0:00 - Introduction to Anarchism and Rights
3:52 - Concepts and Their Existence
9:38 - The Nature of Rights
18:02 - Confusion Around Human Rights
23:41 - Properties vs. Rights
31:06 - Self-Ownership and Responsibility
37:20 - Tyranny and Personal Accountability
This lecture, led by Stefan Molyneux, dives deep into the philosophical discussion surrounding the concepts of rights, human nature, and the nature of governance. Starting with the basic tenets of anarchism, libertarianism, and liberalism, Molyneux presents a critical view on the idea of natural rights—asserting that while human beings are claimed to possess inherent rights to life, liberty, and property, such rights do not appear to exist in the natural world, which operates on principles of domination and survival rather than moral absolutes.
Molyneux elaborates on the distinction between concepts that exist in the mind versus those that have a tangible reality in nature. He argues that concepts, including rights, do not exist independently and thus cannot be universally applied without internal contradiction. For instance, he discusses how fictional characters and narrative constructs (like Superman, Hamlet, or even constructs from games like Dungeons & Dragons) can have internally consistent rules or traits but do not correspond to an objective reality. This leads to the broader claim that many supposed rights are subjective proclamations that lack a universal grounding.
The lecture progresses to explore the implications of acknowledging that self-ownership is a fundamental property of human beings. Molyneux argues that if individuals own themselves, they inherently bear responsibility for their actions. He critiques society's tendency to blur the lines of accountability and responsibility, particularly when discussing health care as a "right." He successfully illustrates that claims for such rights often result in a contradiction, as they imply that one person can lay claim to the labor and resources of another, diluting the legitimacy of property rights which are inherently about self-ownership.
Moving into the examination of totalitarianism and authority, Molyneux posits that the demand for external entities (like governments) to provide for personal needs stems from individuals' unwillingness to confront their own choices and responsibilities. He emphasizes that tyranny thrives in environments where people seek to escape accountability, using the example of how societal structures like welfare can enable individuals to offload the consequences of poor decision-making onto others.
In the latter parts of the lecture, Molyneux draws on personal anecdotes to highlight how the process of holding individuals accountable can contribute to a more just society. He suggests that true freedom is not necessarily about the absence of rules but rather a commitment to recognizing and owning one’s choices. He advocates for a societal shift from a focus on subjective interpretations of rights to a clearer articulation of objective properties,—that human beings have self-ownership and are responsible for the outcomes of their actions.
In conclusion, the lecture is a comprehensive examination of the philosophical, social, and psychological implications of rights, personal accountability, and the nature of authority. Molyneux’s insights challenge the audience to reassess their understanding of rights, urging them to base their discussions on objective properties rather than subjective claims, in order to foster a more responsible and free society.
[0:00] Good morning, everybody. Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain here with great questions from Facebook.com. And let's get right into it with a nice, deep, juicy political one. Yeah, baby.
[0:13] Anarchism, says somebody, writes somebody, anarchism, libertarianism, and liberalism as a whole is based on the assertion that human beings are born with natural rights, that each individual is endowed with the right to life, liberty, and property, regardless regardless of any social or political institution. And the only role of government, if any, is to protect these individual rights. But, if you look at nature, these rights do not actually exist. Nature is amoral, and a species' survival is based on domination, either through brute force or cunning, or some other means. The idea of individual human rights seem to be a human constraint. Why do people think that natural rights exist? And if they do exist, where did they come from? So it's a great question. It's a deep question, a very meaningful question. And concepts do not exist. You look at a forest, there's a bunch of trees that exist. But a concept which describes the trees or the aggregation of trees as a forest, a concept does not exist. Now, just because something does not exist, people somehow think that means that it is subjective. That which does not exist is subjective. Now, it is certainly true that there are things that do not exist that are subjective.
[1:36] So, Middle Earth does not exist. And so the map of Middle Earth is not objective. It does not describe things in the real world. It describes things in the imagination of one J.R.R. Tolkien. It does not exist. A Superman is a creature that does not exist. It's not a human because it comes from Krypton, right? So Superman is a creature which does not exist, and therefore the abilities of Superman do not measure something or anything objective in the real world.
[2:09] So can superman fly sure because superman does not exist and therefore the concept of superman does not describe anything in the real world and therefore there is no limit upon the properties that one can ascribe to superman now of course there's story consistency you can't have it that it can fly one day and doesn't fly the next day so there has to be some kind of internal logic to it you can't say well he's really susceptible to kryptonite one day and then he's immune to kryptonite the next like that wouldn't make any sense right so there is a certain logic that you need to follow in terms of the story you can't have characters in lord of the rings constantly, interchanging the words for shire and mordor and and so on right moria and the misty mountains right so i get and i think we all understand there has to be some kind of internal logic logic, but if you were to describe the digestive systems of Klingons on Star Trek, well, you're not following any objective thing, because Klingons in Star Trek are made-up creatures. Because they're made-up creatures, then you can't get it wrong, so to speak. I mean, you can get it wrong in terms of internal consistency, but you're not describing anything objective.
[3:26] On the other hand if you are describing the properties of matter right that the sort of three states of water right solid as in ice liquid as in water and vapor as in mist well if you say water boils at 100 degrees centigrade well you are claiming an objective testable metric about something that exists in the real world.
[3:52] So, the concept of water does not exist, but because the concept is describing something in the real world.
