0:03 - Introduction to the Theory
1:24 - Truth and Delusion Dynamics
2:48 - The Impact of Scarcity
8:20 - Property Rights and Agriculture
12:13 - Meritocracy in Farming
18:25 - Classes and Inequality
28:14 - Explaining Wealth Disparity
32:38 - The Role of Choices
41:10 - Guilt and Resentment
43:53 - The Consequences of Broken Morality
50:37 - The Future of Society
The lecture presents a comprehensive theory about the dynamics of society, particularly focusing on how property rights, scarcity, and abundance interact to shape historical trajectories and societal structures. The speaker begins by declaring that the analysis will address issues specifically relevant to a statist society, distinguishing it from concepts applicable to free societies. This distinction sets the stage for a deeper exploration of societal mechanics under centralized, coercive systems.
Central to the discussion is the idea that "truth breeds delusion," building on the notion that truths derived from scarcity lead to rational behavior and property rights. The speaker argues that in societies characterized by abundance—such as those with plentiful resources—rationality and strict property rights become less essential. He elaborates on this by illustrating how indigenous societies, living amidst overflowing resources, had little need for formalized property rights. As populations grow and resources become limited, competition for those limited resources inevitably leads to conflict and the necessity for structured rights to manage and protect them.
Transitioning to agricultural societies, the speaker highlights how the shift from hunting and gathering introduces crucial elements like property rights and the cultivation of land. He asserts that agriculture fundamentally changes the landscape of human interaction by allowing for the establishment of ownership and the enforcement of property rights, which are critical for productivity. This transition is depicted as essential for the development of complex societies, where trade and specialization take root, eventually leading to increased productivity and wealth generation.
As the discourse deepens, the distinction between meritocracy in agricultural realms versus hunting is crucial. The speaker maintains that while hunting prowess can deplete resources through overhunting, farming allows for sustainable increases in resource availability. A skilled farmer can drastically increase yields, thereby enriching society, whereas hunting subsists on the immediate results of finite resources, leading to inevitable depletion and conflict. This shift towards a meritocracy based on agricultural skills results in the generation of wealth and subsequently the stratification of society into classes.
The emergence of this class system raises questions of morality and fairness within the context of inherited wealth and property rights. The speaker discusses how historical injustices often fuel resentment towards wealth disparities, and how narratives around property ownership influence societal perceptions. He contemplates how a society’s acceptance of property rights correlates with its overall productivity and wealth generation, but warns that these disparities can lead to conflict if mismanaged perceptions fuel class resentment.
Throughout the lecture, the role of sophistry—distracting arguments that undermine rational thought—is presented as a significant hindrance to societal advancement. The speaker argues that when truths about property rights and moral universality are obscured by such sophistry, society risks falling into cycles of poverty, resentment, and instability. The discussion culminates in a cautionary note about moral decay, illustrating how ignoring the foundations of property rights can lead to systemic failures reminiscent of societal collapses in history.
In conclusion, the lecture weaves together philosophical insights with historical observations to argue for the importance of understanding property rights, moral universality, and the consequences of societal choices. The speaker calls for a return to foundational truths about human interaction and property rights as a means to navigate the complexities of modern societies, emphasizing that the acceptance of these principles is critical for addressing current inequities and fostering a prosperous future.
[0:00] All right, it's time for the all-explanation of things.
[0:04] This is a theory I've been working on for a while that will have everything come into horrible focus and traumatic sense. So we can sort of understand where we are in history, how we got here, what's going on, and where it's heading. And thank you, of course, for the time and resources to be able to put all of this together in my mind and communicate it to the world. Freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show, to help out philosophy in the world. freedomain.com slash donate. Thank you. All right.
[0:40] So, this is all applying to a statist society. This is not something that applies to a free society. So, this is not the human condition. This is not the inevitable physics of history. This is nothing like that. This is how things work in a centralized, oligarchical, coercive society, a society with that at its center.
[1:06] So, unfortunately, truth breeds delusion. And this is one of the central problems of philosophy, or one of the central problems of philosophy is really supposed to find a way to overcome. Truth breeds delusion.
[1:24] Now, truth arrives out of scarcity and then...
[1:30] The truth that is derived from scarcity breeds abundance. Abundance breeds delusion. Delusion breeds evil. And evil destroys abundance. So, and there's a case that's made for this in my novel, The Future by Roman, the aptly named Roman. So, it's very subtle. So, you can go and check out that novel. You really should. It's a great book, freedomain.com slash books. So, scarcity breeds rationality. Scarcity breeds property rights. And like, if you are a bunch of natives in North America hunting a virtual infinity of buffalo, you don't need property rights, because there's no functional scarcity. There's more food than you can possibly eat. It's the same thing if you live in some tropical abundance paradise of fruit and fish and game and all that, and then there's more food than you can eat. So because of the abundance, you don't need property rights. You don't need strictness. You don't really need rationality, in a way.
