Tom Woods Questions Peaceful Parenting

Stefan Molyneux

Philosopher Stefan Molyneux talks with Tom Woods about peaceful parenting and why the family is the missing link between liberty and how kids are raised. He rejects spanking and force at home, says even young children can follow simple moral reasoning, and argues that kids who never accept coercion grow up less likely to accept the state.  The Philosophical Baby with Dr. Alison Gopnik - https://fdpodcasts.com/1523/the-philosophical-baby-dr-alison-gopnik-the  The Science of Spanking with Dr. Elizabeth Gershoff - https://fdpodcasts.com/2673/the-science-of-spanking-a-conversation-with-dr  0:00:00 Back by Popular Demand 0:02:26 Roots of Peaceful Parenting 0:05:43 Babies Understand Fairness 0:12:47 Boundaries Without Violence 0:16:00 Handling Tantrums and Safety 0:21:22 Do Punishments Work? 0:24:07 Consequences, Not Punishment 0:33:09 When Methods Seem to Fail 0:36:43 Parenting Shapes Political Belief 0:46:13 Focusing on What You Control 0:50:40 Peaceful Parenting Resources  Support philosophy! https://freedomain.com/donate/  GET FREEDOMAIN MERCH! https://shop.freedomain.com/  SUBSCRIBE TO ME ON X! https://x.com/StefanMolyneux  Follow me on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/@freedomain1  GET MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING', THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI, AND THE FULL AUDIOBOOK! https://peacefulparenting.com/  Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!  Subscribers get 12 HOURS on the "Truth About the French Revolution," multiple interactive multi-lingual philosophy AIs trained on thousands of hours of my material - as well as AIs for Real-Time Relationships, Bitcoin, Peaceful Parenting, and Call-In Shows!  You also receive private livestreams, HUNDREDS of exclusive premium shows, early release podcasts, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!  See you soon! https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/FREEDOMAIN2026

Transcript

00:00Hey everybody, Tom Woods here. It is episode 2,803 of The Tom Woods Show.

00:05You know, maybe I don't need these headphones anymore, now that you've solved the problem.

00:07But you know what? I'm used to them now, so we're going to keep them on.

00:10It's Stefan Molyneux, who is back by popular demand.

00:13I had him on, I don't know, what was it, a month, a month and a half ago, two months

00:17ago?

00:18The country went berserk. They need more.

00:21I've utterly devolved the processing of time to my wife.

00:24I now know where nothing is in time.

00:27My wife can get it down to a laser.

00:29Oh, when did this happen? Nanosecond.

00:32But I, you know, it could have been a month ago, could have been six months ago.

00:35I don't know, but it was definitely an enjoyable chat and I'm happy to be back.

00:38And it's still in the minds of a great many people.

00:41So we're going to give them more of what they want.

00:44But in particular, now, first of all, Stefan Molyneux, you know him from what we once knew as Free Domain

00:50Radio.

00:50His Free Domain has, we talked about the whole story of what happened to Stefan, who is an outspoken, fearless

01:02sort.

01:02But he was an outspoken, fearless sort back when that was not as allowed as it is now.

01:08And he just was put through the ringer in terms of having everything canceled on him.

01:14And he had to just keep on working and working, just grinding away at it.

01:19What else could you do? Just grind away and grind away.

01:21And bit by bit, we've started to see him make his comeback, his return.

01:27He's back on X. He never went away. He was always there.

01:31He was always there.

01:32So today I want to talk about a topic that he is known for.

01:36I would say there are a bunch of topics you're known for.

01:40This is definitely in the top few.

01:42And that has to do with parenting and so-called peaceful parenting.

01:46And I know that you are of the belief that if you get this right, that the society of the

01:53future is going to be better.

01:54That this is one of the reasons that you don't have exactly the society you want.

01:59It's not the only reason, but if you get this wrong, a lot of other things downstream of it go

02:04wrong.

02:04So let's start.

02:06First of all, what made you do this?

02:10Were you inspired by somebody else?

02:12Did you develop the ideas entirely on your own?

02:14What made you not just be, because you are a father, what made you not just be a typical father?

02:21And I don't even know what typical father means, but you know what I mean?

02:23Somebody who's not philosophically reflective about the process.

02:26Right.

02:27That's a great question.

02:29So I had a rough upbringing.

02:31I worked in a daycare and saw other kids who'd had rough upbringings and so on.

02:36I met and married my wife about 25 years ago.

02:39And she's a psychologist, mental health professional, and she studied early childhood development.

02:45And she's a lot more pragmatic, as women often are, relative to me.

02:51So I have all these windy abstractions and the non-aggression principle and property rights and minarchism and anarcho-capitalism.

02:56And she would not exactly glaze over.

03:00She'd get half cocktail eyes when you're at a party and somebody's just looking around for someone better to talk

03:04to.

03:04But she'd listen and she'd be forbearing.

03:06And then she'd say, that's all well and good, but everything starts with the family.

03:11And everything starts with the family was just a whole series of like Christmas tree lights that lit up in

03:16my head to say, well, why hasn't libertarianism, I'm an anarcho-capitalist, which means a stateless society, or even minarchism,

03:24you know, the government being involved in, you know, the law courts and the military and maybe jails and so

03:31on, and the police.

03:32So why is it going in the opposite direction, despite the fact that the ideas have been around for hundreds

03:37of years?

03:38And as you know, Ludwig von Mises absolutely detonated any possibility that socialism or central planning could ever work because

03:45it doesn't have the price signal, which means even if we take away the immorality of central planners initiating the

03:50use of force against people, it can't possibly work.

03:53So how is it possible that in science, true theories tend to displace untrue theories or inaccurate theories, but in

04:01economics and society and so on, why does it just keep getting worse?

04:05And so I felt I was missing something because, I mean, you're obviously a great communicator, I'm not too bad

04:10myself, and there's tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of great communicators promoting, you know, liberty.

04:16And, you know, I'm never going to write a better book than Unsocialism, I'm never going to write a better

04:21novel than Atlas Shrugged, or things that have sort of promoted the free market, I'm never going to have more

04:25impact than Ron Paul did, of course, with his time as Dr. No, as a congressman and so on.

04:31So if I can't do better than really great people who've gone before me, who've promoted these kinds of ideas,

04:38either there's something I'm missing, or there's something that maybe we're all missing, or it's not going to work.

04:44Now, I don't like, I don't like in particular, focusing my entire life, detonating my reputation and all of that,

04:50for the sake of something that isn't going to work, that seems like a very bad, very bad, let me

04:54put my life savings into Sam Bankman-Fried's startup.

