In this Flash Tuesday Afternoon Space on 14 October 2025, philosopher Stefan Molyneux dives back into the political arena, reflecting on his journey in public discourse since 2005. With the reminiscence of a two-decade commitment to philosophy, he casts a spotlight on the intersection of politics and ethics that shaped his thought processes. As he recalls navigating through the intense political climate of the Obama years and the subsequent rise of Donald Trump in 2015, Stefan highlights the media's relentless misinformation campaigns that sparked his interest in Trump. He shares that his fascination stems from his own experiences of being targeted by the media, leading him to draw parallels between his own narrative and that of Trump's, suggesting a shared adversarial relationship with mainstream media narratives.
Stefan transitions into an analysis of Trump's core promises during his second term, tracking progress nine months into his presidency. With a keen business lens, he assesses the completion rate of Trump's commitments, framing it within the context of political realities—limited control over Congress and ongoing judicial challenges. He dissects each promise, updating listeners on which have been fulfilled, which are seeing progress, and those that remain unaddressed. The results illustrate Trump's approach to energy independence, immigration reform, and tax policy. Stefan argues that by completing 25% of Trump's promises in the first nine months, Trump appears to be ahead of schedule. He contextualizes advancements in energy production and regulatory reliefs while emphasizing criteria for gauging success against political and judicial constraints.
As the analysis deepens, Stefan confronts critical issues, notably the lack of peace in Ukraine and the ongoing ramifications of the tariff war. He dissects the complexities of international relations, particularly in light of stagnant progress on peace negotiations and the trade conflict with China. Drawing connections between the current geopolitical landscape and Trump's policies, Stefan raises questions about diplomatic efforts versus military actions and the broader implications for American interests. He touches on current events that have kept the world on edge, like developments in the Middle East, and reflects on the challenges of upholding a coherent foreign policy amidst tumultuous global dynamics.
Towards the close of the episode, the conversation shifts to moral philosophy, as Stefan engages with callers who present various perspectives on ethics, situational morality, and the balance between objective standards and the complexities of human emotions. Each exchange probes deeper into the frameworks of moral judgment, the philosophy of law, and dialogues on due process in a hypothetical free society. Here, Stefan reaffirms the importance of academic rigor in understanding ethics while addressing real-world implications uniquely tied to personal and societal evolution.
The episode concludes on a reflective note, with Stefan emphasizing the philosophical stance that challenges should be faced head-on in the sphere of personal responsibility and collective accountability. He invites listeners to ponder the deeper meanings of their values, urging them not to lose sight of constructive dialogue amidst chaos. The episode encapsulates not only a philosophical exploration of current political dynamics but also sparks a broader conversation about moral imperatives in a rapidly changing world.
0:05 - Introduction to Politics
1:23 - Media Lies and Personal Experience
3:57 - Reflections on Political Promises
7:59 - Evaluating Trump's Progress
29:28 - Analyzing the War in Ukraine
42:22 - The Gaza Peace Deal
47:02 - The Epstein Files
52:10 - The Tariff War
59:12 - Conclusion and Q&A
1:11:38 - Logic vs. Mathematics
1:15:57 - Social Constructs vs. Objective Truth
1:22:19 - The Nature of Mercy
1:31:57 - Ethics and Universal Morality
1:40:12 - Situational Ethics Explained
1:47:51 - Emergency Situations and Ethics
1:58:56 - Due Process in a Free Society
2:09:27 - Exile as Punishment
[0:00] Hi, everybody. Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain. I hope you're doing well.
[0:06] And yeah, you know what?
[0:07] I'm going to do it. I'm going to dip back into politics just a wee smidge because that's kind of how I cut my teeth in terms of coming out into the public eye. I started my show in like 2005. October, in fact, was my first published article. So it is 20 years, really. And I kind of cooked around doing philosophy and, you know, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and the call-in shows and so on. And then, I guess it was around 2012, I started doing politics, and wouldn't you know it. I'm not the first philosopher to have taken his dip into politics and found both success and controversy thereby. It's happened to many people throughout the history of philosophy, so I guess I kind of dipped in Dovin through, I guess, the Obama years. And then around 2015, oh dear, oh dear, I started talking about Monsieur LeTrump. Monsieur LeTrump. Now, I was actually just kind of fascinated as a whole, as somebody, since I am somebody that the media has lied to repetitively.
[1:21] If you're relatively new to the show, you wouldn't know about all of this. My picture was three times on the front page of the Sunday New York Times as part of a horrifying online community that led people into religion, girlfriends, and getting jobs.
[1:37] And so, anyway, having been lied about myself when I saw the media lying about Trump, pathologically, ferociously, relentlessly, just lying their asses off about Trump. Now, one of the things, of course, that you go through when you're lied about by the media is you start to have sympathy for, I suppose, other people who are, yes, that's right, lied about by the media. And if I look at myself in the mirror every morning with great delight, I look at myself in the morning and I know that I am a good guy. I know that I'm doing good things in the world, being virtuous to the world. And I also know that I'm lied about continuously and ferociously. And so if I'm like, oh, gosh, you know, I didn't have any particular opinions about Trump. I didn't really follow him that much. But I'm a good guy that the media hates. So I found it quite interesting. I'm like, okay, so if I'm a good guy and the media hates me, the media hates Trump. Huh. Well, I'm sure you're aware enough to finish that syllogism all by yourself.
[3:06] So that was sort of the genesis of the idea. And I was working with a fellow named Michael. And he, of course, was based in the U.S. Based. Based, I tell you, in the U.S.
[3:21] And he and I worked on a series of presentations called The Untruths About Donald Trump, which were viewed millions and millions of times. Now, what is interesting is Trump won in 2016 by 70,000 votes. My presentations were viewed millions of times. Well, look, I'm not the only person on this planet who can do some math. So then when it came to 2020, I was despawned, ladies and gentlemen. The button was pushed, and I was beamed out to deep space, where I spent a half decade in the wilderness.
[3:58] And no disrespect to the people who followed me there, it was wonderful to have you on board, but it certainly was a wee bit of a far cry from what had been going on before. So, I didn't have much to do with the 2024 election, but I thought it would be interesting to revisit what happened since, what has happened since. Because Trump obviously had a fairly expensive and extensive set of promises on his website. And I've been keeping track of them over time, over time. So sort of without any further ado, I will share, I'm pretty good at politics. I'm pretty good at politics. Sorry, just before I jump in as well, don't mean to tease you all too much, little leg, little thigh, maybe an ankle for the Victorian among us. But one of the things that I had great sympathy for were the people that I had worked with in America. You don't have to get into their names. Everybody who's been around knows who they are. The people who I worked with in America, we did shows together. We did Christmas specials together. We did a bunch of work together and so on. I was in documentaries and so on. So the people that I worked with in the United States had an absolutely appalling time. under Biden.
[5:28] There's a list of pro-Trump people who were arrested under the Biden. It's not even a presidency. It really was just a black-hearted auto-pen regime, in my humble opinion. But, you know, people sleeping on the couch because they were afraid of being.
[5:43] Awoken at sort of five, six in the morning, and they didn't want their kids to be traumatized, and some people left the country and it was rough and scott adams recently did a very powerful and emotional speech regarding the recent piece in the middle east saying that it kind of made it worthwhile all of the difficulties that he went through because i mean he lost it's funny it's funny because he scott adams lost his entire social life his career most of his businesses and so on. I gave up, I imagine, millions and millions and millions of dollars every year, in order to support Trump. Now, I personally was not a Trump supporter. I just don't like it when people lie. And he was sort of the ground zero or the nexus of the loci, the meridian, I dare say, falsehoods. And it is a philosopher's job to defend the truth and to oppose falsehood. And where the most falsehood is, therein should lie the most attention of the philosopher. So that was sort of, I wasn't pro-Trump. I think Adam, Scott Adams was saying that he was pro-Trump and he paid a lot. Now, the good news is that I didn't pay that much other than sort of my career as a whole.
[7:05] Certainly, socially, it wasn't such a big deal because I didn't have any normie friends. And I haven't had normie friends since probably a year or two after I was married. So a little over 20 years now. So it didn't affect my friendships that much. But yeah, let's just say it had a smidge of effect on my income, my prominence, and other things, which was fine, which was fine. As you get older, the stuff that seems important when you're young just doesn't seem that important anymore. And so, yeah, I lost some money and I lost some eyeballs and I lost some viewership and I lost a YouTube channel. And probably I was banned from, I don't know, 10 to 15 places as a whole.
[7:47] And it doesn't really matter. Honestly, it doesn't really matter. You've got your health, your family's well, your friends are well. You're still north of the grave, pumping philosophy into the stratosphere.
[7:59] Everything else is relatively unimportant. All right. So to circle back, how is Mr. Trump doing? So we are about nine months into Trump's second term, and he had 20 core promises on his website, in his 2024 campaign website. So we've done a kind of calculation here. So which promises have made progress, but are not completed. So out of the 20, and again, we're talking nine months into Donald Trump's second term, which promises did he make that have made progress but are not yet completed? Which ones have been finished? Which ones have seen no progress? Which ones have been reversed on entirely? Which promises have had mixed results? Now, there is a certain amount of subjectivity, some of this, but not much. Honestly, not much. Like, you know, you and I are going to see the color red slightly differently, but we're not going to look at a zebra and say red, right? What's black and white and red all over? A newspaper! Yeah, I remember that joke too, although it wouldn't make much sense now because who knows what a newspaper is.
[9:12] So which promises have been followed through, have been completed? Five out of 20. Now into a four-year term, nine months into a four-year term, so like 22% or whatever it is into the actual term, the way that I view this stuff is out of my business lens, right? So if I had a four-year business plan with 20 items and nine months in I'd completed five of them, that's 25%, I'm on track.
[9:40] If you've completed 25% of your promises made over four years or to be completed over four years, if you've completed 25% of them in the first nine months, you're ahead of schedule because 25, 25, 25, 25, right? That's what you would be expecting. So that is fantastic by any metric you could imagine, no matter how strict and stringent. And again, Trump is not a dictator, so he's limited. it. He's got to get the buy-in of Congress and the Senate. The courts have proved particularly recalcitrant because, of course, Obama appointed a whole bunch of far-left judges who seem to view everything for the revolution and not so much sometimes for, I don't know, I would say the rule of law because it's all kinds of complicated, but I don't think that a judge has the power to overturn a presidential decree. But again, I'm no legal expert. So it's very good. It's very good by any metric. Now, promises have made progress, not yet completed, 8 out of 20. Progress, but not yet completed, 8 out of 20. Fantastic. Well, promises have seen no progress, only 2 out of 20. So obviously, 10%. 10% has seen no progress.
[10:57] Doesn't mean they're not going to see any progress over the next three years and three months, but none yet. Which promises have been reversed on entirely? Zero. Of the 20 promises Trump made, zero have been reversed on entirely. Which promises have seen mixed results? Five out of 20. So that is very good. Of course, a lot of the promises are fairly broad, but of the five in 20 with mixed results, there have been some follow-through through a lack of progress or some reversals. We are also going to go into details about the ones that I sort of personally am the most interested in, why has there not yet been peace in Ukraine? Because there were sort of promises that was going to be achieved rapidly after the election. Why has there not been peace achieved in Ukraine? Why have the Epstein files not been released? And what are the results of the tariff war? All of these are important. Some of these are more momentary, and some of these are more in terms of progress, right? Releasing the Epstein files is more of a one-shot thing. Peace in Ukraine would be a bit oaf a process.
[12:16] The tariff war is going to be ongoing. I imagine, like most of these conflicts, the important aspect of it is consistency. So if you threaten a tariff, but you don't follow through on that threat, well, then people aren't going to listen to you. They're not going to care. If you put in a tariff And then people will wait to see if the tariff is going to take you put some 25% tariff off tariff on and people are going to see well do the manufacturers or the unions or whatever do they push you hard and then you you falter and you fail and you fall over, and so the tariff is probably the longest term one because people have to see that you're serious about it and are able to survive the blowback and the backlash of imposing tariffs, and can you survive the media war, the hostility, and can you survive all the political blowback in order to continue maintaining the tariffs? So let's see here. What have we got here? We're going to go through these fairly rapidly. Of course, I'm very happy to take your questions and comments afterwards.
[13:24] So the ones that have been followed through. So these promises have been substantially achieved through executive action, regulatory changes of policies with clear measurable results. Now, I think like most people, I'm not huge fans of executive actions because they can be undone by the stroke of a pen/auto pen, and it's not quite as solid as getting a law passed, but the Democrats hang together, the Republicans hang separately, right? So that's just a sort of political fact that you have to deal with. So one of the promises, this is promise four, make America the dominant energy producer in the world. Yes, that has been followed through, and this is really one of the best ones. Day one executive orders lifted restrictions on coal, oil, gas, and this has led to or stimulated record outputs of energy reported by the Energy Information Administration by mid-2025. Even PolitiFact, which is not exactly pro-Trump, has rated this one as fully kept. So dominant energy producer in the world by far, yes. Just remember, as you know this, there's no such thing as a advanced low energy civilization. Energy is civilization. And if you don't have high energy, you don't have high energy output, it is impossible to maintain your civilization, which is why.