[2:49] And if you look at sort of the history of the west particularly sort of well i mean i know it's not in the west but siberia which which gave birth to the great east asian race and north, northern europe western europe which gave birth to caucasians a scarcity is essential like scarcity is a foundational fact of life. You don't have enough food, you don't have enough game, and you have a long, long winter. That's tough. Very tough in that long winter. So when you move to an agricultural society, which is an advantage in many ways because it takes care of the limitations of trying to find game, right? As your population increases relative to the amount of hunting that's around, people start to hunt each other as well as hunt game. Because if there's a limited amount of, you know, rabbits and deer and whatever else you're hunting to eat, if there's a relative scarcity of that stuff, well, what happens? What happens is you keep running up against other people who are taking the food that you need and so you then will hunt to eliminate other people so that they won't take all of your food.
[4:18] A significant portion of your food which you need to survive, in particular, the winter.
[4:22] Winter is harsh, but it's also nature's natural freezer, so you can at least store your food in some way. So, agriculture transforms that so that you can grow your own food and trade. And growing your own food, there's three major categories. There are the crops, of course. There is the livestock, which you can eat, and then the products of the livestock, such as milk, and of course the fertilizer that is needed to keep your crops, your soil healthy and fertile. So when you switch from a non-property rights society, which is hunting, now there are some property rights around hunting, but that tends to be later on, like you can't hunt on the Lord's land, right? That's called being a poacher and was often punishable by death, but that's sort of later on. And that's a subset of agriculture. So, or what is it Oscar Wilde said about the aristocrats hunting the fox, the unspeakable in hot pursuit of the inedible? So, you don't really need property rights. You can't really enforce property rights when it comes to hunting. So, then you transition because hunting creates It's constant warfare, right? If there's a lot of game, then humanity reproduces to the point where you run out of food and then you have to have war over the scarce resources. It's constantly going that way.
[5:50] And you don't need rights, right? The only right that you have in the state of nature is the right of violence, which is not really a right. But if you can dominate the other person to threaten enslave or kill the other person then that is your quote right you have power and therefore you get your will in your way but there's no such thing really as abstract rights because you it's really hard to own that which is in motion right so can you really own a herd of deer that's constantly roaming around not really because you don't know where the hell they are pretty hard to have property rights when you don't even know where the deer are, right?
[6:29] So, when you have farm land, well then, That's a whole different matter. With regards to farmland, you now have property rights. And in fact, there is no farming without property rights, because it takes a huge amount of labor to clear the land, and to fertilize the land, to seed the land, to keep the plague species, the insects and birds at bay, to grow the food. And then you have to have usually some right to trade, because you're focusing all your efforts on food and livestock, and therefore, you're probably going to have to trade for other people, like the blacksmith needs your food, and you need the blacksmith's skill and abilities. So, you have to have property rights in order to have an agricultural society. And so, the property rights in general have to be universal. Now, I'm aware, of course, that there's the property rights of the aristocracy, and then there are the property rights of the serfs and no property rights really for slaves at all. And that's kind of a fact that is real, but there still has to be a conception or concept of property rights.
[7:47] Now, when you have property rights, then you have the right to buy and sell land. You can't say, I mean, this is how you distinguish serfs from people who actually own the property. The serfs can be bought and sold like livestock with the land.
[8:02] So you have to have the right to buy and sell the land in order to be considered its owner. Property rights must be the right to buy and sell, to transfer property rights. So the transferability of property rights means that there's a universality of the concept of morality and of rights.
[8:21] If I can sell my 10 acres to you, then ownership is a universal, because ownership can be transferred from one person to another. All human beings have the right of property, and so that universality of morality and of rights spreads throughout society because it's just so productive. So the scarcity of land, right? Game is an unknown scarcity. I mean, for the most part, right? And again, if you're following 10,000 buffalo, it's a different matter. But sort of in Siberia, in Northern Europe, in Western Europe, game is an unknown scarcity, right? I mean, if you go out hunting three days in a row and get nothing, it might just be a dry spell or the place, the whole area might have been overhunted. And then you have to kill each other as tribes in order to reduce the number of hunters so that the game can replenish. So the only solution to scarcity in a hunter-gatherer society is the violence.
[9:24] And when you move to an agricultural society, you have property rights, because that's the only way that farmers can be productive, is if they know they're going to own the products of their labor. So you have property rights, property rights become universal, and it's not a win-lose, it's not kill or be killed, it is productivity based upon property rights. To mutual benefit and trade. Now, then what happens, of course, is once you have property rights, as I mentioned, you can buy and sell the land. Now, once you can buy and sell the land, then you have a meritocracy. Now, of course, you have a meritocracy in hunting and gathering. Some guy's better at throwing the spear or whatever, right, than the other guy. So, there's a meritocracy, but being a great hunter reduces resources.
[10:16] So if you're a great hunter, then you are really good at killing the local animals, which means that your skill, your ability, reduces the resources available to you because you kill too many and then you end up with not enough food. And it can take a while for the food to replenish. It's one thing if it's rabbits, they breed like, well, rabbits, but deer have a slower life cycle and other creatures that you would be eating. So, a meritocracy in hunting reduces the amount of resources available to you.
