
And they kind of freaked out and they said, oh, it's, you know,
the fats that are the problem. And so they started stripping
fat out of food, but then it tasted like cardboard, so they
started adding sugar. And of course, women went to the
workforce, which meant that you couldn't make meals from
scratch. So processed food became more
valid. And, you know, if you ever had
one of those pizzas maybe before your carnivore thing, you know,
those frozen pizzas that come on the cardboard, it's like, you
might as well just leave the cardboard on.
It tastes about the same. I mean, it's just a little bit
extra roughage. So yeah, food has become
significantly poisoned in the modern realm.
Of course the sugar industry paid some scientists to say
sugar is not the culprit and and so on.
And so it's all completely corrupt.
And of course, most of it has to just to do with government money
and and bad incentives. I mean, the the COVID, the whole
COVID situation was a Fiat currency situation.
It was a debt and government money situation.
COVID had nothing to do with medicine or health as far as
that goes. Because if you were to go to
people and you were to say, like, how much money did they
spend developing the COVID vaccines or, or the mRNA
technology over the past, you know, it's been 20 years or
whatever, right? Well, like, I mean, it's
hundreds of billions of dollars. So I don't know whatever it was,
right? So if you were to go to people
and you would say, OK, there's this virus that's around, even
if we kind of ignore the bio weapons lab origins of it, which
to me is an open and shut case. And I made this case years and
years ago called the case against China.
So even if we were to just say, oh, it just it did come from
bats, it did come from a pangolin or whatever it is.
So, so we've got this virus. Here's the problem.
And the cure is going to cost you $150,000 or the, the, the,
the, the shot, right? The, the vaccine is going to
cost you $150,000, which you know, per person with all the
debt and you know, and so on. Because not many people would,
would pay that amount of money, right?
They'd say, OK, are there any other alternative treatments
right now? Of course, as you know, they had
to suppress alternative treatments to get the emergency
youth or youth authorization. But they'd say, is there
anything cheaper? Well, there's this ivermectin
that won a Nobel Prize and it's really only pennies a dose and
blah, blah, blah. They'd look for alternatives,
right? So how was it that they gave
away this incredibly complicated and expensive technology for
free? It was government money,
government spending. So and, and what was the
incentive to suppress alternative treatments or
natural immunity or all the other things, right?
Well, the incentive was that you didn't get access to hundreds of
billions of dollars of, quote, free government money if there
were alternative treatments. And of course, as we all know,
the absolute horror shows that went on inside hospitals where
hospitals were paid 10s of thousands of dollars per COVID
patient and COVID death where patients, hospitals were even
further incentivized in some places to put people on
ventilators and so on with the idea of overcoming the cost.
But it does create the ultimate perverse incentive, which is
hospitals were in many cases, paid for bad outcomes.
And we all know that people respond to incentives.
Of course, there were a lot of honorable and decent doctors who
did the right thing. We also know, of course, that
doctors were massively incentivized to have people take
the vaccines. And like, not just all vaccines,
but in particular the mRNA, the vaccine, to the tune of 10s or
sometimes even hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Well, where's that money coming from?
It's coming from the government. So, so all the funding for these
labs came from the government, which is of course where I'm
fairly certain that the virus came from.
So the money that came for these things only exist because of the
government and the money for the medicines or the, the, the COVID
shots came from the government. And then the government handed
blanket immunity to the manufacturers and then the
government, at least until they were sued for the documents
allowed for the some pharmaceutical companies to hide
the data for 75 years. And and that to me was like,
come on. I mean, I hate to say IQ test,
but yeah, it's novel technology. They're not releasing the source
data and the, the manufacturers are demanding immunity and
they're saying they know that it's safe and effective with no
long term data. I mean that to me.
I don't even know what to say. Like I, I can't, I, I genuinely
am baffled as to why people fell for this stuff so hard.
But obviously they did. But then they also got, hey, you
can feel like a really good person by obeying those in
charge and hating your fellow citizen.
And sadly, that is just a thing that human beings are very
susceptible to. We're going to give you a gold
sticker for obeying those in charge and you get the moral joy
of hating your fellow citizens who are not conforming.
And sadly, that's just over and over.
That's a copy paste in history, which goes back to early
childhood stuff, I think. But so the experts, I mean,
people respond to incentives and people who are not, you know, my
moral tradition of course, is Christianity.
And so a lot of scientists are anti theistic, right?
And we'll just talk about Christianity, sort of the
foundation of Western morals, the combo of Socrates and Jesus.
So why would people tell the truth when they're punished for
it and they're rewarded for lying?
