There are few issues which have been brought to the forefront of discussion this year that have been as contentious as the topic of immigration. Having accepted the validity of the non-aggression principle and property rights back in 2010, my default position on immigration since then has always been open borders.
After being introduced to new data covered in Stefan Molyneux’s extensive library of content about the migrant crisis and immigration, I have changed my perspective on this issue. Here I’d like to share a few quotes from Stefan Molyneux taken from some of his presentations and listener conversations as a way to introduce crucial nuances that are essential to include in any analysis that aims to see the issue of immigration clearly.
“Open Borders” is an oxymoron
This whole ‘open borders’ thing — it’s a complete oxymoron. If you’ve got *open* it’s no border. It’s simply not a border. It’s just a line you can cross that is completely imaginary. So, Hillary is basically saying that she wants to be the last president of the United States because she doesn’t want the United States to exist afterwards because open borders is exactly that.
In one way it’s like, “oh, free trade, free travel!” and so on, but everybody knows exactly which direction that travel is going to go. It’s going to go south to north.
It’s not like you’re going to get masses of people moving from Canada to America, it’s going to be a massive, one way, gravy train of welfare dependent migrants coming across from South and Central America who are going to sit there and consume welfare at ungodly rates, 70% to 80% of some estimates, and going to vote democrat.
-Stefan Molyneux (Quote from Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton | Second Presidential Debate Analysis
43:44)
Open Borders is Just Another Government Program
If you are against government subsidies to business, you are not against the free market. Would you agree?
In fact, being for the free market, would that not lead you to oppose government subsidies? Now, would we not say that opposing government subsidies is a reasonable thing for a libertarian or an anarchist to do?
When it comes to say, Syrians from the conflict; how do these Syrians get to the United States? Airfare or by ships and generally the airfare is paid for by the government because these people are not hugely rich.
So, when they get to America they are met by legions of social workers who sign them up for every conceivable government program that can be imagined.
And then they put their kids in government schools and the government schools budgets go up enormously because now you have multilingual issues to deal with, not to mention kids who have been educated according to different curriculums and different subjects.
And who pays for all of that? Is it the Syrians themselves?
So, immigration, in this particular context is paid for enormously by the state. So, the cost of resettling Middle Eastern refugees, if people were to send a thousand dollars to the middle east they could resettle someone from the Middle East in the Middle East.
However, it’s almost thirteen thousand dollars to bring that person to the United States. So, immigration right now is highly subsidized. It is a highly subsidized government program for the most part, in this particular context.
So, when I say that I’m against this kind of immigration, am I saying that we should initiate the use of force to keep people out? Well, the only reason they’re here is because the initiation of force. In other words, because of government subsidies.
In I say, if I don’t want “Green Energy companies” to get billions of dollars in government subsidies and then people scream at me that I’m against the free market, you can understand that that would be a little bit frustrating if it happened month after month after month.
So, this is highly subsidized human movement and frankly, at the expense of kids because there are fewer resources to bring to kids who are born in America because of all of these immigrants and not just the Middle East, but other places where language incompatibility is an issue.
Thus, being against government subsidies, which is how the immigration in a lot of ways works these days is not being against the “free movement of human beings” anymore than being against government subsidies to business is against the free exchange of goods and ideas.
— Stefan Molyneux ( Quote from FDR 3213 Sexual Market Value Olympics)
Open Borders + Welfare State = The Initiation of Force
“People say if people are not allowed to come into the country, then that is the initiation of the use of force. I completely agree with that. I completely and totally agree with that. However, if the actions of someone by entering a particular area results in the greater initiation of force, then it’s not as simple as people think. The problem is that people are showing it in isolation.
So, let me give you a tiny example. If I go into my own house, I am not initiating the use of force. If some guy with a gun wants to come into my house, well, guess what? He’s initiating the use of force. If he comes in while I’m sleeping and steals from me he is initiating the use of force.
Now, if someone comes into my house because I’ve invited them and we’re going to play Yahtzee and Monopoly or he’s going to fix my toilet because I had Indian food, then he’s coming into my house voluntarily and he’s not initiating the use of force and neither are his actions initiating the use of force against me.