[10:53] And that's in stark contrast to being a really skilled farmer. Ooh, a whole different matter. You know, the green thumb, the people who are just magic with plants and animals. Animal husbandry, they used to call it in D&D or in history, I guess. Always a strange phrase to me, gestiality, but I'm sure it's valid. So if you are a really great hunter, you destroy resources. And being a really great hunter is kind of negative because it toasts all the animals and takes a while for them to replenish their numbers. However, if you're a really great farmer, then you can coax double the crop yields, five times the crop yields, really great farmers, maybe 10 times the crop yields. So excellence in farming massively increases the resources. And of course, I understand, you know, our rotation, I understand soil exhaustion and so on, but a really great farmer finds ways, you've got winter crops like turnips and so on. So really great farmers find ways to keep their productivity high. I mean, anybody can get a whole bunch of crops out of land if you just plant like crazy, but then that destroys the economic value of the land by stripping it of nutrients and resources and phosphates and all that kind of stuff. So to create a sustainable increase in.
[12:13] Crop yields and so on, and of course, livestock yields, is really important. So, excellence in farming increases resources to a massive degree. Excellence in hunting temporarily increases resources in terms of what you hunt and what you kill, but then destroys those resources because you strip the land of the animals you need to hunt. There aren't enough of them to reproduce, and so it's feast now, famine later. So once you get productivity in a farming or agricultural scenario, then the number of resources available in the society goes through the roof. It's incomprehensible. And the sort of Malthusian idea that the human population increases exponentially, but food productivity only increases in a linear fashion, therefore starvation will what was happening, has so far, of course, proven false. So, universality of property rights and of the transfer of ownership, respect for property rights, the enforcement of property rights in an agricultural scenario, which is really the only place where property rights can really take root, produces a, I mean, obviously, it's not a technical infinity, but compared to what came before.
[13:35] Meritocracy in land ownership and farming produces what was what is effectively an infinity of resources an infinity of you have infinite resources compared to what came before and of course i know this is sort of based on my research from my novel just poor which you should also check out it's a great book freedomain.com books my novel just poor i was doing the research and got this out of my medieval courses in graduate school but crop yields when a meritocracy was finally allowed in the production of land, which is to say that they moved from a surf to a, in a sense, capitalist system for land ownership. It's called the enclosure movement.
[14:13] Yields went up 5, 10, 15, sometimes even 20-fold, which is what allowed the excess. I mean, it was the equivalent of AI, sort of back in the day. And like at the beginning of the 20th century, 90% of Americans were involved in farming. Now it's 2 to 3%. So that is allowed for the release of the urban proletariat, which was the foundational labor pool for the Industrial Revolution, and so on, and sort of the birth of the modern world came out of the excellence or meritocracy in farming. So, of course, this is an obvious economic principle I've talked about before, so I'll keep it brief, but when it comes to meritocracy in farming, the most competent farmers end up with the most land. This is an obvious thing, right? If you are a farmer, and let's say that it's 10 pounds, just make up some numbers here, 10 pounds for 10 acres, right?
[15:14] And if you're a bad farmer, and you can only produce five pounds worth of crops, or a pound worth of crops, you know, maybe pay it off in 10 years or whatever, right? Then you can't bid much for the land. But if you are a really great farmer who can produce, let's say, 20 pounds worth of crops from those 10 acres, then you can afford to bid, of course, a lot more for that land. I mean, if you imagine two people who want to buy a camera, one of them is just going to use it to take holiday snaps that he stores under his bed. And the other one is a paparazzi or Pulitzer prize-winning photographer who can sell photographs for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars or more. Well, who's going to be able to bid more? The guy who is not able to produce any revenue or is not going to produce any revenue but the camera or the guy who's going to produce a million dollars a year revenue but the camera. Well, the guy who's going to produce a million dollars a year of revenue but the camera can bid a whole lot more for that camera because it's a capital asset that is going to profit him rather than somebody who's going to use it as a consumer consumption item.
[16:30] So, in a meritocracy based upon property rights and universal morals with regards to agriculture and land, the very best farmers end up bidding the most for the most land. And then there's a sort of countervailing impulse, right? Which is that, you know, the children of great singers tend to have nice voices, but they probably aren't as good as the voices of their parents, because there's a regression to the mean, right? The children of two smart parents are likely to be smarter than average, but not as smart as the parents, right? So there's a regression to the mean so the regression to the mean is how the land gets redistributed because the children of great farmers are probably not going to be quite as great as their parents however there's a countervailing two countervailing impulses or realities to this one is that the child let's say the son of bob the great farmer has two advantages one is that he already has the land because bob has bought it and has it so he has the 10 or 100 or 1,000 acres. So, we're already inheriting that. That's number one. And number two, of course, Bob's son has Bob teach him how to farm. And a talent is not transferable, but skills are, right? You can teach your kid how to read music. That doesn't mean if you're really good at writing music, that doesn't mean that your kid is going to be good at writing music.
[17:57] I remember talking to a guy once, I was talking about a friend of his who was the son of a famous musician who could play anything he wanted on the guitar, but just couldn't write music to save his life. So what happens is, of course, when you move to an agricultural society, which is based upon universal ethics and property rights, you get massive increases in productivity. And the amount of food that's available to the society is virtually infinite compared to what it was before.