[4:02] Has a need for accuracy and objectivity, right? You cannot spend the concept of money. I suppose in fiat currency, it gets kind of hazy around there. You cannot drink the concept of water. You cannot eat the concept of food. However, water and food describe real things with real properties in the real world. If you were to say that for human beings, carpets are food, you would be incorrect because no nutritional value in carpets so concepts do not exist in the real world and there are in general three categories of concepts the first is entirely self-contradictory concepts which are impossible and usually simply show error right so if you and say, if you say two and two make five, or the concept is a square circle, or an immortal human being, right? As in, human beings are mortal, and if you say, well, there's human beings with the characteristics of immortality, then you have a contradiction, because human beings cannot be both mortal as a category and immortal as individual. So they're just contradictory concepts. So these are concepts that are just invalid, right? And then there are concepts that do not exist but require certain levels of consistency.
[5:31] So, if you look at, say, the character Hamlet, the character Hamlet has several characteristics, hyper-intellectualism, extraordinarily high verbal skills, and indecision, right? Let's just sort of say, to sort of boil Hamlet down to a couple of things, right?
[5:46] So, if you were to portray Hamlet from one scene to the next as being, you know, having dazzling verbal skills and then being, even though he was trying, completely not eloquent, right, then that would be inconsistency. If you showed him as being really indecisive and then really decisive and so on, right, then this would not be any particular sense as a character and that would be bad art. I mean, if you were to take the indecisiveness and eloquence of Hamlet and jam them into the muscle-bound brain of Conan the Barbarian, you might get some comedy, but it would only be funny because it would be so wildly inconsistent, right? So these are things that do not exist. Conan the Barbarian, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. These are people who do not exist, but in order for the stories to work, there has to be some kind of internal consistency and logic to them. King Lear can end the play for the sake of pathos. He can end the play as a very fond and foolish old man, as he describes himself. But he has to start the play, King Lear, as massively arrogant and superior and dominant and bossy and so on, right? Demanding these love tests from his daughters and only believing the liars. So there has to be a character arc. It wouldn't make much sense to go the opposite way.
[7:13] So, Mickey Mouse works as a sort of cute cartoon character because he's got that squeaky voice, optimism and enthusiasm and is fairly kind and all of that.
[7:25] And if he were to be vicious and cruel and evil from one cartoon to the next, it wouldn't make any sense. So, there has to be some sort of internal consistency and some kind of logic to the situation in Dungeons & Dragons. Just last example, right? I'm sure you understand. In Dungeons and Dragons, there are creatures that do not exist in the real world, but they still have specific properties, right? They have particular levels of strength. They have particular spells that they can cast. They're easy or hard to hit. They're good or bad at fighting. And these have to be consistent. So, you know, you've got some big fiery demon, very hard to kill. You've got some giant rat, should be relatively easy to kill. So you have to have some kind of logic. In Dungeons & Dragons, there are hundreds of spells, and each of these spells has particular characteristics. So even though the spells don't exist in the real world, there is an internal logic. Otherwise, the game would be unplayable and no fun, right? Chess pieces exist, right? The chess board exists, the chess pieces exist, the chess players exist. The rules of chess are not embedded in the board or in the pieces. They are... The rules of chess exist within the mind. The concepts exist within the mind.
[8:49] Right? Our ideas of the forest exist in the mind. The word forest, as I say it, right? I mean, there's vibrations in my throat. I'm moving my mouth, tongue, and lips, and teeth, I suppose, to create forest, right? Forest. So, the word forest exists in the world. It affects matter matter, in that I create vibrations, go to my microphone, to the computer, up to the server, into your ear, and now my argument has been transferred from my mind to your mind, imperfectly, right? The language is imperfect, but the argument has been transferred. But it's the most perfect thing we have, right? So it's imperfect relative to, I don't know, some kind of mind melt, but it is the most perfect thing we have.
[9:38] Somebody who lives for a hundred years is considered healthy and successful in living, we don't say well compared to a turtle or a tortoise that could live for hundreds of years he died young right you have to have your standards relative to the ideal so self-contradictory concepts do not exist and are not valid concepts that require consistency do not exist and are valid to the degree that they maintain consistency and then there are concepts that describe things in the real world, they still do not exist, but they are objective.
[10:15] Well, sorry, what they describe is objective, and therefore the concepts have to be accurate.
[10:22] So you wouldn't look at a microphone stand and say, that's a forest. Or at least if you did, you would not be accurate. So rights, human rights, is a concept. Do concepts exist? They do not.
[10:36] And this is Platonism versus Aristotelianism, right? Plato said concepts exist in the universe and are superior to our mere sense apparatus. So Plato said that there's this world of ideal forms that we inhabit before we're born, and that's how we know what a chair is, because we saw a perfect chair in the world of ideal forms, and they are superior to our mere sensory input and so on. So concepts do exist and are superior.
[11:01] Aristotle said, no, we develop concepts by repeatedly looking at the use and purpose of things and what they are, and we learn what a rock is because we repeatedly handle and deal with rocks, and we learn what chairs are because we see people sit in them, and that's what they're designed for and they have particular properties and so we develop concepts from sensory data and our understanding of purpose and properties, right? Rocks have particular properties that we abstract in order to understand what rocks are as a whole. So a concept is that when we take a property shared among like objects and abstract it to be able to deal with new things, right? So So, if we're in some big battle and I have a sling and I say, hey, pass me that rock over there because I need to fire my sling or swing my sling. Well, you don't say, well, what the heck is a rock, right? You know what a rock is, you grab me the rock, right? I mean, you know, you're helping your dad fix his car, like, pass me the three-quarter spanner, three-quarter inch spanner or the Phillips screwdriver or something. You know, hopefully you know what that is and can hand him the right thing, your surgeon's scalpel, right? Hand me the whatever scalpel, right? The nurse is supposed to know what that is and hand it to him.