[14:47] Other hostile civilizations will constantly be provoking and funding environmental hysteria and so on to try and tamp down your energy production. I'm sure you've seen reductions in CO2 from everyone in the West, which is China's gone through the roof, right? China has gone through the roof. I guess they're just that benevolent to release a huge amount of plant food into the air to stimulate. Well, of course, they're, what is it? They're taking about an area the size of Denmark every couple of years in turning desert into green land, and they need CO2 for that, maybe. So energy is a significant area of combat, not just conflict, combat in the world. If Saudi Arabia has funded environmental groups to reduce American production of oil so that America has virtually no choice but to buy oil from, guess, ding, ding, yes, Saudi Arabia. So So war is fought with demographics, war is fought with propaganda, and war is fought with crippling energy. And so the fact that the West has an environmental movement and other cultures don't is a complete catastrophe for the West.
[15:55] I'm sorry, like, hey, I worked in the environmental field for many years in software as an entrepreneur, so we all want the environment to be clean, but it is an Achilles heel through which the West is being crippled and these sorts of disasters are occurring. So getting your energy production up is fantastic for domestic civilization. All right. So promise 15, they said we're going to cancel the electric vehicle mandate and cut costly and burdensome regulations. Well, EV mandates were repealed in January of this year. Over 50 regulations rolled back by April as per Brookings and implementation is complete via administrative action. And both AP News and all sites have marked this promise as fulfilled. Promise 16, cut federal funding for any school pushing critical race theory, radical gender ideology, other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content honored children.
[16:50] And a DOV, sorry, Department of Education guidelines issued in February 2025 enforced funding cuts. There has been enforcement in multiple states. NBC News has said that this is achieved. Promise 17, keep men out of women's sports. This is just the way that he reported on it, his words, not mine. A January 2025 executive order enforced Title IX ban on transgender participation in women's sports in federally funded programs. There have been lawsuits, of course, but court implementation has occurred, and that can be rated as cat. Promise 18 was to deport pro-Hamas radicals and make our college campuses safe and patriotic again. There have been over a thousand deportations of Hamas sympathizers via visa revocations and tightened campus policies through funding, and that one is fulfilled. Now, which are the promises? Have had meaningful advancements, but full delivery is pending,
[17:48] And there's a combination of logistical problems, legal challenges, or congressional factors. So, promise one, of course, the number one thing that Trump was elected for, arguably, seal the border and stop the migrant invasion. So, the reinstatement of a remain in Mexico and wall expansions reduced apprehensions by 30% by July 2025, per Customs and Border Protection. Full sealing awaits additional funding and resolution of legal challenges. So I think that is not a matter of will or dedication, but simply it is very hard to get that across because, as you know, people on the left want a lot of migrants and immigrants or illegal immigrants to come in because the census doesn't discount you if you're illegal and therefore you get more congressional seats and a greater political power. Promise two, carry out the largest deportation operation in American history. I think the last one, a big one, was under Eisenhower, called, I guess by modern sensibilities appallingly enough, Operation Wetback, if I remember right. So have there been over 500,000 deportations by September 2025? Military support and focus on criminals. Scale is building, but short of millions, the millions promised, the resource and court constraints, and so on.
[19:03] And if you've read, what is it, Adios America, Ann Coulter's book from 2015, I think it was, she estimated 30 plus a million, possibly even 40 million. And so half a million is interesting. Of course, there have been voluntary deportations as well. All right. Was five, stop outsourcing and turn the US into a manufacturing superpower. Of course, in March 2025, big tariffs on China, reshoring incentives via tax credits have boosted jobs modestly. Trade deals are in negotiation and steady but incomplete progress on this. And here's the thing too, of course, one of the things that's really true about manufacturing, I spent a fair amount of time dealing with the manufacturing industry because the software that I wrote that was designed to help keep the environment clean and help companies comply with regulations, environmental regulations. I spent a lot of time on site in manufacturing areas. It is a beast and a half to get a manufacturing concern going in America. And it's easy to drive people away. It's very hard to bring them back. You know, like if you run a restaurant and your food is bad or your service is slow, then it's easy to drive away customers. It's very hard to lure them back. And it takes years to build and equip and make functional a manufacturing plant. And people don't want to do that if they're concerned that either in the midterms or in particular in 2028, that a Democrat is going to get in and destroy, right?
[20:37] I mean, now manufacturing has to compete with Bitcoin as an investment vehicle and other things too. So do you want to go through all the risk of building a manufacturing plant just to have the left come in and shut it down again or some regulation or something like that to come along. The unions end up with closed shop legislation where you can't even get strike breakers or as the union called them scabs to come in and work if you're laying people off or they go on strike. So manufacturing is really tough. In business, just so you understand this, right? In business, and I'm sure you know this, I'm sure most of you do, but for those of you who don't, in business, the longer you can plan, the more you can invest, right? The longer you can plan, the more you can invest, which is why there are 99-year leases sometimes. That was Hong Kong, if I remember rightly from my documentary. When the government has significant control over the economy, especially over the manufacturing sector, if you have to plan on two to four-year cycles, midterms and presidential elections, you just don't want to do it. I mean, if you've ever driven through the rust belt, right? Well, all of the former manufacturing plants were that have just turned to rust and been locked up. It's absolutely heartbreaking.
[21:53] As a guy who likes to build, who likes to create, absolutely heartbreaking. Each one of those hulking rust-laden monstrosities is someone's heart that got absolutely shattered and broken, or hundreds of thousands of people's hearts that got absolutely shattered and broken because of politics, because of politics.
[22:11] All right. So promise six, large tax cuts for workers and no tax on tips. No tax on tips. So that was implemented via IRS guidance in June, 2025. Broader cuts are in congressional discussions. Partial relief has been achieved through some interim deductions. Promise nine, end the weaponization of government against the American people. Well, I think in general, it's perceived as not against the American people as a whole, but against Trump supporters in particular. I did videos on the lowest learner stuff with the IRS way back in the day. So, there was pardons in January 2025 for the Jan 6th defendants, and agency investigations were launched. Reforms have continued amid internal resistance, and you can't just snap your fingers and reform organizations, especially when they don't face competition. Promise 10, stop the migrant crime epidemic, demolish the foreign drug cartels, crush gang violence and lock up violent offenders. Border enhancements and cartel operations have reduced fentanyl inflows by 20% as per the DEA. And this is a very tough one to keep going. Promise 12, strengthen and modernize the American military, making it without question the strongest and most powerful in the world. May 2025, budget increases, funded modernization, their multi-year buildups are underway. Promise 19.
[23:33] Secure American elections, including same-day voting, voter identification, paper ballots, and proof of citizenship. Now, executive orders have mandated voter ID for federal elections with state adoptions. Nationwide rollout awaits Supreme Court decisions. One of the, of course, the big challenges is when you give people this wild drama stuff like, we're part of the resistance and Trump is a fascist and a Nazi, then people will consider themselves like heroic french resistance fighters in 1943 under the vichy regime in france under the nazi occupation and they will get great brownie points from their idiot friends about the resistance and so on so that there's going to be a lot of quote heroic, countermeasures to all of this and a lot of wink wink you can vote anyway stuff which can't be dealt with at the presidential level that's going to have to be local if it's going to happen at all well what about no progress?
[24:23] Keep the U.S. Dollar as the world's reserve currency. No actions really have been taken, but I think it's fair to say, at least at the moment, that no actions are needed because the U.S. Status as the world's reserve currency remains secure.
[24:36] Fight for and protect, this is promise 14, fight for and protect Social Security and Medicare with no cuts, including no changes to the retirement age. No cuts proposed, maintaining status quo, but no enhancements or reforms, advance amid budget debates. Mixed results. So, of course, Social Security and Medicare is a battle, actually, of the old to extract and exploit resources from the young. And it's tough because the young are the future, but the old vote more. Okay, so what about mixed results? End inflation and make America affordable again. That's a big one. End inflation when 40% of the dollars ever created in America have been put into circulation since COVID. That's a big promise, to put it mildly. So end inflation, make America affordable again. This encompasses reducing prices in energy and housing and goods. So energy production boosts, which is tied to the promise for to make America stronger, stronger energy, lowered fuel costs by 15% by August 2025. This is as per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And that's some progress, without a doubt, but overall inflation hovers at 3.2%, with food and housing prices stable, but not reduced significantly. Tariffs contributed to some price hikes, which offset some of the gains.
[25:54] The White House claims affordability improvements via wage growth, but critics like the Hill note persistent high costs in urban areas. No comprehensive legislation has been passed, leading to uneven results across sectors. Now, the idea, of course, that you can cut inflation or eliminate inflation with a big comprehensive legislation is not true. That's sort of a normary perspective. You need a big law and all you need to do is stop printing money and inflation will go down. Okay, so Promise 7 was to defend American Constitution, the Bill of Rights, fundamental freedoms, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to keep and bear arms. Gun rights have been upheld with no new restrictions and religious freedom executive orders protected faith-based organizations from discrimination suits.
[26:40] To a January 2025 attempt to end birthright citizenship via executive order was blocked by federal courts in March, halting implementation but not indicating an absolute reversal. Efforts to appeal continue. On free speech, campus policies limited to Promise 18 curbed protests with a shift on TikTok from campaign threats of a ban to negotiation for U.S. Ownership drew mixed reviews. Supporters see it as pragmatic. Politifact notes it softens prior stances. Core freedoms like freedom of speech and the right to bear arms show defense, but immigration-related constitutional pushes faced blocks. Promise eight, prevent World War III. Seems important. I don't think it's going out on too much of a limb to say preventing World War III seems important. Restore peace in Europe and in the Middle East and build a great Iron Dome missile defense shield over America and have it all made in America.
[27:35] So diplomatic efforts yielded a Ukraine ceasefire in April of 2025. That did reduce large-scale hostilities, but full peace remains elusive because of ongoing skirmishes, territorial disputes, and Russia's rejection of proposed settlements, as detailed in analyses from the Institute for the Study of War and Atlantic Council. In the Middle East, of course, as you know, Israel and Hamas agreed to a U.S.-brokered ceasefire in Gaza very recently, it was less than a week ago, October 8th, 2025. The hostages have been returned and the prisoners released. So Trump has declared the war is over, although enforcement challenges persist. So since Trump gained office, no escalation to World War III has occurred. And that's good. Iron Dome funding, it's already in Israel, right? Iron Dome funding increased by 20% in the defense budget with US-made prototypes. In testing, nationwide deployment remains years away because of all of these various hurdles.
[28:34] Promise 11, rebuild our cities, including Washington, D.C., making them safe, clean, and beautiful again. So federal grants have supported D.C. Infrastructure upgrades, monument restorations, and some progress to the beautiful aspect. Crime initiatives tied to Promise 10 reduced violent offenses in select cities by 10%. This is per FBI data.
[28:55] But broader urban rebuilding lacks major funding. Homelessness and cleanliness issues persist in places like San Francisco. Spotty implementation. some successes in Republican-led areas, but stagnation elsewhere, which is kind of what you'd expect, right? Promise 20, unite our country. He says it in America, unite our country. Unite our country by bringing it to new and record levels of success. So GDP growth is up 2.5% in the second quarter of 2025. Energy independence represents success, for sure. Could foster unity? Rally-style events promote national pride.
[29:29] Well, Polarization has deepened with approval ratings at 45% and protests over immigration policies. And idiots like Joe Rogan saying, have a heart. Yeah, have a brain, man. Stop pushing weed. No specific unity initiatives advanced. Eh, fragmented. All right. So what about peace in Ukraine? Russia has reported 90,000 casualties over the last year. It's just horrendous. Now, I'm sure you know this, I'll just sort of touch on this briefly, the invasion, right? The invasion.
[30:04] Why did, from the Russian perspective, right? I'm not judging, just reporting, right? From the Russian perspective, why did they invade Ukraine?
[30:14] I mean, Russia's claim is that for eight years since the 2014 Euromaiden revolution and ensuing conflict in eastern Ukraine, the Kiev government, which they portray as illegitimate and controlled by extremists, has been perpetrating shelling, abuse, genocide against the Russian-speaking civilians in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. This is the Donbass region. I'm sure you know that. He described this as an intolerable nightmare, could not be endured through diplomatic means alone, couldn't solve it. And he had to stop this nightmare and safeguard the millions who rely only on Russia.
[30:49] And this was the immediate trigger and so on. And I mean, if you can imagine that Mexico took over Texas, again, I'm not justifying it. I'm just telling you the thinking behind it, as far as I can see. If Mexico took over Texas and started killing all of the Americans in Texas, that would be viewed as pretty important to take back, right? The second reason given by Russia was the encirclement of Russia by NATO. So there were these promises in the early 90s to advance not one inch beyond a unified Germany's border. So, Russia, of course, has been invaded by Napoleon and Hitler, and to be encircled and to be attacked in this kind of way is a nightmare. The horrors that are perpetrated in Russia before the inevitable Russian winter kills off the invading army is appalling. And Germany, of course, was the last country to invade Russia under Hitler.
[31:47] And as a result, Russia was not very keen on German reunification. And Russia eventually accepted German reunification on the promise that NATO would not go eastward from Germany at all. And then they did, and then they did, and then they did, and then they did. Putin argued that Ukraine's potential NATO membership and the placement of Western military infrastructure on its territory would turn it into an anti-Russia bridgehead for aggression against Russia. This created an unacceptable threat to Russia's sovereignty and very existence.
[32:23] Putin invoked Article 51 of the UN Charter allows for self-defense against armed attack as legal grounds for the operation, framing it as a preemptive response to prevent a scenario akin to the 1941 Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. If the army's there and the gathering and you've got concerns, you're allowed in the international law, you're allowed preemptive strikes.