So, the reality is that statistically, by and large and by far both legal and illegal immigrants coming into America vastly increase the use of force in America. And so, simply by looking at putting a barrier around america to prevent people from coming into america and saying, ‘Well, that’s the only initiation of force that matters’ That’s ridiculous.
There’s a little thing called the welfare state, which I believe I’ve seen a few Libertarians talk about. But, immigrants use welfare at vastly higher rates than domestic citizens. So, 51% of immigrants are using the welfare state, compared to 30% for natives. And those natives include high utilizers of the welfare state such as blacks and Hispanics.
Among illegal immigrants, it’s even higher. It’s more than twice the rate of natives. So, the reality is and this is a basic mathematical reality that you can only escape by sticking your head so far up your ass that you can drill though your nipples and call them telescopes. The reality is that immigrants in general, on average, coming into america are both going to use, be dependent on, and vote for increases in the welfare state.
If you care about the welfare state, then you need to diminish the number of people on the welfare state. This is not brain surgery. People do not vote to get rid of or even intellectually oppose that which puts bread on their table and puts a roof over their heads that is necessary for their survival. And the fact that this is even debatable or even debated, I don’t even know what to say.”
It’s very hard to get a man to understand something when his livelihood depends on him not understanding something. And when you bring a bunch of people in with no history of free market thinking in their culture, and for illegal immigrants in particularly, get on welfare at a rate of 62%, those people in order to survive in america require massive amounts of government spending in America and indeed the only reason they can stay in America, as Dr. Steven Camarota has pointed out on this show, is by voting for an ever increasing welfare state.
When, you get people coming in to a country who can only survive and live in that country because of government spending, what do you think they’re going to vote for? An expansion of extraction of government power? “
- Stefan Molyneux (Are Libertarians Wrong About Immigration)
Well, Let’s Say That 99% of The Immigrants Coming Into America Will Accept Welfare. Is It Still Fair To Punish The Innocent 1% Who Will Not?
Ethics would be from first principles, not from last minute emergencies and ridiculous made up nonsense, but from first principles.
How can philosophy improve our lives? What does morality mean? What is virtue? Are there exceptions to the non-aggression principle? That is what morality and philosophy is about.
Morality is not about ridiculously emergency, murder based, lifeboat, imaginary, non-existent situations.
We’ve got to start working from first principles and figure out what is virtue?What is truth? What is reality? What is goodness? Is there a role for violence in society? If so, where? Is self-defense justifiable? Is the initiation of force justifiable? If so, how? If not, well, let’s get rid of it.
And so, coming up with this kind of crazy shit to me is missing the entire point of philosophy. Start with first principles, not with last minute imaginary nonexistent emergencies.
Don’t get into the trap. Reject the scenario. Don’t accept the premises of this kind of crazy stuff. This is not what philosophy and morality should be working with. These made-up scenarios will never happen.
So, what these people are saying is that the most important question in philosophy is something that will never ever ever happen. You will never be in that situation. So, what this person is saying is philosophy is both abusive and irrelevant.
Now, what will occur in your life is how well you treat those around you. Do you tell the truth? Do you refrain from abusing them physically, emotionally, verbally, sexually? When you see someone being hurt, whether it’s an adult or a child, will you intervene? Will you do something moral? Will you use the against me argument? Will you point out the gun in the room when it comes to people supporting statist violence? Will you oppose war?
And what will you do with the people in your life who support war? These are all things people can do. Fuck this trolley bullshit. That’s something people will never experience.
What I am always curious about is what actually can people do in their lives to advance the cause of virtue and truth and goodness and progress in the human experience. And this trolley stuff, I’d say it’s intellectual masturbation, but masturbation is a lot more fun than this sort of nonsense.”
- Stefan Molyneux (Podcast 2278:The Evils Of Emergency Ethics.)
The “Innocent Immigrant” Fallacy
Caller: Well, it is the initiation of force to not allow people to enter into the country.
“Yes, and it is to prevent a greater initiation of force by the massive consumption of the welfare state and dedication to a party that itself is dedicated to expanding government to the nth degree, which is the leftists.