[12:15] So, as far as human rights go, they don't exist. Now, if we are going to ascribe preferences for human beings, because a right is a preference to not have violence used against you, to not be stolen from, to not be defrauded, and so on, right? If we're going to ascribe preferences to human beings, the oughts, well, the oughts don't exist in nature. nature, but oughts are required for arguments. So oughts do not exist in nature, but oughts are required to have a debate, to have a conversation, to communicate with another human being requires an acceptance of shoulds and oughts and preferences.
[12:58] So if somebody, if we have a debate, if I have a debate with someone and we agree that reason and evidence are going to win the day, and then they decisively disprove both my argument and they dispel the validity of my evidence, and then I claim that I have won, well, I haven't violated any laws of physics, but I have violated the laws of debate that I agreed to ahead of time. And in a sense, I've stolen the other person's time, right? I've stolen the other person's time because if I debate with someone for two hours, let's just say it's a private debate, and we both agree ahead of time, I'm reason and evidence are going to win the day. And then that person does not accept the reason and evidence and then continues to claim that I'm wrong and lies about me or whatever. Well, they've wasted my time because if I'd known ahead of time that they weren't going to accept reason and evidence, if I'd have known that ahead of time, I wouldn't have bothered to engage in the debate.
[13:56] This is similar to if you agree to play chess with someone, then you agree to play the game of chess. Yes, bishops move diagonally, knights do the L-shaped thing, pawns move two at first, then one, and only diagonal to take, right? So we understand all of that, and those are the rules. And if you play chess with someone, and then they say, well, my three remaining pawns can all act as queens, well, you wouldn't bother playing. If you knew ahead of time that the rules were just going to be changed after the fact.
[14:31] So, if you hook your sense of morality into the concept of rights, then the question is, what can you do with people who disagree with you? Right so you know this old meme right like everything i like is a human right like health care every it's a human right for everything i like and prefer or that people want is a human right everything that people dislike is bigoted and hate speech and should be banned right.
[15:05] So what do you do with people who disagree so if you say human beings have rights people are going going to use the concept of rights. Rights are deserved behavior, right? So if you say, well, I have the right to freedom of movement, then anybody who interferes with that right is wrong because you have the preference of free movement. Now, if somebody says, I have a right to health care, right? So somebody says, I have the right to property rights, and somebody else says, I have the right of health care. I have the right to health care. So the word right here is being used in two completely opposite ways. One is saying, I have the right to keep the products of my labor. And the other person says, I have the right to consume other people's labor. Right? So if you say, I have the right to keep my labor, the products of my labor, then that's property rights. If say, I have the right to healthcare or something like that, then you're saying, I have the right to consume other people's labor. And if they want to keep In other words, not give it to me, then I can get them thrown in jail or whatever is going to be talked about in that context. So the word rights becomes subjective.
[16:21] I have a right to control, this is the woman's argument, right? I have the right to control what goes on in my own body. I have the right to control my own body, right? And that then leads to the right of abortion, even though the baby is not technically the woman's own body and has separate DNA and can have a separate blood type and all these kinds of things, right?
[16:45] So the word right is challenging because what does it describe that is actually objective and measurable? And how do you know if someone is wrong? So the formulation that we say, well, I have a right to retain my property and the government is instituted to protect my property well what protects you from the government taking your property right that's that's who watches the watchers right there's no answer to that in a political sense the only answer to that is in a voluntary ostracism sense where you can't be forced, into association the government is a monopoly that says you have to true choose my method of protecting property so that's a contradiction right it's like saying well we should be totally free to marry whoever we want, and therefore, you have to marry this person.
[17:35] So, you're not going to get very far with rights, and this is part of the confusion of the modern world, that everybody's redefining rights to mean whatever they like, whatever they want, and they use this supercharged word rights to get whatever they want. They simply redefine their needs and preferences, they redefine all of that as a right. Everybody has a right to this, everybody has a right to that.
[18:02] And you don't get anywhere useful. So, what does this mean? How can we deal with this problem? And if you ask people to define rights, they just say, well, people have a right to health care. It's like, well, that means that they have a right to other people's labor, which means that they get to use coercion against people for exercising their free choice and will. That can't be right. That can't be good. That's a form of slavery, right? If you have a right to other people's labor and they can be put in jail for resisting you, then that's kind of like slavery. That can't be good. So what does this mean? Oh, people say, well, I have a right to not be offended. Well, what does that mean? Then anybody who wants to censor others just simply claims to be offended. And we can sort of see this. It's not an abstract thing, right? It's actually happening all over the world. I'm upset, therefore you should be quiet. Well, I'm upset that you're upset, therefore you should be quiet. Can't be universalized, right? So, what can we say about this? So, the way that you can correct other people is according to objective metrics. Objective metrics. Something measurable in the real world. That's how you can correct people for sure. And there's no other way. So if somebody says mammals are cold-blooded, right? Mammals are cold-blooded. Well, one of the definitions of a mammal is that it's warm-blooded.
