Hey.

In advance I apologize for the length of the post. I hope it flows well at least!

I used to be an avid stefan molyneux "follower" (I didn't donate or anything like that), although once in a while I would find Stefan had some very strange ideas and he didn't appear to be making very logical arguments.

Like on one of his youtube videos about using independent entities called "DROs" in a free market anarchy (dispute resolution organizations) - where he talked about how they would act like a credit rating company, except in this case they would rate the success or reliability of certain organizations and whether they do what they claim to do - basically a watchdog group.

But the first thing that popped into my head is; isn't this a bit too ideal? How can you ensure that these DROs are going to give a perfect, unbiased review of corporations? Whats to stop them from being bought out by certain competitors to give misleading reviews? To which Stef's reply was "the market will find a solution" [i'm paraphrasing, this was a few years ago so I don't remember perfectly ]. At the time, I considered stef to be super smart (for some reason! Maybe its just the way he presents himself), so I thought...uhh yeah I guess you must be right about that.

But in retrospect I really started to question that. Then I ran into another person (who I also thought to be quite intelligent), called INFPmarmalade (he has a blog called benjamindavidsteele, if you're curious about his ideas - he posted about FDR there as well in the past). He was making similar arguments on another comment page of one of Stefan's youtube videos; questioning the perceived justice of a free market economy where corporations exact no violence, citing the example of company towns like the British East India Co. (I'm getting this from Benjamin's/Marmalades blog post called "Anarcho-capitalism & stateless society", where he goes into exquisite detail on how these ideas have been tried), and going on to show how they led to fascism (he makes a similar post pointing out how Stef's vision of how DROs would work is fascism, which was quite entertaining and informative to read!)

Here is a URL for those interested: http://benjamindavidsteele.wordpress.com/2010/02/12/anarcho-capitalism-stateless-society/

At this point I was a bit more skeptical of Stefan's ideas...but I still respected him for really trying to show us how the government does use force and how that has been accepted by society for so long that it doesn't seem like an evil anymore; just something to go along with.

Then I started learning about how he pushes people to abandon their families (defooing) - and how in many cases the parents were actually nice people who hadn't done anything wrong - but through continued forceful conversation, Stef got people to believe that their parents had very negative reasons for doing what they thought was "nice"...leading to the results we've been following on the news and in other cases as cited in his podcasts.

I then learned on this site how someone who trains psychologists would characterize Stefan [don't remember the exact poster who passed on the conversation, but thank you ] - in which he said Stefan was a dangerous influence, and you could see him deliberately pushing his own agenda onto these young people (regardless of political/moral opinions or philosophy - psychological manipulation is psychological manipulation)

Then I started reading all the dissent from other intelligent posters - one a graduate student in philosophy who piece by piece took apart Stefan's UPB (Danny); and other posters on FDR's forum (one whose alias was Stewart) pointing out how Stefan didn't reference one work of modern philosophy in the past century, which was deeply troubling for someone who claimed to create a comprehensive philosophy about morality that does what no one else has done in the history of mankind (see the thread here: http://board.freedomainradio.com/forums/t/14774.aspx)

I refer you to this outstanding post made by Stewart on page 4:

"Which is what, exactly? Presumably you both agree that there is some value in critical discussion of behavior and philosophy. My statements aren't meant to be cruel or passive aggressive. My observation is that a lot of pretty basic philosophical mistakes are made, both on these boards, and in UPB. There is a systemic avoidance of previous philosophical reference. While it's common to see vague mentions to Plato or Aristotle around here, there's virtually no specific references to any 'contemporary' philosopher beyond the early 1800s. As someone else mentioned somewhere on the boards, it's pretty remarkable that UPB is being heralded as no less than the greatest revolution in ethical philosophy, and yet it's only 130 pages of large type, and has no footnotes or references to any other work of analytical philosophy.

Do you think that's not a problem? It's pretty clear that not only has Stefan not referenced any other works, but that he probably isn't all that familiar with them. I could be wrong, but the points of UPB really do suggest a lack of familiarity with some of the giants of ethical philosophy. It's just insularity to think that you can reinvent morality without specifically referencing (or at least addressing) the work of giants like Moore, Wittgenstein, Ayer, Rawls, etc. It's simply not enough to have a passing familiarity with Hume and Nietzsche and to mention them briefly.

In Stefan's own words, "the odds that some guy on the Internet has somehow solved the philosophical problem of the ages are not particular high - in fact they would be so close to zero as to be virtually indistinguishable from it" It is made worse, much worse actually, by the fact that there is no real reference to other approaches or interpretations of the problem. Everything outside of the author's own examples and analogies has been thrown out, effectively declared irrelevant or wrong. Yet when I express criticism of his attempt, I'm "bitchy and condescending". Is that a reasonable reaction to what I've written?"

For some reason...there's a part of me that just loves this. Its like I actually want to see Stefan Molyneux "go down in flames"; and seeing him on the Alex Jones show twice just gets me really excited. If he starts being influenced by conspiracists, and agrees with the 9/11 truther movement...it would feel so great . I think its because I feel like this man is a fraud, and that he destroys families unnecessarily because of his own bias against all family/authoritarian structures; and that anyone who disagrees with him critically is silenced or ridiculed (stewart, danny), that more and more people are "coming out" against him (brainpolice, Xomniverse, laughingman0x, and my favourite INFPmarmalade - although marmalade was never really "in it" to begin with, i suspect).

And now most recently I see someone who introduced me to stefan molyneux in the first place on these forums: blackacidlizzard, who has decided to stop posting at FDR.