You’re only focusing on one side of the equation. The debt is all on innocent people because the debtis intergenerational. 100% of the debt is going to fall on the next generation. So, if you say that 10% or 20% or a couple of percentage points of the illegal immigrants who aren’t going to get on welfare are unjustly coerced, then okay. But, 100% of the debt that the remainder are generating is going to go on 100% of innocent people called the kids. So, you can raise me with 20 or 30% innocence and I’m going to trump you with 100% of innocence.
First of all, nobody can tell who will or will not go on welfare, although there could be an IQ test that would help, but it’s illegal to administer it, so who cares. But, is it fair to say to the children that the quality or your education is going to be significantly worse because half the resources in your school district is going to go to figure out how to teach traumatized kids with an IQ of 85%.
Do you have the right to inflict that kind of degradation on the quality of education on children across America? Are they not innocent? Do they not deserve as good an education as can be provided to them? Are you not stripping them of possibilities and futures? Plus, what about poor black kids who are having a significant degree of trouble competing with illegal immigrants who aren’t having to pay taxes of follow regulations to get jobs.
What about the black kids? What about the native people? What about the whites, the Hispanics, the Native Americans, the blacks who can’t get jobs because wave after wave after wave of people are coming in and driving up the cost of legal jobs because of the amount of welfare taxes that have to be paid and driving down the cost of under the table jobs, which the immigrant networks are all set up to exploit, while no native networks exist.
And so, what about the young black kid who can’t get a job because it’s been taken by an immigrant? More immigrants have come into America over the past decade than jobs have been created. So, statistically immigrants are taking away jobs and driving down wages — it’s supply and demand. Libertarians and free market economists should understand this. Huge numbers of low skill, low education and possibly low intellect people all coming into a country, what is that going to do to the price of low skilled, low education labor? It’s supply and demand bitches, you can’t fight it.
So, what about those people? Are you going to stand in front of one hundred million American children and say, ‘Sorry, you don’t get music lessons. You don’t get to play outside. Your playground doesn’t get repaired. You have to sit with old textbooks in cold classrooms because I want people who don’t speak your language and who don’t know your cultural values to come in. And by the way, you’ll be in debt another 50,000 dollars for each of you because of my preference for open borders.’
Look, if people can say that then I admire their consistency, if not their ethical integrity, but these are the stark realities of the effects of immigration.
Caller: You are a voluntaryist right?
Right, which means I want a free society. Now, the way to get to a free society is for people to treat their children better. So, if I think a free society requires a country or a geographical area where people treat their children better, do you think that Europeans treat their children better or do you think that Muslims treat their children better?
Do you think that a culture that has really focused on banning spanking or at least focused on reducing the amount of aggression in childhood is something that I would prefer to be surrounded by in my quest for a free society through better parenting or say people who think that sawing off the labia of twelve year old little girls is a really fucking great thing to do?
Which group do you think is going to be better equipped to lead society to a free society through better parenting? Your average white western European christian or your average IQ 85 Islamic?
The Europeans. So, if people from Europe since Rousseau for the past 150 years have focused on improving the relationship between parents and children — I believe it is absolutely functionally and totally necessary for peaceful parenting to bring a peaceful and free society, so if I want to live in a free society do I want people around who are better parents or who are worse parents?
Better parents. It’s perfectly consistent with my goal for a free society to want people around who are better parents, rather than parents who are aggressive and violent and clitorectomy-based parents.
Caller: But, in order to accomplish that you need to initiate force against innocent people.
So, what? In order to not go to jail I have to pay the state. It’s not a moral situation. Don’t fucking put the morals on me, I’m the guy fighting it. Go yell at the IRS, why don’t you go yell at the people on welfare and tell them about the morally-compromised situation they’re in. Why the hell are people bringing it to me?
Caller: Well, I’m curious because everything you say is usually morally consistent and it just breaks away…
I am morally consistent. I have said in a situation where there is coercion, where there is violence no matter what there are no moral standards to be applied. There is no moral choice to be made in a coercive situation. If somebody puts a gun to your head and tell you to walk left or to walk right, whether you walk left or walk right is not a moral choice. No morality exists when there is coercion.
When it comes to immigration, there is no possibility of a consistent moral choice at the moment. In the future, free society — open borders away! Fantastic! Because then we have a choice. Right now we have no choice because immigration is a giant government program and if the immigrants come in huge amounts of violence will be enacted against the young, against those on fixed incomes, and not to mention very high rates of crime among immigrant populations, which we’ve talked about before.