04:59So, with the idea that something that hasn't worked, you know, you could say John Locke, or you could say

05:07Bastiat, or something that hasn't worked for 150 years, which is having people really understand the free market, even though

05:13the evidence is infinitely greater than it was back in Bastiat's day, or back in von Mises' day, or Rothbard's

05:19day, and so on, how is it possible?

05:20You know, we've got all these examples from all over the world, central planning is catastrophic and evil, and the

05:25free market works and is moral, so I'm like, if I can't talk people into it, and far better people

05:33than me have tried for hundreds of years to talk people into it, if it's not going that way, maybe

05:38there's a missing ingredient, and that's sort of where I started from.

05:41Now, I have a new baby, a new-ish, right, he's just about 10 months old, little Henry, and so

05:50this, the subject of children remains very current for me, because somehow I'm still doing it here, and so that

05:58was part of what inspired me to have you on to talk about this.

06:01So I want to know, I wonder if you or anybody else has ever come up with a, somebody from

06:09the, let's say, peaceful parenting point of view, has come up with a list of benchmarks or ages by which

06:17you can expect certain things.

06:18I think one of the points that you've made is that children can respond to reason better than we give

06:26them credit for, so we don't often give them the chance to do it, but at what age can I

06:31expect this or that or the other thing?

06:33You know what I'm asking?

06:34Yeah, I mean, many, many, many years ago, I interviewed a wonderful lady by the name of Dr. Alison Gopnik,

06:41G-O-P-N-I-C-K, and she wrote a book, and I think there's been a new version

06:45out recently, called The Philosophical Baby.

06:47The amount of research that's been done into early cognitive abilities from babies is truly staggering, because of course, you

06:53know, babies can't talk, but babies tend to focus more on that which they find odd or unusual or more

06:59interesting.

06:59So we can track how babies view non-expected events.

07:05In other words, they have a model of the world, and they can look at things that are unexpected.

07:08And so we can track that kind of stuff.

07:11Now, videotapes back in the day, and now, of course, video cameras have really helped us figure out where pupils

07:16in babies are looking, and so we can track reasoning and thinking and the processing of standard versus non-standard

07:22reality.

07:23Babies are more drawn to exceptions, and they have found it to be remarkably, remarkably early.

07:29In fact, and I just talked about this in a rather raucous debate I had with Jay Dyer in Nashville,

07:35because I'm sort of making the case that reason can be derived from matter and energy, the objective properties of

07:41matter and energy.

07:42And even newborns, a day or two old, if you play them three tones and show them three objects, they

07:49look at them for a certain amount of time.

07:51If you play them three tones and you show them five objects, they look longer.

07:55In other words, they already, at a day or two of age, understand that there's a mismatch between the sounds

08:00they hear and the things that they see.

08:01Now, this, of course, develops, I won't go into all of the details, but this goes into things like if

08:07you show a kid an impossible thing, you know, like a...

08:11You get those swinging illusions where it looks like the windowpane is going through another windowpane and so on.

08:17And very early on, a couple of months in, babies will look longer at something that they perceive to be

08:21impossible.

08:23And if you show a jar, a clear jar, with an equal number of red and white little balls, and

08:32you reach in, and all you do is pick out the red ones, the babies look longer than if you

08:36just pick out randomly the red and the white ones.

08:38In other words, they recognize that something that is happening is non-standard, is not predictive, is not the way

08:44that the math should go, so to speak.

08:45Now, of course, they're not doing abstract math, it's instinctive and so on, but moral reasoning, babies can recognize unfairness

08:52very early on.

08:53You can certainly, you can, they do moral reasoning, although you can't verbally reason with them, but, you know, 18

09:00months, 16 months, 14 months, it's hard to know exactly how far back it's going to go.

09:04So, certainly with my own daughter, I could do moral reasoning with her at the age of two or three,

09:09you know, could be a little earlier, could be a little later.

09:11Can I interject there, what does that look like at that age?

09:16So, yeah, moral reasoning, so let's say, I'll give you an example from when my daughter was little, and we

09:22were actually going to Porkfest, which is not the Cornell 7, it is actually a libertarian conference, and we were

09:30at a little motel as we drove to go to Porkfest,

09:34and she wanted to, she wanted me to get up really early and to go with her to the pool,

09:43right, and so I did and so on, and I, because I promised, right, I promised and said, yes, we'll

09:48do it in the morning, and then I kept my promise and we went to the pool, even though it

09:51was not my first choice at seven o'clock in the morning, because it was also cold.

09:55Anyway, so later, she made a promise for me, which she did not keep, and so I said, ah, but

10:02I did keep my promise, right, and you want me to keep my promise, and this is sort of the

10:07basic Kantian stuff that the kids really respond to, how would you like it if, or what if we make

10:11this a universal rule, like act as if the standard of your behavior becomes a universal rule.

10:16So when she made a promise and then didn't keep it, I could say to her, wait, are we not

10:20keeping promises now? I mean, is that the way that we want things to go? I mean, I don't want

10:25things to go. I mean, remember how you really enjoyed that we went to the pool, and I promised I

10:29would, and so on.

10:30And so if you take children's behavior and try to universalize it, you know, if your kid takes something, you

10:36can say, oh, well, then we can just take things now. If I want something from you, I can just

10:39take it.

10:40And like, so you can get them to universalize their own moral behavior, which is not my theory of ethics,

10:46universally preferable behavior, but it certainly is, you know, Kantian 101, or of course, Jesus, act unto others as you

10:54would like them to have to act unto you, the golden rule, and so on.

10:57And they get it pretty quickly. And, you know, you want me to keep my promises. Well, I'm another human

11:02being. I want you to keep your promises. And that's how things work. And it's so much better. And how

11:06would you like it if I promised you, oh, you eat your vegetables, and then you can have some candy.

11:11And then I said, ah, sucker, I can't believe you ate those vegetables. You're not getting any candy. And I

11:15eat it in front of her like you'd be upset, right? And so you want me to keep my word.

11:19I also want you to keep your word.

11:19But you can start with this stuff pretty easily and pretty early. And children are hardwired for consistency. I mean,

11:29most people are like hardwired for consistency. In the physical world, it's called object permanence. You know, like you have

11:35a ball that rolls under the couch. When the kid is very young, it's like, oh, it's despawned. It's gone

11:39into the back rooms. It's gone into the nether. The ball no longer exists.