[19:26] And so you have an objective fact that you can reference that will define this. I remember playing chess with my brother when I was very, very little, and I was convinced that the king could move two spaces, and we had these big, giant Encyclopedia Britannicas on the shelf. And I had set my whole game or my whole sort of somewhat losing game I had set my entire hopes and plans on the king being able to move two spaces. I'm not sure why I had that in my head but that was just what I had in my head. And then when I tried to move my king two spaces my brother said you can't do that and I said yes I can. Now it was different if I said I can jump off the couch and keep going up, right? We could just test it, right? And so we cracked our Encyclopedia Britannicus and we looked up and I saw with a slightly sinking heart that my brother was right and that I could only move the king one space. So I lost the game, but I gained a very important lesson.
[20:38] Yeah, I was a younger sibling. I hated it. Of course, right? So that's looking at something objective. So if you say rights, you're in the realm of subjective. And it's people recasting their own particular preferences as universal moral goods and absolutes that don't all hang together at all. So rights have to have an internal consistency, the claim of rights. They're in the second category, right? They're not entirely self-contradictory, but they contradict some things. In the same way that a square circle is entirely self-contradictory, or two and two to make five is entirely self-contradictory, but Mordor doesn't exist, but it still has to be Soren's home throughout the story, right? There has to be some sort of internal consistency to it. Although you can't objectively prove that Mordor is not Soren's home without reference to the books, right? If it's only within the books, then internal consistency is valid, right? If I say that the capital of Spain is Tel Aviv, well, people can, it's not just looking things up in books, right? You can actually, if you want, travel to the places and see that for sure, right? So rights are in the second category in that there does have to be a certain amount of internal consistency. And somebody who says, well, people have a right to healthcare, they're not saying people have a right to healthcare and the opposite of healthcare at the same time.
[21:59] There is a certain amount of internal consistency but if people say well you have a right to property and other people have a right to healthcare, well then you have a problem because I mean our time is our property and if you're saying you have a right to other people's labor then you have a right to their property and time and value, so there are internal inconsistencies but it's not directly self-contradictory, in the way that two and two make five is internally self-contradictory so rights exist in the second category and then the question is can we move the concept of social or political goods to the first category where you are referencing something objective it's in other words it's not what is the what are the what is the metabolic rate and thyroid properties of the elvish race which just make things up because doesn't exist you can't measure it against anything in the real world you could measure sure it against other internal things within the Tolkien stories, but you can't measure it relative to the actual real world. So can we move the concept of rights from the second category of subjective but with some consistency to objective thus requiring absolute consistency?
[23:14] Well, yes we can. And instead of thinking of rights, which are subjective, we must think of properties which are objective.
[23:25] So if somebody says human beings don't occupy space, well, you can see that human beings do occupy space. You could measure that and so on. So you would solve that. That would be nicely and beautifully solved.
[23:42] If you say that human beings are not mammals, well, you can measure the temperature. It's warm-blooded. We have hair, not scales right we give birth to life young so you can test that so if we can make what is called rights into what are actually properties then we remove the subjectivity we've removed the subjectivity now of course the objection is and i i understand the objection it's a good one the objection is to say hey bro wait a minute wait just a gosh darn minute you said that rights don't exist, but when you're talking about, you know, blood temperature and giving birth to live young and hair not scales, these things exist. They can be measured. Absolutely. So, I understand the objection. That's why the problem is hard, but relatively easy to solve if you just go with me for another minute or two.
[24:34] Now, human beings have properties and those properties are objective. Otherwise, they're not properties, they're subjective. So, properties are objective, can't be measured objectively. Now, it is impossible to say human beings do not have self-ownership.
[24:58] Because you have to exercise self-ownership in order to make that argument, and therefore it is self-contradictory. Saying human beings do not have self-ownership is like saying a square circle or two and two make five.
[25:11] Because you have to exercise self-ownership in order to make the case that human beings don't have self-ownership.
[25:17] So it's in the first category. Human beings don't have self-ownership is in the first category of self-contradictory principles, number one. Number two, if you and I are having a debate and you say human beings are not responsible for the effects of their actions, so I say human beings are responsible for the effects of their actions and I direct that argument at you and then you reply to me, human beings are not responsible for the effects of their actions, you have contradicted yourself. Yourself because you're saying you Stef made this argument which I am now rebutting to you Stef because you made this argument and it needs to be rebutted right so you are accepting that my argument was created by me and I am responsible for the effects of my body which is to make this argument so if I say human beings are responsible for the effects of their actions and you say to me, no, Stef, you're wrong, you've just contradicted yourself, and you have affirmed my argument, because you're saying the argument that you, Stef, produced, Stef's argument, is incorrect according to an objective metric, and therefore you, Stef, are wrong, because you made this argument, it isn't independent of you, right? Like if you and I were unearthing some ancient burial ground, and we came across some text that said two and two make five, you wouldn't turn to me and say, Stef, you're wrong, two and two don't make five.
[26:46] We're just finding this piece of pottery shard written by a third grader in Mesopotamia 4,000 years ago. You wouldn't ascribe that argument to me because I didn't write it down. So the moment somebody says to me, Stef, you're wrong, they are affirming their own self-ownership by making the argument. They're affirming that I am responsible for the effects of my actions by telling me that I'm wrong, right?