[32:46] Also, the stated goals of the invasion were explicitly the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine, the neutralization of its military capabilities to prevent it from posing a threat or acquiring nuclear weapons, and the eradication of what Russia described as neo-Nazi elements within Ukraine's government, and also its military and its society. And you can see the sort of Azov battalion stuff that's out there. These included far-right groups allegedly empowered since 2014, and this narrative was part of a broader concern that Russia had that Western powers were using Ukraine as a proxy to contain and weaken Russia. And there were a whole bunch of biolabs in Ukraine, which were pretty negative and dangerous as well. Now, Putin also said that the invasion of Ukraine was a response to decades of Western hypocrisy and violations of international law. He said, look, you intervened in Yugoslavia in 1999, in Iraq in 2003, in Libya 2011, really one of the worst interventions since it opened up the floodgates of African migrants across the Mediterranean into Europe, and Syria as well, as precedents, where the U.S. Led, as he called it, empire of lies, ignored the UN and pursued unilateral dominance. He said, look, post-Soviet Union, Russia, has been deceived, disarmed, and subject to constant pressure. And so, to prevent a further erosion of Russia's sphere of influence in its historical territories, then this was necessary.
[34:23] So, that's important. Whether you agree with these or not, and I certainly wouldn't say whether I agree with them or not, but it's important to know the reasons why people are doing things things. And we think it's only important to know these reasons if we agree with people, but it's much more important to know these reasons if we vociferously don't agree with people, because you can't negotiate if you don't understand the other person's perspective, right? So again, Promise 8, Prevent World War III, so far so good. Restore a peace in Europe, eh, trickier. Middle East, yes, at least for now. So the administration did achieve a partial ceasefire in Ukraine, as I mentioned before, in April 2025. This was just diplomatic negotiations. And there were direct talks between Trump and Putin at an Alaska summit in August 2025. So this caused a temporary reduction in large-scale hostilities and a de-escalation in some regions. U.S. mediation focusing on the peace through strength, leveraging sanctions and military aid adjustments. And just as of today, full peace remains elusive. Ongoing skirmishes, drone attacks, territorial disputes, preventing a comprehensive resolution. Remember, peace sells, but who's buying? Is that a Megadeth album or something like that? But the reality is that you've got a military-industrial complex.
[35:45] Really, really hates Russia. They used to like Russia. Well, I shouldn't say. The leftist elements of the West used to really like Russia. I remember when I was younger.
[35:57] Actually, I'm pushing 60. Not when I was younger, when I was young. There was a hockey match, believe it or not, between Canada and Russia. And this was like a big battle between the West and then the godless communists and so on and it was a very very big deal and then i remember reading oh canada's sending five billion dollars worth of grain to russia and it's like what why would you arm anyway oh sorry why would you why would you send all this food to your enemies or at least the people that your own citizens view as enemies but of course the west was very pro-russian like the intellectual leftist west was very pro-russian when russia was under communism when russia became christian and nationalist. It's now the enemy and blah, blah, blah. It's pretty wild. And of course, the globalists, the powers that be, dislike in particular white Christian males. And so to have a conflict go on where hundreds of thousands of white Christian males are getting killed, I'm sure gives them some salivation of some kind. So what has happened? Why is there this stalemate. So Putin has rejected what the Trump administration has described as a generous settlement offer. This is during the August 2025 summit. Reportedly, nobody knows the details, of course, territorial concessions for Russia in exchange for Ukraine's neutrality and demilitarization.
[37:22] And Moscow, I think, says, look, we've got good momentum and we'd rather take more than be given less. The Russian forces are maintaining the strategic initiative and inching forward in eastern Ukraine, including advances near key cities like Pokorost. So this is an ongoing offensive campaign, campaigns, plural, sorry, from Russia. Large-scale drone and missile strikes the night of October 9th, 10th, which have overwhelmed Ukrainian defenses.
[37:56] Ukraine's drone interception rate dropped from 93% earlier this year to 88%, which exacerbates vulnerabilities, Russia is betting on U.S. fatigue. And the longer the conflict goes on, the more people are just like, oh, this isn't going anywhere. Let's just withdraw our support and so on. And again, I've said this before, I try not to be overly cynical. I'm still kind of blown away, really blown away that America can fund one side of the war without Congress declaring war. But I mean, I think the last time Congress declared war was World War II. So what does that matter right now?
[38:31] So, of course, Ukraine insists on full territorial integrity. They want the return of Crimea and the Donbass regions that were annexed or occupied by Russia since 2014. Despite the April ceasefire, Ukraine has continued targeted strikes, such as the October 2025 attack on a Crimean oil refinery, disrupted Russian fuel supplies, and escalated tensions. Do you remember this wild one where they had a bunch of drones come out of trucks and attack Russian airfields deep within Russian territory pretty wild. So this has led to these retaliatory actions, and Russia has reported over 90,000 troop losses in 2025 alone, still pressing their offensive. And the war has entered this phase. I mean, everybody hates to invoke sort of the World War I trench warfare stalemate situation, but it is a war of attrition now. Neither side is willing to concede core demands. The generals sat and the lines on the map moved from side to side. So the impetus for peace from the Putin-Trump summit has been exhausted, according to Russian statements, amid concerns over NATO expansion and European security. Europe views Russia as a direct threat with incidents like unmarked Russian troops near the Estonian border, heightening fears of a wider conflict. Now, it's pretty wild that Europe views Russia as a direct threat, but then also says that Russia should not view Ukraine with its strong Nazi elements, NATO, pending NATO membership, and fairly rapid remilitarization as not a threat, as not a threat.
[40:01] So, I mean, you could say, well, yes, but Europe was invaded by Russia, Second World War, but that was part of the pincer movement, the two-front war to take out the highest IQ population in Europe, which is the Germans. So, US-led sanctions, including those on Russia's shadow fleet of tankers, have strained Moscow's economy, but not forced outright capitulation. And there are, of course, significant internal US debates, even within the Republican Party and the Republicans' over aid levels. And, of course, Trump coming in as America first has slowed momentum. And so, do they want to support a war on the other side of the world or not, and so on, right? So the ceasefire is progress for sure, but there's still lack of mutual trust, still incompatible and unmoving demands and so on.
[40:57] Trump administration is still continuing to push for negotiations, but without stronger leverage, if you're in an attrition situation, full peace can take years. All right, so the big one, of course, the Israeli peace settlement. October 8th, 2025, Israel and Hamas agreed to a U.S.-proposed ceasefire in Gaza, marking a significant breakthrough after previous failed attempts in November 2023 and March 2025. The first phase successfully returned all 20 living hostages to Israel and led to the release of over 1,700 Palestinian prisoners. There was a formal signing ceremony on October 13th, 2025 in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt. President Trump, with mediators from Egypt, Qatar, and Turkey declared that the war is over, peace in the Middle East. Now, of course, if you're over the age of 12, you've seen this a whole bunch of times before. I think former President Clinton was taking to X being quite embittered over how much he gave up for the Palestinians to try and have some sort of homeland, which did not work out, of course. So there's a 20-point Gaza peace deal expanding on the Abraham Accords, includes provisions for reconstruction and demilitarization.
[42:07] But potential long-term implications for regional stability, enforcement, broader Arab-Israeli relations, and so on. Trump praised Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during speech to the
[42:21] Neset, emphasizing U.S. Insistence as key to the deal's success while sidestepping remaining challenges like potential violations or Hespa'al attentions. So, that's quite something. Ah, the Epstein files. This is Sernovich's prize, the Miami Herald. They both worked together to begin the unsealing of Epstein documents, which started the whole process. And if you're not following Mike on X. I don't know what you're doing with your internet connection. So now releasing the Epstein files, this was not explicitly listed in the 20 core promises, but he did repeatedly pledge during his campaign in 2024 to release all remaining Jeffrey Epstein related files, including client lists, investigative documents as part of a broader commitment to transparency, ending government weaponization, and so on. He framed this as exposing deep state corruption and elite networks. As of today, only partial releases have occurred. The Department of Justice began handing over initial batches to Congress in August of this year, including redacted transcripts and some names already public from prior court unsealing In 2024. Full unredacted files remained withheld, drawing bipartisan criticisms.
[43:36] So what's happened? I mean, there are concerns over Trump's own mentions in the files. Now, this is public opinion and congressional questioning. There's a concern that President Trump's name appears in the documents, albeit in non-incriminating contexts, for example, social interactions with Epstein before their fallout. Trump kicked Epstein out of Mar-a-Lago many, many, many years ago.
[44:01] Because according to reports, he heard that Epstein was hitting on an underage girl, maybe even trying to recruit them for his creepy sex ring. Sorry, like not that there's a non-creepy sex ring, but you know what I mean. So, I mean, the left has constantly tried to tie Trump to Epstein. And in fact, you know, I'm no lawyer, but when Trump said something like, yeah, Epstein, great guy likes girls on a little a little bit on the younger side though i mean that's the most you can say without getting your ass sued right so just listen to oh gosh was it courtney love talking about harvey weinstein saying how am i going to say this without getting sued if he invites you to a meeting don't go in hotel room late night meeting don't go i mean the threats of these kinds of blowback situations is pretty pretty considerable so so 53 percent of americans this is a poll from October, 53% of Americans believe the primary reason for non-release is to protect Trump. 75% overall support full disclosure. During a September 2025 hearing, Attorney General Pam Bondi stonewalled questions about these mentions. She said, oh, it's national security, redactions, blah, blah, blah, but avoided specifics.
[45:16] So DOJ confirmed Trump's inclusion in July 2025, fueling accusations of self-protection. So, personally, you know, the victims of Jeffrey Epstein have consistently praised Trump, as has the FBI and other law enforcement alphabet agencies for Trump's full cooperation to help out with Jeffrey Epstein and so on. So, I personally don't think that Trump is going to be implicated in any negative way, any seriously negative way in these documents. But I mean, gosh, I mean, I got to tell you guys, I mean.
[45:52] Would break people's brains if the full unredacted Epstein information, including all of the videos from his wired up penthouse and his Florida home, New York was in, Brownstone. So if all of the stuff that was found when his home was raided and then vanished, if all of that stuff came out, people would go insane. And I'm not kidding about this. People would lose their minds. It would be like ripping people right out of the matrix
[46:21] And of course all of this material which i assume is considerable all of this black male material when trump's saying oh i'm gonna release all the epstein material i mean that's all gone i said they said this on x like it's long gone i don't mean it's erased i mean it's gone it's not in any place which can be retrieved by any regular, method uh it's gone and i don't know if it's the idea of the sort of plato's noble lie or something like that. But if people genuinely knew how many decisions are made via blackmail, they would lose their entire faith in democracy because there's almost no relationship between what people want and what governments do.
[47:00] And the difference is, I assume, is threats and bribes. So there's also these administrative and legal hurdles. You've got to have extensive review for classified information, victim privacy, ongoing investigations. This is interagency coordination, notoriously slow. And if you if it's at all similarly declassifying other sensitive files it's a month long months or years this this process so in august 2025 the trump administration kind of shifted the tone said oh not necessarily full release but it's going to be partial, batches legal complexities under the freedom of information act and potential lawsuits from named individuals.
[47:41] And I mean, if you are, let's say you're, I don't know, Billy Joe Bobhead or something like that, and you're named in these files, I mean, you almost have to sue because you're, I mean, my gosh. I mean, if you're named in some significant negative way, you'd have to launch a lawsuit. Otherwise, your public life is probably done. And you may in fact be in serious trouble. Well, I don't know. Statute of limitations passed on all of this stuff. What do I know? Probably.
[48:07] So, let's see here. So when they reversed the full release stance in the summer of 2025, sort of controlled disclosures, people are calling this a mirage of transparency. So are they protecting other high-profile figures like politicians and business leaders and so on? Maybe. Maybe.
[48:27] What was that Trump said about the JFK files? Like why he didn't release them all? I was like, if you saw what I saw, you wouldn't release them either. Okay, so let's just end up here with the tariff. War. so this is promise five stopping outsourcing becoming a manufacturing superpower trump relaunched tariffs in early 2025 10 blanket rate on chinese goods starting february 1st 25 on mexico and canada tied to fentanyl and migration demands a lot of uh unsavory types are coming in through the northern border especially because the southern like you close one border open up the other you just shift where people are coming through right so additional measures like suspending the de minimis exemption for low-value imports in August 2025. New port fees effective October 2025 escalated the trade war. As of October 14th, 2025, results are mixed. Modest U.S. gains in revenue and reshoring, but global disruptions and higher costs.
[49:25] So tariffs have boosted federal revenues by an estimated $171.3 billion in 2025, which is a little over half a percent of the GDP. It's a de facto tax increase in some ways. Manufacturing jobs rose modestly, about 50,000 added by Q3 2025. Some reshoring, which means bringing manufacturing back home in sectors like electronics, but consumer prices increased two to three percent on imported goods like electronics and furniture, which is part of why there's persistent inflation. The IMF notes global impacts were smaller than fiat, but warns of premature conclusions, U.S. Growth resilient at 2.5% for the year. China's exports to the U.S. dropped 15% by mid-2025, prompting Beijing to eye U.S. Supreme Court rulings on tariff legality for leverage. Temporary tariff reductions by China in response could aid its growth, but overall the World Trade Organization forecasts resilient global trade growth despite tensions. The war has caught the world in its crossfire, raising costs for allies like Europe and reducing Asian imports via new U.S. Port fees on timber cabinets and furniture, much of it coming from China. So, of course, when foreign goods stop coming in as much, either people pay more or they reduce their demand or they start to manufacture domestically. But because there's such hostility on the left for these protectionist measures.
