Dear Stefan Molyneux,
With all due respect and due credit, you are panicking and you need to calm the hell down.
I am writing this under the assumption that you are reading it, and reading it with extreme skepticism, so if you take nothing else from what I am about to say, please take this: Read The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson immediately.
I watched a video of yours yesterday, and it is very similar to other videos you have been making recently. In it you said the following very passionately:
“We are very very close to losing it all. The entire Western Experiment. To losing it all. And this is why I am working so hard, this why I am doing two or three or more shows a day, and this is why I am working my brain to the melting point, to get this across to you: ONE ELECTION AWAY FROM LOSING IT AAAALLLLLL!!”
We Are Losing Something, But Not What You Think
Stefan Molyneux, you have misdiagnosed our current situation, and the distortion that caused your misdiagnosis is fear.
We are not on the verge of the destruction of Western Values. We are not on the verge of “losing it all.” We are on the verge of the destruction of the territorial Nation-State, and what we are losing is an outdated social organization, so that we may birth a new one.
As a leader with a voice as far-reaching as yours it is imperative that you come to this realization. A bigger picture, and broader view is required to see it. A reading of The Sovereign Individual provides this. Again, I urge you to read that book as soon as possible. And if you've already read it, (which I doubt) read it again.
Without a big picture and broad view it is easy to perceive the situation as you have.
You say:
“Whether we end up pulling back from the brink, whether we end up taking the higher road back to reclaim the freedoms that we are right on the edge of losing, that’s up to you. Please you must understand this… Nobody is going to save what we have but you! You understand!? This is the time. This is the time when everything comes together, this next month is the time when everything EVERYTHING comes together… Now is the time to step up. Now is the time to get involved. Now is the time to get people motivated. Now is the time to get people to go and vote! Now is the time to save everything that we have inherited, everything that our forefathers bled and died to provide to us, now is the time!”
Voting For Trump Will Not Save The World
You are attempting to save what cannot be saved. We are baring witness to the waning of the old age, and you are struggling and straining with veins bulging out of your forehead, with every ounce of strength you have to save the old world from it’s necessary and inevitable death. And you cannot succeed.
To say we need to "pull back from the brink" and "take the high road back to reclaim what we are losing" betrays in you a fundamental misunderstanding of what is happening.
The potential of the Nation-State is exhausted. Voting Donald Trump into our dying Nation-State will change exactly nothing. It matters not who the Captain of the Titanic is, it’s already hit the iceberg, there is no saving it now. We don't need to "pull back" and "reclaim what we are losing", we need to PUSH FORWARD and CLAIM WHAT WE HAVE NEVER HAD BEFORE.
Your efforts are more productively expended looking forward to the new era, building out the new social organizations, constructing the new ideas, carving out the new liberties and freedoms that are and have always been our birthright. Rather than wasting effort and energy mourning over and hopelessly attempting to revive what must die and is already dead, you should be busy outlining what is coming to take it's place.
From The Sovereign Individual:
“Like an angry farmer, the state will no doubt take desperate measures at first to tether and hobble it’s escaping herd. It will employ covert and even violent means to restrict access to liberating technologies. Such expedients will work only temporarily, if at all. The twentieth-century nation-state, with all it’s pretences, will starve to death as it’s tax revenues decline.”
There Is No Saving The Nation-State
But don’t mistake the death of the nation-state for the death of morality, and virtue, and human social organization as a whole.
Technological innovations drive revolutionary paradigm shifts in human social and political organization. The invention of microprocessing, the internet, Bitcoin, and even Steemit here, are the iceberg that has hit the Titanic. There is no stopping the process now.
These technological innovations are already in the process of subverting and destroying the nation-state and creating new forms of social organization in the process. But it will be far from an easy transition.
It is imperative that YOU Stefan, not me or anyone else, but YOU are working to help build and spread the new ideas that will replace the old and dying ones. You are in a unique position that none of the rest of us are, yet for the past year you have been obsessed with preserving the old and ignoring what is new.
“It is a fact of human nature that radical change of any kind is almost always seen as a dramatic turn for the worse. Five hundred years ago, the courtiers gathered around the duke of Burgundy would have said that the unfolding innovations that undermined feudalism were evil. They thought the world was rapidly spiraling downhill at the very time that later historians saw an explosion of human potential in the Renaissance. Likewise, what may someday be seen as a new Renaissance from the perspective of the next millennium will look frightening to tired twentieth-century eyes.”
Proclaim The Good News Of The Rise Of Individual Liberation and Autonomy
It is possible to perceive the good or the bad in any situation. In a change as sweeping and revolutionary as the one we are living through, one in which all forms of human organization will be changed and even our conception of morality will be affected, it is easier to perceive the bad than to zoom out and see the good.