11:41And then after a while, they realize that the ball still exists, even though they can't see it. Then they

11:47reach under the couch and they get their ball and so on. So the brain is hardwired for consistency in

11:52the real world. Like it's not like, well, the last three sets of stairs I had to climb down, but

11:57this one I bet I can fly, right? Like we're used to consistency and the brains that didn't develop that

12:01kind of consistency didn't usually make it very long. That consistency in general also goes to the moral realm, but

12:08it also has to include empathy.

12:09In other words, if my daughter didn't care about my feelings at all, it would be harder to make the

12:12candy in case for keeping your word. So as long as you're consistent, you model that kind of consistency, then

12:18your children will want that consistency morally in the same way that they like consistency in language, right? If your

12:25kid asks for an M&M and you give them a, I don't know, what's the most evil food in

12:28the world? Brussels sprouts. You give them a Brussels sprout, Satan's boogers. Then you say, well, that meant candy yesterday,

12:35but today it means Brussels sprouts. Your kid would be kind of frustrated because they're looking for that kind of

12:39consistency.

12:39consistency. And if you bring that to the moral realm, they will work with that in a very positive and

12:45effective way.

12:47Let's talk definitions a bit here. Like what would constitute a departure from peaceful parenting? Is it just a kind

12:58of corporal punishment or is it also a raised voice? Is it any kind of physical restraint? What are we

13:03talking about here?

13:04A raised voice is not a violation of the non-aggression principle. Let's test it. No, I'm kidding. Because you

13:11had headphones on. So a raised voice doesn't violate the non-aggression principle. So yes. And of course, I would

13:17do that if my wife was somehow about to walk into traffic and I would bellow her name and I

13:21would make sure that she was not about to walk into traffic and stop her.

13:24So, you know, that which you would do with an adult, with some exceptions, of course, you can do with

13:29a child. Raised voices is totally fine.

13:32The initiation of force is not. So spanking would be a violation of the non-aggression principle because the non

13:37-aggression principle says you can't initiate the use of force.

13:40You can use force in self-defense, but spanking is not an act of self-defense. It's not like some

13:45toddler is going to, you know, punch you in the nose and cause you grievous bodily harm.

13:50So you can raise your voice. You can get angry. You can be firm. You can be insistent. You can

13:55be upset. These are all emotional patterns that are important for children to learn. And also, if you get angry

14:01at your child and you're not abusive, then your child understands that anger can be healthy. It doesn't mean you

14:06go crazy. It doesn't mean you just lash out or be immature.

14:09And so, yeah, any sort of physical intervention, it's the office principle. Like at the office, you can yell at

14:15people and, you know, maybe you'll get fired or whatever, but you won't get thrown in jail.

14:19But if my, I was a manager, I managed like 35 people in the software world. And if somebody displeased

14:26me, I could, I didn't usually yell at them, of course, right? But I could be pretty firm with them

14:29and so on. I couldn't pick them up and put them in a timeout. Like I could not physically lift,

14:35like let's say the QA tester let a bug through in the software. I couldn't pick them up. She was,

14:41I think, 33 at the time. It's supposed to be a minute per year. I couldn't pick her up.

14:44I need you to sit on this stair for 33 minutes and just think about what you've done and then

14:48come and apologize, right? And so we want to prepare our children for a reasonable adulthood. And that means negotiating

14:56with them as soon as possible. There is this thing called gentle parenting, which I do not agree with, which

15:02is you don't have any standards. You just try and understand and empathize with the child's feelings and so on.

15:07And that's not realistic because in the world, of course, we have standards, right?

15:10You and I have a time to meet and we have, I think, a civil back and forth about these

15:16issues. So you want to bring your children into the kind of world they're going to inhabit productively as adults.

15:22I mean, when was the last time you got a timeout or me, right? It doesn't really happen. When was

15:25the last time we got spanked? You know, again, assuming that we're not at Cornell, then we have to raise

15:31our children for the kind of adult lives that they're going to have, which is usually negotiation and reason and,

15:36you know, violence and self-defense in an extremity.

15:38But that's outside of the realm of parenting. But yeah, it is reasoning with them. It's listening to them. It's

15:45certainly having standards and having firm standards of behavior and expectations of behavior.

15:50But it is just not violating the non-aggression principle, which is a universal principle and I would argue applies

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16:53I have some questions I want to ask you about results, like how people do when they are raised in

16:59this way.

17:00But before I get to that, I want to ask you what I think is the elephant in the room

17:04for everybody,

17:05which is, what about that situation where we're out in public and the kid is just screaming uncontrollably and it

17:13doesn't seem as if reason is going to cut it?

17:16How do you handle that?

17:18It's tricky.

17:19Of course, my daughter, if she's really upset, then you interrupt whatever you're doing to listen because children are helpless,

17:26right?

17:27And when people are helpless and they're not listened to, they tend to escalate their aggressions.

17:32So I can't imagine, you know, maybe if we were running for a plane that was super essential to catch

17:36or something like that, that might be a different matter.

17:38But if your child is getting upset and you go to eye level and tell me what's going on and

17:42what can I do to help and so on, you don't generally get tantrums.

17:45And my daughter, and we were just talking about this the other day, she says, you know, I don't think

17:49I've ever lost my temper.

17:50And I'm like, poke, poke, poke.

17:51So if you have that line of communication open, then you should not be in the receiving end of tantrums.

18:00Unless, of course, there's, you know, the child has horrible bloating or some sort of bad headache or, you know,

18:05then maybe like all of us, they can be a bit more short-tempered.

18:08But I didn't have to deal with tantrums because I really did try to listen.

18:13And so tantrums, I would say, probably are the result of parents impatiently avoiding some of the child's upset or

18:21sort of roughly dragging them along or, yeah, you're fine, you know, that kind of stuff, as opposed to, you

18:25know, go down and listen and so on.

18:28And the other situations, of course, you know, the hot boiling water on the stove or running towards traffic and

18:35so on.

18:36The hot boiling water on the stove, of course, that's largely to do with prevention, right?

18:39You turn the, well, they're still very young, you know, teach them all about the stoves, the heat, the bed,

18:44you know, turn the handles away and so on.

18:47With regards to running, yeah, listen, if your child is running into traffic, you can tackle them, of course, right?

18:53Because the child is impulsive and so on.

18:56Of course, you want to do what you can to prevent that kind of situation.

19:00People will say, you're on the front lawn.

19:01It's like, just build a little fence.

19:02They won't run into traffic and so on.

19:04And so, you can work to prevent, but in the same way, if a blind guy was about to walk

19:09into traffic and the only way I could stop him would be to tackle him,

19:12then you would do that on the basic assumption that he would thank you afterwards.

