Hsien Seong Cheong

I am withdrawing my support of Stefan Molyneux and Freedomain Radio. I find his business model to be parasitical and due to it apparently being his main source of income, I am afraid that his operational activity suffers from an inevitable conflict of interest. https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-TPwjUmS7Vw http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/therapist-who-told-podcast-listeners-to-shun-their-families-reprimanded/article4846791/ http://members.cpo.on.ca/members_search/print/19048 This will be the last time I visit the boards to post or read content. Best wishes to the FDR community. Anarcho-capitalist thought deserves better and so do you.

I wouldn't say that it's ignored or not cared about. The below video might give you some pleasure: I would argue that it's a bit of a red herring to say that branding is violently deceptive. Brands are just symbols that distinguish a particular seller from the others, and can be great things for sellers and customers alike when the brand is justly associated with integrity and value. For example, I would buy any piano in the Bosendorfer brand, not because Yamaha are deceiving me on any level but because Bosendorfer is a brand built on the uniquely rich and truly wonderful sound quality of the instruments they make. If Yamaha started slapping Bosendorfer symbols on cheap tacky pianos (and we all know they are more famous for making those haha) then it would do irreparable damage to the brand that consumers have come to value. The truth is that brands don't lie to consumers, consumers lie to themselves about brands. Even though the majority of Coca Cola drinkers preferred Pepsi in the taste test, when Coca Cola made their formula sweeter; their "loyal fans" went nuts and demanded that the old taste was brought back to their traditional red can of punchy tasting syrup water. Coca Cola tried to improve the quality of their product, but as it turns out the consumers were more attached to their connection between the brand and the traditional taste; despite preferring Pepsi in blind tests. Corporatism aside; this was a totally voluntary arrangement where Coca Cola tried to respond to their consumers' needs and ended up losing out. (There are conspiracy theories about this incident but it mainly arises from peoples' disbelief that top level business managers can make stupid decisions. Having worked close to the top level in businesses for almost all my career; I have no problem in believing that executives can make bad choices!) We invest our time and donations into Stef's brand of media output but if Stef makes a bad podcast and we come away telling ourselves it was great; then the FDR brand hasn't lied to us, we've just lied to ourselves. Smart consumers will use brands to buy reliable, high quality products and stupid consumers will use brands to buy stupid looking shoes and have their self esteem temporarily elevated. What you have correctly identified, is stupid peoples' need to deceive themselves. So don't follow the red herring of beliving that the symptoms (the misappropriation of value) are the cause. Don't charge empty symbols with violent domination when it is merely an intangible bought by the masochistic consumer. If we attack the symptoms then we will not get around to treating the cause, and I like to think that philosophy, self knowledge and the subsequent pursuit of happiness is the medicinal cure for this ailment. Hope this helps, and please check out the video above, it's really funny and deals with some of what you put forward

Using minimum wage to protect the poor in a statist economy is like gobbling down painkillers and refusing to acknowledge that your leg is broken. Another argument you could make to minimum wage supporters is the following: Let's say I'm a hopeful business start-up that could only possibly afford to employ 3 unskilled (but trainable!) high school leavers at $5 an hour to get off of the ground. Has this wonderfully altruistic piece of equality loving legislative genius done either: A. Prevented me from exploiting 3 vulnerable poor people. or B. Prevented a small business entering the market and lost 3 high school leavers their potential first steps on the rungs of the career ladder. Of course, people who do not base their positions on reason and evidence will just be angry that you are exposing their beliefs as falsehoods, but hopefully a bystander will think "Well, that libertarian guy had a really good point and the other guy was just an asshole about it. Maybe I should look into this." For all libertarians out there losing the will to debate, remember this: We don't stand up to a bully to convince the bully that he is wrong. We stand up to a bully to show the bystanders that he is alone in his aggression and has no place among virtuous people.

Microsoft business plan http://i.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/photoshop/5/8/8/154588_v1.jpg

Nice calculations and thank you for the well wishes! Something in the referenced webpage confused me though. (Apologies for not converting GBP to CAD.) The average salary for recent graduates with the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) Professional Qualification is £27,464. Salaries increase substantially on passing the relevant examinations. The average salary of a CIMA student whilst studying the Professional Qualification is £30,817 and for a newly qualified chartered management accountant it is £36,195. How is the average salary for "recent graduates" completely different to the average salary for "newly qualified chartered management accountants"?? To qualify/'graduate', one has to undergo a period of 3 years practical experience which is normally completed whilst studying and taking the exams. Even if a CIMA student has passed all exams; unless they have the mandatory professional experience, CIMA will not qualify them. So if the two terms used above do not have any distinction between them surely the two figures erroneously disagree and probably shouldn't be referenced alongside each other! Is there something I have missed or is this just a case of laziness in their reporting?

