0:04 - Introduction to the Question
0:39 - The Challenge of Trust
2:29 - Immigration and Its Implications
4:23 - Breaking the Deal
6:42 - Honor in Relationships
10:34 - Expectations and Commitments
14:26 - Implicit Agreements
17:22 - Risks of Unilateral Changes
19:24 - Final Thoughts on Trustworthiness
In this episode, I dive into a thought-provoking question raised by a listener about navigating the complexities of personal relationships with someone who has questionable legal standing in the country. The listener has developed an interest in a young woman who opened up about her status as an overstayer on a student visa after leaving school due to family circumstances. This situation sets the stage for a broader discussion about the integrity of commitments and the implications of unilaterally changing life circumstances, particularly in the context of relationships.
I explore the notion of immigration laws and the moral considerations surrounding them. This discussion touches upon concepts like freedom of association and voluntarism. I emphasize that while individuals have the right to move freely, the responsibilities tied to legal agreements—like visas and immigration status—are crucial. When someone breaks these societal agreements, it raises questions about their integrity and potential for future commitments. I provide analogies to elucidate how breaches of contract, whether in relationships or legal agreements, signal a lack of respect for the trust inherent in them.
The conversation then transitions into examining the broader implications of honor and integrity in relationships. I contend that the foundation of any healthy relationship is built on the fulfillment of promises—both explicit and implicit. I use various analogies, such as insurance claims and business agreements, to illustrate that when established expectations are altered, it can lead to significant issues of trust. This line of reasoning leads to the argument that if one partner shows a tendency to disregard key agreements, it can jeopardize the honesty and reliability needed in a romantic relationship.
I urge the listener to have open and candid conversations with the woman about her choices and the reasoning behind her decision to remain in the U.S. despite her visa situation. This inquiry may reveal whether she holds any principled beliefs regarding her actions or if she simply places personal desire above the commitments she made. Ultimately, I caution the listener that a relationship with someone who does not maintain their word or change their course of action responsibly could introduce significant risks.
This episode acts as both an exploration of the complexities surrounding immigration and personal integrity while equipping the listener with practical advice on approaching their romantic interest. By emphasizing the importance of discussions centered around commitment and honor, I aim to provide valuable insights for maintaining healthy, trustworthy relationships in our interconnected world.
[0:00] All right. Quick question from a donor. Thank you for the donation.
[0:05] He says, hi, Stef. I'm a 30 year old male. Not sure if you do give advice through donations. Recently, I've met a girl, 26 year old female through the Facebook dating. We hung out a few times. And after the third date, she opened up to me that she came to the U.S. Through student visa and overstayed for a few years now. She dropped school because of her father passing and broke up with her long distance boyfriend. From conversing with her, she seems genuine, but deep down I have a feeling she is a red flag. I've talked to my relatives about the situation and they mostly suggested me to know more about her as a quote friend.
[0:39] I want to know what is your advice on how to interact with her and find clues that she is actually genuine.
[0:47] So look, it's a big, it's a big question. And And I am going to, as I am occasionally want to do, I will annoy some people. And none of this, of course, is designed to be a comment on, you know, what should or should not be legal, right? At the moment, mass immigration in general is not freedom of association, right? It's not freedom of association because, in general, people, of course, come to countries and then they get, a lot of times, they get free stuff, right? And because they get free stuff and often they'll get preferential loans or hiring policies and so on, so it's not particularly freedom of association.
[1:35] If you come to a country legally or illegally and people, you know, you get sort of, quote, free healthcare or free retirement benefits or welfare or subsidies or preferential hiring policies because of quota systems and so on, that's not freedom of association. I have zero problem with whoever wants to live in a particular geographical area, right? And I write about this in my novel called The Future, which you should get for free at freedomain.com slash books. So moving from one place to another is not a violation of the non-aggression principle. It's not a violation of freedom of association. However, if you as a taxpayer are forced to subsidize.
[2:25] Then it's not freedom of association anymore, right? So that's sort of my major issue.
[2:30] And that's just this sort of inevitable fallout of the principles of freedom of association and voluntarism and so on, non-aggression principle. So, I mean, you are obviously in a free society, in a free world, you are free to move wherever you want. But nobody is obligated to do any kind of business with you. Nobody's obligated to give you money or resources at least at the level of coercion, right? And so on, right? So these are all, I think, fairly obvious and evident situations. So there is, however, something that is interesting about this woman in particular, right? So as a whole, and I know this is kind of collectivism and all of that, so this is like not me with my voluntarist hat on. This is me with the sort of general, as the world is now. So, you know, rightly or wrongly, people have voted for particular laws about entering countries. And if you then break those laws, you are going against, in general, the codified will of the people. So the people have voted and they said, listen, you can come to this country in order to study.