[18:25] So, that's a big plus. The minus is that you get classes. You get classes. I mean, you can't compete with genius. Maybe another genius can, but two genius farmers are not likely to bid each other for their land. The genius farmers are not going to bid each other for their land because you're bidding against somebody who can make a high offer based upon productivity, the genius farmers tend to get against the worst farmers because they can bid a lot more for that land.
[18:59] And because we don't accept IQ and innate talent, right, we just, we don't really accept that. And this is partly because people who are brilliant don't look fundamentally different from everyone else. And also because the conception in most religions is that there is a soul, and the soul is equal to every other soul. Now, of course, human rights should be equal across people, but the fact that both Adam Lambert and I have the right to be the lead singer for Queen doesn't mean that we both have an equal opportunity or ability to be the lead singer for Queen. Not going to happen, right? Bro has a good pompadour and a great voice. Although a little too fey in his stage presence. So...
[19:52] The emergence of a property-based meritocracy in agriculture creates classes. So serfs are equal in general in their misery, but people who are bad farmers, and this could be for any number of reasons, right? It could be laziness. It could be that they really want to become priests and don't really care about farming. Just not exactly laziness, just inattention. It could be that they just had a bad series of luck with regards to health. It could be, or it could just be lack of intelligence. It could be any number of things. It doesn't really matter. I mean, it matters at a personal level. It doesn't matter at an economic level in terms of who ends up in control of the most land.
[20:37] So what happens is Bob the Great Farmer ends up with a thousand acres of land because he cannot bid everyone else. And then Bob's kids have a substantial advantage, right? But the substantial advantage being that Bob already has a thousand acres, which he's going to leave to his kids, although with sons it's going to get split up, which is why some of the sons went into the military, and some of the sons went into the clergy so that there wasn't quite as much fight over land distribution. But Bob's...
[21:05] Bob's sons are going to inherit the land, and Bob's sons are going to inherit what Bob teaches them about farming. And so already having some land, and also having Bob's knowledge about how to farm, creates significant, and it creates a class or almost a caste system. Now, I say this merely in terms of analysis. This is not any kind of moral evaluation. I mean, the only way to break this class or caste system, other than waiting for some accidental regression to the mean doofus to go and blow all of the family fortune, which tends to happen on a pretty regular basis. I can certainly say this from my own father's side of the family tree, that I had a grandfather who was a drunk, if I understand the family lore in the right way. He was a drunk, and he sold off a lot of the family lands, I assume gambling debts, whatever, right? So even though we'd been in that region of the land for almost a thousand years, or 900 years. Didn't matter. Actually, yeah, it's funny, 900 years. From 1066, when we came over with William the Conqueror, the Battle of Hastings, until 1966, when I was born. 900 years. So, there is a hardening of a caste system. And this goes against a people's, and this happens from both the significant left and the significant right. This offends people's sensibilities.
[22:35] Why should Bob have a thousand acres and I don't have any? I have to work Bob's lands. Why does Bob have a thousand acres? Which is, you know, why does Elon Musk have hundreds of billions of dollars? Blah, blah, blah, right? I mean, he's not substantially taller than me. Bro is on a regular basis, seems to be built by a fridge, built like a fridge, and we don't see his genius. We see the products of his genius, but we don't see his genius, it doesn't manifest itself.
[23:05] With regards to singing, right, we can hear a great singer on the radio, whatever, we try and sing along, and I'm like, oh, that's why they get paid so much, right, because they kind of know what they're doing, or they can do it.
[23:15] So, when you start to get universality and morality, you get abundance, and abundance fragments society into the haves and have-nots, the, control over the means of production, ownership of the means of production, in this case, Bob's Thousand Acres, and those who don't control the means of production, which is all the people working on Bob's farm. And this offends our sensibilities for two reasons. One is that, on the left, all wealth arises from exploitation. Everyone is equal. There's no brilliance on the part of the manager. He's just a bad guy willing to exploit the workers because everyone's equal and everyone's interchangeable like some Star Trek blob, right? That's on the left. On the right, but on the religious right, it is everyone is the same because everybody has a soul, and therefore vast differences in wealth offend the sensibilities on the left and on the right. And this also just partly arises from the inevitable solipsism or narcissism that occurs on the basic fact that we are all heroes and we are all the lead in the movie called Us, in the movie called Life. I am the lead in the movie called Life. And of course, I aim as much as I can to have as much empathy as possible with others. And I think I do a pretty good job of it in the call-in shows in particular, trying to step into other people's shoes and so on.
[24:40] But we cannot experience another person's internal reality. We can't directly experience it. I think, you know, idly sort of just by the by, like from time to time, I think about how to step into somebody else's mind. Like I'm talking to someone, I think about this when I'm sitting on the couch chatting away with my wife. And I think, you know, for 23 years, she sat across the couch and looked at me. I've never sat across the couch and looked at me.