19:16He wouldn't say, no, I would rather have walked into traffic than have you tackle me.

19:20So, I wouldn't consider that specific to children.

19:24All right, because I really do feel like there are a lot of people who are going to say, suppose

19:30I came to your philosophy a little bit late in the parenting process and my child's two and a half

19:36and has these undesirable behaviors already kind of baked in.

19:42So, how do I peaceful my way out of that?

19:45Well, the other question, of course, is compared to what?

19:48So, if you try to aggression your way out of it, and again, I talked to a researcher about Elizabeth

19:56Harvey.

19:56No, I can't remember her name.

19:57I'll send you in the show notes, which was spanking doesn't work.

20:02Spanking will provide short-term compliance and long-term rebellion and disobedience.

20:08And so, spanking doesn't work.

20:12And because it doesn't work, you can't stop doing it.

20:15So, it is sort of saying, well, the free market might have negative outcomes.

20:18Sure.

20:18I mean, for some people, the free market is going to have negative outcomes.

20:22Compared to what?

20:23Compared to central planning, which has even worse outcomes.

20:26So, if you have been aggressive towards your children, then, you know, you can sit them down and say, I've

20:32made a mistake and you're not going to do that and tell me how you feel.

20:36And you start reorienting that because your other alternative is just keep playing whack-a-mole until when?

20:41Until the kid gets too big and you can't do it anymore?

20:44That's not a very reasonable place to stop, you know?

20:46That's like the movie scene where the villain gets a hold of the gun.

20:50Sorry, the good guy gets a hold of the villain's gun and suddenly the villain's all like, no, no, we

20:54can work it out.

20:54We can talk it out, right?

20:55All that's happened is the power has shifted.

20:58So, you want to stop hitting your children before they get too big to hit because then everybody knows, the

21:04kids know as well, that you're only stopping them because instead of wagging your finger down, you're now wagging your

21:09finger up some giant cavernous teenage nasal cavities with like incipient muscles and abs which are going to make short

21:15work of you should you try.

21:16So, yeah, you want to turn that ship around as soon as you can and it certainly is possible to

21:21do that.

21:21All right, so let's talk about, I know the claim is at least that when you raise children without physical

21:31punishment, that they show better impulse control, they themselves show lower aggression, they themselves have maybe higher academic achievement than

21:44their counterparts.

21:46But there's also apparently there's a literature that finds that child temperament and family chaos can confound this so that,

21:58for example, it may be the case that children who aren't hit don't themselves hit quite as much.

22:06But isn't there also a selection effect here in that the very kind of parent who would implement a philosophy

22:13like this tends to be higher IQ, tends to be more patient, you know what I mean?

22:19So, how much of this is the environment of the household as opposed to the, actually, maybe I'm answering my

22:28own question here, but as opposed to specifically the no hitting?

22:33I mean, it's a great question and let me respond with an analogy, which I know is not an argument,

22:38but hopefully it will illustrate things.

22:41So, it certainly isn't the case in the free market that smart people tend to make more money.

22:47But poor people or less intelligent people also do better because the smart people are inventing all of these wonderful

22:52technologies and air conditioners and antibiotics and self-driving cars and so on that benefit the lives of those at

22:59the bottom.

23:01So, it certainly is true that it's easier in many ways if you have a higher IQ, at least in

23:07the short run, because you're changing course, right?

23:09If you're raised peacefully parenting, then you're just repeating what you learned, right?

23:14It would take a very, it takes a high IQ person to study and become fluent in Japanese unless they're

23:19raised in Japan, in which case just about everybody speaks Japanese natively.

23:22So, I think in the long run, it'll be a whole lot easier.

23:24So, living by principle, which is in the free market is, you know, private property and free trade, benefits everybody,

23:31although it certainly is true that the most intelligent tend to benefit the most, but everybody, you know, the rising

23:36tide does lift all boats, although obviously some limitation of wave tectonics is some go much higher.

23:43So, the following principle with regards to parenting is easier and probably a little easier to implement in the first

23:52generation for smarter people, but whatever you can go in that direction to implement it will benefit your family and

24:00maybe it'll take two generations or three generations rather than one, but it still is heading in the right direction.

24:06When a child needs some kind of correction, let's say you had company over and the child was rude, something

24:13like that, and then the company leaves and you sit the child down and say, well, now look, now that

24:17was really out of bounds, what you did.

24:20What does the punishment look like?

24:23Is it, is it, is it, are there, what kind of consequences, let's say, are there?

24:29I've never punished.

24:31Okay.

24:31That sounds incomprehensible.

24:33Now, let's explain yourself here.

24:34Yeah, so, so to be fair, and I want to do this preemptively because it's a very, very fair objection,

24:39I have a one daughter.

24:42So, listen, I mean, I don't have kids hanging off the rafters, I'm not the, you know, eight is enough

24:48house of Tom Woods and so on.

24:49So, I fully, fully recognize that I'm on shaky ground with Ricard, but I also did, I worked in a

24:56daycare for many years, took kids all over the city, 30 kids with one other teacher, ages five to 10.

25:02And so, I do have a fair amount of child wrangling under my belt.

25:07But as far as consequences go, you want to try and mirror the consequences people are going to face as

25:14adults.

25:14Because otherwise, you're teaching them a language they're never going to speak as adults, but like teaching them Klingon, like

25:19when are they going to speak Klingon?

25:20So, when you're an adult, consequences tend to be disapproval, it could be ostracism, it could be getting fired and

25:28so on.

25:29Of course, you can't fire your kids and so on.

25:31But when you raise your children well, and sorry, that's sort of begging the question, when you raise your children

25:37peacefully, then they really care about your opinions and they really care about your approval and they respect you because

25:43you're not, you know, pounding them like a bunch of rusty nails.

25:47And so, your disapproval is very important to them.

25:50In the same way, you know, some random woman sends me a message saying, you're a bad guy or you

25:58did something really wrong or whatever, I don't care.

25:59It's just the internet, who cares, right?

26:01But if my wife or my daughter or some close friend says to me, hey, I think you did something

26:05really wrong, like they matter to me.

26:07Like, I'll really listen and I'll almost certain to change course because I'm almost certain they would have a really

26:11good case.

26:12I mean, I got back on Twitter because my daughter made an airtight case for it.

26:17And so, whereas if some random person just say, hey man, you should get back on Twitter, like I'm not

26:22going to listen.