[27:10] Now, Now, if it should turn out, I mean, let's take an extreme example here, just to reinforce the point. If it were to turn out that I was debating with someone, and, you know, they had long hair, and they had a little earpiece in there where some horrible criminal was whispering that if they didn't say X, Y, or Z, then, you know, appalling crimes would occur, and then would harm that person, and so on. Then I would, and if they said outlandish things, I'd be upset with them maybe, or irritated, or exasperated, or something. But if I later found out that they were under compulsion, I would have sympathy, not, because they would not be under a situation of self-ownership. They would have their actions dictated by the person whispering threats into their ear, credible threats into their ear. There was a guy, Thaddeus Russell, I can't remember, the guy I debated years ago who was an academic, and he said, yes, women could have children by having sex with trees. To me, it's a perfectly ridiculous and embarrassing statement to make, but if it turned out later that he was under some kind of compulsion, that would be a different matter. They would not be exercising self-ownership in that way. Their self-ownership would be hijacked by someone else, in the same way that if a man goes to rob a bank with a partner, both partners go to jail, but if one man goes and kidnaps someone, we don't put the kidnapped person in jail, because they're not doing what they're doing in participating with the criminal's activities of their own free will.
[28:39] So, to move rights into the third category of objectively described properties, we accept human beings own themselves and human beings are responsible for the effects of their actions right human beings are responsible for the effects of their actions now if we accept that human beings own themselves then we have free will and personal responsibility and accountability moral judgment and if we accept that human beings own themselves and the effects of their actions. That's how we know if some guy strangles a woman on camera.
[29:19] Then he is the murderer, because he has through his choice strangled a woman, therefore he owns the murder, he owns the dead body, he owns the moral crime, and that's why we put him in jail. And we know, even though it's his hands that committed the crime, we don't cut off his hands and throw his hands in jail, we put his brain in jail, him in jail. If he happens to have to have a foot amputated because of diabetes, we still put him in jail because it's his brain that we accept is the motive force behind his actions. So we own ourselves, and we own the effects of our actions. And of course, you know, we all know this when we're kids. You're playing, some lamp falls over and breaks, your mom comes storming in. Oh, he did it, he did it, it wasn't me, right? Try to get the other person to own the lamp breakage and so on, right? Right. So, if we can go from subjective preferences claimed as universal, quote, rights, to instead properties that cannot be overturned, then we have the basis for, not rights, but properties. We own ourselves, we own the effects of our actions. This cannot be disputed in any rational context.
[30:36] It's like saying language is meaningless. Well, you've just chosen particular words in the lexicon of language to communicate that language has no capacity to communicate meaning, but you're using language to communicate that language has no meaning. That's self-contradictory. It's a contradiction in terms. That's in the first category of concepts. Language has no meaning is in the first category of concepts, a square circle, two and two make five. We own ourselves. We own the effects of our actions. We own ourselves as moral responsibility. We own the effects of our actions as property rights.
[31:06] We own the effects of our actions as property rights if i clear an unowned piece of land right i clear the land and i plant crops i harvest the crops well the crops are the effects of my actions i own them as much as i would own a murder if i killed someone as much as i would own, a bad argument if i made it as much as i own if i if i lie about someone in some horrible and materially harmful way and I know that I'm lying and I'm just out there to harm their business and so on then I'm responsible for that resulting damage and there would be civil penalties and so on right so we don't want to talk about rights indeed we just want to talk about properties, human beings have a property called self-ownership human beings own the effects of their actions.
[31:54] Someone else to take your property is an explicit or implicit falsehood. It's saying, I control the effects of your actions. I control the effects of your actions. So in Crime and Punishment, spoiler, right, there is a painter who is a crazed religious fanatic who takes responsibility for Raskolnikov's murder and confesses to a murder he did not commit. Now, we understand that this would be a sort of crazy, deranged thing to do. To accept or to make the claim that you committed a murder you didn't would be to attempt to own the effects of somebody else's actions, as in the double murder of the pawnbroker and Elisaveta. So that would be wrong and unhealthy. And somebody who, or if the police coerce a confession out of someone, then we would recognize that as an abuse of power, if the person did not commit the crime, and so on. So, we understand all of this. So, we're talking about properties. We're talking about properties, not preferences. Preferences are subjective.
[33:05] Claiming that your subjective preference is some sort of universal right is a contradiction in terms. Saying, I want free healthcare and then say, no, no, no, it's a universal right that everyone get free healthcare. Well, what that is saying is it is a universal right that some people own the effects of other people's actions, but it is impossible for us to own the effects of other people's actions any more than it is possible for us to digest food for another person or, you know, somebody says, hey, man, I'm really enjoying the movie, but I got to pee. Can you go pee for me? Well, that's not going to work. You can't own the effects of somebody else's actions. And if you say, well, I have the right to healthcare, you're saying, I own the effects of other people's actions, which is the provision of healthcare. But you can't own the effects of other people's actions.
[33:59] Then you can, quote, make a decision for someone else. You can influence them. You can't make a decision for someone else any more than you can digest their dinner for them. So there's more to talk about all of this. This is a fair amount to digest up front. But we don't want to talk about rights. The word has been corrupted, and it is kind of meaningless. And yes, they don't exist in reality. We want to talk about properties. What properties do human beings have? Do they have self-ownership? Yes. And this is established from a physical perspective. This is not something that's, do I have self-ownership? Well, sure, because it's only my brain that is wired into my nervous system. Nobody else's brain, there's no tentacles going from somebody else's brain into some port through my neck that controls my nervous system.