I feel like its an addiction - I'm hoping to see Stefan make a huge blundering mistake and not be taken seriously, or to see him try harder and harder to get his work to be accepted by the larger academic community, only to become increasingly insular, paranoid, and fanatical.

Boy that doesn't seem healthy . I tried to tell myself, you gotta stop. We've moved on from Stefan Molyneux. Lets never look back . But all the drama just keeps pulling me back in. I want to see intellectual titans demolish this mans ideas! I want to see more people like Stewart and marmalade take a part his ideas piece by piece, and point out how he fails to reference or acknowledge anything in modern history or academic literature!!

Argh . Thank you for existing liberating minds, you sort of quench my thirst, but its like drinking sea water - you just feel thirstier .

I am going to take a mind vacation. Focus on my career, hopefully becoming a scientist in physics! I know this topic could potentially belong in the rant thread. Well if it does I don't mind if a moderator moves it.

But since it is so specific I thought I would add it to the freedomainradio section.

Oh also one more place where I found dissent to fuel my unusual addiction; what I believed to be the figurehead of intellectualism and rationality (i am definitely far too idolizing, I should work on that): THE JAMES RANDI EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION!!! YAYYY

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=155358&page=98

The good stuff starts on page 98 (as I have in the URL given above). The following is a quote from user "D'rok":

"It's "Canadian". With a "C". As in citizen of Canada.

Oh, and philosophers don't operate crank websites out of Mississauga where they charge membership fees to dispense "wisdom" via podcasted speeches and attempt to seduce followers. That's what sophists do.

Here, READ some philosophy that explains this:

http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/gorgias.html"

Later on D'rok comes back with more awesome postage:

"What do you suppose natural law is? Who determines what acts do or do not comply with natural law? How is natural law enforced? What prevents someone from violating natural law?

If you read any history or study the history philosophy, you will find that natural law has almost always meant might makes right. It is natural for the strong to take what they can and for the weak to suffer what they must. The Melian dialogue in Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War is a great example of this."

and

"The state has a monopoly on violence - i.e., only the state can legitimately use violence as means of enforcement. That does not mean that all state coercion is violent.

Your anarchist utopia is a mythical society where coercion is not necessary and where we'll all just get along.

If you want a theoretical vision of how freedom and coercion can co-exist, look up Rousseau's concept of the General Will."

Anyway. I've been following this stuff for a while. And I needed a release valve to let it all out. So I thought who better to share it with than similar, critically minded posters as liberatingminds?? I think, hopefully, with all this out of my system I can move on.

Anyways; what do you people think? Can this Stefan drama become an addiction? Is it unhealthy?? I think it definitely has a tendency to be. Its strange - being in a cultish atmosphere is bad, but when you escape it it still negatively influences you . Well, hope you all have a good day, and a rational future free of agenda-pushing psychoanalysis and idealistic, largely ignorant sophistry .

Sincerely,

joejoefine (a character from a great game called Deus Ex, which I recommend as a good way to get your mind off these things.)

I'm the person who wrote the blog post from your first link. My WordPress account shows where people link to my blog. I registered just to respond to this.

I have no grand opinions about Stef, but from what I hear about some of the cult-like more aspects disturb me a bit. I can't speak from any personal experience. My criticisms are more about the ideology itself.

My central criticism has two parts.

First, his DRO proposal seems unrealistic, but he seems to believe it would be realistic. I've never seen Stef or any of his followers confront the negative possibilities. There is no explanation of how corporate feudalism would be avoided or why corporations wouldn't form private armies to defend a new fascist government. Stef claims that a free people would never allow that to happen, but he doesn't explain why people in his world would act any differently than people in the world we now live in. If we are to be realistic, there are far more realistically possible systems that could be proposed. But Stef sees the realism of the world we live in as the problem.

Second, his DRO proposal seems so unrealistic as to be utopian. In a video, he even admits this to be the case. His defense is that all change comes from those who who strive toward the seemingly impossible. That is fine as far as it goes, but I'm not sure it goes very far. If we are going to propose utopian visions, I can think of greater visions than a DRO. If we are going to strive for the most ideal society, why stop at such a mundane vision of a world ruled by corporations? I have some idealist inclinations myself. I don't criticize him for that. I just think his ideals lack imagination.

So, from my perspective, the DRO fails both as a realistic system and as an idealistic vision. I'm reading a book about Thomas Paine right now (Thomas Paine and the Promise of America by Harvey J. Kaye). I was feeling inspired by the truly radical and idealistic vision that first inspired American Independence. The problem I see isn't that we lack a vision of what society could be, but simply that we haven't yet lived up to the vision of what those before us proposed. The problem with democracy isn't that it's failed, but that it's yet to be attempted. I'm just not inspired by Stef's DRO.

The thing to understand about Stefan's political ideology is that it is based entirely on principle. The only principles he believes a society MUST adhere to are property rights and the NAP. Thus only anarcho-capitalism is valid in that it rejects legitimized violence (in the form of a state), and is based fundamentally on property rights. He says DROs are just the vision he's come up with for how such a society might look, but acknowledges that the free market could come up with a better solution than he alone can. I think it's admirable to stick to principle rather than push towards a certain unproven conclusion (i.e. DRO society).

Unfortunately, what Stefan has NOT done, is prove that it is even possible for a society to function under the NAP. Given that libertarianism is still an active field of discussion, I would say that some scholars would disagree. So Stefan still is pushing an unproven conclusion, that is, that an anarcho-capitalist society is even possible.

Furthermore, he claims that UPB proves the NAP, but I think he is a long way from being able to claim that. So even if the NAP is possible, he hasn't shown why it should be followed.

Stubbornly sticking to principles and refusing to discuss the practical is what he calls "living your values." His members eat it up. Master of rhetoric is he.