Stefan Molyneux discusses government debt, inflation, and taxation as modern forms of enslavement. He argues that government debt goes beyond simple finance and instead creates lasting intergenerational obligations, so that people and their children are effectively born into it.

He compares today’s taxation and money creation to older slavery, noting that while traditional slaves sometimes had paths to freedom, this system tightens its grip the harder you work, through higher taxes and the state’s increased borrowing power.

Molyneux then explores a hypothetical Bitcoin-based economy, where governments could no longer borrow or print money easily. Investment would move into the free market, with individuals bearing real responsibility and liability, and he questions how corporations often serve as legal shields from accountability.

He links debt to broader social decline, likening it to addiction: once an economy depends on borrowing and inflation, it spreads into welfare transfers, bureaucratic growth, and wealth redistribution through money creation.

Molyneux also examines virtue in politics and religion. He says power is frequently wrapped in moral language, with leaders and institutions demanding resources while presenting compliance as virtuous and resistance as immoral, much like a shakedown dressed up as duty.

Finally, he mentions future plans, including the idea of writing a children’s book on ethics, and continuing work with AI tools to generate consistent characters for imagery and video.

Transcript

[0:00:00] Good morning, everybody. Hope you're doing well, Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain. Couple more questions, sorry I didn't get to them before. Steph, I checked your AI and did find reference to your thoughts on government debt, but not in relation to the below. Forgive me if you find this rambling. I'm genuinely curious what you would have to say about these ideas and perhaps not equipped to inquire properly. I see debt as an enabler for many of the points you touch on, for example, allowing governments to become substitute fathers and thus dismissing the roles of men in families. Further, there have been talk recently about the feminization of the West, and I wonder if debt may be playing a significant role in enabling caustic feminism, DEI, pandering to special interest groups and ideas that seem distant from reality. What do you think? Could all this happen without debt as a contributor? Can debt make a civilization dumb? Yeah, it's not debt in particular, although, of course, that is the word that is used, and I use it as well. That's the nomenclature that's typical. We say government debt. And saying government debt is like saying human ownership. It's slavery, is really the word for both. Government debt takes the concept of debt and applies it to the government, as if it is the government that has the debt.

[0:01:19] And government debt, national debt, and so on, all take the concept of debt and tie it to something external to people, when, of course, it's not. It is a form of enslavement. So, for instance, there were people who would come over to America, and to pay for their passage to America, they were pretty much enslaved for a period of years.

[0:01:47] And if that slavery, if they were born into that slavery, we would say that they were born into slavery if they were never released from that debt. Sometimes it took them years to work off the debt, and then they were free. And if they were born into that debt or were never free of that debt, we would simply call them slaves. We would simply call them slaves. It is a form of enslavement, and a very pernicious form of enslavement, to have children born into a million dollars worth of debt, because a million dollars is kind of what people earn on average, give or take, of course, over the course of their lifetimes.

[0:02:26] Now, to call it what it is, which is an odd form of enslavement, because normally when you enslave someone, you just order them around and tell them what to do. But what's happened now, of course, is that governments control money, governments print and create money, but the free market or its vestitial remnants and choice as a whole is allowed to continue. So, in other words, you are in perpetual debt, you are born into debt and you live in perpetual debt, but you are allowed to choose the manner in which you try to pay off but will fail to pay off that debt. but it's a very different matter. And it's really only possible with fairly advanced technology and computers and deduction at source and so on. Computers and accountants have allowed the tax code to get this complicated. If you've ever run a business, you just know that you can't do your taxes. You can't do your own taxes. It's impossible. A flat tax you could do, you know, just take your gross, take 15% of it, send it off. But taxes have become insanely complicated.

[0:03:51] So it's really just another form of enslavement. And the difference is, of course, that when you are enslaved, like you just owned, you know, as most people were throughout history, just kind of owned and controlled slaves or serfs or whatever. When you're owned, in general, your children aren't more owned.