[25:07] I know what I'm about to say. My wife does not. In the same way that she knows what she's about to say, but I do not. We cannot jump from one consciousness to another. And so a certain amount of solipsism, you could say narcissism, but it's not really because there's no alternative. But we are all the lead actress in a play called Life. And, you know, I think, of course, occasionally about, you know, if somebody's taking a photo and I just happen to be in the background, I'm just some person in the background of their photo. They don't care about me. They don't think about me. I'm completely unimportant to them. I'm just some, you know, bald head in the back of their photo. You know, maybe if I get my philosophical credit down the road, people will be like, holy crap, he was in the back of our photo and there'll be a little cottage industry for all of that? I don't know. I mean, I think it'll happen, but who knows, right? But I'm just a background player. I'm just, I'm a filler. I'm just a head in the crowd, right?
[26:09] So that's kind of inevitable. So if you are, if you are now a renter or an employee on the land your forefathers owned then your fall from grace your fall from wealth is frustrating it's annoying it's baffling it's confusing now and and the world goes to heaven or to hell based upon how this disparity is explained right based upon how so if let's say joe right joe is joe used joe's family used to have, 10 acres or 100 acres, and Bob bought them out, and Joe now works the land that his family used to own.
[26:53] And how this is explained is whether society goes to heaven or to hell. That's it. That's all there is. If it is explained, well, you know, Bob ripped off your ancestors and stole your land, and, you know, he's got all of his cool stuff and his hot wife and his happy life because he's a thief and a sociopath and an exploiter, well, then society goes to hell, right? And, of course, Christianity tries to deal with this envy by saying, oh, it's fine, you know, don't worry so much about Bob having a thousand acres, worry about your own soul, and he who was last would become first in the afterlife, and it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, and poverty is the best, and so on, right? So it attempts to have people focus on following particular moral rules and how well they're going to do in the afterlife rather than the resentment at seeing people do much better than you, the world that is. Marxists, of course, don't try, they try to weaponize this disparity, right?
[27:59] So, scarcity breeds property rights, which is to go from hunting to farming. Property rights and universal morals breeds vast disparity in wealth outcomes, and they tend to persist.
[28:14] I mean, if land is involved, and again, it just takes one wastrel or one fool or one, person who doesn't care about farming, even if he just wants to study Latin and follow theology, it could be any number of things, it only takes one generation to break that class system, to cycle the classes. And it happens sooner or later, but that doesn't really help Joe, who's frustrated at working the land his grandfather owned. So, if it is explained that Bob Stole Your Ancestor's Land, and I talk about this in my documentary on Hong Kong, Hong Kong Fight for Freedom at freedoman.com slash documentaries. It's free, you should check it out. It's really good. So if on the other hand, people say, well, Joe, so the reason why you are an employee on the land that your grandfather owned is your grandfather chose, chose voluntarily to sell his land to Bob.
[29:21] And, you know, you can probably look at the numbers, right? The accounts, books probably still exist. And you can say, look, Bob came along and offered your grandfather, Joe, Bob came along and offered your grandfather a hundred pounds for his land.
[29:38] And your grandfather, Joe, was only able to eat two pounds a year off of his land. He was not a very good farmer for whatever reason. It doesn't really matter why. And so when Bob came along and offered your grandfather, Joe, 50 times his annual productivity to buy his land, and your grandfather, Joe, said yes, as you probably would say, yes, right? 50 times, that's a lot, right? That's a lot. So, I mean, this is why people who make $100,000 a year, or $10,000 a year, 50 times, so $100,000 a year, quite happy if they make 50 times that amount, right? It's $5 million. Now, Joe, if your grandfather... Had invested the money that he got, you'd be fine, right? Because your grandfather could, like we'll just use modern numbers, your grandfather could only produce $100,000 a year worth of crops from his land, but Bob came along and offered him $5 million for his land, which is 50 times the amount.
[30:56] Then if Bob had taken, sorry, if your grandfather Joe had taken that $5 million and invested it, right? Even if he'd invested it at 10%, that $5 million would have gotten $500,000 a year, right? 10% of $5 million. So even if he'd invested it at 5%, he would have got $250,000 a year. And even if he had invested it at 2%, he would have got $100,000 a year. And, you know, you could buy investment stuff back in the day. Or, even if there's no particular investment vehicles, if your grandfather had taken the $5 million and bought up a bunch of land and then sold it to Bob, the excellent farmer at a profit, you still would have made a bunch of money. Or, even if he just set the money, I wasn't assuming there's not a huge amount of inflation, which there tended not to be with bimetallic currencies like silver and gold. If your grandfather, Joe, had simply left the money or kept the money somewhere, put it in gold, stuck it in a bank, something like that, then you would have had enough money for many generations. If your grandfather, Joe, could live on $100,000 a year and he got $5 million a year, that's 50 years worth of money even if you just spent it all.
[32:23] So if he chose to blow it on a bunch of stuff that didn't work out he chose to invest in South Sea bubbles or tulips in Holland or something like that if your grandfather sold the land and blew the money or did not save the money or whatever it is, right?
[32:39] Well, that's a shame but that's not Bob's fault Thank you.
