The Story of Your Enslavement [Remastered]

Stefan Molyneux

Come and see the Freedomain classic which had millions upon millions of views before I was de-platformed.  For many, The Story of Your Enslavement was their first introduction to Freedomain. Here it is again, with enhanced audio and video!  We can only be kept in the cages we do not see. A brief history of human enslavement - up to and including your own. From Freedomain Radio, the largest and most popular philosophy conversation in the world.  From https://freedomain.com/ the largest and most popular philosophy conversation in the world.  Originally released April 15, 2010.  Text: https://fdrurl.com/slavestory  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

00:01This is the story of your enslavement, how it came to be and how you can finally be free.

00:12Like all animals, human beings want to dominate and exploit the resources around them.

00:19At first we mostly hunted and fished and ate off the land, but then something magical and

00:26terrible happened to our minds.

00:30We became, alone among the animals, afraid of death and of future loss.

00:39And this was the start of a great tragedy and an even greater possibility.

00:47You see, when we become afraid of death, of injury and imprisonment, we become controllable.

00:54And so valuable in a way that no other resource could ever be.

01:03The greatest resource for any human being to control is not natural resources or tools

01:09or animals or land, but other human beings.

01:17You can frighten an animal because animals are afraid of pain in the moment.

01:22But you cannot frighten an animal with a loss of liberty, with torture or imprisonment in

01:30the future, because animals have very little sense of tomorrow.

01:37You cannot threaten a cow with torture or a sheep with death.

01:42You cannot swing a sword at a tree and scream at it to produce more fruit or hold a burning

01:48torch to a field and demand more wheat.

01:53You cannot get more eggs by threatening a hen.

01:57But you can get a man to give you his eggs by threatening him.

02:05This human farming has been the most profitable and destructive occupation throughout history.

02:13And it is now reaching its destructive climax.

02:19Human society cannot be rationally understood until it is seen for what it is.

02:25A series of farms where human farmers own human livestock.

02:35Some people get confused because governments provide health care and water and education

02:40and roads and thus imagine that there is some benevolence at work.

02:46Nothing could be further from the reality.

02:52Farmers provide health care and irrigation and training to their livestock.

03:01Some people get confused because we are allowed certain liberties and thus imagine that our

03:06governments protect our freedoms.

03:11But farmers plant their crops a certain distance apart to increase their yields and will allow

03:17certain animals larger stalls or fields if it means they will produce more meat and milk.

03:26In your country, your tax farm, your farmer grants you certain freedoms not because he cares

03:33about your liberties but because he wants to increase his profits.

03:40Are you beginning to see the nature of the cage you were born into?

03:48There have been four major phases of human farming.

03:51The first phase in ancient Egypt was direct and brutal human compulsion.

03:57Human bodies were controlled but the creative productivity of the human mind remained beyond the reach

04:03of the whip and the brand and the shackles.

04:07Slaves remained woefully underproductive and required enormous resources to control.

04:16The second phase was the Roman model wherein slaves were granted some capacity for freedom,

04:22ingenuity and creativity which raised their productivity.

04:27This increased the wealth of Rome and thus the tax income of the Roman government and with this

04:33additional wealth Rome became an empire, destroying the economic freedoms that fed its power and collapsed.

04:44I'm sure that this does not seem entirely unfamiliar.

04:51After the collapse of Rome, the feudal model introduced the concept of livestock ownership and taxation.

04:58Instead of being directly owned, peasants farmed land that they could retain as long as they paid off the local

05:04warlords.

05:05This model eventually broke down due to the continual subdivision of productive land and was destroyed during the enclosure movement

05:13when land was consolidated

05:15and hundreds of thousands of peasants were kicked off their ancestral lands because new farming techniques made larger farms more

05:23productive with fewer people.

05:27The increased productivity of the later Middle Ages created the excess food required for the expansion of towns and cities,

05:35which in turn gave rise to the modern democratic model of human ownership.

05:42As displaced peasants flooded into the cities, a huge stock of cheap human capital became available to the rising industrialists.

05:51And the ruling class of human farmers quickly realized that they could make more money by letting their livestock choose

05:59their own occupations.

06:04Under the democratic model, direct slave ownership has been replaced by the mafia model.

06:09The mafia rarely owns businesses directly, but rather sends thugs around once a month to steal from the business owners.

06:22You are now allowed to choose your own occupation, which raises your productivity and thus the taxes you can pay

06:30to your masters.

06:33Value this time in your life, kids, because this is the time in your life when you still have your

06:36choices.

06:37And it goes by so fast. When you're a teenager, you think you can do anything, and you do. Your

06:41twenties are a blur.