So, if the immigrants from third-world countries come into America, it will result in the vast escalation and hazardously resulted, statistically, demonstrably, according to the experts with all the data — it has resulted in a vast increase in the initiation of force in society.
And you say, ‘Ah, well keeping immigrants out also requires the initiation of force!’ Yes, let’s say that it does. So what? The initiation of force is going to happen under any context you can consider other than a magical, unicorn-based free society that will never occur tomorrow because libertarians wont focus on peaceful parenting. So, there’s going to be coercion no matter what.
There’s coercion to keep them out and to keep them in there’s even more coercion. So, if you want the immigrants to come in just be honest and say, ‘I’m willing to accept the coercion of the immigrants coming in.’ But, it is dishonest and tendentious to the maximum to only focus on one small potential act of violence called keeping people out and to completely ignore all of the amounts of violence that is occurring by letting people in.
I mean, if libertarians can stand in front of a group of hundreds and hundreds of Swedish women and say, ‘Yeah, it’s fine that you got raped because I don’t want to have border guards push people back’, then fine. Go talk to the Swedish women and say, ‘Your bruised and battered and blond faces because you got raped, fine, it’s for my moral self congratulation.
It’s because I’m afraid of being called a racist, it’s not because I have any consistent application of the non-aggression principle, otherwise I’d be all over that spanking thing Stef’s been talking about forever. It’s because I wanna feel good about letting people in. I don’t wanna be thought of as a racist. I wanna be thought of a cosmopolitan. I wanna be thought of as an egalitarian and I just want to focus on one tiny little aspect of the initiation of force and ignore all of the other initiations of force that occur just to satisfy my moral high ground.
Pathological altruism.
But, if people are willing to say, ‘Yeah, I wanna let people in and the result is far greater crime, much worse educational outcomes for the children, massive increases in the national dept, and a complete entrenchment of the welfare state and all of the intended destruction on the poor the welfare state entails’, great! Fantastic. Say, ‘I don’t want that border. I don’t want that initiation of force at that border, I’m willing to take a far greater initiation of force elsewhere’, fine! Say it! Just say it and be honest about it.
But, don’t be one of these people who are like, ‘Ah, yes, you see there’s this government program that created 500 jobs, so we’re now richer!’ The whole point of libertarian thinking and economic thinking and just plain thinking is to not look at the obvious benefits, but to look at the hidden costs. And there are huge violent, coercive, destructive, direct, repetitive, government escalating costs by allowing third-world people to come into a first world country.
And if people want to have open borders to third-world immigrants they have to be honest about the violence that causes in society.
- Stefan Molyneux (Podcast 3170- Dusty P3n!s Syndrome)
Multiculturalism Destroys Societies
Multiculturalism is a complete and total failure and I say this as somebody who was dedicated to multiculturalism literally for decades. But, when the data is there, only fools and dogmatists ignore it. We all have to accept the new data. The new data shows that multiculturalism destroys societies. It doesn’t just make them difficult and tense, it literally destroys society. We can see this occurring is Germany. We can see this occurring in Sweden.
Sweden is now pushing back against all these immigrants because society is fucking breaking down because you have a bunch of IQ 84 people with a history of Islamic abuses and abusing swarming into a country and they have to be lectured not to rape people. Jesus god, go and look up immigrant crimes in Sweden. Look at how expensive it is. Look at how destructive it is. You want to see a rape culture, do you think these people should get raped because libertarians don’t like fences?
Caller: Well, wouldn’t that be defensive force against individual aggressors, whereas (borders) is force against an entire category of people.
My god man, you’re still focusing on only one side of the equation. As I said before, when they come into the country you are initiating force upon an entire categories of people. Who is paying for the Islamic immigrants in jail and on trial and all of the traumas inflicted, the lost productivity, the emotional traumas, who is paying for all of that in Sweden? Everyone!
So, letting the people in is also initiating force against an entire category of people called tax payers. So, I’ll see your “it’s initiating force against one group of people” and I’ll say it’s initiating force against another group of people. That’s why there’s no moral choice to be made. You may look at some pragmatic and practical choices, which I choose to do. But, saying there’s some kind of principle you can apply here is madness.