[32:44] Bob honorably paid the $5 million for your grandfather's acreage, and what your grandfather did with the money has nothing to do with Bob. What your grandfather did with the money has nothing to do with Bob, right? I mean, if you have employees and you pay them, well, you're obligated to pay them. What they do with the money, I mean, you might, you know, want to give them some good advice, but what they do with the money is not your concern. I mean, you may have, you know, if they're getting into terrible debt, then that's probably going to be destabilizing to your business. But if you sell your house to someone, do you care after you sell it to them how well or how poorly they maintain your house? Well, no, because it's not your business anymore, right? If you sell a car, do you call the guy up every couple of months and say, hey, man, did you check the brake fluid? Did you change the oil? No. I mean, you sell your car and, you know, some guy spends a couple of years driving your car into the ground. Is that your business?
[33:49] No, it's not your business. So if you explain to Joe, the worker on the lands his grandfather owned, if you say to him, well, your grandfather chose to sell those lands and And your grandfather, unfortunately, did not invest or take care of the money. And now you have neither the land or the money, right? I mean, I don't sit there and say, gee, after 900 years of being aristocrats in Hoyerland.
[34:21] Why was I born into a single mother welfare state dirtbag poverty? Well, I know the answer to that. Because the money was sold and the resources were blown. My parents, when they were still married, had a lovely house. Probably is worth a fortune now, but they sold it as part of the divorce, sold it, split the money and the money was all toasted.
[34:47] My family, with the exception of me, has a spending problem in my humble opinion. I tend to hold onto money or at least spend money on stuff that hopefully goes up in value, but my family as a whole has a spending issue. Now, so you end up with a small number of wealthy people. And it doesn't matter what you do. Like, I mean, assuming that you still have a relatively free market property-based, property rights-based system, you can take all the land and redistribute it among everyone. And with a generation or two, it'll be back to the same configuration. Because there are just some people who are ungodly talented in productivity. Magic multiples, right? They parade a principle stuff, right? So what happens is, there is the creation of a class system because of skills and excellence and property rights, the people best able to bring resources out of the means of production end up with massive amounts of wealth and the people who formerly had land but managed it badly end up as employees.
[35:57] And you know if you're patient which you know that's a long view and all of that but if you're patient, then some massive advancement, some change in whatever is going to shake up the whole system. And whereas land used to be the great wealth, then it becomes the factory system, and then it becomes financial instruments. And like this just changes all the time, right? I mean, there's podcasting, which was not around a generation ago. So what happens then is you end up with very wealthy and very poor people, or relatively poor people. And this is true, a riding tide lifts all boats and so on, but people don't look at how wealthy their ancestors were, right? Because if you say to Joe, look, your grandfather owned land, but you have twice his income. People don't compare themselves to the past, they compare themselves to others in the present, usually because they're not taught differently. So, rather than say.
[36:59] Your grandfather made $100,000 a year from his acreage, but you make $200,000 a year working that same acreage, so you're better off than your grandfather, or whatever, right? Or, even if you only make the same as your grandfather, you don't have the same variability that he did. In other words, your pay is guaranteed, whereas his would go up and down depending on weather and various infestations and whether the scarecrow worked and stuff like that, right? So you end up with significant wealth disparity and then that because you have a whole bunch of sophists who are out there pouring their iago-based poison into the ears of those who are not owners of the means of production and saying oh he stole from you and he's a bad guy and he ripped you off and you should go and reclaim your heritage just people who get their tickles and jollies from.
[37:54] Fomenting wars and fights and battles and all of that kind of stuff, right? There's some people, I mean, real verbal sadists' office, they get a huge kick and probably almost a sexual pleasure from fomenting wars and fights and combat and conflict, right? And they tend to be physically weak, but rhetorically skilled people, right? Like the woman who can't beat up a guy, but she can complain to a big guy that the other guy called a whore and grabbed her ass, and then the big guy goes and beats up, right? Just physically weak, but rhetorically strong. So, what happens then? Well.
[38:26] Then, because the sophists are whispering their poison into the resentful, those who formerly, whose ancestors owned the means of production, and now they're just workers, then a combination of guilt and sympathy and fear, right? Guilt, sympathy, and fear, there is a resource transfer from the wealthy to the poor and i did the show on this on peter shift's show radio show many years ago called spenum land s-p-e-e-n-h-a-m-l-a-n-d spenum land where they tried this uh welfare state tried this welfare state and hundreds of years later, it's still depressed just as when there was a the flood of gold from the new world hit spain to cause massive inflation, it caused a 400-year recession, because all of the hyper-skilled Pareto principle geniuses flee, and everyone just kind of staggers on under a load of diminished expectations.
[39:27] So, because the sophists and rhetoricians are fomenting rage and violence among those who are employees against those who own the means of production... Is a break in property rights. So the only way to get abundance is through inequality. The only way to get abundance is through inequality. The only way to get wealth is through inequality.
[39:50] And the only way you get inequality in outcome is through property rights, as we talked about with land. If the wealthy guy, sorry, if the really great farmer is eyeing land, he can pay more for it because he's so productive.