Well, the only reason you would tell the truth when you're
punished for telling the truth and rewarded for lying is you
have an abstract moral principle that surmounts the hedonism of
immediate material incentives. I mean, Jesus was offered the
entire world under his dominion if he just worshiped Satan, and
he's like, Nope, not going to do it, right?
So in the absence of Christianity or in the absence
of universal moral objective values and rules, people just
respond to base mammal material immediate incentives.
Oh, I get approval dopamin. Oh, I get money dopamin.
Oh, I'm going to have disapproval and punishments for
not doing what people say. Well, when you take away
people's abstract morals, they just become basically frightened
lemmings that are running from the dinosaurs and running
towards the food. They become like, you know, when
you're out in the in nature and you, you're walking through this
lovely forest, you come across this beautiful Meadow and it's
like, well, it's just full of animals trying to eat each
other, not get eaten and reproduce in often violent ways.
It just becomes a hedonistic treadmill.
And so the experts were responding to all of the
incentives and I assume absent any overarching moral rules,
well, they just pretend to be moral and lie and take benefits
and avoid punishments, right. You would get people to abandon
morality. They become very easy to
control, which is why the powers that be have a great hostility
these days for Christianity and moral philosophers to some
degree, because it's easy to control people without abstract
moral values, because all you do is threaten them with punishment
and bribe them with rewards. Oh, you get 90% of people to
comply without moral rules. So I assume that that's they
were experts in maximizing benefits and minimizing
discomfort. So that's their expertise.
And I I take all of their statements through that filter.
Do you have time for two more or should I push these tip for
tomorrow? Let's do one more, if that's all
right. Absolutely.
Oh, no. So no, wait.
There's one other option. I could be concise.
No, no, let's be real. OK, You know what?
I will try to be concise because it's not your fault.
I have. My daughter has this, the
yapping. She just this is yapping, right?
Yap, yap, yap. And I disagree with her.
Yap, yap, yap. I get this little Pac-Man thing
come through. So you know what, you, you had
great questions. I have been fairly happy.
So, you know, I'll, I'll take on the challenge.
Let's do 2 and I'll be concise. What criteria can we use to
differentiate evil people from people who genuinely just have a
different view of the world? Right.
Are they villains or are they victims?
This is a big question in life. So people who succumb to
propaganda, are they driving propaganda because propaganda
lets them do bad things like hate their fellow citizens for
private medical decisions, or are they victims in that they've
been lied to and don't know about it?
Well, there is a test and we talked about this briefly so I
can talk about it even more briefly, which is people go from
victim victimhood to villainy when they're given accurate
information, right. So when I talked to people about
the COVID shots, I said, well, they can't possibly know the
long term effects because it's only been a couple of months and
they're not releasing the source data and they want to hide the
documents for 75 years and they've demanded immunity from
liability. Now, if people are like, yeah,
you know what, that is interesting.
I hadn't, you know, then that's fine.
Then there are people who are looking for information.
They don't have the information yet.
And they are good actors who lack information, which is true
for all of us. We all lack information about.
I mean, I know nothing about virtually anything because, you
know, the sum total of human knowledge is virtually infinite.
And what I have is a tiny spot or slice of that.
Hopefully the principles are overarching.
But so for me, it's like when somebody lacks information, they
are in a morally neutral place. But when you give them that
information and they react with hostility, then they're revealed
not as victims of a lack of information, which we all are to
a large degree, but they're revealed as villains.
And if they, you know, there's this, there's this eerie,
stunning silence in Canada at the moment about the vaccines
and what happened and, and the stripping of rights and travel
and, and income and so on, right.
And so if people were like, wow, you know, I really, I, I went,
I, I, I fell for this stuff and, and you know, there was some,
some stuff that was kind of doubtful about it and so on,
right. But if they don't talk about it
afterwards and they don't circle back and reflect and say, OK,
well, what happened there was IA good guy, was IA bad guy, at
least have a conversation about it, right?
Because certainly what people were told at the beginning is
not what has, what has played out.
And so people who don't circle back and people who resist the
topic, people who resist knowledge or in the possession,
possession of knowledge, still believe things that are false
and wrong. That to me is when they go from
victim to villain. The iron law of oligarchy states
all complex organizations, regardless of how democratic
they are when started, eventually develop into
oligarchies. Since no sufficiently large and
complex organization can function purely as a direct
democracy, power within an organization will always get
delegated to individuals within that group, elected or
otherwise. Does the existence of the iron
law of oligarchy basically refute all of leftism that all
of us can be equally participants in society?