[3:50] That's the deal. And she signed up to that deal ahead of time, says, okay, you can come to the country if you are a student.
[4:00] And what's happened though, is that she is breaking the deal and she's staying in the country despite the fact that she is no longer a student. So that's not ideal. And again, we're just talking from the general norming perspective, not sort of the enlightened non-aggression principle, voluntarist perspective.
[4:24] But it means that she will break a deal unilaterally with no consultation. So she hasn't maybe applied for a work visa, or she hasn't renegotiated the student visa, or she hasn't even taken part-time courses and so on. So from the sort of general average normie perspective, she signed up for a deal and she has broken the deal and gone against the wishes of the people as a whole. And there's no particular way around that. That's just a fact. Like it's hard to think of a great analogy, but it would be something along the lines of you can stay in this place if you have a medical condition. And then she stays in this place for free. And then she, even after the medical condition is cured, she pretends to still have that medical condition, right?
[5:22] So it's like, well, you can stay here. This is for people who can't walk, right? And then she just fakes being in a wheelchair in order to stay in that place or to get those resources. Or, you know, if it's like the insurance company says, if you are really harmed in some way or another, then you get payouts every month until you get better. And she signs up for that. She pays her premiums and so on. And then she fakes an injury in order to keep getting paid. So from the general normie perspective, this indicates a lack of integrity to go against the laws of the country, to go against the will of the people, and to go against what she herself voluntarily signed up for ahead of time. Now, I understand that you can argue that the laws are unjust, and I get all of that. And I'm not saying, obviously, obey all laws, no matter how unjust. Like, I get all of that, right? I mean, that's the Nuremberg principle as a whole, right? That not all laws are just, and a positive law is not a moral substitute for natural law, right? Not all laws are just. I get all of that.
[6:35] I'm not saying this in order to try and argue for that. I hope that you would know me well enough to know that that is not my argument or my perspective.
[6:43] But from a general perspective, it is still the case. And look, if she says, and I wouldn't necessarily agree with this reasoning, but if she says, look, these laws are corrupt and immoral and unjust, and I'm a freedom fighter who's disobeying that which is wrong. I'm like somebody, like slavery was legal, but I'm running a kind of underground slavery to get slaves to Canada because I hugely disagree with them. Like, okay, you could make that case and there would be some perspectives on that argument that would be less dishonorable. I'm just sort of trying to be as circumspect as possible, right? So I'm trying to give as much credence to the case, right? But if she's just like, well, you know, I just, I got here on a student visa, I just quit the student life, I'm no longer a student, and I'm just staying. Like, there's no particular reasoning, there's no moral argument, there's no, oh, the woe betide the tyrants who inflict these unjust laws on a helpless population, whatever, right? Like, if it's just, if it's not a principled stand in any way, and whether you agree or not with the principle, you can certainly understand why somebody might have civil disobedience to laws they consider enormously unjust. I'm not recommending it, obviously, but you can certainly understand the argument, right?
[8:01] So, you know, the people who resisted apartheid and so on, right? We can understand that. So if, and it doesn't sound to me like she's got much of a philosophical perspective on any of this stuff. It doesn't sound like she's fighting the good fight in her own mind and opposing immoral and unjust laws and striking a blow for her perception of freedom. And like, it doesn't sound like that. it just sounds like she just broke the deal. She came here under true pretenses. But then when those true pretenses became false pretenses, she didn't change, right? So this would be another analogy would be that you have insurance, right, on your jewelry, and you think you lost a $5,000 ring. And so you file a claim and you get your $5,000, right? Because it's gone, right? And you sign an affidavit that it's gone and so on, right? And I assume that in those affidavits, it would also say, oh, and by the way, if you ever find it again, you have to tell us and you can't keep both the ring and the $5,000. Now, if she were to file an insurance claim that she had lost the $5,000 ring and they give her $5,000 and then a month later she finds the ring again but doesn't tell the insurance company, that would be dishonorable, right? That would be a form of theft or fraud.