[40:06] So you know i would bid more for a microphone if there was one microphone and there was a bad podcaster with only a few people listening and there's me sort of at my height with millions of subscribers and 10 million views and downloads a month then i would be able to bid more for that microphone sorry to labor the point so property rights and universal morality breeds abundance and inequality. And they're two sides of the same coin. Same big, beautiful new coin with ridges on it for reasons you can look into. So, property rights, universal morality, the truth. The truth. Universal property rights are true and valid. We own ourselves. We own the effects of our actions. Whether it's a crime, whether it's a baby, whether it's crops, whether it's a freshly killed deer, whatever it is, right? We own ourselves. We own the effects of our actions. That's a universal moral principle. And accepting that universal moral principle breeds both wealth and inequality. Inequality breeds a fertile ground for resentment and rage and threats.
[41:11] And then what happens is the people who are doing really well feel bad, feel guilty, feel fear of the incipient revolution.
[41:21] And so they take some of their wealth and they carve it off to spend money on the poor. And they do this, not usually through charity, but through the state. Because the poor and the workers vastly outnumber the wealthy, the productive, and the owners of the means of production. I mean, it's one landlord per building, let's say, but there's 100 tenants in the building. So, in a democracy, the tenants vastly outvote the landlords, and the politicians have to appease the tenants, not the landlords. Which is why you get zoning, rent control, blah, blah, blah, right?
[42:01] So through the power of the state, which is supposed to enforce property rights, property rights get violated through forced redistribution of income. And the morality, the universality, is broken. We can, at least at some level, justify a state that protects property rights, even though the source of the revenue for the state, protecting property rights is a violation of property rights, taxes, duties, and so on. But when the state is redistributing income at scale and forcefully, either directly through taxation or indirectly through counterfeiting or money printing and debt, well, then the morality is broken. The universality is broken. And the fault, for the most part, lies with the sophists. This is why Socrates identified them in many ways as the primary enemy.
[42:53] So, rather than tell the truth as to why your grandfather was a landowner and you're an employee, resentment is sown. When resentment is sown, the threat of violence increases, and people run to the government to redistribute income, which violates the property rights, which were the foundation of the plenty. And there has been, of course, a massive battle. Those who do worse are called victims and exploited, and those who do better are called victimizers and exploiters. And all sorts of evils are heaped upon their troubled brows.
[43:30] So the truth is that we own ourselves in the effects of our actions, universal property rights. When that truth is accepted, you get wealth and inequality, which is, of course, of course you do. Of course you do. I mean, when was the last time, outside of Andy McDowell in Four Weddings and a Funeral, when was the last time you saw bad acting in a movie? It's very rare.
[43:53] I mean, seeing great acting is rare, but seeing bad acting is rare. Because people are unequal in their acting talents and abilities, and therefore most people are either not cast, or are cast as minor roles, or are cast as background extras, or whatever, right? Whereas the really good actors, especially the handsome ones, pretty ones, are front and center. Yeah, inequality. Acting talent and good looks are unevenly distributed among the population and therefore there's an inequality, of course. When I was an extra in the made-for-television movie Cain and Abel, although I had a full screenshot of me in the crowd, I was not paid as much as the actors. Of course, right? It was not a shock to me. Why do I get paid more? Because they've proven their worth. Nobody pays to see me back in the day, but they pay to see the other actors. So, the degree to which a society accepts the truth of the universality of property rights, owning yourself, and the effects of your actions is the degree to which you get wealth and inequality.
[44:56] And then, because of sophistry, coming from both the left and the right, because of sophistry, you end up in a situation where the truth is broken. The truth is broken.
[45:10] The truth of the universality of property rights, the morality of self-ownership, and only the effects of your actions is broken. And then, well, we can see this in the West, right? That when wealth really began to explode in the post-Second World War period, but even to some degree before that, I mean, although there was a 14-year Great Depression, but when wealth really began to explode in the post-war period, you got massive income redistribution schemes. Office were telling all the people who were making more money but not as much as the wealthiest that the wealthiest were ripping them off and stealing from them and exploiting them and blah blah and then the west like why is the west in so much trouble because the west west has denied universal morality the left has denied the west sorry the west and the left but the west has denied universal morality as has the right because both are in favor of horrible income redistribution schemes such as the welfare state and, you know, subsidized housing and all kinds of stuff, right?
[46:11] So, the West has broken with universal morality. Thou shalt not steal property rights. The West is broken with universal morality. And as a result, the West is dying because, of course, the welfare state, which was supposed to help the poor people in the West, now has become a magnet for migrants and immigrants to come and live off the taxpayer's time, right? I mean, in the Middle East, you make one-tenth as a wage laborer as you can make getting government income in the West. Until society learns the truly moral roots of inequality, and listen, I hate to say inequality because a disparity or whatever it is, right? But, you know, some people open their mouths and sing like angels. Other people can take singing lessons for years and don't sound particularly good. Set un fact. It's just a fact. Now, have singing voices been unequally distributed? Well, no, it's not like there's some central factory of vocal cords and, oh, I like this fetus, I'll give them a great singing voice. That's not how it works, right? It's just organic, it's biological, it's evolutionary, whatever it is. It's genetic, right? And obviously, you can't have too many great singing voices, otherwise society becomes a choir which starves to death. So talent has to be relatively small because a talented singer might entertain the farmers in the evening but.