Can I find where my first opinions came from? Who have I lost from my life that I wish I hadn't? When did I act without virtue when I knew I was doing wrong, and why? Where did the qualities of who I am come from? Did anything happen in my past to predispose me to not see truth in the present?

Walk up to your typical uninformed but ideologically leftist student on campus and say: "Excuse me, do you have a moment to talk about anarcho-capitalism?" 1 point for each student who reacts to you as if you had said: "Excuse me, may I have a moment of your time to convert you to chaos-exploitation?" Highest tally wins!

Such a lovely story! Thank you for sharing. I'm glad that you know you're not alone anymore Confirmation bias is a tricky thing to avoid, but damn it's lonely if you feel like you're the only person in the world who can see a particular truth. Well done on being such a strong willed individual in your pursuit of truth and virtue.

While I was at high school, I was quite a precocious teenager. I had reasoning abilities that surpassed the abilities of the bottom-of-the-class degree graduates that were teaching us... which resulted in a lot of conflict and resent from my teachers! I took geography as a GCSE subject and remember being taught the following case study: A Welsh town with a small working male population had received a huge injection of government funding to improve the economy (job creation, building stupid structures to attract tourists etc.) but the net effect was that the economy could not sustain the growth or attract the revenue, and was still performing poorly. Our assignment in the lesson was simply to come up with a plan of things that we could do to improve the economy. I did some calculations with the figures that we were given and called the teacher over. I pointed out that if the working male population was so low and that the economy had been harmfully inflated with government interference, surely the best thing to do is to stop spending money trying to stimulate the economy (keep in mind that I was 14 at the time and had no working knowledge of economics at all). Of course, I expected the teacher to give me a good reason as to why my calculations or theory was wrong, but instead she said "Yeah, well... you've just got to play the game." I took this advice to heart and decided to "play the game" with my GCSEs. Step 1: Sat my two favourite subjects early at the age of 14 (Maths & Music, I got an 'A' in both). Step 2: Calculated the minimum amount of GCSE passes and effort I needed to put in, to get into college. Step 3: Totally coasted through my last year of high school. Only turning up to a third of my lessons. Step 4: Passed GCSEs with excellent grades and got into college. As for my geography exam; I requested to sit the lower paper (maximum possible grade: C, predicted grade at start of year: A) , did the exam left handed (I'm right handed) and got a big fat D when the results came in. I counted this as my revenge for tricking me into studying an irrational, poorly designed piece of propaganda disguised as a GCSE subject and so started my journey towards finding libertarianism. I'll save the story of my relationship with the religious education teacher for another time!

Hello FDR, My name is Sam (from the Chinese 'Hsien') and I'm very pleased to meet you. I am a 21 year old trainee accountant currently studying CIMA. My future goals are to qualify as a Chartered Management Accountant, become a company director in private industry and use my knowledge of business & trade to promote liberty and freedom from an accountant's point of view. I have worked as a manager in companies delivering government social programmes worth millions of pounds, I have worked at the headquarters of a criminal organisation the county police force accounting for millions of pounds spent on inefficient monopolistically provided services and I've spent the rest of my time working in private industry. My career history, my state school education and my relentless pursuit of the truth have led me to Stef's amazing work on philosophy and libertarianism. I look forward to becoming a more regular participant in the most important philosophical conversation on the internet. I would like to outline my payment terms below for the services I have benefited from and would strongly encourage others to come forward and do the same: Self-Billing Agreement Supplier: Stefan Molyneux Customer username: Hsien Seong Cheong For the provision of the below services: An education Payment terms: 5% of all my future earnings payable upon receipt of my net income except for in times of financial hardship should they ever occur. Thank you so much for your business! I trust that this will be a highly profitable relationship for the both of us

Oh my god, I had no idea that we won. You're absolutely right, there is no social discrimination towards the LGBT community anymore. Someone call Uganda and tell them that the battle is over! We're on American TV baby! I sure hope this logic means that corrective rape of lesbians all over the world is a thing of the past too. Thank you for your mind blowing insight to LGBT struggles emptyblessing. I'm now going to call my family in Singapore and ask them if being gay has been made legal yet; now that the social change has hit the critical mass and all.