[0:04:13] Your children are more slaves. In fact, you know, you can work or hope to buy your way to freedom. You could work to hope to escape, such as through the Underground Railway to Canada for the antebellum slaves, you could hope to become less enslaved. But of course, that's not the way that it works with government debt, with fiat enslavement. It's that in traditional sort of southern slavery, if you, I don't know, you work, you scraped, you saved, you had benefits or generosity or something like that, you could find some way to get out of being enslaved. I mean, for some, for a few, there was some possibility, some hope. There's no hope for that. I mean, because the harder you work in old-style slavery, the higher your chances get. And again, I'm not saying they were super high, but the more you worked in the past, the greater was your chance of you or your kids getting out of slavery. And there were places to escape to where you weren't enslaved.

[0:05:31] That is not the case with modern government debt. The harder you work, the more you and your children are enslaved. For the simple reason that the harder you work, the more taxes you pay. The more taxes you pay, the more the government has assets which can be used as collateral for more borrowing and money printing and so on. So, it would be like if you had 10 years or 7 years to pay off your debt for, say, coming to America back in the day, but the harder you worked, the more years you would have to be enslaved. Well, that would be an insane system, right? that would be a deranged system. So, the better the economy gets, the more innovations there are, the more advances there are in technology and other forms of efficiency and transportation and so on, the more of that that occurs, the more people are enslaved. So, the harder you work, the more money you make, the more your children end up in debt.

[0:06:49] So, if we took away, let's say you could snap your fingers and the government had to operate on Bitcoin, then it would not be able to print money. It would not be able to use Bitcoin as a collateral. Well, no, sorry, technically it could use Bitcoin as a collateral, but let's say that the entire economy worked on Bitcoin. Then you can't really use Bitcoin as collateral to borrow Bitcoin, unless you have a clear return on investment. So yeah, if you were a business and you needed some Bitcoin to start your business, then people might lend you Bitcoin if you signed contracts and would return collateral, but the government doesn't return collateral. The government is about consumption, it's not about really investment.

[0:07:40] And of course, you can say, well, the government built a lot of roads and that has facilitated things, for sure. For sure. But the government doesn't really have an ROI. You can't pay people back. So in a Bitcoin world, things, of course, things need to get done. And people who were investors would have the choice to invest in something to do with the government, or they would have the choice to invest in something to do with the free market. Let's say that there was still a government. Would people invest in the government or would people invest in the free market? I mean, people would invest in the free market because in the free market, individuals are responsible. In the government, nobody is responsible. In the free market, there's no overhead of the use of force. In government, there's the overhead of the use of force.

[0:08:29] And you can sign contracts with individuals in the free market. I mean, individuals embedded it in a corporation, but even the idea that corporations would exist in the free market is highly debatable. At least corporations wouldn't exist as a way to shield people from legal liability. Corporations exist so the government can sell legal immunities to rich people in return for rich people supporting the government. It's a very clever scheme. So I doubt anybody would really invest in the government if the government was in competition with the free market. So, in a Bitcoin universe, government activity would very quickly shift to the free market, to individual responsibility and accountability and liability. Because if people aren't responsible for failure, there's no point to investing in their success. So, governments could not pretend to add value, governments could not create intergenerational debt, governments could not borrow on a blockchain currency, on a Bitcoin currency. Because all the Bitcoin that would be available for investment would go to free market entities, not to the government. You can't beat City Hall, so to speak, right?

[0:09:45] So, if you look at debt as a drug, and if you look at someone who gets addicted to, I don't know, what's the worst, crack cocaine, or I don't know, heroin, or something like that, But let's look at somebody who becomes a crack addict. And they continually escalate their use of crack. And when we look at the failure of their lives, because they end up, you know, homeless, no teeth, they end up dying in some horrible way, their health is completely ruined, they lost all their money, they lost their family, their job, their friends, they became a thief, and it was a wretched descent into a truly scurvy death. We would say, what happened? Say, oh, God, I heard that guy died. He was 94 pounds? What happened? Oh, he became a crack addict. Say, well, it's got to be more complicated than that. I mean, I heard he got divorced. Yes, his wife divorced him because he was a crack addict.