There’s no principle that’s possible because everywhere you turn there’s a gun. Now, I choose to turn to the less rapey gun. I prefer to turn to the gun that is not stuck in some woman’s vagina at the moment. I choose to turn to the lesser of two evils. And people say, “Well, it’s still evil!!” Okay, well, you tell me where there is no evil in this situation and I will award you with the knight’s cross of perfection and I will follow you and turn my show over to you.
And I don’t mean that facetiously. If someone can explain how letting third world immigrants in is a non violent situation then they can show how there are no illegal immigrants on welfare or at least show that illegal immigrants don’t use welfare at higher rates than domestics because you could say, “well, you can’t allow people to have kids because 30% of them will end up on welfare.” Yeah, but for them the numbers are different and there is the capacity to stop immigration into America, there’s no capacity to stop people from breeding.
So, there’s no moral answer to this. But, anybody with any pragmatic brains has got to recognize that bringing in people with no history in the free market, no appreciation of church and state(25% of whom want to use violence to oppose Sharia law and 50% of whom want to live under Sharia law) and that comes from a group of people whose religion commands them to lie to outsiders and to hide their true intentions. How the fuck is that suppose to result in a free society?
Import millions of people who want to stone adulterers, import people who believe in honor killings and by the way who vastly outbreed the domestic population. How is that going to get you your free society?
-Stefan Molyneux (FDR3170 Dusty P3n!s Syndrome — Call In Show — January 1st, 2016)
A Free Society Requires A High IQ Population
The reality is that the immigrants are only here, in general, and there are exceptions — they are only here for the social benefits. They are only going to Europe. Well, let’s look at Hispanic immigrants. As Stephen Camarata pointed out, for a family of four your health care insurance is going to cost you 20k a year. 20,000 dollars a year.
See, the expense of things in a free society is what keeps the low IQ people out. Because if you have — and I’m not saying it’s a free market just go with me on this at the moment — let’s say your healthcare cost is so advanced and so powerful and so productive and so all healing. Let’s say your healthcare costs 20,000 dollars a year for insurance. What that means is that people who can’t make at least 30 dollars an hour can’t come in because they can’t even afford the health insurance not even counting the deductibles and things like rent and food and cars and gas and school, etc.
So, when you have a free society or a relatively free society, things are kind of expensive because they’re high quality. So, people can only come illegally into America because the government pays the bills they can’t afford to pay. To pay 20,000 dollars for a family of four’s health insurance for a year means if you make 10 dollars an hour and pay no taxes and have no deductions you can barely afford to pay for the health insurance, which means that if you don’t make much money, — in other words if you’re not educated, if you’re not smart — then you don’t get to go to that country. You can’t make it. You can’t make it.
And this is how a free society has a natural shield against low IQ people coming in. And why do I say low IQ people? Because a free society requires high IQ populations. Because you cannot point to one single god damn place on this Earth where you have a low IQ population and a free society. A free society requires a high IQ population and those high IQ populations can come from Somolia, which we see with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, they can come from Japan, they can come from Scotland, they can come from Eritrea, etc.
And a free society is expensive enough that low IQ people need not apply. Now, if you violate that free society with forced association and government immigration, stopping immigration is ending a government program.
-Stefan Molyneux (FDR3170 Dusty P3n!s Syndrome — Call In Show — January 1st, 2016)
Forced Association
You may not like it that someone who doesn’t speak your language, and who doesn’t respect your values, and who wants to impose horrible immoral laws upon you and your children and in particular women in your family — you may not like that.
And in a free society you can choose not to interact with that person. But, in the government called immigration you are forced by gunpoint to not only interact with that person, but to pay for that person. You are forced to pay for that person, half of whom want to replace reasonable descendants of Anglo-Saxon law with god awful primitive, barbaric, Sharia Law. You are forced to pay for them. You are forced to associate with them and hire them because if you don’t have proportional representation you could get sued.
You are forced to hire them, forced to rent to them, forced to interact with them, forced to pay all their doctors bills, food bills, housing bills, and everything. You are forced to pay for people who, if at least half of whom got their way you wouldn’t want to get out of bed because your life wouldn’t be worth living.