[47:37] Still need to work. And most people would rather be singers than farmers. And so the number of people without good singing voices has to vastly outnumber the number of people with really great singing voices. Otherwise, nobody wants to work. They just want to sing. So you have universal morality, which produces disparities in outcome.
[47:57] And those disparities in outcome, those wedges are widened and salted and poisoned by sophists into rage, and that is used to break, out of fear, guilt, shame, obligation, that is used to break the universality of property rights and morality. The wages of sin is death, and the West is in trouble because we have sinned. We have sinned, we have broken property rights for the sake of sentimentality and fear and guilt and obligation. And what happens is of course what we should tell the poor is you know work hard look for various opportunities and and so on right i look for ways that you can do something new economically look for ways that you can assert your skills you know poor people should be studying ai like crazy look ways you can study your skills and you know see if that gets you out of your your poverty right okay that's good i mean i studied a lot of computer stuff and a lot of economics a lot of history, a lot of philosophy, and it ended up with, you know, I had a career in as a software entrepreneur, and then as a podcaster and videographer, video vlogger or whatever, right? And public speaker. And so, yeah, it kind of worked out, but, you know, it was a lot of extra work, but that's fine. I mean, the wealthy people usually work pretty hard too, so I have no particular issues with that. It's that Britney Spears song, Work Bitch. So.
[49:22] Just should be taught to work hard. It's not like all the wealthy people are happy, and it's not like all the poor people are unhappy, and it's not like the wealthy people don't work hard. Maybe the wealthy people could do a little less Instagram flaunting of their wealth. It's usually the kids, not the adults who do that.
[49:40] Unfortunately, we broke morality. We broke morality in the First World War. We broke morality in the Second World War, particularly with the draft, broke morality with Vietnam and America with the draft, and broke morality with income redistribution schemes, which is just buying off the proletariat, so to speak, and buying votes. Because the poor will always outnumber the rich, so the poor always vote to take away the property of the rich, and everyone becomes poor. So we broke morality, and we refused to continue to look at shrinking the size and power of the state, and now we have a giant state that can redistribute income, not just within our own borders, but in a sense across the world by having people come in who get free stuff, quote, free stuff from the government. So the wages of sin is death. It's hard to mourn. Like, I wish people had made better decisions as a whole. I wish people had listened to moral philosophers. I wish people had listened to, you know, ANCAPs and libertarians and so on. But they didn't.
[50:37] They didn't. And it's kind of tough to mourn the hardships being suffered by society that has broken morality so fundamentally to the point where it's stealing from the unborn through national debts. It's stealing from everybody through rampant inflation. It's redistributing money. Like, so we broke principle. We broke property rights. We broke universality. And when you break universality, you destroy productivity. And it's sort of like, if you are, you know, there used to be this thing where doctors would talk about how great smoking was.
[51:13] All the doctors, they smoke camels, blah, blah, blah, right? And it took about 40 years to break that.
[51:20] And if you are somebody who's campaigning against smoking, oh, smoking is really bad. Smoking is really dangerous. And then there's a bunch of doctors who are promoting smoking. Oh, this cigarette is the best cigarette and you'll be fine. Well, when one of those doctors gets sick from smoking, what is your response? Well, obviously you don't want them to get sick, but that's why you told them that smoking was dangerous. But if they fought against you and through their advocacy of smoking, you know, killed hundreds or thousands of people statistically, well, you're not happy that people are sick from smoking, but you are vindicated that people are sick from smoking. Because if you say, you know, smoking is bad for you, smoking is dangerous, smoking will kill like one out of two smokers or whatever the numbers are. Well, it's not that you want people to die. You don't want people to die, which is why you're against people smoking, but if people continue to smoke and then get sick, you are vindicated, like your life's work is vindicated.
[52:18] We don't want to waste our life, we want our life's work to be vindicated, and the breaking of universal morality, the rejection of universal morality, the turning of societal sympathies into systemic immorality, well, a society that rejects truth and reason and evidence and facts, well, it's like a guy driving blindfolded. I mean, he's going to crash, you don't know exactly when, or where, but he's going to. He may drive for a few minutes. Okay. Now, you don't want him to crash. You say, take off your blindfold. And instead, he puts on another blindfold. And you say, he's going to crash. You don't want him to crash. That's why you're telling him to take off the blindfold. But when he does crash, you're vindicated. And you were right. And then hopefully, his crash means that other people will not do the same thing. So that's on the grave of the West.
[53:16] Do not reject reality. Do not reject morality or suffer the same fate as us. And that will be the sole lesson we have for the future. Sadly, but certainly. So I hope that helps freedomain.com to help out the show. Love to get your feedback. And don't forget, we've got shows Wednesday night 7 p.m. Eastern, Friday night 7 p.m. Saturdays 11 a.m. And you can set yourself up for a public our private call-in show at freedomain.com slash call. Thanks so much, everyone. Talk to you soon. Lots of love. Bye-bye.
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