[0:10:59] Oh, uh, I heard he had a lot of health problems. Yes, he had health problems because he was a crack addict. Oh, I heard he lost his house. Yes, he lost his house because he was a crack addict. Oh, I heard he spent time in jail. Yes, he spent time in jail because he stole to support his crack habit. And pretty much everything in his life would revolve around his crack addiction.

[0:11:20] And if you're saying, well, I mean, it can't be the whole reason as to why his life fell apart and he ended up 94 pounds and dead, so yeah, that pretty much was it. And you say, oh, come on, it can't just be one explanation. It can't just be one explanation. If people understood that government, quote, transfers, again, to use a neutral term, if people understood the government transfers of wealth were a negative sum game, that I think it's 70 plus percent of the money that is allocated to the welfare state ends up in the hands of the bureaucrats and 20, 30 percent of it ends up in the hands of the poor, so that's very inefficient, right? I mean, would you give money to a charity where they hoovered up 70 plus percent of your donation without giving it to the people in need? Probably not. I think charities are supposed to operate 10 to 15% overhead, not 70 plus percent. But if governments can create money, which is the ultimate theft through inflation, if governments can create money, then they can just hand out all of this newly minted money to their friends who get it at full value and everybody else, particularly those on fixed incomes, ends up being robbed blind.

[0:12:35] So debt, by which I include inflation. Now, I know that that's a little bit of a round peg in a square hole, but debt is a form of theft, right? So, if I sign a note that says you owe $10,000, then I've stolen $10,000 from you. I've stolen $10,000 from you. If I forge a signature and whatever it is, go off to some foreign country and you end up having to pay that debt, I've stolen $10,000 from you because I take the money and you have to pay the expense. And inflation is the same kind of thing. A counterfeiter is a stealing from people who have the existing currency, right? In the same way that the people who shaved off the edges of coins were stealing from those who had those coins, and the Roman emperors who kept putting more and more garbage metal into their coins were stealing from those who already had the good coins and so on. Because it creates a debt.

[0:13:43] Just adds a little bit of that debt to everyone else and every other price. So it's fine to look at a single cause. It's sort of back to the guy who was the crack addict. It's fine to look at single causes for overall disasters and government control of money and the ability of governments to go into debt. In other words, to create unfunded liabilities on the part of others is foundational. All right, part two. You speak significantly of virtue, which I have taken deeply to heart and working to learn more. Thank you. I wonder if you could also speak to virtue in government and among the elites who now run much of our world. If our leaders claim to be virtuous, which I'm sure they would, if asked, but don't bring up on their own terms, how can they justify the debts that have been accumulated, mass immigration and so on? If elites claim to be virtuous, again, they don't bring it up, how do they justify Rust Belt's offshoring of work and well-being of regular people. It seems like virtue is under attack or is being placed to the side. What is going on? Or was it just never really a significant thing?

[0:14:45] So, the best way to control people is to pretend you're not threatening them, but you are inflicting virtue upon them. So the most dangerous and excessive threats in this universe exist in the concept of eternal hell that if you don't obey the priest that you will burn in torment for eternity I mean we think of medieval tortures as brutal and inhumane as they were of course if you've ever been to sort of medieval like recreations of medieval torture chambers and you see just the Horrors that were inflicted upon people. Physically.

[0:15:32] You'd look at that and say that's monstrous, but those people would die in a relatively short order, and certainly they would die virtually instantaneously relative to eternity, where even worse tortures awaited them. And so a priest will tell you that you will be tortured and mutilated and punished for eternity if you don't do what he says. And part of what he says is you have to transfer resources to me. If I said to someone, nah, let's not make it me, if, let's say Bob, if Bob says to someone, you have to give me money or I will torture you, that would be a threat and that Bob would go to jail. But if you are religious, a religious leader, and you say, you have to give me resources or you will be tortured, say, hey man, it's not me, it's God who's doing it, so it's not that bad. But if Bob says, oh, it's Doug who will torture you, then both Bob and Doug would be arrested. This is sort of basic morality, right? If you threaten torture from someone else, then both you, as the person who threatens, and the other guy, as the person who will torture, would both be arrested. That would be kind of like a shakedown, right? That would be like the mafia saying, if you don't pay me protection money, of them have burned down your store.