Immigration is a government program. The immigrants are in general here for subsidies. So, when I oppose immigration and people then think I’m somehow pro-government that’s like saying I’m pro-government for being against the welfare state. I’m against immigration because it is a government program. In a free society with no welfare state and free association, people can come and go, I don’t give a shit. I don’t care who moves in three streets down the road in a free society.
But, when people pouring in across the border interfere with my daughter’s ability to get a quality education, if she were in government schools, interfere with my daughter’s ability to get a job in the future, interfere with my daughter’s ability to go through life without being called a racist because the vast majority of these people come from low IQ populations — they’re going to fail because it’s a high IQ society. They’re going to fail and who’s going to get blamed for that failure? Genetics? I don’t think so. White people are going to be blamed and my daughter’s going to get called a racist.
I take that pretty fucking personally.
-Stefan Molyneux (FDR3170 Dusty P3n!s Syndrome — Call In Show — January 1st, 2016)
Just Focus On The Welfare State?
If tomorrow we said let’s stop subsidies to big business people would say, “it’s going to cause suffering and pain, but it’s what’s needed.” And if we say stop subsidies to immigrant, great. But, there’s no way to stop subsidies to immigrants when more and more immigrants come in and become dependent on those subsidies. That’s like saying let’s get 90% of companies dependent on government money and then we’re going to lobby companies to cut government spending. How could that be a sane proposal in any rational universe?
Immigration is a government program. By stopping immigration, sensible people are saying let’s stop the government program. Let’s stop people coming in who are going to want more and more government so we can have a civilized discussion about the role of the state in society without massive dependent self-interest completely skewing the conversation. You cannot have a sensible conversation about drug addiction with someone who is currently addicted to cocaine.
Immigration is a government program. It requires massive spending, massive social controls, massive violations of freedom of association through forced association, it destabilizes communities, it lowers the quality of life in those communities, and it is currently tearing America apart.
Stefan Molyneux (FDR3170 Dusty P3n!s Syndrome — Call In Show — January 1st, 2016)
Well, You Can’t Judge The Immigrants Since They’re Just Taking What’s Available To Them. The Politicians Allow It To Happen.
Here’s how you can judge the immigrants.
And this is not particular to Muslim immigrants. Let’s say that there was some Japanese policy, that you could go live in Japan and you could go and get 5000 dollars a month ‘for free’, so to speak, from the taxpayers in Japan.
And, if I were to think of going for whatever reason, I think I’d say to myself,‘Well, wait a minute. I haven’t paid into this system. I’m going to go there and I’m going to squat on the necks of the Japanese taxpayers.’ Because the welfare state was originally suppose to work this way: you pay your taxes, if there’s some emergency, we make sure you don’t starve to death until you get back on your feet.
That was sort of how it was suppose to work in the first place and it wasn’t an absolute disaster when it first started. But, I would feel really bad. I would feel really bad and it would stop me from doing it, to go to Japan and know that all the 5000 dollars a month that I was getting was coming from a system I had never paid into and it was being paid for against the Japanese people’s will.
Because it’s tax money, which means they don’t want it. If it’s a charity and someone sponsors me, that’s different. That’s voluntary. Now, this to me is one of the basic tests of the whole migrant situation. And one of the basic tests of the whole migrant situation is, are the migrants emotionally aware that they’re coming here and taking money from a system they never paid into?
The fact that they don’t care means that there’s an empathy mismatch, to put it as nicely as possible. So, what it means is, if they are willing to come and take all of this government money and in the states 90 to 95% of all the Muslim migrants who arrive goes on welfare and a lot of them stay on it for a long time if not forever.
And also there are minimum wage laws, which means in Germany two-thirds of the Syrian migrants are functionally illiterate and there’s been some research that says if they don’t hugely lower the minimum wage laws, then these people can never really produce enough value.
So, they’re going to come on welfare and it’s the same thing with the Hispanics, the people from South and Central America, they’re moving north into the United States, they come and they get on welfare.
Now, do they know that they’ve never paid into this system and that the money has been transferred against the domestic population’s will through the violence of taxation?
Now there’s either one of two options.
Either A. They do know that and they don’t care fundamentally.
