Reported.

Stefen is an A+ intellectual even if he is on the crazy side. I'm a fan of George Soros because I believe in the values of democracy and self-governance of people.

I'm going to attack his argument even though I agree with the end result, that Soros is free to use how power as he will as we all do.

Stefan's first faulty premise (around 5:00) is he stated that in a marketplace of ideas good people address other people and only bad people address governments. I think lobbying and advocacy can have positive and negative effects, so I don't agree with this hyperbolic statement. It seems like Me (good) and Not Me (bad) thinking and I would rather get away from Good vs. Evil and get to Good vs. Bad.

His second faulty premise (11:30-12:10) is that welfare is taken from the rich and given to the poor. This is veritably false. If you compare the amount that the rich (1%) consume and are taxed on, and juxtapose it next to what the working class and poor (lower 80%) consume, it isn't even close, there is more sales tax coming from the poor people. Poor and working families have a higher marginal propensity to spend, meaning most of every additional dollar coming into their household is spent, while the rich save a large portion of additional dollars coming into their households. Even welfare programs are handout to big business. The Department of Agriculture and Big Farming use the SNAP program as a welfare program to grocery stores, markets, and every place that sells food, in the United States, and the primary beneficiaries of the wealth distribution are the producers of food products and the sellers of food products. There is something called a agricultural subsidy, and it is welfare for the very wealthy, several wealthy Republican lawmakers receive these subsidies they vote in Congress to support. When money is taken from being committed to other government programs and instead given to several dozen people in the form of a "tax cut" it is the same thing as giving it to anybody else, but these always favor the wealthy.

His third faulty premise is that people have kids to make money. This guy has obviously never really had kids, or is a terrible parent, which is why he recommends the psychologically destructive practice of DEFOOing, which is leaving and cutting off all contact with your mother, father, siblings, extended family and friends, if they do not share your same political goals, since Libertarian political ideology works from a Good vs. Evil dynamic rather than a realistic Good vs. Bad dynamic. But in reality, and anybody here who knows can vouch with me, kids are fucking expensive. Nobody has kids to have money. If the state provides a little health insurance for a kid and some food for him or her it just cuts a little bit into what the hell these things cost, and even with government welfare you have to put time and money into the little demons, without the government just a little more time and money, and shittier food and I guess no physical check ups....I fail to see how that is better. But him saying that single mothers are having children to live free off the system is just dragging out the old corpse of the welfare queen myth that famous racist Ronald Reagan used as a rhetorical device when he "reformed" welfare by not significantly changing it. Ronald Reagan used racist imagery of a black woman having a new baby every 10 months driving around in a Cadillac and eating steak and lobster every night while not working a day in her life, and having a pretty good time of it all. Anybody who believes this garbage (probably the majority of Stefen's audience) probably don't even know a single person who fits this description and only believes this because they believe what people tell them as long as it matches their own confirmation bias, on faith alone.

His Fourth faulty premise is the underdetermined theory that the government is the reason that literacy has gone down. He ignores that literacy measures a century ago only counted *ahem* certain people and ignored people like: women, poor people, immigrants, blacks, disabled, etc. It is almost laughable that this is a talking point. What is also laughable is that this premise within it has the implicit claim that Stefen was able to control for ALL the cultural variables that have existed and isolate that one as the causal link. By his reasoning the rising of ice cream cone sales is the cause of crime increases in the summer months. Here is a list of other stupid things Stefen believes if he commits to this argument: http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

Here is one:



We need more sociology PhDs to explore space, says Stefen Molyneux (and IceMage).

At 1500-1530 he pretty much says that the way to get out of your problems, is to buy your way out. Coming from a wealthy intellectual with no real career or profession I don't blame him for having this attitude.

Always he is a pleasure to listen to, but he is a sneaky guy and if you're not sharp he will make a convincing sounding argument based on some really bad ideas that often seem like personal prejudices stated as a fact ("only people full of hatred and bile talk to governments") or says stupid things like: "people are using their unborn babies as collateral to foreign banks". Wtf. People aren't their stuff, you can't give babies that don't exist yet as collateral to banks that might not even be there when the child is born....this is completely an emotional appeal on par with "what about the children?!?!".

This post was edited by Skinned on Aug 18 2016 08:01am

lol I knew you'd be triggered by a Krugman vid. I'll watch your vid and get back to you

Track and field is a wonderful thing

that's a good post right there