[9:25] So that would be that even if she filed, not intending to defraud the insurance company and steal $5,000, but she genuinely, like she genuinely believed the ring was lost, then she is in possession of those $5,000 in an honorable contractual fashion, right? But then if the conditions change, in other words, she finds the ring, but she does not inform the insurance company and give the $5,000 back, then that's wrong, right? So the conditions have changed, and now she's in the wrong. So she came over on a visa, and she signed all this paperwork that says, I'm going to maintain good standing in my educational environment. I'm going to stay a student, and if it should change, I'm going to do X, Y, I'm going to leave or whatever, right? So she signed all of that, and she swore to all of that, and that's the deal by which she got the student visa. And if she is just not respecting the document that she signed and the fairly solemn promise that she gave. And again, I mean, you could make some kind of case about, oh, it's an unjust law and so on, right? But nonetheless, that doesn't seem to be the case.
[10:35] So I haven't talked about this as much as I probably should, and maybe I'll do it on the show tomorrow. But it is really, really important to understand that the foundation of any good relationship is honor, that you have to keep your word, right? I mean, if you say your marriage vows, right? We're together forever, better, worse, sickness, and in health, richer for poorer, till death do us part, holding no others before you, and so on. That vow, that wedding or marriage vow, is a statement that is only as good as the honor of the people making it. And if you don't have honor in your relationship, then you don't have much of a relationship because honor is predictability when it comes to promises, when it comes to commitments.
[11:25] There's this whole argument that erupts on Twitter from time to time about duty sex, right? To just the woman who has a monogamous relationship or a monogamous marriage, where the man, of course, can't sleep with anyone else, does that woman, well, what happens if she stops providing sex to the man, right? Well, I mean, at some point, you know, what's that shocked Pikachu face where a woman who has to slept with her husband for three years is shocked that he cheats on her, right? I mean, if a man has an economically monogamous relationship, in other words, he's the sole provider of income and his wife is forbidden to work and then he stops providing income, what's going to happen? Well, she's going to have to get her income from somewhere, right? They say, ah, yes, but you need income. You don't need sex, right? But if sex is unimportant, then it shouldn't matter if he cheats, right? Sex doesn't matter.
[12:20] So if there is a lot of sex before the marriage or a lot of sex early on in the marriage, a lot of sex on the honeymoon and so on, right? If that's occurring, then there's an implicit deal which says we have a sex fest, right? We have a sex-filled relationship. That's the implicit deal. And for a woman to pull the rug out from under a man and to stop sleeping with him, again, outside of medical issues and stuff like that, to stop sleeping with a man, would be as much of a bait and switch as a man paying for everything during the courtship and paying for everything during the engagement and then paying for the wedding and then paying the bills for the first six to 12 months of marriage and then just not paying any bills anymore ever again. There's an expectation of continued behavior that is implicit. It is implicit in a relationship that the best predictor of future behavior is relevant past behavior. So if the woman is hot to trot when you're dating and engaged and married and honeymoon and early marriage, right, then there's an expectation that that continues, right? So an honor is when you accept the binding nature of both explicit and implicit commitments, explicit and implicit commitments.
[13:37] So a woman doesn't have to have a formal contract with a man that he's going to continue to pay the bills if she quits and gets pregnant with their children. But it is just something you talk about if the man sort of says, I'm going to do that. Yes, of course, that's my goal. I want you to be a stay-at-home mom. I'm happy to pay the bills, all that kind of stuff, right?
[13:54] Well, then if he does that for a while, he can't just change that because that would be dishonorable, right? That the woman has made big decisions based upon an expectation of continued behavior, right? The woman has made big decisions based upon an expectation of continued behavior, right? And the man has forsworn all other sexual contact in order to have a, or on the understanding or the acceptance or the belief or the trust that the sexual behavior that characterizes the early part of the relationship is going to continue.
[14:26] Again, absent medical issues and so on, right? For me, there's always going to be occasional stuff, right? So, I'm sure that's the deal. Well, so honor is when a person's word is his or her bond. And the honor in terms of bond and promise does not have to be explicit, right? There is implicit behavior, right? There is implicit behavior. So if you've used the same catering company for all of your social events for, you know, two or three years, and they have consistently delivered and it's been a good value and you're happy with their service, and then you give them a big order, then you expect them to continue.
[15:08] To provide the good service they've provided for the last two or three years. And if they just suddenly take your money and don't deliver anything, then would they say, well, you and I didn't have an explicit...