26:23So, with parenting, the more peaceful you are, the more reasonable you are, the more rational you are, the more

26:29gentle you are, the more your negative opinion matters.

26:34Because they look up to you, they respect you, and they know that you are aiming for their best interests

26:39and the more that you explain things, right?

26:42So, if my daughter were to be rude, and rudeness doesn't come out of nowhere, right?

26:46I mean, rudeness is not innate to children.

26:49If you raise your children speaking English, they're going to speak English.

26:52And if you raise your children being relatively polite and diplomatic and considerate, then your children are pretty much going

26:58to follow that lead.

26:59But let's say there is a certain amount of rudeness, which can happen.

27:02And, you know, the sort of classic example of the kid who says, you know, loudly in front of Aunt

27:06Edna, why is Aunt Edna so fat?

27:08You know, or why does she have 12 moles coming off her left cheek?

27:12Or whatever it is, right?

27:14Perfectly, and those are, you know, thou shalt not bear false witness.

27:16If Aunt Edna is fat, your child is actually telling the truth.

27:19And, you know, we only call it rudeness because we get more blowback as adults.

27:23But nonetheless, and so, you know, we can say, look, the truth is not a sword to be drawn at

27:27all costs.

27:27And, you know, you do have to have some sense of how what you say feels to people and so

27:35on.

27:36But it is also true that Aunt Edna is fat, right?

27:39So, you know, it's learning these diplomacies, you know, truth falls, I think, in the Aristotelian mean in that you

27:44don't want to lie.

27:45But you also don't want to tell blunt truths necessarily that hurt people and demotivate them and take them out

27:52of the orbit of perhaps better thinking.

27:54Like, if you keep calling Aunt Edna fat, she just may not want to see you anymore and maybe you

27:59won't be able to influence her to be healthier.

28:01So, you know, certainly within families, we're all so intermeshed that I think the Aristotelian mean with diplomacy.

28:06But that's all complicated.

28:07And I certainly, sorry to me, love, I certainly would never punish my daughter for being too blunt and offending

28:14people.

28:15Why?

28:16Because she knows what I do for a living, which is sometimes be too blunt.

28:18And how dare you, oh, child of mine?

28:22Yes, but there's a time and a place, though, right?

28:25We should teach them that.

28:27Sure, but I'm also not going to say that I know exactly the time and the place either.

28:31Because I got deplatformed like I got sent into orbit around Uranus.

28:34Sorry, let me just use another planet as an example.

28:37But, yeah, so, I mean, did I go too far?

28:40That's possible.

28:41I mean, certainly in terms of deplatforming and all of that, yes, I did.

28:45Although the annoying thing for me, just to take a slight side quest and top the annoying thing for me,

28:50is that, boy, I was really edgy, you know, 10, 15 years ago.

28:54I was super edgy, man.

28:55I was the cutting edge.

28:56I was a katana blade.

28:57You couldn't even see it pass through the Fruit Ninja pile of confection.

29:02And now, having come back and having been away for like half a decade and so on, really coming back

29:07to social media, I'm about as edgy as a cup of warm garlic butter.

29:12Because the Overton window, maybe I had something to do with it, the Overton window has shifted so far.

29:17You know, I keep like, ooh, this is, you know, this is pretty edgy.

29:20And then I'm like, I look at my feed, I'm like, really, really isn't, right?

29:24Really, I mean, the younger generation in particular have, you know, they have no sacred cows left at all.

29:28And that's pretty wild.

29:30So, yeah, so I can't tell my daughter that I've perfectly navigated telling the truth and being blunt in the

29:36world.

29:37And I can't expect her to do that.

29:39If I wasn't doing it at the age of, I don't know, when was I, 55 or whatever, when I

29:43was deplatformed, am I going to ask her to do it at 5 or 10?

29:46I'll give her some advice.

29:47But she can also at some point say, are you perfect at that?

29:51And of course, with good rational humility, I would say, no, I'm not.

29:56And we all struggle with that.

29:57How much truth do we tell people?

29:58Well, we don't want to lie to them.

30:00We don't want to totally mislead them.

30:01But at the same time, blunt truths can cause problems in relationships.

30:06And that can cut off the person's access to better truths down the road if they just dissociate from you

30:11and so on.

30:12So, yeah, I mean, I wouldn't punish.

30:15We would have a conversation about it.

30:17And I would say, my instinct is to say that was a bit too blunt, right?

30:22But I don't know.

30:23And the truth is, I don't know.

30:25You know, sometimes if the kid says, why is Aunt Edna so fat?

30:29It will be the tipping point, right?

30:31The straw that breaks the belly's back that gets her to start dieting.

30:34I don't know.

30:35Maybe all the adults have been tiptoeing around this issue for 20 years.

30:38Why is Aunt Edna so fat?

30:39And Aunt Edna's like, you know, that kid's going to get out of the mouth of babes.

30:42All right, look, do you watch, did you ever watch Seinfeld?

30:46Yes.

30:47Okay, because there's an episode where Elaine has a friend who needs a nose job.

30:53And so they call in Kramer because they know he's going to walk in and they'll say,

30:57what do you notice about her?

30:58And he'll say, she needs a nose job.

31:00Just like that.

31:02I remember Elaine is like, Kramer, how could you say that?

31:05And it's like, I don't know.

31:07I mean, we need people who are diplomatic.

31:08We need people who are blunt.

31:10And, you know, there's a whole lot of realm.

31:12Oh, no, you know what?

31:13It's because I think I've misstated the story.

31:16They weren't expecting to be so blunt.

31:18But then there's another episode where her friend has a terrible hairstyle and they figure

31:23Kramer will come in and set her straight.

31:25And he comes in and loves it.

31:26And they don't know what to do.

31:27Right.

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33:09All right.

33:10Let me ask you, one of the things that annoys me about strongly held ideologies, or not even

33:20ideologies, like people who believe, let's say, in, oh, I don't know, Alcoholics Anonymous.

33:24Now, I've heard things from both sides of that.

33:29I've heard people say, this thing changed my life.

33:32I can name you people who say this thing changed my life.

33:34But I've heard, I had a guest on this show, a Harvard professor, years and years ago, who

33:40has studied the matter and says, Alcoholics Anonymous does not actually do very much.

33:47Like, the numbers of people who recover from it is actually very low.

33:51So, like, this is what you should do instead.

33:54Welcome to my new addiction, which is talking about my addiction.

33:56Anyway, sorry.

33:57Yeah, I know.

33:57Exactly.

33:59So, but the thing is, if you go to AA, and you go to somebody who's very, very committed

34:03to it, and you say, it didn't work for me, what do they say to you, Stefan?