[50:54] A lot of people say, well, I'm going to, A, I'm going to wait and see if they work and B, I'm going to wait and see if they're permanent. If it's just going to be an executive order. Next time a Democrat gets in, it's just going to be overturned. And then I built this whole plant for nothing, this whole factory for nothing. Well, worse than nothing, right?
[51:10] You may remember this from last week, if you're at all involved in crypto. So on October 10th, is that four days ago, wild day? 2025, Trump announced plans for an additional 100% tariff on all Chinese imports starting November 1st or sooner, in retaliation for China's new export controls on rare earth minerals and refining equipment, which also was effective, well, sorry, was effective December 1st. This would stack a top existing 30% rates, potentially halting much bilateral trade and reigniting recession fears. It was last seen in April 2025. China responded defiantly on October 12th, vowing corresponding measures and retaliation, blaming U.S. discriminatory policies. Beijing urged negotiations over threats and accused Trump of double standards.
[51:57] And there's going to be a Trump-Xi summit in South Korea late October, and this could and all of that.
[52:03] Stock markets dropped, bottom fell out of crypto since recovered to some degree, and all of that. So the tariff war has advanced reshoring, but at the cost of higher prices, strained alliances, long-term effects hinging on negotiations, and court decisions. How you get other countries to take out their tariffs without imposing your own tariffs? Well, I mean, that was my argument from the beginning, that the tariffs are not there because Trump hates free trade, but because Trump wants free trade and you just, you can't get free trade if other people have their tariffs and you just have vague exhortations for free trade, right?
[52:45] Librarians dislike this kind of stuff, which I understand. But if you look at countries as individuals, if someone pulls a knife on you, you pull a knife on them. I mean, self-defense, right? So the idea is to get free trade through imposing punitive tariffs until tariffs are lowered. That is not too shocking, I think, is it? But again if you want to be um a purist then you need to be on another planet and you certainly need to not talk about profits and you really not need to talk about you really need not to talk about sorry let me just stop that again if you want to be a purist you have to live on another planet and if you want to talk about politics you have to talk about the exercise of power you cannot talk about idealism i mean you can but no one's really going to listen all right So that's my update on Trump. I think it's a very good mark. I think it's a very good mark, given all of the limitations. The man is a powerhouse. Sleeps a couple of hours a night, survived two assassination attempts, one of which took off a chunk of his ear.
[53:56] And came back from 94 indictments and endless time being threatened and is achieving a good deal of what he promised. And I understand people, I sort of hate to be this guy, but people who don't try and achieve difficult, complex things with significant opposition always think that things are easier than they are. Trump is not a dictator. And interestingly, it's one of the weaknesses that the West has when dealing with dictatorships like China. The dictatorships like China, like China has a 500-year plan, right? And I'm not kidding about this. You can actually see, you can see it online that they have a 500-year plan. I mean, how do you get that with a two-year cycle of midterms and presidential elections, right?
[54:46] So when you have to deal with internal opposition, it's very hard to get things done. Do you think that if the premier of China says something that there are a bunch of courts opposing him? I think not. I think not. So they just have a certain amount of decisiveness. And this is one of the things, one of the reasons why people have a certain yearning for this kind of dictatorship. Because you can, look, I'm not approving of it, of course. I'm just saying that when it comes to.
[55:25] Comes to actually getting things done for a long period of time, without a lot of internal opposition, dictatorship is more effective than a democracy. I prefer democracy, or I guess America is a constitutional republic, but I prefer the freedoms. Don't get me wrong. I really do. But in terms of decisiveness, if you have a general who's in charge of his army, and then you have five generals in charge of the other army, all of whom hate each other, Who's going to win the war? It's not that hard to figure out. And this is something that, I mean, Theodore Roosevelt was deranged. I mean, legit insane. But anyway, he did say something, he gave a speech at the Sorbonne in Paris, April 23rd, 1910. And this is an important thing to kind of grind into your heart. And I'll take questions if you have any questions or comments, I'll take those in a sec. It's important to kind of grind this into your heart. Because there are the doers and the naggers, men of action, women of action, and men and women of complaints, nagging, reply guy, nitpicking, and so on, right? And I'm starting to evolve into my privilege of age phase where I give less of two craps what other people say, and I'm only looking for what they have done over the course of their life. And it is very easy, right? Let's go with this great quote from Theodore Roosevelt.
[56:54] Not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of evil deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows. The great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls, who knew neither victory nor defeat. The man was mad, but what a glorious sequence of syllables to spit out of your breathing hole. That is just fantastic. Go out there and do things in the world. And when you go out there and do things in the world, I've been trying to bring reason, facts, philosophy, and evidence and virtue to the world.
[58:07] Well, this year is 44 years. And I've been up, I've been down, I've won, I've lost. I've succeeded, I've failed it's been glorious and cringe it has been everything, good and bad, sometimes even at the same time I have been incredibly low beaten down, defeated I have been victorious great, grand, magnificent, and everything in between and I wouldn't have it any other way and so when people are just like, yeah, but another thing what about this? It's just, it really is inconsequential. And the people who nag, the people who complain, the people who judge, but never do are irrelevant. I will take almost any advice from somebody who's achieved some significant thing in their life. And I would take almost no advice from people who have not. They just are irrelevant in the equation. They are just noise and not even that loud anymore.
[59:12] All right, so let us get to your questions and comments. James, if there's anything that you wanted to add, I'm certainly happy to hear if you had anything that you wanted to add to this. Privateer, I am, what is this, a space trading game? Do I have that right? It's a vague memory of that. All right, Privateer, if you wanted to unmute, I'm certainly happy to hear what is on your mind.
[59:34] Can you hear me?
[59:35] Yes, sir.
[59:36] Stefan, you're definitely that man in the arena, and you've been doing a great job with all of that.
[59:41] Thank you.
[59:42] I just want to talk on, I guess, you're talking about sort of the advantages of a dictatorship versus the advantages of a democracy. And I think, at least within America, constitutional republic, democratic republic, whatever way you want to describe it, And it has its advantages, but I think it has a requisite of needing strong moral and ethical orders in order for it to operate better than a dictatorship. Would you agree with that?
[1:00:12] I'm not sure what you're saying. So are you saying that if a country is full of strong people with good moral fiber, that it can operate better than a dictatorship?
[1:00:25] Yes.
[1:00:26] Well, what would that have to do with America? I mean, America is wildly fragmented, as is most of the West at the moment, by, you know, a wide variety of immigration and culture and languages. And, you know, I mean, someone I worked with in the past had a job at a previous life at a hospital, and he said they had to have 20 to 30 translators on hand just to process people coming in with various injuries because they didn't speak English. So i mean we can talk about you know i guess america in its founding was like 98 percent protestant uh white protestants and but it's been since certainly the heart seller act of 1965 where the demographic composition of america which had traditionally been sort of 90 percent white and 10 black uh was was fragmented uh now to uh almost beyond recognition so we can talk about some theoretical America where things hadn't gone that way, but I'm not sure how that would apply to the real America that is, or rather isn't at the moment.
[1:01:28] Yeah, I would actually, most of the Scott and I would agree with having a foundational primary language that we could all speak, and historically it was English, right? Now, I'm not Against having other people speak their own language, that's totally fine and all, but I still think a country needs, or at least all to have, a primary language in order to communicate between all people up in that country.
[1:01:56] Yeah, I mean, how many years is America away, how many years away is America from like press nine for English, right? It's not that far at all. Well, and of course, the purpose of... Or the issue to me with language is not so much that people speak a different language. What do I care? People speak whatever the heck they want. The issue that I have is the subsidization of those languages. It's all the government money being poured into translation services and all of that.
[1:02:28] Well, the most interesting thing is that it's considered English as a second language. Why? Those programs just seem, I don't know. They seem like they're buried within that description itself, trying to overthrow English as the primary language of the United States, maybe. But I'm just trying to wrap my head around.
[1:02:50] Yeah, English is the language of political and economic liberty. So, of course. But, I mean, the way that it used to work in the past, of course, was you would get a bunch of people coming over to Canada from Greece. My wife's parents were Greek. So you get a bunch of people coming over to, say, Canada from Greece, or you can say China or whatever. And you know what happens is they all congregate un their own neighborhoods, right?
[1:03:17] So you get Greek town, Little Italy, you get Chinatown and so on. And so the immigrants come first generation and they have to function. So they move to their own communities where they speak Greek, and then they learn some English. but then the children grow up speaking English and you get the merging, right? So it's usually a whole generation.
[1:03:38] It's a bridging assimilation process in a way and that's actually a beautiful thing in my opinion.
[1:03:44] Well, I mean, it is what it is, beautiful or not, but what happens now, of course, is a variety of factors which keep people from assimilating. So in the past, it used to take a month to get the newspapers from the old country. But, and I remember my mother used to go sometimes to the library to read the German newspapers and so on, but they were always like weeks or more out of date.
[1:04:10] And now, of course, with the internet, you can watch TV in your native language and you, also don't have to economically integrate because if immigration is very high, then you end up with groups that simply trade and have economic relationships among themselves. And then, of course, if there's welfare involved, then you get money pouring into a community, and the community doesn't have to integrate, and then you get affirmative action, which means that they get jobs that, to some degree, displace the native population. And so, it's all a bunch of government hoo-ha that is not particularly conducive to peace. Sorry, is there anything else that you wanted to mention?
[1:04:54] I think you mostly answered it but I think you kind of dove down into the four elements of it and it really is related to at least establishing primary language so that you can further discuss things within your own country and on top of that perhaps even the emphasis on assimilation as well before you can even establish moral force and ethic force that you've come through. Did you agree with that summary?
[1:05:24] Well, I just, people should not be forced to subsidize other people.
[1:05:29] Absolutely.
[1:05:30] But because being forced to subsidize other people harms men primarily and benefits women primarily, what could you say about it, right? If it harms men and benefits women, nobody can say anything about it. It's just very, very sad. All right. Well, thank you.
[1:05:45] Thank you. Thank you for talking.
[1:05:47] Yeah. Appreciate that. I think that's a conservative note, sir. Oh, sorry. Conservative non-believer. My apologies. i did not see that if you would like to unmute.
[1:05:54] Good afternoon stefan how are you?
[1:05:57] i'm well how you doing.
[1:05:58] Good hey uh it's off subject but i've been wanting to talk to you for a long time on this um i'm familiar with many of your works peaceful parenting probably the greatest thing you've put out um the um non-aggression principle aligned with it pretty well and i actually reviewed art of the argument before i came into this um i don't necessarily agree with upb being a practical way to apply ethics to real world situations yeah
[1:06:32] But that's not what upb is for i'm certainly happy to hear criticisms but let's make sure we're in the correct category uh so upb is a way of evaluating moral propositions.
[1:06:43] I appreciate that. I, uh, because all of your other works tend to give me ways to practically apply my ethics for real life. I read it in that same sort of sentiment. Um, I'll be straight up about it. I tend to lean towards situational ethics more than objective morality, um, where UPB does hit the big ones as far as objective truths, murder, lying, uh, theft. It doesn't really hit the gray areas that people deal with on a day-to-day basis where there is no good moral option so you have to make a decision based on which is the better option
[1:07:25] Okay so uh i'm i'm thrilled to talk talk about the subject and i'm certainly happy to hear your thoughts situational ethics can be fascinating so hit me with a a situation that you feel upb does not help you with, and we'll see if we can figure it out.
[1:07:40] Okay. One of the best examples I've come up with, at least thinking through this argument, was we'll say there is a nurse in a hospital and she has one ventilator, yet there are two people that need that ventilator. A decision has to be made on who gets the ventilator. And I don't see, and because I'm focused on UPB, I don't see how UPB would help me figure out that ethical dilemma.
[1:08:08] So, I'll make sure I understand this. There's one ventilator and two people who were dying and in need of a ventilator. Yes. Okay. Why would that fall under the category, and again, I'm not disagreeing with you, I just want to make sure I understand. Why would that fall under the category of an ethical dilemma?
[1:08:27] Because we're dealing with life and death at this point, and the fact that that person has that power in their hands at that moment.
[1:08:35] Well, I mean, it happens all the time in hospitals, right? I mean, if there's a big, if there's a bus crash or something and you get 30 people coming into the ER, you do triage, right? So the people who are going to be fine without direct intervention, you don't treat them immediately. The people who are going to die, even with direct intervention, you kind of have to let them die and you have to focus your efforts on the people who are going to die without immediate intervention and you try and save their lives, thus condemning other people in a sense to die because you can't save them. And would you say that falls under an ethical dilemma?
[1:09:13] I sort of think it does. And if it doesn't, explain to me how it falls outside of ethics, because you're given the power to make a decision. And so you have to sort of analyze the situation to determine which is your best way to go to, for lack of a better term, reduce harm.
[1:09:37] Okay, so tell me what your definition of ethics is.
[1:09:40] Ethics is making the best decision you can based on a social construct of right and wrong, What's better, what's worse, how basically to be a better person for yourself and those around you.
[1:09:58] Okay, so it's a social construct. And how is it a social construct? Because UPB says that it's a universal truth. So how is it a social construct? So murder is wrong. That is a social construct. Murder is not wrong in any sort of universal or fundamental way, but it's just society determining that murder is wrong.