“Hey! Free stuff! Who cares? Free stuff.“
It’s not free, assholes. It’s not free. People are working from dawn to dusk, not seeing their kids, to pay for you and your hammock and your tequila. (That’s not of course a reference to the Muslims who are not big on alcohol.)
That is the question.
Either they do know that they’re taking money from people against their will from a system that they never paid into and they don’t fucking care, in which case sorry, you’re an asshole! They’re coming in and taking money from my pocket through the power of the state.
And either you know that’s happening, but you want the money anyway, in which case you’re an asshole or you don’t even know that, in which case you’re not smart enough to do anything of value in this society.
Either way, not a fan.”
-Stefan Molyneux (ISIS Murdered My Friends — Call In Show — March 23rd, 2016,Podcast 3238–1:34:00)
Muh Principles!
Are people willing to go and talk to the families of the victims of the San Bernardino shootings and say, “Yeah, it was totally worth it because I’m against the initiation of force. So, the blood soaked into the carpets of the dead people and the funerals and the missing fathers and brothers and mothers and sisters and children — all worth it.” Are people willing to go to the concert goers in Paris where 130 plus were slaughtered and say, “No, it’s worth it because I’m against the initiation of force.”
That is not a rational situation. We must abandon the hope of a purely moral situation in an immoral environment like this and work as hard as we can for the long term minimization and stopping of the growth of violence. And if stopping immigration is the least of the evils when it comes to stopping the growth of violence. If we stop immigration at least we stop the number of people accumulating on the welfare rolls. At least we stop the continued dumbing down of education because it’;s turned into a tower of babble where you have 18 kids and 15 languages you gotta teach.
And it reduces the amount of criminality because immigrants, particularly from 3rd world countries, are vastly over-represented in the ranks of the violent and criminal. So, right now stopping immigration is stopping a giant government program and if libertarians are not against stopping government programs then they aren’t libertarians. At all.
They’re just cowards and cucks who are terrified of the media and of being called racist. And they should just admit that, “I’m chicken shit. I don’t like to be called racist. I don’t like to think that any culture is superior to any other culture. I’m a total egalitarian. I’m a cultural communist and that’s all I have to say” and then just drop the mic and walk out of the room.
- Stefan Molyneux (FDR3170 Dusty P3n!s Syndrome — Call In Show — January 1st, 2016)
Lecturing The Kidnapped
Caller: It seems to many people that you are for restrictions on immigration, provided that a welfare state exists. You think that it’s a bad thing that immigrants come to the United States because they’ll vote for welfare. And provided that the welfare state exists, the United States should prevent Immigrants from coming in because they will vote for enlarging the welfare state. Is that not true? Am I mischaracterizing your position?
Stef: Well, to say that I support the initiation of force or that I support a government program is a very complicated thing to put across. Now, I will tell you what I repeatedly have said. I’m guessing, have you only read quotes other people have posted about me or have you listened to shows where I’ve talked about this?
Caller: I’m a long time listener of your show.
Stef: Okay, so what have I said with regards to government immigration, government programs, in terms of its relationship to ethics?
Caller: As far as I know you don’t think the state changes the moral landscape at all. We still have the same moral duties that we’d have if the state didn’t exist.
Stef: What? I don’t know what that means.
Caller: So, you think that whether or not the state exists, we have the same moral rights and the same obligations, correct?
Stef: Whether or not the state exists, we have the same moral rights and the same obligation? Again, I’m sorry, I don’t know what that means. Explain that to me a little more.
Caller: Sure. We have an obligation not to coerce other people, right?
Stef: Again, I don’t know what this means and I’m not trying to be dense. Are you saying that the initiation of force regardless whether the state is there or not, everyone has the same requirement to not initiate force?
Caller: Yeah.
Stef: But, the state is the initiation of force. So, if there is a state that exists then by definition there are millions of people who thoroughly endorse the initiation of force. So, I’m not sure what it would mean to say what you’re saying.
Caller: Alright, so let’s imagine that we live in an anarchist society and that there’s no state. You are morally obliged, it is immoral for you to steal from someone else?
Stef: In a free society, absolutely, stealing is immoral.
Caller: Is stealing not immoral if we’re living in an unfree society? So, if we have a state and the state steals from everyone, is it still immoral to steal?