06:42Thirties, you raise your family, you make a little money, and you think to yourself, what happened in my twenties?

06:47Forties, you grow a little pot belly, you grow another chin. The music starts to get too loud.

06:51One of your old girlfriends from high school becomes a grandma.

06:53Fifties, you have a minor surgery. You'll call it a procedure, but it's a surgery.

06:57Sixties, you'll have a major surgery. The music is still loud, but it doesn't matter because you can't hear it

07:00anyway.

07:00The seventies, you and the wife retire to Fort Lauderdale. Start eating dinner at two o'clock in the afternoon.

07:05You have lunch around 10, breakfast the night before.

07:07Then most of your time wandering around malls looking for the ultimate soft yogurt and muttering,

07:10how come the kids don't call? How come the kids don't call?

07:12The eighties, you'll have a major stroke. You end up babbling at some Jamaican nurse your wife can't stand,

07:16but who you call mama. Any questions?

07:18Your few freedoms are preserved because they are profitable to your owners.

07:27The great challenge of the democratic model is that increases in wealth and freedom threaten the farmers.

07:34The ruling classes initially profit from a relatively free market in capital and labor,

07:39but as their livestock become more used to their freedoms and growing wealth,

07:43they begin to question why they need rulers at all.

07:50Ah well, nobody ever said that human farming was easy.

07:57Keeping the tax livestock securely in the compounds of the ruling classes is a three-phase process.

08:04The first is to indoctrinate the young through government, quote, education.

08:11As the wealth of democratic countries grew, government schools were universally inflicted

08:16in order to control the thoughts and souls of the livestock.

08:23The second phase is to turn citizens against each other through the creation of dependent livestock.

08:32It is very difficult to rule human beings directly through force and where it can be achieved,

08:37it remains cripplingly underproductive as can be seen in North Korea.

08:43Human beings do not breed well or produce efficiently in direct captivity.

08:51Ah, but if human beings believe that they are free, then they will produce much more for their farmers.

08:57The best way to maintain this illusion of freedom is to put some of the livestock on the payroll of

09:03the farmer.

09:05Those cows that become dependent on the existing hierarchy will then attack any other cows

09:11of the workers who point out the violence, hypocrisy, and immorality of human ownership.

09:22Officers positioned Grant face first on the floor with one officer near his head,

09:28a second near his back, and a third officer standing nearby.

09:31There appeared to be a brief struggle.

09:34Then, a two-year veteran barred officer stands, draws his weapon, and fires.

09:45Freedom is slavery, and slavery is freedom.

09:51If you can get the cows to attack each other whenever anybody brings up the reality of their situation,

09:58then you don't have to spend nearly as much controlling them directly.

10:04Those cows who become dependent upon the stolen largesse of the farmer

10:07will violently oppose any questioning of the virtue of human ownership,

10:11and the intellectual and artistic classes, always and forever dependent upon the farmers,

10:17will say to anyone who demands freedom from ownership,

10:20you will harm your fellow cows.

10:26The livestock are thus kept enclosed by shifting the moral responsibility

10:32for the destructiveness of a violent system to those who demand real freedom.

10:40The third phase is to invent continual external threats,

10:44so that the frightened livestock cling to the protection of the farmers.

10:51This system of human farming is now nearing its end.

10:57The terrible tragedies of modern Western economic systems has occurred not in spite of,

11:04but because of, past economic freedoms.

11:10The massive increases in Western wealth throughout the 19th century

11:13resulted from economic freedoms.

11:16And it was this very increase in wealth that fed the size and power of the state.

11:22Whenever the livestock become exponentially more productive,

11:26you get a corresponding increase in the number of farmers and their dependents.

11:31The growth of the state is always proportional to the preceding economic freedoms.

11:37Economic freedoms create wealth,

11:39and the wealth attracts more thieves and political parasites,

11:43whose greed then destroys the economic freedoms.

11:48In other words,

11:50freedom metastasizes the cancer of the state.

11:57The government that starts off the smallest will always end up the largest.

12:04This is why there can be no viable and sustainable alternative to a truly free and peaceful society.

12:12A society without political rulers,

12:15without human ownership,

12:17without the violence of taxation and statism.

12:24To be truly free is both very easy and very hard.

12:31We avoid the horror of our enslavement,

12:35because it is so painful to see it directly.

12:41We dance around the endless violence of our dying system,

12:46because we fear the attacks of our fellow livestock.

12:52But we can only be kept in the cages we refuse to see.

13:01Wake up.

13:04To see the farm is to leave it.

13:07.

13:077

13:087

13:0910

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