[1:10:21] Yes, because philosophy itself is a construct of the human mind. Without humans, there would be no philosophy. There would be no ethics. There would be no morals.
[1:10:31] So it doesn't mean that it's not objective. I mean, math is a construct of a human mind. It doesn't mean it's not objective.
[1:10:38] Yes, but in math, two plus two always equals four. When we're dealing with the human condition.
[1:10:45] Hang on, hang on. You can't just get a blow past that one, right? So, I agree with you that two and two make four in math, and it makes four universally, and it can't be overturned by anyone who disagrees with it, right?
[1:10:57] Right.
[1:10:58] So, it's a logical construct. Two and two make four. So, mathematics is a subset of logic in that everything that is mathematical has to be logical, but not everything that is logical is mathematical. Do you agree with that?
[1:11:14] Agreed. That is true.
[1:11:15] Okay, so we're talking not about mathematics particularly, but about logic. So logic, is that a social construct?
[1:11:23] In the sense that, yes, it was created by humans to try and make sense of the universe.
[1:11:28] Nope. You just contradicted yourself. Sorry. In what way?
[1:11:32] And please enlighten me, in what way?
[1:11:33] That's fine. So you said that mathematics is objective, right?
[1:11:38] Yes.
[1:11:39] Mathematics is a subset of logic, and I said, is logic objective? And you said, no, it's a social construct. But if mathematics is a subset of logic, and logic is not objective, then mathematics cannot be objective either.
[1:11:53] Push back on saying that knowledge is a subset of beliefs, where knowledge is close to 100% certainty.
[1:11:59] No, no, hang on, hang on, hang on. We're talking logic and math. You can't introduce beliefs and other things like that, because then we have to start defining those. Let's just stick with logic and math, right? If mathematics is subjective and mathematics is a subset of logic, then logic cannot just be a social construct. Because if logic is a social construct and mathematics is a subset of logic, sorry, could you stop playing with the microphone? It's kind of distracting. So if logic is objective, sorry, if mathematics is objective, and mathematics is a subset of logic, then logic cannot be subjective. Because something that is subjective cannot produce something that is objective. Sorry, go ahead. And is there any place you could, anyway, you could get to someplace quieter? I'm hearing a lot of background noise.
[1:12:47] If you're talking about my end, I'm sitting in a silent room, Stefan, so I don't know where that noise is coming from.
[1:12:52] Oh, my apologies. Then I will make sure nobody else is in the call. I think somebody is still on. Sorry, what was your username?
[1:13:00] Oh, my username is conservative nonbeliever,
[1:13:02] But you can call me Kyle. Okay, sorry, there was somebody else who was sitting on the line who wasn't muted, who was loud. My apologies. You're totally right. Go ahead.
[1:13:10] So you're saying that logic has to be objective because mathematics is objective?
[1:13:15] Well, logic can't be just a social construct if a subset of logic called mathematics is objective.
[1:13:22] Guess my line of thinking is logic has to be a social construct because it was created by the human mind. Without the human mind, logic doesn't exist.
[1:13:30] Yes, but not everything that is created by the human mind is subjective. I mean, if mathematics, is mathematics, does it exist in reality or is it created by the human mind?
[1:13:40] It exists in nature by itself.
[1:13:44] Mathematics, so numbers exist independent.
[1:13:46] Of the human mind. No, not in the sense that we can write them down, But physics itself can be broke down into mathematics as a way to explain it. And it is absolutely objective. And I already said two plus two equals four in that sense. If you remove the human, mathematics still work.
[1:14:10] And it's still applicable. No, but hang on. So let's say talking about two coconuts. So there are two discrete entities that exist independent of the human mind. Is that fair?
[1:14:19] Okay.
[1:14:20] That's right, right?
[1:14:21] Yes.
[1:14:22] Okay. The equation one plus one equals two is mathematics. We agree with that, right?
[1:14:29] Mm-hmm.
[1:14:30] Now, if I look at two coconuts and say one plus one equals two, that's an operation of the human mind. It does not alter or affect the coconuts in any way, but it is not subjective, right?
[1:14:42] Right.
[1:14:43] Does the equation exist in the world in the same way that the coconuts do?
[1:14:47] No.
[1:14:48] So we have something in the human mind that is created by the human mind that is a slave to things in reality and is objective in that it refers to things in the real world. And it's not a social construct because it would be true everywhere we go.
[1:15:04] With that, yes.
[1:15:06] The statement, all men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal, is that true everywhere in the world?
[1:15:15] Yes.
[1:15:16] Okay. The syllogism is created in the human mind in that it doesn't exist out there in the world any more than the equation one plus one equals two exists out there in the world, but it's not subjective because it's true everywhere, right?
[1:15:33] Right the inverse square law or gases expand when heated or e equals mc squared these things don't exist in the real world in the same way that a rock or a tree does but they're also not subjective because they're not arbitrary and they measure real things in the real world in a consistent way. Is that a fair statement?
[1:15:56] Yes.
[1:15:57] Okay. So, if a moral system conforms to reason and evidence, then it is not a social construct. A social construct would be, this kind of dance is the best, or I like this kind of music. And it's to some degree subjective, and it involves taste, and so on. It's not objective because every different culture prefers different kinds of music or song or dances or whatever it is. So there certainly are, I agree with you, there are certainly social constructs, but there are products of the human mind that are universal and objective. The difference between, say, science versus superstition. Science strives towards reason and evidence and objectivity, whereas superstition resists any kind of test of provability.
[1:16:50] Okay.
[1:16:51] So if a moral proposition conforms to reason and evidence, then it is not a social construct any more than two and two make four is a social construct.
[1:17:00] I see where you're going and I think I'm a little outside of, we don't have a meeting of minds here because I'm looking at ethics as a way that rational humans have developed to basically get along with each other and be Sorry,
[1:17:19] Sorry to interrupt So I asked you for your definition of ethics, right? Yes And you said it's the best decision based upon a agreed upon social construct.
[1:17:29] I would go as farther to say to expand that definition to, gosh, I hate using the term, but to either help humanity or at least reduce harm to yourself and other humans.
[1:17:44] Social constructs. So you said that ethics, I mean, this is the way debate works, right? Sorry to be annoying and pedantic.
[1:17:49] Oh, you're fine, Stefan,
[1:17:50] Please. The way debate works is you propose that ethics is a social construct, and then I made a case that ethics, if it conforms to reason and evidence, is not a social construct any more than science or math is. Now, when I had made that case, and it seemed to me that you agreed with it, you then jumped out of the debate and you said, we're not having a meeting of the minds. And what that means is, I don't know what the point is, if you make a statement like ethics is a social construct. And then I provide a counterproof and then you just say, well, we don't have a meeting of the minds. The whole point is we can't have a meeting of the minds unless we agree that reason and evidence is where our minds meet because there's no other place that we can meet. We can't have a meeting of the minds except through reason and evidence. Any more than I can be in one of your dreams or you can be in one of my dreams objectively. So I must say it's a little annoying personally. I apologize.
[1:18:44] Hang on.
[1:18:44] No, you don't have to apologize for anything. I'm just telling you my experiences. It's a little annoying when you give me a definition of ethics and I give you a counter proof, which you seem to accept, and then you just jump out of the whole debate and say, we're not having a meeting of the minds. What's the point of having a conversation if I make a reasoned case and then you just dismiss it as not meeting minds or something like that? I mean, what's the point of having a conversation then?
[1:19:09] To clarify what I mean by a meeting of the minds, I believe that where objective morality fails is where it doesn't take the human condition into consideration, such as emotions, mercy, justice, hate, love, all these things that people use all the time to determine their ethics is completely ignored by objective morality.
[1:19:37] So you're saying that murder never has anything to do with anger or hatred.
[1:19:42] It does but not if you break it down to objective morality then it's simply a rule on a piece of paper
[1:19:48] It's it's really tough to hear that morality so i work to ban rape theft assault and murder it's hard to think of somebody who hauls off and punches someone else who's not crazy like they're insane or they're not having some sort of epileptic seizure. It's kind of tough to hear that objective morality doesn't take into account human emotion when evil largely exists because of human emotion, greed, rage, lust, hatred. I mean, it is an acceptance of human emotion that drives the.
[1:20:23] Need for objective morality.
[1:20:24] If human beings never hated each other, who never, if there wasn't some rapist who had so much lust and hatred for women that he raped them. I mean, it is because of an acceptance of human emotion that we need objective ethics. So I'm not really sure how objective ethics fails to take into account human emotion when violations of objective ethics are almost always driven by an excess of human emotion.
[1:20:47] Sure, murder would relate to hate and anger, but where does mercy fall into it and compassion, which would be, I would say, the opposite side of those emotions? Do we say murder is wrong?
[1:21:03] I don't know why you keep using these terms without defining them. I mean, if you've listened to me for a while or you've followed this conversation, you need to tell me what your definition is. Let's start with mercy. So what is your definition of mercy?
[1:21:15] Mercy is to basically give somebody a break when they've violated some ethic and you've you understand where they've come from that you lighten your uh judgment at lack of a better term uh judgment on their uh transgressions so
[1:21:38] Yeah and i i think that there's a value real value and what you're saying, I would amend it slightly and, of course, not without your agreement and permission. So, mercy is when forgiveness reduces the chance of further recurrence of evil. And mercy is bad when it increases the chance of future evil. So, for instance, if there's some kid, he's shoplifting from my store, I catch him and I say, I give him a stern lecture and I let him go. And then he's so freaked out by that or nervous about that, that he never shoplifts again. So that would be a plus, right?
[1:22:19] Yes, absolutely.
[1:22:20] On the other hand, if there's a kid who shoplifts from my store and I give him that, and then he just goes and shoplifts from other stores and so on, then I have done something negative, right?
[1:22:30] Agreed.
[1:22:30] So I think mercy is, the act of forgiving someone for a moral transgression results in fewer moral transgressions in the future. Because the other thing too is that, you know, that sort of school to prison pipeline that if every kid who shoplifts is thrown into a dungeon, they're going to get kind of bitter and angry and more likely to become thieves, perhaps, right? So mercy is, I think, a principle of efficiency.
[1:22:54] So in terms of when to apply mercy, in general, the principle of mercy is applied when people are genuinely sorry for what they've done and make a pretty solemn promise to not do it again. And you believe them. So if you catch some kid shoplifting and he's like, oh, I'm so sorry, mister. You know, I need this loaf of bread. My mom's hungry. I'm really sad. He bursts into tears. He's really sad. Then you would probably refer him to a charity and not to the police. Is that fair to say?
[1:23:25] Fair to say, yes.
[1:23:26] But of course, if he comes and steals from your store and he steals something frivolous, not food, and he says, you know, screw you, store owner, if you catch him, right? Screw you. I'm going to get what's mine and nobody can stop me and, you know, I hate you and I'm going to come back and steal. Then you probably wouldn't want to forgive him, right?
[1:23:45] Right.
[1:23:46] So mercy is earned by contrition.
[1:23:51] But you basically just argued for situational ethics in a way
[1:23:55] No no no because upb doesn't tell you how to handle what is immoral upb only tells you that it is immoral but what you're talking about is a court system rather than a moral system so a moral system will say stealing is wrong now it won't tell you what you do it won't tell you what level of stealing there's some places where it's like, well, if you steal up to $700, it's petty theft. If you go over $700, it's grand theft. Like, UPB won't tell you any of that stuff. UPB won't tell you whether any individual is innocent or guilty of the act of stealing because that's for the courts to decide. UPB only tells you that stealing is wrong. And it's immoral everywhere and no matter what, no matter who, at all times, under all circumstances, stealing is wrong. So that's a principle.
[1:24:47] And I used the analogy before that UPB is like physics, but the court system is more like engineering. Now, an engineer has to base his calculations on physics, but physics will simply tell you these are the properties and relationships of matter and energy. But it won't tell you what kind of bridge you need to build in various circumstances that's for the engineer to do. So I think what you're saying is situational ethics is like what bridge you have to build in this circumstance. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. That's a very important thing. UPB without enforcement is just an empty theory. So UPB will say this is immoral.
[1:25:23] And that's the principle that you work with in the same way that physics will tell you that matter has a property called gravity, wherein mass attracts mass. And you need to take that into account when you're building a bridge. If you were building a bridge on the moon, you would need one-sixth the tensile strength that you would on the earth and maybe even less that you wouldn't have to worry about air resistance you wouldn't have to worry about rust because there'd be no oxidation but you'd have to worry about excessive sun exposure because there's no atmosphere to protect the moon from the sun so there would be a whole bunch of different equations and i think what you're saying is well you need to build a different bridge on the moon than on the earth and that means situational ethics and what i'm saying is that upb is the physics, and you can't ignore physics, but physics won't tell you what kind of bridge you need to build in each circumstance, if that makes sense.
[1:26:17] It does. The pushback I would give on that is with physics, that is absolutely universal. No matter where you go, what you do, as far as we know, gravity is the same everywhere. But ethics is often based upon culture. And right, wrong, or the other, sure, former cultures probably got it wrong. It's something that we have evolved as a human species. And it's gotten better as we've gotten older and wiser. Um so i i maybe i went into upb looking at it as a way to use it as a functional ethics no no
[1:26:51] Sorry sorry to interrupt okay what is the proof in upb that theft can never be universally preferable behavior that stealing can never be universally preferable behavior.
[1:27:03] Because you wouldn't want them to do it to you you wouldn't accept it the other way no no no
[1:27:09] Um have you read the book, right?
[1:27:11] I did, yes.