Stef: Well, if you’re concerned about the morality of stealing, why wouldn’t you go and talk to the state who’s doing the vast majority of the stealing? Why would you focus on a podcaster? I’m just kind of curious about this. Why focus on me as an individual if the state is doing the vast majority of stealing?
And the reason I’m saying all of this is that, it is wrong to destroy people’s property. However, if they kidnap you and lock you in a basement are you justified in breaking down the door of the basement in order to escape?
See, you’re lecturing the guy down in the basement, who is locked in the basement, you’re lecturing him and saying,”but you cannot destroy property even if you’ve been locked in the basement! It’s immoral to break down someone’s door, to break their window!” So, why are you not talking to the kidnappers rather than the guy locked up? I’m just kind of confused.
Caller: I’m just generally interested in your position on immigration. I’m not lecturing you as if you’re the cause of statism and all evil in the world.
Stef: But, you started with an anarchist society. Of course, if we live in a free society and people in general recognize that the initiation of force is wrong and theft is wrong, of course it’s absolutely immoral to steal. And look, in a free society, what the hell would I care who lives where?
And also, even if I did care, what conceivable mechanism would be put in place to enforce my particular preferences? There would not be this giant apparatus of the state controlling human movement. So, in a free society of course you should not initiate the use of force and *moving* is not the initiation of force. So, I’ve said that repeatedly and I don’t see how that would be a violation of any principles that I have put forward in the past.
Caller: Okay, so in a free society or an unfree society, the same actions of the same principles hold in both places, right?
Stef: Absolutely not. They absolutely do not. And I have said this so many times, you have to have worked fairly hard to miss it I’m afraid. Of course the same moral standards don’t apply to a statist society as they do to a free society.
Caller: But, it seems like things like rape are always wrong. It doesn’t matter if there is institutionalized rape of any thing like that.
Stef: No, listen, we can’t bring rape into this because that is a moral crime that can never be justified, but you can steal something back that’s been stolen from you.
Caller: I don’t think that would still fall under the definition of stealing.
Stef: No, I understand all of that. Just for those who are dead set against understanding what I have said repeatedly and clearly is that when you are in a statist environment ethics do not apply because you are in a situation of coercion.
Half of your property is going to be taken from you by force, your children are usually going to be forced to go into government schools, or you are at least forced to pay for those government schools, which result in massive amounts of indoctrination. Your property is not your own because you have to rent it by paying property taxes or they’ll take it away from you.Your productivity and your life and your labor and the productivity of your future life and labor of your children are all stolen from by the government to borrow money collateral from their future productivity. Your money is not your own because you can take it out of the bank put it under your mattress only for the invisible government elves of inflation to steal it from you repeatedly, so you are in a situation of near universal compulsion when you are a basal of the state.
So, when you come to me and say, ‘Well, what moral rules apply when you’re dealing with the state?’ — I say, as I’ve said a million times before, the answer to that would be: none. Because you are a victim and are encased and are enclosed in a situation of near universal compulsion and coercion, moral rules that would apply to a situation of choice do not apply.
Caller: You still think that there are moral rules that dictate respect for one another right?
Stef: In situation of choice, absolutely. Morality is universal. Morality does not apply when you are in a situation of coercion. So, this is an extreme example, if someone has a gun to your head, what is the moral thing to do? If someone has a gun to your head and says, ‘shoot that cat.’ What is the moral thing to do?
Caller: Well, I don’t believe in animal rights, I think you can kill the cat regardless.
Stef: Okay, if someone says, ‘shoot that homeless man.’ What is the moral thing to do?
Caller: I think you’re obliged not to shoot the homeless man.
Stef: That is the wrong answer. Morally, there is no moral thing to do. When you have a gun to your head, choice and all of that is out the window. If we’re going to have moral sensitivity to any situation, we reserve our moral condemnation for the man who has a gun to someone’s head, not to what that panicked, freaked out human being does in a moment extremity.
Do you see? You’re jumping over the guy who has got the gun to your head and you’re trying to lecture the guy who has a gun to his head. I don’t reserve my moral lecturing to the guy with a gun barrel to the head, I reserve my moral lecturing to the guy with the gun.
(From Podcast 3123 Sexual Market Value Call-In Show)