34:08What do they say in response?

34:09Oh, well, that's too bad.

34:10It doesn't work for anybody.

34:11Yeah.

34:11What do they say?

34:12I mean, I've had calls into the show where people are saying, you know, you, you, rat

34:17wretch, I implemented your principles, and they didn't work, and my children are out of

34:22control, and so on.

34:23Right.

34:24But then what the response that you get is, well, that's because you didn't work it.

34:29You didn't work the system.

34:30It's you.

34:31It's your, it's never, the thing is, is universally applicable and never fails.

34:35So, you must have failed.

34:37That's always the response.

34:39So, what I want to know is, suppose some, a parent comes up and says, we tried everything

34:44with this kid.

34:45We really, really did implement what you said, and it just didn't work for our kid.

34:50Is there ever a case where you would say, unfortunately, there's the occasional child this just does

34:56not work for?

34:57Or would you say, you must have failed?

35:00Well, I mean, certainly, if you have a child who has a severe intellectual disability, then

35:05maybe more restraint would be appropriate.

35:09So, this does require a reasonable level of verbal intelligence, not like IQ 150.

35:16I mean, I think basically everybody within a standard deviation or standard deviation at

35:21a half of the norm can probably achieve this.

35:23I mean, I have had, and I understand this is not proof, but I certainly have had a number

35:28of conversations that people have called into my show and said, it hasn't worked.

35:31Every time I drill in, there's violence in the household somewhere.

35:34It could be an uncle.

35:35It could be a grandparent.

35:36It could be that they were really violent early on and they tapered off without explaining

35:40to the child.

35:41And so, the child is left confused between two worlds.

35:45So, but, you know, principle is principle.

35:47You know, that's the beauty of relaxing into universal moral standards.

35:52The non-aggression principle is a principle.

35:53And you say, well, you know, it doesn't work sometimes.

35:56It's like, principles aren't judged by what works.

35:59They're judged by whether they're good, right?

36:01I mean, you're obviously a man of deep faith.

36:03Has that always been convenient to you?

36:06Yeah, that's true.

36:07I hear that.

36:08I hear that.

36:09And yet, you would not surrender the values of your deep faith for the sake of convenience

36:14or if somebody said, well, your deep faith doesn't work.

36:17And it's like, it's really not about whether it works or not because you can always find

36:20exceptions, right?

36:21You can find somebody in the free market who loses everything.

36:24Did it, quote, work for them?

36:25Doesn't really matter.

36:26What matters is we don't initiate the use of force and steal things from people because

36:29that's immoral.

36:31And that aspect of things, and I don't want to jump the gun if you have another question,

36:35but I did want to talk about what this has to do with libertarianism and politics and

36:39social change as a whole.

36:40But, of course, I don't want to wrestle your question.

36:43Well, I guess one thing I want to make sure we cover before we go on is whether your daughter

36:49has ever commented to you about what, you know, her feelings about being raised this

36:55way.

36:56I mean, maybe she's appreciative about it.

36:58Maybe she's never given it a second thought.

37:00Has she ever weighed in on this?

37:01Oh, yeah.

37:02No, sure.

37:03We've talked about it.

37:04And, of course, my wife and I talked about this very early on before we even had kids,

37:07which is, you know, we're going to commit to this approach.

37:11There are benefits and there are drawbacks.

37:13And that is true for us.

37:15And that is also true for our daughter, right?

37:16Because if you're raised in an environment where most children are treated very aggressively,

37:23then there's going to be some compatibility challenges.

37:26But that's the homeschooling question, right?

37:28I mean, if you're going to homeschool your children and try and keep them away from the

37:31communist toxicity of modern, quote, education, they're going to have less in common with kids

37:37who are brought up that way.

37:38But nonetheless, you still have to, you know, I mean, if you don't feed your kids lead, they

37:43have less in common with the kids who've eaten lead, but you kind of want them to have less

37:46in common with brain toxicity of that kind.

37:48So, again, it is based on principle that these decisions are made.

37:56And so far, it's worked out well.

37:58She's got a great social circle and all of that.

38:00But yeah, I mean, certainly for sure.

38:02But I view that as protective.

38:03You know, if there are kids out there who were raised, let's say, really violently,

38:07then you want your children to have nothing in common with them.

38:10You want your children, in a sense, to recoil from them or to be like, ooh, that's, you

38:15know, there's something not quite right about that.

38:17That's, you know, like having a security guard with them at all times in a way.

38:21All right.

38:22So now let's go to what you wanted to say about a bigger part in libertarianism.

38:26Why do people believe we need the government, right?

38:30The government doesn't exist.

38:32It is, the state is just a state of mind.

38:34People believe in the government.

38:36And I remember actually with somebody, we both know, Steph Kinsella, having this debate

38:40back in the day on a forum.

38:43And I was saying, the government doesn't exist.

38:44And some people on the forum, I don't think it was Steph himself, were, you know, sending

38:47me pictures of the capital.

38:49And it's like, I get the building exists.

38:52I'm not arguing whether the building exists.

38:53But the government is an entity that exists in people's minds, right?

38:57And that doesn't mean it's purely subjective or random.

38:59I mean, if you look at trees and you call it a forest, I mean, the concept forest doesn't

39:05exist out there in the world, but still, you can't look at a school of fish and call it

39:08a forest, right?

39:09Maybe a forest of kiln.

39:10So the government doesn't exist, but everybody believes in it.

39:13And that's a great mystery.

39:14That's a great mystery.

39:15Why do people believe in something that doesn't exist to the point where they're willing to

39:20surrender their freedoms, half their income, their children's education?

39:22Like, it's just, it's a one go to war for.

39:24And it's just, it's a wild thing from the outside, right?

39:27You got to blank slate things with philosophy and say, okay, let's pretend we know nothing and

39:31sort of start from the ground up Socratic style.

39:32So why, why are people so grounded and, and so sank into like quicksand that belief that

39:42we absolutely have to have a government or everything is, you know, the sort of classic

39:48definition of anarchy, which is chaos and violence and warlords and, you know, like some

39:52sort of Mad Max beyond the Thunderdome, a hairdo and all of that.

39:56Why do people believe that?

39:59Well, because in a sense, that's in a very deep sense, that's how most people grow up

40:04in that their parents tell them, uh, we have to be violent or aggressive with you.

40:08Otherwise, everything's going to be chaos and, uh, you're going to fight and beat each other

40:13up and steal each other's toys.