[34:49] So physically, this is physical stuff, right? If I slap some guy voluntarily, like I choose to slap some guy. I'm not under coercion. It's not epilepsy or anything like that. So I choose to slap some guy. Well, can I say he made me do it? Well, physically, no, because his brain cannot control my arm. His brain cannot control me. There's no physical wiring. There's no nerves. There's no brainstem. There's no spine. His nerves do not physically control. Only my brain physically controls my arm. So we are in the realm of self-ownership. is in the realm of a physical verification.
[35:29] Owning the effects of your actions is absolutely commonplace. If there's some kid who has a take-home test, who then gets his brilliant friend to write the test for him, we would say, who owns the mark? Not the kid who pretended he'd written the test, but his friend who actually wrote the test. And who is punished for cheating? Well, both of them, because they were both aware that they were participating in a fraud to pretend and greater knowledge than actually existed in the mind of the person taking the test. So, we know. There's no justice system, there's no legal system, you can't punish any criminals, you can't ever hold anyone accountable, you can't give anyone raises or fire anyone if they don't own the effects of their actions. And you can't debate about it without accepting that you own the effects of your... everybody owns the effects of their actions, right? So, at a practical, physical level, at a socially accepted level, at a biological level, at a logical level, we own ourselves, we own the effects of our actions. Now, if we can build our ethics based upon those facts, and they're incontrovertible facts, do we own ourselves? Absolutely. I mean, only our brains are wired to our bodies. Nobody else. So, we own ourselves, we own the effects of our actions. Indisputable. Now, from there, we get moral responsibility and we get property rights.
[36:52] You've got moral responsibility, and you have property rights, right? We own ourselves, therefore I should be, like rape. Rape is a violation of self-ownership, because if the woman wants to have sex, then it's not rape. If she doesn't want to have sex, but the man forces himself on her, that's rape, because he is claiming ownership of her body, which she is not granting. He's violating self-ownership. She is the one in charge of her own reproductive organs and who has access to them, so he's violating that.
[37:20] So once we get self-ownership and property rights, that's really 90% of the way to ethics, and I would focus on properties, not rights. All right, let's see here, where are my questions? I loved your video, The Story of Your Enslavement. It helped crystallize in my mind the need of governments to control more and more of our lives and the idea that our programming since birth has created the myth of authority.
[37:47] All and yet have witnessed a totalitarian shift in the intervening years of rules and laws and surveillance that have encircled us all, controlled us all? Do you think that it is possible to escape this panopticon of control, or will it follow us wherever we go? Can we ever be free if they control both the fruits of our labor and our ability to travel? So, totalitarianism, in its extreme forms, is the price we pay for lying to ourselves. The real question with, and this is outside of the sort of parenting child scenario, but the real question of unjust authority is, is it a pull market or a push market? A pull market is where demand creates its own supply. A push market is where supply creates its own demand. The example being, of course, nobody knew that they needed an iPad until an iPad was around and then they really wanted it, right? So with totalitarians, what drives the market for totalitarianism? Well, what drives the market for totalitarianism is people wanting to commit evil acts while convincing themselves that they're good.
[38:57] Lying to themselves about the morality of their unjust desires. It is recasting evil as the good. It is recasting violations of property rights as somehow serving the human good. So, if you have a desire to, which we all do, right, to portray your own unjust impulses as the highest moral virtue, then you're lying to yourself. And because you're lying to yourself, tyrants will give you what you want unjustly at the expense of your liberties. But the only fundamental freedom is telling the truth to ourselves and to those around us. And even within the halls of your own mind, there is no totalitarian who can force you to lie to yourself. You can submit to unjust laws, but nobody can force you to say that those unjust laws are, in fact, just. If we all told the truth to each other, and all were willing to trade rather than steal, tyrants would have nothing to offer us. Tyranny is the shadow cast by our avoidance of morality and responsibility.
[40:09] So an example might be a woman who has a child with a bad man, a wrong man, an unjust man, a brutal man, a bad man, an irresponsible man, a lazy man, a crime-ridden man, she has a kid with a bad man and then she wants free stuff to take care of her kid. Now if we imagine, let's just take a mind case here, a mental case here, if we imagine a society wherein women chose to have children in wedlock with good fathers, good providers, good fathers, good men, right? So women chose to have kids with good men. Well, would there be any demand for a welfare state? Well, no, because the women would have good providers with good men. And as a result of that, there would be no demand for a welfare state. In fact, there would be an opposition to a welfare state because there would be no need for the welfare state and also because the welfare state would be taking taxes away from the man who was providing for his family, which would mean that the woman would have less money for her own family, like the responsible woman, right?
[41:28] Now, if there's a man who makes bad and greedy business decisions, let's be fair and reasonable at what can happen in the world. It's obviously not just women who make bad decisions. If a man, well, we can say too, if a man has a baby with a bad woman, an unjust woman, a brutal woman, an irresponsible woman, well, he's got a big problem, right? Because he has a kid now with a woman who is unstable or unjust or violent or vile or bad or whatever, right? So he's got a problem.