My message to you is to get back to talking about voluntarism, and individual sovereignty, and Bitcoin and decentralization and all the good that will be what replaces the compulsion and coercion of the Age of the State.
Donald Trump is not our savior. Nothing about the government of the United States of America or any other government is our savior. Elon Musk is our savior. Satoshi Nakamoto is our savior. Susanne Tarkowski Tempelhof, Vitalik Buterin, and sovereign individuals all over the world like yourself are our saviors.
We need you Stefan. We need you fiercely fighting for the success of the new age, rather than fiercely fighting to preserve the old age.
“The clash between the new and the old will shape the early years of the new millennium. We expect it to be a time of great danger and great reward, and a time of much diminished civility in some realms and unprecedented scope in others. Increasingly autonomous individuals and bankrupt, desperate governments will confront one another across a new divide. We expect to see a radical restructuring of the nature of sovereignty and the virtual death of politics before the transition is over. Instead of state domination and control of resources, you are destined to see the privatization of almost all services governments now provide.”
- KG
P.S. Why aren’t you on Steemit yet?
I'm surprised he's not on Steemit yet. I used to love his podcast but he's seemed to sway from ancap-style opinions lately. I still enjoy him as a person and podcaster, but I don't understand why he thinks voting for Trump will save us all. It won't, regardless of who you vote for. Great post!
I agree. Stefan introduced me to many ideas I cherish today, but for the past year it has been tough to watch his stuff. I hope to see a triumphant return from him as soon as possible! Hopefully once this election is over.
Holly shit. The best post I ever read on steemit.
Upvote and resteem. And follow, of course.
Thanks
Trump is a liar.
Hilliary is too.
At this point what difference does it make?
Exactly.
How can you say trump is a liar when he hasn't been able to do anything hes promised yet?
Haven't you been paying attention?
He'd walked back every single thing he said in the early days.
When called out he said "it was only a friendly suggestion".
He even wrote a book on the subject "The Art of the Deal" in which he describes in gleeful detail how to lie.
He's not only a liar he brags about it.
that's quite the compliment, thank you sir!
this was a fantastic read
thanks for posting this
thanks for reading!
Yeah, the whole Donald Trump thing he's doing doesn't make sense to me either. I could understand if he had gone off the deep end supporting someone like Ron Paul (still a lost cause IMO, but understandable), but not Trump.
Right. I was hoping he would get behind Austin Petersen during the Libertarian debates and nomination process to hopefully give minarchist and libertarian principles a boost, but nothing. He's been trump the whole way through.
does he still claim to be an an-cap?
I believe he does. It's hard to see how he reconciles that with fanatic support for Trump though.
Right. I can't watch his videos anymore. The alt right stole Stefan from us...
The human mind is hard wired for people to exist in small groups. Since the advent of the agricultural revolution that has been increasingly hard to do. Thugs rule. The advent of power to the people, that is the individual makes thugs, that is , large groups, less and less important.
I envision increased wide spread technology in the not too distant future which will allow small groups to exist in peace. Like Porcupines they will be too dangerous to the Predators for them to bother.
this is already happening. the ever present possibility of cataclysmic self defense of mutually assured destruction is going to be the norm among the intelligent. imagine everyone with an IQ over 120 being handed an h-bomb on their 21st birthday. this will be to a further extreme. with the information now available, the individual has the power to dead man switch self defense against all the democratic hordes of the planet. with the internet and a grocery store, let the MacGyvering of the apocalypse commence. won't the people who think they are in control be surprised. bombs and bullets will become more dangerous to the ones that use them than their targets.
People like Molyneux, the Tinfoiled Vigilante and the like, feed on people's fear and paranoia.
If you see his agenda from a strictly promotional point you will understand why he is saying what he is saying.
People forget that people like him and every other persona with an ideological mantra
want
to
make
money
first
really. is THAT simple
a logical conclusion, but I wouldn't have thought it of Molyneux....
You are correct. To often we have weak moments and forget about that fact.
I do not agree with your conclusion. Molyneux's show was better before he went on this crusade. It is costing him to do this. I would cancel my donation if I thought he was not doing the honorable thing.
I believe you are right, but I believe that Stephan Molyneux is doing the honorable thing. When people loose confidence in fiat currency, it is going to be ugly. There will be a lot of suffering. Too many people are dependent on government. It is honorable to do everything you can to prevent this. Trump is the best chance we have for preventing this. Unfortunately I agree with you. There is no way to prevent it.
Suggested books to read on the current crisis:
"Generations" (1982) and "The Fourth Turning" (1997) by John Strauss & Neil Howe.