40:15And without that central coercive authority, everything's going to fall apart.

40:19Nothing's going to work.

40:20And the whole household is going to collapse.

40:24And so, because people grow up with that, then when they transition into, into the society

40:29as a whole, and they're told, well, there's this coercive entity at the center of things

40:34that has to organize society.

40:35Otherwise, everything's going to fall apart and we're all going to be a war of all against

40:38all.

40:39You know, the Hobbesian, what nature read in tooth and claw, all of that state of nature,

40:42violence and so on.

40:43So, we need the government and that just, that's a smooth transition from aggressive

40:48parenting being perceived and lectured to as necessary for the functioning of a household.

40:53Uh, violence is necessary for the smooth running of a household.

40:56And then we go out into society, we say, well, violence is necessary for the smooth running

41:02of society.

41:02And people are like, well, well, I mean, that's not even a controversial idea because that's

41:07kind of how they're raised.

41:08Whereas, if children are raised without central coercive authority on the part of parents,

41:15then will they go and say, oh yeah, uh, um, that which worked really, really well in

41:21my family, even though I'm a child, the opposite of that is absolutely what's needed to run

41:25a society of adults.

41:26And I just, I don't really think that if you don't teach your children, sorry, let me rephrase

41:33that.

41:33If you don't teach your children the language of coercion, they won't speak it when they

41:36get older, other than in self-defense.

41:38And I think that is the missing link when it comes to spreading libertarian ideas.

41:44There has to be something that predisposes people towards believing in statism and either

41:51it's innate, like let's say that everybody's just born believing in the state, wanting

41:54to, um, uh, believing that the state is necessary and it's genetic.

41:59It's, but then we can't change it.

42:00That's like trying to talk people into changing their eye colors or for you and I to have full

42:04heads of hair or something like that.

42:05So if it's innate to people that everybody just believes that governments are warlords

42:10or, you know, czars or kings or whatever are necessary for society, then there's no

42:14point trying to change that because it's built in.

42:16If it's not built in and it's immune to reason, then it must be experiential.

42:21It must be something that people are trained in from very early on.

42:25And so I think that the only chance, given that we've had hundreds of years to talk to

42:29people about freedom and we get less free every year, the only chance has to be to look

42:33at it as experiential and say, well, if we're not born believing in oligarchical political

42:38hierarchies full of violence, then they must be taught that in some way.

42:44And then if we don't teach them that, I think not only do we end up with happier children

42:49and happier family life.

42:50And I think a very positive example for, for other parents about what it can do.

42:54But I think in the long run, and it's a multi-generational project, of course, but in the long run,

42:59we

42:59end up with people who grow up not believing or speaking the language of centralized coercion.

43:06And then they'll be as hard to talk into it as currently people are to talk out of it.

43:11I think related to that is the way the school system works so that you have a seven-year-old

43:18kid sitting in a building that was financed coercively, and he's implicitly being told

43:23every single day that the most important thing in your day, most days of the year, has to be

43:30provided in this way.

43:31I mean, you know, in effect, the jackboot provides this thing.

43:36And we all know that if you were ever to become intelligent, you couldn't do it if we didn't

43:41finance it in this way.

43:42So the whole thing is a, is a temple, is a temple to the state that here, this is the

43:49most important calling you have, which is to sit in this room.

43:52And by the way, we couldn't have built this room if we hadn't, you know, shaken down your,

43:57your parents and their, and their neighbors.

43:59Oh yeah.

44:00I mean, every kid who gets into libertarianism as a teenager while still in school, and I

44:04know I had this experience, maybe you did too, is, you know, when the, the teachers

44:08are saying, you, you can't take things, you can't.

44:10And I'm like, your salary.

44:17So, you know, again, that's the Aristotelian mean, like I really want to tell the truth,

44:21but I also don't want to be locked in here forever and never graduate.

44:23So these are all of the challenges that we face.

44:26But yeah, I genuinely believe, and I can't prove it yet.

44:30I can prove it sort of philosophically and saying, well, look, if you, if you want kids

44:34to start speaking Japanese, you got to stop teaching them Japanese.

44:36And then, and if statism in the language of the necessity of coercion, the virtue of

44:41violence, if you don't teach that in the home, then they won't speak that language in society.

44:48And again, that, that there are challenges, there are pluses and minuses, you know, you

44:52teach your kids well and they have less in common with the average person, which, you

44:57know, I mean, I actually view it as a plus, but you know, it can, can be a challenge sometimes.

45:01But yeah, I think, I think for me, that is the missing link.

45:05And I, I don't claim to obviously have come up with this idea all on my own, but the idea

45:11that belief systems start with the family is, I mean, I can't even say, it's a finding the

45:20obvious in hindsight, but I don't know.

45:22I mean, I certainly know I've done a whole series on the history of philosophers, not philosophy,

45:27but each individual philosopher from the pre-Socratics up to right before Kant, who's a monumental

45:31beast that I'll take on at some point.

45:33And in the history of philosophy, there's almost no talk of parenting.

45:40It's really quite, John Locke talks it about a little bit, Plato talks it about it, but

45:43then he wants Plato, wants everyone to be in some incestuous based mosh pit, which is

45:47like horrendous.

45:50But if you think of Atlas Shrugged, an amazing book, but there's like a tiny, there's like a

45:54paragraph about parenting near the end in Gold's Gulch.

45:59And I don't know that libertarians have talked much about parenting.

46:03I do remember seeing a debate or a conversation around a table with Jeff Tucker and Hans Hoppe

46:09and others talking about spanking and so on.

46:13But I think that we need to follow a principle that I really got in business, right?

46:21Because when I was in business, like my entire life was on the line for companies to succeed

46:25for the companies that I was running.

46:26And what I needed to do, which sounds obvious in hindsight, and most people do this anyway,

46:32is you have to, to be a good person or to be an effective person, you have to align your

46:39energies to that which you have the most control over.

46:42You can't align your energies to that which you have no control over and expect to do much,

46:47right?

46:47So if I have a business plan, I can't say, well, the important thing is that the Fed

46:52cut its interest rates next month and then I'm fine.

46:54It's like, I have no control over that.

46:55I can control the phone calls I make, the code that I write, people that I manage, the

46:59whatever, the trips that I take to sell stuff.

47:01I can control that.

47:04Libertarianism has a tendency, and I'm more guilty of this than most and with less excuse,

47:09to focus on the things you can't change.

47:11Like, oh, you know, the Federal Reserve is bad.

47:12Yes, the Federal Reserve is bad.

47:15Can we do anything about it?