[1:27:13] Okay, so what's the proof? And I'm sorry, I don't mean to nag you or anything. That's all right, maybe I.
[1:27:17] Summarized it wrong, but it's basically because...
[1:27:19] No, no, that's not even close, because that's more like do unto others as you would have them do unto you, or some sort of canteen imperative, act as if the principle of your action becomes a general rule for everybody, but that's not the proof.
[1:27:30] Well, it's logically contradicting to say that it's okay to steal if you wouldn't want someone to steal from you, I guess that's...
[1:27:38] No, because thieves do that. That's what thieves operate on. Thieves go and steal something and then don't want it stolen from them. Because if you're a thief and you steal something and then someone just steals it from you, there was no point being a thief. So thieves operate on the basic principle that they want to steal, but they don't want to be stolen from. So there is no thieving without that. So that's not the proof either.
[1:28:02] I'm sorry, Stefan. I'm missing what I guess. I missed something in there, I was to understand that these objective moral truths that you came up with were true because they're logically non-contradictory.
[1:28:17] Right. Okay. So the reason that we know that stealing can never be universally preferable behavior is if stealing is universally preferable behavior, then everyone must want to steal and be stolen from at the same time. Does that make sense?
[1:28:36] Yes.
[1:28:37] Now, if you want to have your property taken away from you, is it stealing?
[1:28:43] No.
[1:28:44] Right. So it is impossible for stealing to be universally preferable behavior because it is logically impossible for everyone to want to steal and be stolen from because the moment that you want to be stolen from, it's no longer theft and the entire concept of theft collapses in on itself. And the same thing is true with the other three major moral categories of assault and rape and murder. If you want to be raped, you're not being raped, right? It's some weird role play or whatever it is, but that's not, right? So it is logically self-contradictory to say that stealing is universally preferable behavior. Now, a respect for property rights, not stealing. It is possible for everyone in the world to not steal, to want to not steal and not be stolen from at the same time. There's no logical contradiction involved in that, but saying that stealing is universally preferable behavior involves an immediate logical contradiction. And what I mean by that is it's the Same as all men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal. That's true everywhere, no matter what. Two and two make four. It's true everywhere, no matter what. And stealing cannot be universally preferable behavior. And a respect for property rights can, is true everywhere, no matter what. All over the world, on the moon, everywhere. It's like physics that way. It's true everywhere.
[1:30:06] Okay. Like I said, maybe I went into UPB looking for a moral framework, sort of how I looked at peaceful parenting. I looked at it almost as a how-to.
[1:30:18] Sorry, I feel like we're really not. I mean, I made a case here. Do you accept it or reject it?
[1:30:25] I accept what you have said, but to call...
[1:30:28] No, is it true? Is it possible for stealing to be universally preferable behavior? No. Okay, so you accept that rape, theft, assault, and murder can never be universally preferable behavior, and that's not cultural. It's logical. And it accords with reason and evidence as a whole, which we can sort of... The evidence part is dealt with in the book, sort of, that historically, when societies become more thievery-based. They tend to do worse over time, like communism as opposed to, say, a free market economy. And so we have reason and we have evidence in support of bans on rape, theft, assault, and murder. And I feel like you're just kind of moving on, because that's a pretty big intellectual thing to do, isn't it? To take it out of the realm of social construct.
[1:31:14] I will concede that there are a handful of things that we as human beings have agreed on that are just morally wrong,
[1:31:25] Period.
[1:31:26] No, no, no.
[1:31:27] Hang on, hang on. I'm sorry to keep interrupting you.
[1:31:30] I know it's- You're fine, Stefan. I appreciate all this.
[1:31:32] I just made a proof here. What are you talking about like we've agreed on? Do we say, well, human beings have just arbitrarily agreed that two and two make four?
[1:31:41] No.
[1:31:42] Okay. So is it arbitrary to say that rape, theft, assault, and murder can never be universally preferable behavior? Is that arbitrary or is that logical?
[1:31:51] It's logically sound, yes.
[1:31:53] Beautiful. Okay, so when you start bringing it in, we've just kind of agreed on stuff.
[1:31:58] Honestly, I feel like we're just not even having a conversation. I feel like you're just waiting for me to stop talking so you can go on with your social construct stuff.
[1:32:05] Not necessarily. The reason I call you is to get your inputs, DeFond. So I'm absolutely open-minded on this, I guess.
[1:32:12] Okay, so why are you going right back to, well, morals are just what we've agreed on.
[1:32:15] As I said in the beginning, because I don't believe that UPB does enough to cover the real-world ethical dilemmas that people face on a daily basis.
[1:32:27] I don't really know what that means, sorry.
[1:32:29] Well, I gave the example of the nurse. In your life, you are faced with ethical dilemmas that have no good answer. And UPB doesn't really address that. How do I handle that? I can't sit down and write a syllogism every time I'm in a moral dilemma to figure out what the right thing to do is. Most times it's guided by… Yeah, but that's not what Sangan,
[1:32:52] But UPB is not for that. I mean, if you're suffering a heart attack, do you call a nutritionist?
[1:32:57] Well of course not, but I guess maybe I need to know what you believe that UPB is.
[1:33:03] It's a category error. So in terms of an emergency, you have two people who need a ventilator. You have only one ventilator, right? That is an emergency situation in the same way that a heart attack is an emergency situation. And so UPB is like nutrition and exercise. It's there to prevent situations or problems. Now, if you are in some emergency situation, you will try to follow your professional ethics and you will try to do the most good or do the least harm, right? So, obviously, an example would be something like, if there is a healthy six-year-old boy who needs a ventilator and a 90-year-old man who's dying of lung cancer, who would you give the ventilator to?
[1:33:51] Oh, the young man, of course.
[1:33:53] Of course, because he's got more life ahead of him. He's not responsible for his issues, whereas the smoker, if he was a smoker, he's dying of lung cancer. He's to some degree responsible. And you're going to gain more valuable person years over the kid. Also, from a cost-benefit standpoint, if you say it's going to be $20,000 or $10,000 to use the ventilator, assuming all other things being equal, would the parents of the six-year-old boy be more likely to pay that $10,000, or would the children or grandchildren of the 90-year-old smoker be more likely to pay that $10,000? The parents, of course. Right. So, the free market and basic, again, obviously utilitarian calculations and some moral calculations as well, in that the child is not responsible for needing the ventilator, but the 90-year-old smoker is to some degree responsible for needing the ventilator because he chose to smoke. So there would be a combination of ethical issues and innocence versus guilt and free market issues and utilitarian calculations of you're going to do much greater good in terms of longevity to save the six-year-old boy than the a 90-year-old chain smoker. But UPB simply says, well, you can't rape anyone, you can't kill anyone, and you can't assault people, and you can't steal from them. Now, choosing based upon a combination of factors of who you give the ventilator to is not a decision that violates any.
[1:35:36] Now, if, for instance, it doesn't violate any UPB to weigh these calculations, which we all do, right? I mean, the people who were on the Titanic, they said women and children first. That was the sort of standard. So it is not a violation of any of UPB's principles to try and decide the best course of action in an emergency situation, right? I mean, if there's only one spot on the lifeboat, the last lifeboat, going off the Titanic, and there's some, again, the six-year-old boy versus the 90-year-old guy with terminal cancer, then you would choose a six-year-old boy, and everyone would understand that that is for the best for the most part, right? Right but it is not uh you could say these are sort of utilitarian calculations you would base in the moment but i don't know that they would be morality in the same way that rape is evil would be because as you say this there's no good decisions there's only the lessening of harm, that is possible in the same and we do this all the time like every meal that i eat like i could conceivably live on, I don't know, a third less calories, right? Maybe I could live on that, right? And if I stopped exercising in particular, I could live on fewer calories. And then I could send food somewhere overseas, right?
[1:37:00] To exercise and I choose to eat, I don't know, 800 more calories a day because I'm exercising.
[1:37:06] And so by making that choice, I have probably condemned people to starve to death, right? You are right now having this conversation with me when you could be out there giving blood or feeding the homeless or, you know, whatever it is, doing some charity work. And so you and I, by having this conversation, we have condemned.
[1:37:28] Like every decision you make has life and death elements to it. If you have a house or an apartment, you can always put someone up, right? You can drive around if it's cold out, right? This is minus five or whatever, minus 10, you can drive around and you could pick up a bunch of homeless people and you could put them in your apartment. And so you would save lives that way, right? So everything we do is life and death in a way, but that's not what UPB is dealing with. What UPB is dealing with is rape, theft, assault, and murder. And for me, eating a meal because I'm exercising that I could give to someone else which might condemn them to death in the third world or something, I'm not violating any UPB principles. I'm not violating property rights. I'm not initiating the use of force and so on. So everything that we do, that we consume, everything we consume has negative of impacts on someone else because they're not able to consume it at the same time. Every house we have that we don't have half the world living in could be food and shelter or could be shelter and warmth for other people and so on. So as far as situational ethics go, it's all very interesting, but UPB is focused on rape, theft, assault, and murder.
[1:38:40] Lying, as you sort of pointed out, and justifying things like self-defense and so on. But we're all making decisions every moment of every day that have negative impacts on others, and that if we'd made different decisions, we could have saved other people or anything like that. But that's not the province of UPB. UPB is defining what is evil. And a decision that you make in a situation of emergency, as you say, is not good or evil because it's under compulsion. Like someone's going to die and you have to choose who's going to die. And yeah, you'll try and make a good decision based upon reasonable best practices and maybe some economic factors of, because whoever's willing to bid more for that life means that the life is worth more to those people and whether the person is responsible for their own illness or not, and so on. But that to me, those are sort of situational decisions made in a situation, sorry, those are decisions made in the moment in a situation of emergencies, which again, we make those decisions all the time, every day. And it can't be that because I choose to have a piece of cheesecake rather than buy a full meal for someone in the third world, that I'm now guilty of murder or something like that. And so we always, all of our lives are based upon these situational ethics and so on. So we're all evil if we take anything more than the bare minimum and don't give it to everyone else. But I'm not violating any property rights. I'm not initiating the use of force against anyone by having my own meal.
[1:40:13] And by choosing in a limited situation of triage or you only have one ventilator and there's two people who need it, You're not violating UPB when making that emergency decision any more than I'm violating UPB by not having 50 homeless people live in my house.
[1:40:33] I may be stuck in my own paradigm a little bit on, because you call it objective morality and situational ethics falls under subjective. And maybe it's just my static idea that it's either one or the other rather than a combination of both. It sure sounds like you're expressing that although UPB is objective morality, there are times in life that subjective morality is absolutely valid. And I can agree
[1:41:00] With you there. Well, okay, but sorry, tell me the moral principles involved in your scenario. I'm not disagreeing with you, but tell me the objective moral principles involved in the ventilator example.
[1:41:11] There isn't any. That's my point. Okay, so if there
[1:41:14] Aren't objective moral principles, it doesn't fall under the canopy of objective moral principles. Then you would say there are emergency decisions that we have to make that may have moral elements, but they don't fall under universal morality.
[1:41:25] And that's fine. That's totally fine. Right? I mean, so it's like saying you should not open an airplane door when it's in flight. Right? You should not open an airplane door when it's in flight. And it's like, well, what if you need to throw a bomb out? You know, then you just come up with something else. But that wouldn't be part of that general principle. That would be sort of an emergency situation. But if there aren't universal moral principles to be applied... It can't fall under the principle of universal ethics. So I think your issue, if I understand this correctly, it's a great conversation, I really appreciate it. But I think your issue is saying there are times when there aren't universal moral principles that you can apply to difficult situations.
[1:42:09] Therefore, there's no such thing as universal moral principles. To which I would say if you are evaluating moral theories, then you need to apply universal standards of reason and evidence. However, if you are in an emergency situation, which you cannot apply universal ethics to, then UPB doesn't apply. Then you're doing some emergency calculation based upon, you know, your feelings, like somebody, I mean, somebody who is standing by a lifeboat and they have the cure for cancer in their head.
[1:42:41] But then there's some kid who also wants to get in the lifeboat. We could argue, well, but the guy who's got the cure for cancer should get in the lifeboat so that, you know, tens of millions of people don't die of cancer every year. And even though he sacrifices the boy, there's a greater good. So these are sort of numerical calculations and so on. But again, universal morals, if they don't apply to the situation, then it's like trying to apply universal principles of physics to a video game or to a dream that you're having at night. They don't apply. So saying that there's a failure of physics because they don't apply in this video game is not a failure of physics. It's just that you're trying to apply a paradigm like physics to something which it doesn't apply to. Or saying that I like the color navy blue, right? And that's sort of personal preference. And because I like the color navy blue, there's no such thing as wavelength. It's like, well, no, wavelength is describing the bouncing of light of a particular color. And so we can say that there's an objective thing called wavelength, but my preference for the color blue. Some degree dependent upon wavelength, but it's a separate category, if that makes sense.
[1:43:53] It makes absolute sense. And I came in with the misconception that you were claiming that UPB was the main moral standard for ethical behavior. And that, I suppose, is my failing.
[1:44:06] No, it is. No, it is the main moral standard for ethical behavior, absolutely.
[1:44:11] But if it doesn't apply to the gray area, how is it universally applicable? I'm sorry, Stefan. I really... That's fine.
[1:44:21] I get it. I get it. Okay. So it's not a gray area. If you cannot apply, because I asked you in the situation of the ventilator, are there any universal ethics that would apply? And you said no. So you're saying the theory that doesn't apply to the situation that I have created is invalid, right?