[42:05] So he likes the welfare state because then she'll leave him alone. She'll run to the government for money and she'll leave him alone. So he likes the welfare state for that reason too. The welfare state is largely a giant subsidy for sexual addiction, people who succumb to sexual lust and desire without having stable structures, relationship structures in place, like homelessness, right? To a large degree, homelessness is driven by relationship dysfunction. Homelessness is driven by relationship dysfunction. What I mean by that, of course, is that homelessness is what happens when people run out of anybody who will give them a couch. People who've become so dysfunctional and destructive and, you know, they've robbed from everyone, they've lied to everyone, they've burned every bridge with everyone they've ever known, and therefore they end up homeless because nobody can stand having them under their own roofs anymore. This is particularly true, of course, of the emotional terrorism that masks itself as addiction.
[43:12] Addicts will lie, cheat, steal, and so on in order to get the money to fuel their addictions. They will do all of that. And eventually people are just like, they're tired of being lied to and having their stuff stolen, so they kick them out. Homelessness happens when people would, you know, everyone grows up with families and have friends and so on. And homelessness happens when people would rather see you homeless than put you out for one more day. You have become that exasperating and difficult for people that they're so done with you from that context that they in a sense don't care what happens to you they just have to, survive in some manner and you are really harming their capacity to flourish or survive or save or maintain their property or whatever right you steal and sell everything and eventually they'll just kick you out so homelessness is more of a relationship problem which is why giving money to homeless people doesn't usually solve the problem What they need is to make amends with the people they've wronged, and thus find a way to reintegrate themselves into having relationships that are productive, right? If you burn every bridge, you end up homeless, right? I never particularly worried about homelessness, of course, even though I went through situations of significant poverty, because I always had a friend who'd put me up, just as I would put up friends when they were having a difficult time and so on, right? So it was never, we'd lend to each other, like whoever was in or out of the money, we'd lend to each other. Put each other up. So that was never really an issue.
[44:37] I always had a friend who I could get a cash for an indefinite period of time, as was the case with friends and me. But, you know, if you're that destructive to your relationships, then you're going to end up without anybody. And that's a shame. And again, I have sympathy for that. Obviously, the families are pretty bad for the most part in these situations. But that doesn't, just because you have a bad family doesn't mean you can't get good friends, right?
[44:58] So with regards to tyranny, tyranny happens when people want to to escape the consequences of their own bad decisions and are willing to prey on others in order to do that, right? So, of course, we can think of the example where a man is running a business, he's running the business badly, and he can't pay his bills, and so he wants free money from the government to cover his bills. Now, if he were to say, well, look, it's not other people's fault that i've run my business badly it's not other people's fault that i chose to take money out of the business and spend it on i don't know a really expensive car and and a very expensive watch and i you know i took a bunch of cool vacations to the galapagos and like and i did all of that rather than putting money into my business right if i did all of that well.
[45:58] People's fault i didn't invest in my business whereas my competitor lived lean and poured all the money back in the business and spent more on marketing and hired higher talented people and and has a better product because he's willing to invest in the r&d like all of that kind of cool stuff right my competitor did that i spent a bunch of money i you know went to strip clubs and you know stuffed 50 bills into the thongs of questionable women whereas my competitor invested in upgrading his capital equipment so that he could be more productive so i i made bad decisions he made good decisions well i guess i'll just accept the consequences of my bad decisions and so on and that's not what happens a lot of times oh it's the economy oh you know it wasn't me it was this competitor came in they're cheating they're undercutting you know they're you know just bad things and they'll complain bigotry or something right they'll complain that it's not their fault and so on, and they'll want free stuff. So every time, and look, we all have these impulses, we're all in that same human muck, right?
[47:03] The battle between, you know, the beast and the gods, right? The body and the ideals, right? So the avoidance of responsibility and the blaming of others creates the market for tyranny, right? If somebody, you know, just doesn't take care of their health, right? They sit around, they eat badly, they don't exercise, they, you know, don't get sunlight, just don't take care of their health, okay? And then they get sick, right? Somebody who's fat and then gets diabetes or whatever, right? Now, are they going to say, well, you know, my neighbor who ate well and exercised and kept his weight down and exercised self-control is healthy. I'm not healthy, but it's not his fault. It's my fault. So the last thing I'd ever want to do is force him to pay for my medical bills.
[47:50] So, it's people avoiding their own responsibility for their own lives, wanting to erase their own culpability in their own, quote, misfortunes, right? And, you know, 70-75% of health issues, other than sort of outright aging, right? But 70-75% of health issues are the result of people's lifestyle choices. Now, again, not counting kids, although even when kids get fat, I mean, I remember when I was a bit overweight in my early teens, I was like, oh, that's not good. I joined the swim team, cross-country team, and all of that, get things done from that standpoint.
[48:27] So, people don't want to take responsibility, and because they don't want to take responsibility, they end up shifting that responsibility to other people and getting very aggressive. Now, this, of course, is circular. if we had a society where you could not force other people to pay for your own bad decisions far fewer bad decisions would be made right i mean if let's say free let's just say free abortions and the welfare state if those were eliminated tomorrow women would almost immediately start making better decisions about who they slept with. So unfortunately, this is why totalitarian power tends to expand, is because when you have the principle that gets violated, wherein people say, well, I can force other people to pay for the consequences of my own bad decisions. Once that principle has been broached, then people profit from pretending they lack self-ownership.
[49:31] Normally doing well in society is taking responsibility, right? I mean, when I was a kid, this is a funny thing, right? This is just a little sort of personal anecdote about one of the reasons why I was so skeptical about all of the socialisms.