47:16I mean, we can, you know, write and talk about it and so on, but we can't really budge

47:19that in any particular way.

47:21So I always looked at where can I do the most good which I have the most control over.

47:26We can't control foreign policy.

47:28We can't control money printing.

47:30We can't control the declaration of war or of peace.

47:33We can't control which benefits are given to various population groups within society.

47:39But what we can do is stay our own hand in our own home.

47:43That we can do.

47:45And if people believe in the non-aggression principle, but only in general apply it to

47:50things that they can't change and don't want to apply it to the things that they can change,

47:55I think that they're missing the point in a way that we want to do the most good in the

47:59things that we most affect.

48:02And that, where do most people use coercion?

48:05They don't use it at work.

48:07They don't use it when a cop pulls them over.

48:09They don't use it with their parents at dinner.

48:12The place where most people use coercion is in their families with their children.

48:18I mean, I reported on a study many years ago where they taped little recorders to women

48:23just that they wanted to study something or other.

48:25And they found that the women were hitting their children like 20 times a week.

48:30Smack, smack, smack.

48:31And it's like, so that's where most people commit violence.

48:35Most people aren't robbers.

48:36They're not thieves.

48:37They're not muggers.

48:37They're not, you know.

48:39The most violence that people commit is in the home against their children.

48:44And so if we want the non-aggression principle to spread, and the only thing we say is all

48:49the things you can't affect is what you should pour your most energy into, that is saying

48:56that the values should only be deployed against that which you cannot change.

49:00But then when you sort of lift the lid on the family and say, okay, well, this is where

49:03most people are most coercive is within the family against their children.

49:06And, you know, the majority of parents hit their children, right?

49:10It's highest in the black community, medium in whites, a little lower in East Asians and

49:15so on.

49:16Most parents still hit their children.

49:18And this is part of the circumcision argument as well, the sort of infliction of unnecessary

49:23mutilation.

49:24But if we want the non-aggression principle to spread, we should empower people to act

49:30on it and stay their hand in the place where they use the most violence, which is against

49:36their children in the home.

49:37So, or even aggression, like even just threats, you know, I'm going to, those available threats

49:43would be illegal as well.

49:44I can't say to someone, I'm going to beat you up if you don't do what I want, right?

49:46Or I'm going to hit you or hit you with a belt or pull down your pants and smack you

49:50in some bizarre way.

49:52So, I'm, and then do this could just be sort of the business training because I came out

49:57of academia with my head in the clouds, went into the business world and it's like, there's

50:00no point talking about things you can't change.

50:01You have to focus your energies on where you're going to have the most impact.

50:04And so, like, you know, like a politician goes to the swing voters, right?

50:08Because he doesn't need to convince the people who already vote for him and he's not going

50:10to convince the people who'll never vote for him.

50:12So, you've got to focus your energies on where you can have the most change and the

50:15most violence that people enact in their lives by far, not even, there's not even a close

50:19second unless you're some, you know, real drunken wife beater.

50:22The most violence that people enact is against their children in their homes.

50:26And that's where the non-aggression principle should have real traction because then we're

50:29saying, not only is there virtue that is universal, abstract, and beautiful, but you can actually

50:35do something about it and change your entire family life.

50:40Stefan, how do people follow you?

50:43Oh, so, freedomain.com.

50:46For the people who are interested in peaceful parenting, please, please, please check it out.

50:51Check it out.

50:51Peacefulparenting.com.

50:52The book is free, both the long version and the short version.

50:55There's an audio book, there's a Spanish version, there's an AI trained on my parenting

51:00material, not just that book, but a whole bunch of stuff.

51:02And you can ask questions at the AI.

51:04So, peacefulparenting.com.

51:05And if anybody has any questions, you can go to call.freedomain.com and just set up a

51:10call with me, it could be public or private, to ask questions about it.

51:13And I do strongly encourage people, virtue is not something that is abstract or in some other

51:18dimension we can't control, but in our own lives, in our own hands.

51:22And I promise you that the more that you are reasonable and peaceful with your children,

51:28the better the world becomes, the happier you become.

51:30And that way, they're not going to hit you when you start forgetting things in your old

51:33age.

51:36Well, fair enough.

51:37Give me the link one more time because I'm going to put it on the show notes.

51:40Peacefulparenting.com.

51:41And for my general podcast work and video work, freedomain.com.

51:44How did you get peacefulparenting.com?

51:46Did that cost you?

51:47Did you have to buy that from somebody?

51:48That's incredible.

51:50It turns out I can live with one kidney.

51:51I'm quite excited.

51:52I didn't know that.

51:54I mean, I don't need the details, but I just want to know, was that one of those?

51:57Let me show you the scar.

51:58It's right in the back pat here.

51:59Yeah.

52:00I mean, I bought nationaldivorce.com and, you know, somebody owned that.

52:04So I paid for that thing.

52:07So, all right.

52:08So peacefulparenting.com is the easiest thing.

52:09I almost don't even, I'm going to put it on the show notes page, but that is so elegant

52:12and beautiful.

52:13It's amazing that you have that.

52:15I know the guy, I hope he still does.

52:18I hope a Marxist hasn't bought it for him.

52:20And then I'll be embarrassed.

52:21But I know the guy who owns capitalism.com and that caught, he's very well off, but he

52:27said it was driving him crazy that it was in the hands of a bad guy.

52:30And he said, I just can't allow this.

52:32So he bought capitalism.com.

52:34You would really hope that the guy who owns capitalism.com would be very wealthy.

52:37I mean, that's what we're shooting for here.

52:40So I think we got that.

52:41So anyway, peacefulparenting.com.

52:43Stefan, thank you very much for the conversation.

52:45I appreciate it very much.

52:47Always a great pleasure.

52:48And I'm sure you upgraded your hotel room because it looks very nice back there.

52:52So that's excellent.

52:53Thanks a lot.

52:54Yeah.

52:54Sorry, everybody, for the terrible background.

52:56I usually have these books and it looks all nice.

52:59And now it's like, ah, it's a disaster.

53:01But, you know, I travel.

53:02I got to do what I got to do.

53:04So Stefan Molyneux, thank you very much.

53:06And ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much.

53:10Make yourself and those you love less vulnerable to the regime, both mentally and physically.

53:16Get more forbidden information at tomsfreebooks.com.

53:19And be sure to subscribe to the show wherever you listen.

53:22See you next time.

53:32Like the sound of The Tom Woods Show?

53:34My audio production is provided by Podsworth Media.

53:37Check them out at podsworth.com.

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