[1:44:44] But if the theory doesn't even apply to the situation, then the theory is not invalid. You're just applying it to the wrong situation.
[1:44:55] That's fair enough. I can agree with that. Absolutely.
[1:44:58] So we have a universal proof that rape, theft, assault, and murder are wrong. And then, so where we have moral theories, so let's say we look at something like communism, right? So communism... That property rights are theft. Property is theft or that there's no such thing as valid property if you are a bourgeoisie or whatever. So it says some people have property rights and some people don't. The worker has the right to own the products of his own labor, but the capitalist who's created the factory does not have the right. So it has contradictory statements. Workers have property rights, and bourgeoisie or owners do not have property rights. And so that's a contradictory theory, just one of the many contradictions, right? Sure. It's just one of the contradictory theories that, one of the contradictory elements of communism. Now, communism, of course, caused the deaths of 100 million people in the 20th century alone, sort of the 87 years or 83 years from 1917 to the year 2000, and is still continuing to cause literally uncountable numbers of death in various places around the world. And listen, it's a great, great conversation. I really do appreciate it. It's very, very helpful and very good. So that's very much appreciated. Let's just make sure that we're back.
[1:46:26] Same here, Stefan.
[1:46:27] I think I know what happened was, yeah, so we've been just talking about this the situational ethics. And again, it's a tough nut to crack. I have not cracked it perfectly yet. I'm giving you analogies, which are fine and helpful, but I will fully admit that I have not cracked it as yet. But what I would say is that maybe we can take this approach to it, and I appreciate your patience as I sort of work through this. So I think when you start to talk about immediate situational ethics, then the challenge is you are no longer fulfilling the you in UPB. No longer fulfilling the universality part. Because if you say, okay, I have a specific situation, then you are no longer looking at the universal. So the universal says rape, assault, and murder are logically self-contradictory and cannot be universally preferable behavior. If you try to make rape, theft, assault, and murder universally preferable behavior, then the immediate self-contradiction emerge and so and so and so, right? So I think when you say, look, I have this specific example that takes place in one place, in one emergency, then it's no longer universal. Does that make sense?
[1:47:51] Yes. And I'm agreeing with where you're going with this. You could also make it non-universal by putting some sort of personal connection into the dilemma, which makes it all about your own personal ethics rather than some universal standard. So, I agree with you there.
[1:48:07] And it's interesting, and I appreciate that. It's interesting because, of course, when we'd use the engineering example, when I used the engineering example earlier, then the challenge that I had was all engineering has to take into account the universal laws of physics. So, in the universal situation, sorry, in the specific situation of the ventilator and you've only got one ventilator and two people who need it, one's going to die, then you've taken it out of universality, but the principles still apply. So let's say that you've got Bob and Doug, and Bob has paid for the ventilator. It's his ventilator. And then you come in and you say, I hate Bob. I like Doug. Doug, I'm going to rip the ventilator out of Bob and I'm going to put it onto Doug. Now UPB is the situation because now you stole them, right?
[1:49:03] Yes, exactly. You're absolutely right. I agree with that. Yes. But if you're
[1:49:07] Trying to decide on the balance of do the most good, do the least harm and so on, then you're still not violating any moral principles. You're just trying to make a good decision in a tough situation, sort of Sophie's Choice sort of thing. And of course, because the, or, you know, we could sort of put another example if somebody who's been shot versus somebody who shot themselves, who would be more likely to save? I think we'd be more likely to save the person who was shot through no fault of their own, as opposed to the person who tried to, or who tried to kill themselves or shot themselves and so on, right? UPB still applies to these emergency situations, but because they are specific situations, UPB cannot tell you what to do because there is no universal moral answer.
[1:50:01] We can say always, don't rape. Rape is evil. Rape is wrong. There's no situation upon which rape would be moral. And so that's universal. But trying to decide, because you can slice and dice these things. Some of them are not gray areas right again i think just about everyone would say the innocent six-year-old boy should be saved not the chain-smoking 90-year-old right i think we i think that's not that but there would be well what if it's a seven-year-old boy and and a 6.5 year old boy but the seven-year-old boy has emphysema and like you could just create these situations where it becomes more and more impossible to get a clear answer if that makes sense It makes sense.
[1:50:42] And where I went with that in my head was, what if it was two seven-year-old boys, but one of the boys was your son?
[1:50:49] Well, I mean,
[1:50:50] The answer for that would be that every person would try and save their own kid, of course. Right, absolutely. Unless they hated their kid. Or if their kid was about to testify against them as a pedophile, they might not save their own kid or whatever. They would go to jail and get killed or something. So you can create these slice-and-dice situations of impossible choices, but that does not invalidate universal morality because rape is always wrong. Theft can never be universally preferable behavior. Now, creating specific situations... It's tough to decide, does not invalidate universal ethics. It's sort of like saying, I don't know, I have just enough money to build this bridge, but I'm not sure it's going to be super secure. Can physics make that decision for you?
[1:51:40] Okay, I get that.
[1:51:42] Physics can't tell you that. Physics can't make that edge case decision. Well, a really solid bridge would cost $10 million. I only have $7 million. That's an edge case decision. If I don't build the bridge, then people are going to die because they can't get to the hospital in time because they need the bridge. They don't have to go 10 miles out their way. I'm going to save some people. If the bridge collapses, then people could die too, but I can't get the extra money. Right. So, so these are all, you know, these are kind of challenging decisions and UPB can't tell you that.
[1:52:20] UPB can say, don't steal, don't murder, don't assault, don't rape, but it can't say what kind of bridge you should build. And it can't say which person you should save in an emergency situation.
[1:52:31] If that makes sense. it does and and you've helped me reframe how to apply upb because you know as a thinker i am just in a quest to find this ultimate ethical standard and you know i'll probably never find it but i certainly am i'm searching
[1:52:49] For it well hang on but you already accepted that rape theft assault murder can never be universally preferable behavior i'd like for you i'd like to invite you to say, if you've already accepted that, then you've come a long way. And that sounds kind of condescending. I apologize for that. But it's like, if it's true that rape, theft, assault, and murder can never be universally preferable behavior, then we've just had a giant step forward in the discipline of ethics.
[1:53:17] Oh, I absolutely agree that murder, theft, rape are all morally wrong, period. And it's not cultural,
[1:53:24] And it's not situational, and it's not societal and it's not an agreed upon thing. It's math. It's logic.
[1:53:31] Agreed.
[1:53:31] I agree with that. Fantastic. Fantastic. Well, I appreciate the work out, man. That was really good. Okay. Thank you. And you are great at bringing questions and I really do appreciate that.
[1:53:41] Thanks very much and have a great evening, Stefan.
[1:53:43] Thanks, man. Good stuff. Good stuff. I appreciate it. All right. Let's do, let me try what's more interesting than me. This is someone, as I mentioned before, whose name would come up occasionally when I was still banned from X and I would occasionally look for my name just to see if people would still remember me. All right, go ahead, man.
[1:54:02] Yes, can you hear me?
[1:54:03] Yes, sir.
[1:54:04] Great. I'd like to make the case, but in a free society, the case that due process is not a great thing. Due process in the event that there's accusations. So can I, I'll just go ahead with my case?
[1:54:25] You can, but I'm just going to need you to define your terms.
[1:54:28] Okay. So due process would be when an adjudicating organization, such as a dispute resolution organization, actually does deep investigation, brings out evidence, and has disclosure of evidence with the defending party, and then holds court, and evidence is led, and there's a court case and an outcome for the court case in terms of guilt or not guilty.
[1:55:09] So, yeah, so basic principles of evidence, chain of custody, the ability to confront your accuser, and the inadmissibility of things like hearsay. So, sort of standard common law practice, is that right?
[1:55:24] Yes.
[1:55:25] Okay, got it. All right, I agree on that with you, process, and you're saying that's a bad thing.
[1:55:31] Yes, I'm saying that it should preferably be avoided by this means, I would suggest. First of all, I'd just like to mention that it has been said, and I agree that in many cases, the process is the punishment. In other words, an innocent party can be harassed by being compelled into this due process situation, compelled into court, incurring expenses and loss of time and other inconvenience or worse.
[1:56:08] Oh, I'm sorry. So I agree with that, of course, right? But that's in a current statist society. In a free society, what safeguards would be in place to try and minimize the harassment of people legally?
[1:56:20] Well, here's my suggestion. If the focus is mostly on protecting the innocent and somebody
[1:56:30] Is suspected… I'm sorry, I feel like my question just.
[1:56:32] Got ignored there. Oh, sorry, sorry, my biologist, yes?
[1:56:35] So what was my question? what was the.
[1:56:37] Safeguards that would be put in place
[1:56:39] Right so you could harass people legally and what were the safeguards that would be put in place given that that could be a possibility.
[1:56:46] Um yes I hadn't thought about that so let me try and work on that one um
[1:56:54] Sorry, do you mean now or later?
[1:56:57] No, no, I've got an answer now. It might not be the great answer, but you see, most likely the accused person would have insurance. And so his insurer would pay because he would take out insurance against being falsely accused and harassed in that way. So that would be the way that he could safeguard himself. Is to have insurance against that.
[1:57:26] If I try in a free society, if I sue someone for a million dollars and I fail, then I would have to pay that person a million dollars.
[1:57:35] Yes, I'm not sure there would be a million dollars, but yes, if you sue somebody and you're in the wrong, yes, you're in compensation.
[1:57:42] I have to pay them everything that I was trying to get from them. In the same way that if I accuse someone of a crime and it turns out that I'm wrong, then I would get the punishment that person would have gotten, right?
[1:57:55] I've heard you say that before and I consider that that's wrong. I'm okay with that. I'm not sure that that would be how it works out and that's the thing we don't know.
[1:58:05] But something like it.
[1:58:06] Yeah, yeah.
[1:58:07] So there would have to be some sort of double-jail there would have to be some sort of skin in the game that if, and also if you repeatedly were to sue people and were found to be in the wrong Let's say you've got a billion dollars, you don't care, a million dollars each time, you don't care.
[1:58:24] Yes.
[1:58:25] You would also lose the right to sue people if you were found to be wrong a certain number of times, right? Then that way, you would make sure that the rich couldn't just keep harassing people and bleeding money.
[1:58:36] Yes. Right. So if I can continue with making my case, because I have a different, yeah, one way to explain. If the maximum penalty, and I mean like even in the case of murder,
[1:58:53] what we'd currently do is take the murderer and put them in prison, right? But what I'm suggesting is your dispute resolution organization, you know, at the request of the insurance companies operating in a territory, might actually agree to take that accused murderer out of that territory and put him somewhere else where people will accept him. Because for whatever reason, they like him or, you know, they have some affinity for him.
[1:59:23] No, no, hang on, hang on.
[1:59:24] Yes. But why would, I mean,
[1:59:26] There are more people who are afraid of murderers than there are murderers, right?
[1:59:31] Yes.
[1:59:32] And so the decision on what happens to a murderer would be a majority decision since murderers are a very small minority of the population, right?
[1:59:40] Yes.
[1:59:41] So people, if they didn't want the murderer to be released in some other society, then they would say, listen, if somebody's convicted of murder, if someone's convicted of murder, I want them taken out of society, you know, whether that's the death penalty or whether that's some sort of incarceration or something like that. But it would be the majority of people would probably not be happy with releasing the murderer somewhere else. So that wouldn't be a thing, I think.
[2:00:05] Oh, well, I would expect that if he gets released somewhere else, it'd be amongst people that accept him or amongst people who have also decided they're happy to be murderers and he would be in danger in that area. What I'm suggesting is...
[2:00:23] Is that a bad Max killer be killed?
[2:00:25] I think there might, look, that'll probably not happen to too much extent because of peaceful parenting. Most likely there won't be too many very wild areas where murderers roam around.
[2:00:40] Sorry to interrupt, but what about you? If you're a consumer in a free society.
[2:00:44] How would you
[2:00:45] Personally prefer that murderers be punished? oh.
[2:00:50] Um i would prefer them just to be taken away from wherever i am and not come back and interact with me in any way so that i'm not in danger
[2:00:57] Well but i mean you you you would travel in the world you would travel to other places so where would what would you like not just remove from your environment and release three blocks over or something i mean or in another county or country because then you'd have to go and travel to those countries you might encounter murderers again so what would be your ideal way to punish a murderer?
[2:01:20] To release him in something more like an open-air prison. In other words, he can't completely escape, but he's got relative freedom in that he can go and make a living and deal with other people who also perhaps have some criminal tendencies.
[2:01:34] So some sort of productivity?
[2:01:37] Yes, large, open-air. Okay. Productive.
[2:01:40] So that's certainly, I can understand that.
[2:01:43] I mean, where I don't have to support him and my insurers don't need to take extra premium from me in order to support him.
[2:01:52] So he's productive in some way, right?
[2:01:54] If he chooses to be or else, you know, that's his free will choice. If he wants, he's productive or he goes home. Yes.
[2:02:03] Right, right. I mean, I'm fine with that too, but sorry, go ahead.
[2:02:05] Okay. So then am I right to characterize that as exile? The maximum penalty that your dispute resolution organization would ever apply at the request of insurers is to physically remove somebody. Is this coming from your Australian
[2:02:23] Genes as a whole or some other place?
[2:02:27] Oh, I get you. Yes, people were exiled to Australia. No, I'm not from Australia.
[2:02:32] Is this primal ancestor memory speaking through everything?