[49:43] I barely studied for tests. Now in areas that I was strong, history and English say, I did well. But where I was not strong in terms of natural talents or inclinations, I did poorly. I mean, I passed, but you know, not a huge, not by a huge margin, right? Now, not one person ever said to To me, as a kid, well, you know, clearly you have a deficiency of ability in these areas, so we're going to take some marks from the better performing kids and give them to you. Now, this was even more egregious because it wasn't like I'm some lazy guy. I'm a very hardworking guy. But it was because my home life was so chaotic and violent that studying was impossible. It's too stressful. You can't concentrate. There's too much storm and stress going on. So even though it really wasn't my fault that I didn't study, nobody ever said to me.
[50:43] Well, you have a deficiency and you didn't study as much or you don't have as much knowledge, so we're going to take the marks from people who did study and give them to you. So, and that's, honestly, this is a very deep part of where I'm coming from, in the origin story of my political philosophies. I was not responsible for the family that I was born into. I was not responsible for the violence and chaos that was enacted upon me. I was not responsible for the fact that I had to work three jobs, starting in my early teens sometimes, and it was not my fault in particular that I had to start paying my own bills from the age of 15 onwards. It was not my fault. I mean, that was just the family I happened to be born into. So even though it wasn't my fault that I got low marks in some subjects, and even though I was just a child, I was told, held 100% responsible for situations and circumstances entirely beyond my control. You just need to work harder. You're lazy. You're going to mark you bad. If effort matched ability, you'd be an A+. So I, at the age of 5 and 6 and 8 and 10 and 12 and 14 and 16 and 17, I was held 100% responsible for things that were almost completely beyond my control.
[52:03] I mean, I really had to ship my mother out across the country because she was endangering my mental health. It was so crazy at home. So even though things were entirely beyond my control and I was just managing, you know, trying to tread water in a storm I was thrown in, in storm-tossed waters I was simply thrown into, I was held 100% responsible. So, if you're going to hold kids 100% responsible for things outside of their control, don't be fucking surprised when those kids grow up to hold people accountable for things entirely within their control.
[52:39] To society as a whole. If you're going to hold me and millions and millions of other children 100% responsible for things we cannot control at all, don't be surprised when we grow up and hold you all as adults 100% responsible, for things you can control. I could not control the environment and the house and the household and the people I was born into. I had no control over that. No capacity to leave, no right to leave, no economic, political, or legal independence. I did it as soon as I could. I had no control over the family I was born into. A 20-year-old woman has control over who she opens her legs to. And a man has control over his actions, too. So this is why when, I mean, I was a genuine victim as a child. That's for you if you were mistreated. I was a genuine victim as a child, and it really, it pisses me off no end in fact i find it almost beneath contempt when people play victims as adults when i as a child who was genuinely a victim got no sympathy or support whatsoever, no if you don't pass you're gonna have to repeat the grade we're gonna take a year of your life.
[53:55] Well okay so then when i'm 10 years old i'm 100 responsible for everything in my life even though though I have no control over my family, my circumstances, my environment. I didn't even have any control over which country I lived in. I was just yoinked from England to Canada when I was 11. So as a kid, I'm just totally responsible for everything that I'm doing. But then adults play victim and say, well, I wasn't responsible. I didn't know. I didn't know the guy with tattoos all over his face was a bad guy. So tyranny ends when we hold people accountable, Because tyranny is what emerges when people are thirsty and desperate for escaping their own accountability, which I understand. I absolutely understand. You know, it was so bad in school. When I was in grade six, I fractured my wrist, my left hand, my right hand, and I was given some lines for talking in class. And I couldn't write my lines because I had fractured my wrist and I came in and I said, I didn't do the lines. Well, double now. So I fractured my wrist.
[55:07] All right. So, anyway, I ended up having to use my other hand to program a computer to print out the lines, and she accepted that, scrudgingly. So, I'm punished, and I was, what, 12? Maybe at that age. So, at the age of 12, even though I'd fractured my wrist, I was still responsible for writing out my lines, for talking in class. All right.
[55:31] So, nobody better play any fucking victims when I get to be an adult.
[55:35] No. So, holding people accountable, and you know this is a lot of what I do in the call-in shows, right? And I do that because I want people to be happy, and you can't be happy if you don't take responsibility for your life. So, holding people accountable is the only way that we fundamentally combat tyranny, because tyranny is the devil that emerges when we pray to the dark souls below to liberate us from the consequence of our own freely chosen actions. The moment we say, I'm a victim, I didn't do it, when you freely chose, well, that's when totalitarianism begins to emerge. When there is a demand for an escape from the consequences of free choice, totalitarianism emerges and spreads. And this is why holding people accountable is the only fundamental way to oppose the spread of these very, very dark beliefs. The devil says, there, so it wasn't you. It was institutionalized bigotry. It was sexist and misogyny. Phobias. Wasn't you. It's the corporations. Wasn't you. We'll take your responsibility.
[56:44] And that's what the devil does. He gives you free stuff in return for your soul. And the powers that be will give you free stuff in return for the essence of your soul, which is your responsibility for your own life. Hope that helps. Thank you so much for these great questions and comments. Freedomain.com slash donate to help out the show. We'd hugely appreciate it. Lots of love from up here. I will talk to you tonight on Wednesday Night Live, 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Bye, everyone.
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