So you know this old meme in Minecraft, I don't know if you
know this, this old meme where you say something that could get
you in trouble with the authorities and then you say in
Minecraft, right? And there's this meme, you know,
like we should do XY and Z terrible thing in Minecraft,
right? And, and this the, the meme of
the FBI agent ripping off his, oh, come on, he said in
Minecraft, right? And so to me, like all of these
rules and these laws, it's like in statism, you know, it's, it's
like, if, if somebody's like, oh, I'm an expert biologist, I
study all these animals. And then you look, and I studied
all these animals and learn their nature and their
properties and what they do and what they don't do and what they
like and don't like and their habits.
And then he never mentions to you that he only ever studies
animals in a zoo. It's like that's not animals in
their natural state, that's animals in a zoo.
And so the iron lore of oligarchy is like that's in
statism. Things get more and more complex
and, and you have less and less impact and things get in
statism. So it is certainly true that
organizations get bigger and bigger and more complex and then
become unwieldy. And then in a free market, they
collapse into their constituent elements and the whole process
starts again. In statism, you can prop these
companies up with preferential laws, hiring policies,
government grants, loans, protection from foreign
competition, tariffs, you name it, right?
So I mean, everybody knows in Japan for like the last 40
years, they've been these zombie corporations that are kept alive
through government spending, right?
I mean, they have what, the highest per capita national debt
in the world, right? And so in statism, yes, oh gosh,
you know, things get really complicated and, and corrupt and
and bad and wrong and this and that and the other.
It's like, yes, in statism, but that's like looking at animals
in a zoo and think you understand something about the
nature of animals. Human beings are in a human zoo.
We are in tax livestock farms called countries and we are
constantly prodded and pushed and bullied and threatened and,
and, and, and coerced and lied to and, and we are, we are in a
state of anxiety and existential coercion and sometimes direct
coercion, right. So whatever we look at when we
are looking at human nature or we are looking at social
organization or we are looking at corporations, corporations,
illegal fictions invented by the state so that rich people can
pillage organizations for all the profits while approving none
of the liabilities, right, 'cause the corporation takes the
liability, right? So if you are a bad guy and the
corporation does some bad things, the corporation gets
sued. You get to keep usually all the
money. Occasionally if there's criminal
things, that wouldn't be the case, but the corporation is a
big magical shield. Where in you say, Oh no, it's my
invisible friend who committed all the crimes so you can just
throw him in jail. Oh, my invisible friend has been
dissolved, therefore there's no wrongdoing.
I mean, corporations are horrible legal fictions invented
to bribe the elites to be enslaved and depended upon and
therefore praising our political power as a whole.
So whenever our people say, well, human beings are like this
and there's this inevitable cycle of civilization and
there's this corruption and these organizations are too big
to and the corruption and politics gets into like in
statism. Why is art so much crap?
Because lying to people through art is incredibly profitable.
Because every election in most Western democracies is
responsible for the transfer of hundreds of billions of dollars
worth of resources. And people love political power.
They, they're addicted to it, right?
So when we say, well, you know, our inevitably becomes
politicizer in statism and corporations inevitably become
corrupt in statism, well, there's regulatory capture in
that the, the people, the government agencies that are
supposed to regulate these industries always end up being
controlled by those industries in statism.
So, yeah, there's all these national debts in statism.
You can't have a national debt without a statist society.
So I I as long as people say in statism, right?
I mean, it's sort of like saying, you know, all of the
manual laborers are demotivated. And you're saying that in
ancient Greece, right? It's like, well, yes, but it's
it's slavery, right. So the problem with manual
laborers is they're just unmotivated and they just, you
have to keep prodding and pushing them and they don't want
to work in. And this is like the problem of
human nature. And it's like, no, it's a
problem of slavery. Now, once you free the slaves,
then you get some pretty hard workers who are kind of
entrepreneurial sometimes and they don't resent as much and
productivity goes up. You get labor saving devices all
you get the modern world. So when slavery was foundational
to all civilizations, as it was throughout all human history
until relatively recently, then you would say, well, I mean, of
course you have to whip your slaves.
They have no motivation. They don't do anything unless
you force them to. And it's like in slavery.
And, and so taking as axiomatic what organizations and human
beings do in statism and saying that this is some sort of
foundational existential thing, it's like, no, these are all
just shadows cast by the system we choose to accept.
And if we start to think of a different system, then we can
have different outcomes. So I would not accept that as
anything other than describing the actions of human beings
trapped in a fairly hellish zoo, which we kind of are.
And so when we start thinking outside the system, we don't
have to look at these as iron laws, but simply the shadows
cast by the coercion we accept in society.
Thank you to everyone for watching Keith and I don't tread
on anyone in the Libertarian Institute.
Check out free domain.com in the description below.
Mr. Molyneux, thank you so much for your time.
Thank you, I appreciate it, and thank you for access to your
audience. We'll talk soon.