[0:16:53] So, there's a horrible threat there, but it is under the exhortation of virtue. I tell you of these things, well, obviously, you.

[0:17:05] If they're perceived to be true, it's hard to know what people actually believe. We only know what they say. But these things are talked about, but they're talked about under the guise of virtue.

[0:17:18] So you're not punished because you don't give me money. You're punished because you're bad. Right? So it's less honest than the mafia, right? At least with the mafia, they say, well, yeah, basically, we're going to burn down your store if you don't give us money. But they don't say, and because you're morally corrupt and evil, to the store owners, right? They say, look, we don't like to work for our money. We're good with violence. So do that. Give us the money or we'll burn down your store. But there's no moral element involved. It's just an appeal to pragmatism. And of course, the mafia will also say, oh yeah, by the way, we own and run the police department and we have lots of people in there. So there's no point going to the police. They have that kind of stuff. There's no moral element involved, which is why it tends to diminish over time. But if you say to someone, I'm threatening you or enacting violence against you because you're immoral, that my aggression against you, my threats against you, are there for purposes of morality, and if, of course, people believe that, then you have a very efficient control mechanism on your hands.

[0:18:32] So, politicians take resources from you under the guise of exhortations to virtue. Don't you want to take care of the poor? Don't you want to take care of the sick? Don't you want to take care of the elderly? Don't you want to help these poor refugees? And so, under exhortations of virtue, well, they get a hold of your resources, to put it as nicely this as possible.

[0:18:59] If you don't want to transfer those resources, then the threats are activated. So, in church, you have to give the tithe, right? Not all churches, a lot of churches, but you have to give resources. And if you don't give resources, or if the church doesn't get enough resources, then it punishes people with chastisement, ostracism. And again, And you give the tithe in part to avoid going to hell and so on, right? Which is give me money or be tortured. Say, hey, it's not me. It's just God, whatever, right? But since there isn't a God, it's basically give me resources or my invisible friend will torture you for eternity after you die. Or, you know, I mean, I know if they say it's not God who's doing the torturing, but the torture is part of the religion. Oh no no it's the devil who is going to torture you it's like yeah but.

[0:19:56] God is the one who sends you to hell because god can do anything therefore god can choose, not to send you to hell say ah yes it's not you it's god sorry it's not god who sends you to hell it's you who sends yourself to hell well but that's like saying if the mafia the guy doesn't pay the protection money and the mafia burns his store down says well it wasn't the mafia who really did it, it was the guy who did it because he chose not to pay the protection money. That's blaming the victim, right? So, sociopaths in general are experts at threatening you under the guise of mimicking virtue. Threatening you under the guise of mimicking virtue. So, sociopaths or control freaks or whatever you want to call them, they want to control you using aggression or coercion.

[0:20:52] Know that if it's open, naked aggression and coercion, that you will resist. They also know that you don't want to resist because resisting is dangerous, and thereby, or therefore, they give you the fig leaf or the cover of, I'm not submitting to aggression or coercion, I'm submitting to virtue. And that way, to resist or rebel is to resist or rebel against virtue itself, which people don't want to do. So, all right, any future plans or ideas to write a children's book? I think a children's book would be fun to write a children's book on ethics, UPB, but I need to become better at AI. Now, I've spent the last month plus working heavily with AI for imagery and video snips and so on, so I need to become better at that because I need to be able to create consistent characters throughout a book. So it certainly is a plan. And I appreciate the reminder. So yeah, thanks everyone so much. Of course, freedomain.com/donate to help out the show. Very greatly, deeply and humbly appreciated. And I hope you have a beautiful day. And we will talk soon. Take care. Bye-bye.