[15:23] That, like, maybe you've gone beyond contract. It's just a handshake deal now, right? And say, well, we didn't have an explicit bargain that we weren't just going to take your money. It's like, well, but, you know, you take my money, you deliver the goods, right? And there's an expectation that that's going to continue. And that's good, right? I mean, consistency is efficiency, right? So it's much easier and cheaper to do business with people you trust, right? Rather than to continually have to get legal contracts and vetting and line-by-line vetoes and back and forth and all that, right? I mean, if it was as complicated in terms of negotiating and paperwork to order some catering as it was to, say, sell a house, well, that would be pretty inefficient, right? So even though the catering company has not explicitly told you that you give me this money and I will provide you this goods, but there's an implicit acceptance of that, right? So it's like, well, you took down my order. It's like, yes, but we never promised we were also going to deliver it. But you took down the date. Yes, but we never explicitly promised. You showed me the paperwork where we explicitly said we would deliver it, right? So you understand, right? So if the woman says, well, I'm just not going to have sex with my husband anymore, that's a change from the implicit provision of activity prior, right? That's a change.
[16:41] And I mean, you can negotiate that change, but you can't unilaterally, justly, just change all of that, right? Any more than the man can just say, well, I know we've got a lot of bills and I've run up a lot of spending, but I've just decided to quit working and quit making money. Again, outside of sort of medical issues and so on, right? So with this woman, what I would be concerned about is the fact that she has.
[17:03] Unilaterally changed a very solemn contract that she voluntarily signed and agreed to, which is to only stay in the country as long as she's a student. That's important because if she says, well, I can unilaterally change whatever I agree to, if I don't find it worth for me anymore, I can just change it.
[17:23] I can just do what I want, when I want, regardless of what I commit to ahead of time. That to me would not be the basis of a relationship that I would consider honorably be sustainable or sustainable through the keeping of promises and honor. And again, like I know I'm not going to be defensive about this. I know it's real easy to misinterpret this and so on, right? I'm not saying all laws are just. I'm saying that from the normal perspective, she's unilaterally changing a solemn contract she agreed to ahead of time. And that is not a good sign for somebody who's good to date, right? I mean, if you had a boss and you had a handshake deal, yeah, yeah, I'll hire you for 20 bucks or no, let's say I'll hire you for 40 bucks an hour, right? You have a handshake deal with some guy, you know, he's gonna hire you for 40 bucks an hour, right? And then he pays you 40 bucks an hour for a year and then he just cuts you down to 20 bucks an hour, right? And he says, well, we don't have a specific contract, right? It's not written down, right? It's all, right?
[18:24] Say, well, hang on. I mean, you hired me on, you said it was going to be 40 bucks an hour, and you paid me 40 bucks an hour. And now you're just unilaterally dropping me down to 20 bucks an hour. And let's say he's also got you, you've signed a non-compete, so you can't just go to the competitor. Well, that's not good, right? Because he's now unilaterally changing an implicit agreement with no negotiation, something that he agreed to and performed and acted upon, which is $40 an hour. He's now dropping to $20 an hour with no input from you. So that is not honorable. So I would be concerned with a woman like this. I would ask her, what is your thinking around staying in the country illegally?
[19:06] Right now, it would be interesting. And of course, you never have to tell me, but I mean, it's worth having the conversation. What is her reasoning behind that? Now, if it's just like, well, I like it here. I don't want to go back, blah, blah, then she, based on hedonism, is willing to change pretty solemn contracts she agreed to ahead of time without consulting the other person.
[19:25] That, to me, would be too risky a person to give my heart to.
[19:29] Or at least that would be a giant red flag for me. And again, maybe, I don't know, she's got some crazy explanation that I can't think of and that might satisfy you with regards to the honor question, but it would be somewhat equivalent to somebody who's like, well, you know, I obviously I want to pay for things in the store, but if I really want something and I don't have the money, like I'll just steal it. It's like, that's not, that means that there's no particular principles that the person is going to limit her behavior by. Is she trustworthy if she unilaterally changes solemn agreements? She, and these, this would be legal agreements, right? That she signed to and agreed to ahead of time. Is she trustworthy? And I would argue that it would be a huge red flag. And now if she's trustworthy in every other circumstance, and this is again, this is all sort of amoral stuff, right? That's a different matter, but it sounds to me like she can just do what she wants. She doesn't have, she doesn't keep her words. She doesn't keep her promises. She doesn't renegotiate. She doesn't find another way. She just takes what she wants at the expense of what she agreed to ahead of time. That is not at all a good sign. All right. I hope that helps. Thank you for the donation. freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show as a whole. Lots of love from up here. I will talk to you soon.
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