[2:02:36] Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no.
[2:02:38] Why are you taking this so personally, my Australian friend?
[2:02:42] I'm just kidding. All right. Yeah, no. But yes, if there was a whole new Australia to use,
[2:02:49] Yes. Yeah, I would say autism or exile or something like that, right? Yes.
[2:02:53] So if we're not actually going to imprison him in a prison that's very confined, right? I would say maybe he's in a prison area, but he's not very confined and he has relative freedom compared to prisons as they are now, he's in exile, he's not here where he can murder other people that are covered by insurance. So I see that it's a shortcut, a way to save costs is to take someone who's a suspect and move him into exile. And then if he doesn't like that if he wants to return to the society from which he's been exiled he can start to make the case and he can start it at his own cost
[2:03:47] I'm still not sure where the due process problem is?
[2:03:49] Oh, yes. So what I'm saying is, while he's a suspect without due process, because the insurers have evaluated and said he is a threat, he might murder people here. We don't want him around here.
[2:04:03] Please remove him. Sorry, you mean before he's been convicted?
[2:04:07] Yes. I'm saying skip that and just say, let him go somewhere else. If there's somewhere where people will accept him. That's not prison-like. Let him be there. If he has to go to somewhere where he's more restricted and can't get out, then also fine. But we don't let him back in here, in this area that's protected by these...
[2:04:29] Hang on, hang on. Sorry, I just want to make sure I understand the sequence here. So let's say Bob is accused of murder. Yes. He's just shipped off to this thunderdome or something? Like, I'm not sure.
[2:04:41] Don't you have to establish whether he,
[2:04:43] In fact, did kill someone?
[2:04:46] Well, I'm saying no, because, yes, I get it can end up like a thunderdome. But if there are more degrees of it, if there are some people, for example, Oscar Pistorius.
[2:04:59] There are false accusations. How do you have the false accusations?
[2:05:02] Absolutely, there can be false accusations. So, oh, I think at least it should be partly up to the accused to choose whether he wants to go through the process and find some of it himself or the accused can just say, look, you guys think I'm a murderer. You're wrong, but I don't want to be with you guys anymore. Let me go somewhere else. you know because exile is the is the
[2:05:34] Most extreme sanction if somebody doesn't want to be in the society why wouldn't they just move somewhere else to begin you.
[2:05:42] Sorry, yes, I'm saying because the actual accusations and people turning against that person by accusing him is actually putting them
[2:05:52] All from staying there. You say, I plead guilty, or I accept the punishment, but I don't plead guilty.
[2:05:58] Right. In this case, yes, because you say, I want to skip the trial. I'm not even admitting guilt. But since you guys want to exile me for what you say is for your safety, I want no part of you. I'll go somewhere else And perhaps actually find people That are on his side And live in a reasonably ordered society I
[2:06:19] Consider this Extremely unlikely Which is not to say impossible But I consider it extremely unlikely Because if you bring an accusation Against someone Let's say you're a DRO And you bring an accusation of murder Against Bob And Bob turns out to be innocent, Then you have to pay bob a billion dollars or something like you have to have there has to be some jeopardy involved right so they would not bring charges against someone as a murderer public charges against someone as a murderer unless they kind of had him dead to rights right.
[2:06:53] Right and i
[2:06:54] Agree with right now like right now if you look at all the people who brought these sort of literally trumped up charges against trump yes from 2020 to 2024 after presidential immunity but before he got re-elected i mean what negative consequences have they faced for this stuff right no i mean of course that latisha james i think is in some trouble now or something like that but that's just not that's not directly consequential so what negative thing happens to people who uh bring charges against someone that turn out to be uh false well i mean maybe you can sue them but even if you sue them then it's just the government who pays not them personally so the the you would you would have to you have in your contract with Diaduro, that if they accuse you of a crime, are incorrect, that whoever accused you of the crime faces significant sanctions as well.
[2:07:47] Right.
[2:07:48] And bonuses, if you're right, so that they have both an upside and a downside for good or bad decisions. So I think it'd be quite unlikely that they would bring charges against someone where they didn't at least have a very good case.
[2:07:58] Yes, and I would agree with that. And I would say that's part of the reason that it might be more efficient to actually He skipped the trial part in which the defendant actually brings a whole defense against something because he has less jeopardy. For example, Oscar Pesturi is faced being in prison where he could have been harmed in a prison, you know, whereas some people probably to this day don't think he's guilty and would happily have them. That would happily live in a small area together with him to show him solidarity. So, was it necessary to put in all the resources into actually coming to the conclusion that yes, he was guilty, he wasn't defending against some mystical, mythical intruder, he actually shot his girlfriend in a raid? Was it necessary to prove that? Sorry, Oscar Pistorius, the Blade Runner.
[2:08:58] Up oh the guy with the.
[2:09:00] Sort of bows for legs right yeah yeah yeah
[2:09:03] Well or or derek german who of course a lot of people believe presided over the fentanyl death of george floyd and then ended up being convicted for political reasons and is facing you know obviously very a very challenging life in prison to put it mildly so um okay so um yeah so you would just want to build in as many safeguards as possible but again all of this comes about after peaceful parenting when
[2:09:25] criminality Yes. Very rare.
[2:09:27] I agree, yes.
[2:09:30] Okay, good. Is there anything else you wanted to mention?
[2:09:33] No, I've made a case against due process, like in that saying it doesn't need to apply to every case, and maybe we can skip it because there might be a more easy out.
[2:09:49] Well, and I think in general, you can almost skip due process by pleading guilty. Maybe it would be a way of saying, I will accept the punishment without pleading guilty, but that could be the.
[2:10:00] Case not except something relevant relatively mild like exile from this territory I'll go find myself another territory and we'll skip the trial and I won't plead guilty.
[2:10:13] I don't think that would be allowed though. If you were a murderer then you wouldn't just be able to say I'll just move away and then you don't try me I don't think that would happen, Roman Polanski fleeing to Paris or whatever, that's a different matter but i don't think you would want to say oh somebody could just move away and and so on right because then they could all if they're a murderer right murderers are not confined to their geographical district they can send letter bombs they can send anthrax through the mail they can do all kinds of harass people they can do all kinds of terrible things uh right yelp reviews right so right if somebody is really corrupt and like a murderer then i don't think it's um well we'll just move them someplace else and everything will be fine. I don't think that would be allowed.
[2:10:57] Okay. Yes. Okay. All right. I accept.
[2:11:01] All right. Well, thanks, man. I appreciate that. And let's talk to Jordan. You can be our last caller for the day. And I really do appreciate that. I had a couple of odd callers over the last week or two. So I'm very glad that we've got our new friends and great comments and questions. And everybody's just been fantastic today. And I really do appreciate that. Jordan, if you wanted to, give you to go on once, go on twice situation?
[2:11:30] Yes, no, yes, no, yes, no! Are you with me? I'll just give him another second in case he is mucking with his techie-tay. And I'll just remember for the future that nobody can start a car in my vicinity if my headset is attached to anything other than the phone. Good to remember.
[2:11:50] Jordan, I hear rustling. I don't do mime. All right, so you've made it. in okay uh jordan did you have something that you wanted to say did you know how this works are you with me i guess.
[2:12:04] Like yeah i guess i get in okay um no i was like going back to the trump thing as far as one of the main things it's like is um like staying out of war it's like the first time you know 17 18 everyone tried to push him into attacking syria and then he goes okay He started like a two-week push. He lobbed a bunch of missiles, worldwide push, going, okay, no, it's like...
[2:12:34] Sorry, do you mean the Syrian strikes?
[2:12:37] Yeah, he lobbed a bunch of missiles, worldwide push, going, you know, it's like, we don't want this. And then the media couldn't push it anymore. He did the same thing in 2018. He did the same thing with the arenas.
[2:12:49] Sorry, sorry, sorry, hang on. So, but the Syrian missiles didn't escalate, right?
[2:12:53] No, but that's what I'm saying. but you had like two weeks of a push like 2017 2018 he did the same thing in like with the iranian ones like they were like you know israel's like all we need is the bunker buster he's like okay he did like a 36 hour thing like drop some bunker busters and the media couldn't push it anymore those are like the biggest yeah the biggest uh of war things you could do you have this build up and then whether it was like the two times in syria or iran and then everyone has shut up about it yeah i mean i'm a big fan
[2:13:31] Of the syrian stuff but i would imagine i think trump is foundationally anti-war and so i think that the syrian stuff and so on i i honestly i have no proof of any of this right so this is pure supposition but i think he's like you've got to do something to appease the military industrial complex otherwise um i think very bad things happen to you and so.
[2:13:54] Yeah i mean it's like we with the syria thing it's like they had to i mean because you had like msnbc and all that stuff there oh yeah now he's a presidential you know now now he's presidential and it was just like but he made he made them have to stop and he did the same thing with the iran thing and i'm like just those three things like monumental and
[2:14:16] The media of course is always pushing for war because that gets them a lot of eyeballs plus they're kind of sadists uh so um so yeah i i have no idea of course what happened with with those airstrikes and so on but i would imagine that you know the pressure was such that he had to do something and if he didn't do something he might not have been president for long in one way or another he had to do something and he did something and then there There was lack of interest in pursuing, and he used that to negotiate something else. And so, yeah, because I was not a big fan. But it didn't escalate, which is, I think, to some considerable credit.
[2:14:52] Yeah, I mean, I was super pissed when it happened at first, too. And then a couple days later, he goes, yeah, he contacted Russia and Syria and said, yeah, I'm going to hit this defunct airbase with a couple of planes. And everything went back to normal. But it made the whole media and the world say, hey, no, we don't want this.
[2:15:07] Yeah, and I think because the anti-war sentiment was really strong, I think it may have been one of these, like an inoculation, prevented more than it harmed.
[2:15:17] Yeah, and when he was saying, it's like, yeah, we're going to hit Iran, I was like going, okay, he's going to be pulling the same thing he did in Syria, which made sense. It was like, okay, this is going to be bad, and then it worked out. It's like everyone had to stop and slow down. so it's like so just yeah just those three things it's like he did a really good job yeah and it's like so it was like that and then yeah as far as the trade stuff shit i mean it it's it's okay i mean you like have tim pull talking about the skateboards and talking about like yeah people you know like small companies here having to compete with whatever and they're having you know they're having to you know it's like raise their prices and everything he's like no we're having to make here i mean i i do glass blowing i do construction and shit so it's like but yeah it's like having imported stuff coming in it's like if all of a sudden those prices come up then it's like it makes everybody doing their small business here it's like it makes it makes it better so it's like i mean yeah as far as trade stuff stopping wars is yeah i mean he's just on those two things he's doing a really
[2:16:28] Good job yeah and i like everyone else i have my criticisms of public figures but again being a obviously somewhat minor public figure myself, it is really tough to keep your integrity with a huge amount of pressure coming to bear upon you. And I imagine that nobody is experiencing more kind of pressure than someone like, well, Donald Trump, I mean, leader of the free world and all of that. And the amount of people who want you to do to fulfill their agenda, I mean, I obviously in a tiny, tiny way. But I get this with people on social media, my show, they want me to push their agenda. This is my thing and so on. And I've had people, oh, 9-11 is my agenda or JFK or 6 million different other things that people want to have me push. And I'm like, I want to take feedback. I want to sort of please the audience, but I do have to fulfill my own preferences and priorities and, and fulfill my, appease my own conscience and so on. So I would say that with regards to Trump, he's not a dictator. There's no big magic button, but he gets to push. He's got to negotiate within the system. And, you know, one of the things that is a, you know, basic tragic fact about the, um, uh, state of system is that it, um.
[2:17:51] There's a lot of big fans of war in governments, all governments. And to try and be a peacemaker when everyone is howling and baying and trigger happy for war is a very tough situation. And I think the degree to which he didn't start new wars and the degree to which he was able to keep conflicts very small and very confined is fantastic. Is that perfect? Well, perfect, you know, the perfect is the enemy of the good. And it's pretty damn good.
[2:18:21] Yeah as much as it could be and it's like also yeah as far as like you know people talking about the epstein thing i mean i commented on on there it's like going yeah it's like if you took like that is the main issue it's like it would dwarf anything so there there wouldn't be any there wouldn't be anything accomplished if that was the main issue so it's like you go okay trade stopping wars all that stuff and you go it's like yeah we'll deal with that later it's i mean hasn't even been a year yet and it's like if you go okay yeah let's take care of the let's take care of the stuff before um yeah yeah it hasn't even been a year yet so it's like you just take care of the stuff you can take care of and then you know last
[2:19:03] Year or whatever.
[2:19:04] Just just take care of it and then at that point it's it's it otherwise other yeah otherwise it would be it would be totally there
[2:19:13] Wouldn't be anything else
[2:19:14] Done right
[2:19:15] Right right okay i appreciate that is there anything else that you wanted to mention uh.
[2:19:20] That was pretty much all right
[2:19:21] Thanks jordan i appreciate it very nice to meet you please feel free to call back anytime it is wednesday night 7 p.m friday night 7 p.m and for subscribers sunday morning 11 a.m freedomain.com/donate to help out the show would really appreciate that have yourselves a wonderful afternoon/evening i really appreciate everyone's time today what a delight it is a true delight it is to talk philosophy with you all and freedomain.com/donate um subscribers you get my new book which is i'm currently on chapter 13 and i hope you'll enjoy that too lots of left everyone thank you so much thanks to james as well as always we'll talk to you soon bye.
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