Stefan Molyneux's videos

[Travis Retriever]

This video does a good job explaining what the national debt is and why it is bad.
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This one makes me raise an eyebrow.  It is WAY to conspiratorial for me to really take seriously...
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Personally, I think he could have done without this video in his "Statism is Dead" series.
The first one was fucking brilliant.  The second was good.
After that, they seem to just go downhill for me.

I mean, please, if the state was even HALF as competent as he makes them out to be, wouldn't they be striving for long term benefits for themselves?
Mary J. Ruwart explained the idea beautifully.  When they take wealth, they stop the growth and creation of further wealth that effects everyone, including them.  Maybe the wealth that will not be able to come into existence would be, say, more efficient versions of what we have now, a 4 hour, 3 day work week, a drug that cures all cancer and/or the curing of disease.
The idea of them and their loved ones dying because the wealth to save them wasn't created.  Do you really think that is on purpose?
Please.  Stefan, you give the state FAR too much credit.
If they wanted to turn this around and make the USA a free market, they could.
He complains saying that, "oh, the unions and the state workers will riot".
Oh?
Did they when we shrank the state after the end of WWII?
He also complains saying that the people have been taught to hate the free market, there's no going back now.
Bullshit.  The state controls all of the media outlets.  All they would have to do to get the public for the free market is to break up the media oligopoly and allow people to know what's really going on, or possibly even get the free marketeers on the primary stations.

Then of course there's the burden of proof issue.
The idea of incompetence is a negative; an absence of expertise, skill or whatever else.
The idea that they know what's going on is a positive.
The burden of proof is therefore on him, and he hasn't met it.
I suspect it could also be indifference as well, but I digress.

[Lord T Hawkeye]

I mean, please, if the state was even HALF as competent as he makes them out to be, wouldn't they be striving for long term benefits for themselves?

As I understand it, it's not some master plan consciously cooked up by the state but rather the inevitable result of the setup.  In other words, the invisible hand works both ways.

Give people the power to initiate violence and what the video describes is simply the type of behavior they are nudged towards.

[Travis Retriever]

As I understand it, it's not some master plan consciously cooked up by the state but rather the inevitable result of the setup.  In other words, the invisible hand works both ways.

Give people the power to initiate violence and what the video describes is simply the type of behavior they are nudged towards.

You thought so too, huh?
Cool.