I'm really glad to see such moral optimism here! @robzrob I live in a small rural village in the SE of England that is under the boot of an incredibly deprived, state run town. Our village was once prosperous until an aristocrat took away the railways... just because he felt like it. The result has been a rise in crime, yob culture, child abused masses abusively raising children and needless to say, rampant social bigotry. The pink pound will have such a strong position in a free market without government. For example, do you remember the malteser advert where there is a couple cuddling picking maltesers up with a straw? They made a gay male couple version of the advert to try to get in on the pink pound market. It was lobbied against by a government backed "family issues" group and the gay version was taken off TV immediately. Companies want to sell to the pink pound but our closeted anti-gay government will support whichever bigoted self interest group that shouts the loudest. So I don't think at all that the pink pound is wishful thinking and thank you for opening my eyes to an important factor that would help end prejudice in a free market. Unfortunately, while there is a state interfering with the market in the UK; the pink pound only shows up in Lady Gaga record sales *rage*.

Why is it fair to assume that paraphilias come from adverse childhood experiences? A lot of destructive and sociopathic behaviours come from ACEs but many fetishes can be enjoyed in healthy adult relationships. It's comparable to saying that it's fair to guess that someone who is into avant-garde music must have developed it from ACEs (since it is an odd taste that brings pleasure to the willing receiver and is non-mainstream). We should take care not to stereotype such private and subjective things that do no harm to others. After all, before Kinsey did his research, it was at a point in time where oral sex acts were considered; what we call today, "paraphilias".

If you actually took the time read my post you wouldn't need to make your first statement... or any of the others come to think of it.

I recently found a couple of Stef's videos on YouTube where he made some comments on "gaydom". Video 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQa_NAwDQ9Y Clearly anti-Stef propaganda that primarily serves to ignobly attack his reputation. Video 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gzHR5GV8Zs Stef's responses to criticism including an excerpt reading of an experiment performed on rats to investigate sexual orientation. As a bisexual man and proud member of my local gay community, I found it hurtful to hear Stef say such ignorant things. (Now, I know my emotions have no causal effect on reality and the truth but please bear with me.) His suggestions; as always, are logically valid, but they are not sound due to limited experience and information. A big problem is as Stef himself said in a forum post: "By seeking political solutions to their legitimate problems, the vocal gay community has become as corrupted as any other community that seeks to redress prejudice with power." I fear that in the beginning stages of a free society, gay equality will suffer because society has been forced to accept us instead of being invited to understand us. Agendas, corruption and politics have clouded the relationship between homosexuality and public knowledge. Scientific studies on sexual orientation are corrupted by agendas and always will be for the following reason; it is extremely easy to manipulate the categorisation of self reported subjective data such as emotions, attraction and sexual desire. State funded scientists can assert their "findings" but in reality we have no unbiased truthful reporting on the prevalence of homosexuality or the genuine scientific complexities of sexual orientation. General public perception still holds the view that straight people fall in love and gay people have sex. I wish I had a more objective objection but the best I have (in light of the above explanation) is this thought experiment: Imagine if we lived in a dystopian future where a gene had mutated 90-95% of the population to be functionally sterile and homosexual. A world where children were produced from test tubes (think Aldous Huxley's Brave New World) and there was no need for procreational coitus. A religion has gained prominence that denounces heterosexuality and society dutifully oppresses it. Those born with the abnormality of opposite sex romantic desire live in danger and secrecy for centuries until religion eventually takes a backseat to an information age. There is a heterosexual rights revolution but unfortunately under a totalitarian government even the most grassroots organisations eventually become large, useless charities corrupted by political lobbying incentives. Straights gain legal "rights" but the journey to public understanding is painfully slow. Do you think in this society that: 1. There would be a lack of education, rigorous social science and rigorous biological science on the subject of heterosexuality. 2. The poorly educated masses of minority straight children (coming of age) would naively initiate sexual play with naive and improperly safeguarded gay children. 3. The poorly educated masses of minority straight adults would be wildly sexually irresponsible and promiscuous. 4. Straight people growing up horribly confused and persecuted would be more likely to be violent criminals (i.e. abusers of opposite sex children and prone to choosing careers that give them an unquestioned authority over opposite sex children). 5. Straight people would be hugely over-represented by the mainstream 'out' straight people who act in a way that the mainstream 'out' straight community expect of them, while a huge unreported demographic of non-stereotypical straight people keep their heads down to commit to their careers, find love discreetly (and with great difficulty) or worse; live a lie and pretend to be normal and gay. Stef often says that to truly understand the free market you have to get out there as an entrepreneur. I think that some straight people; no matter how intelligent, philosophical or virtuous, will never shed misconceptions about the gay community because they will never have to experience what it's like or what actually goes on within it. Which is fair enough I guess... I just wish that I didn't have to hear one of my heroes say such socially misinformed things about something so dear to me. If you're reading Stef; you may not understand the finer points of what it feels like to be me but you're beautiful and I still love you! P.S. Hello free domain radio board, this is my first post! My next will definitely be on the introductions forum and I look forward to being a part of this wonderful community.