Canoe_Captain

Hello everybody, I just recorded a largely biographical summary about Stefan Molyneux in my native tongue: German.

Welcome to the community robc! I live in Germany and I have watched my country getting at first slowly and now faster weighed down by economic and social problems as well. I understand where you are coming from.

Just a short remider: The event happens this weekend.

Positive Song

With the Philosophy Europe Convention - Prague 2015 on September 12th and 13th we want try something new: We will offer you a seed crystal where your energies and passions for philosophy can do a gravitational slingshot maneuver and charge full speed ahead (with "we", the FDR fans organizing the convention are meant). The event will offer you all the qualities of a large FDR meetup with some conference-like aspects. We organized a large room where everyone is invited to hold a presentation. The organization and program of the convention are "open-source", anyone can organize a group activity, prepare a presentation etc. The Philosophy Europe Convention - will be a place where you can connect first hand with the people whose posts you digitally liked and commented in the FDR forums and groups. A place where you encounter other FDR listeners and for once you are not the one with the outlier ideas and philosophy. The roots of the FDR community are tied to the emergence of the internet but there are some good arguments to sometimes return to the archaic, millennia old custom of convening, talking and dining together. It will assure your subconscious mind in powerful way that the FDR community lives in the real world in the minds of 3D people, not just on 2D screens. We like to invite all FDR listeners may they live in Europe, America, Asia or elsewhere to come and share their thoughts and passions. Get updates and more Information by RSVP'ing on the Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/848338805251127/ We would very much appreciate your support of this event. We are open to all ideas. Some workshops and presentations from other participants are already in preparation. If you have a project you are working on, or a concept you would like to talk about, let us know. We need your help! Thank you. If you have any questions just write it on the wall of the event or directly below this post and we are going to answer it. Just to be clear, a visit by Stefan is not part of the convention. The Philosophy Europe Convention is organised by fans of FDR.

I have not seen the movie yet, but this analysis is so great that it should appear on YouTube as a video with the images you posted. The nerd in me suggests you make an audio commentary that I can listen to, synced to the movie

@Lens: Yes an Interview by Stefan with Musk would be great. Regarding love and presence, I agree with you that this is even more important for children than education individually tailored to aptitudes, interests and way of learning. Not to defend Elon Musk for not mentioning love and presence, I just wanted to post some background on Musk's own time in school: “I hated going to school when I was a kid," Musk told his interviewer. "It was torture." The Washington Post collected an insightful and sad quote: “They got my best [expletive] friend to lure me out of hiding so they could beat me up. And that [expletive] hurt. For some reason they decided that I was it, and they were going to go after me nonstop. That’s what made growing up difficult. For a number of years there was no respite. You get chased around by gangs at school who tried to beat the [expletive] out of me, and then I’d come home, and it would just be awful there as well.” — Elon Musk, who said he was hospitalized after one beating and couldn’t return to school for a week. He was living with his father, who was said to delight in being hard on his sons. (source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2015/05/11/the-22-most-memorable-quotes-from-the-new-elon-musk-book-ranked/) The last quote obviously minimizes violence through a parent with the words "delight in being hard on his sons"...

Elon Musk was dissatisfied with regular school and started one, called Ad Astra (Which probably means "To the Stars") to educate his 5 children and also 9 children of SpaceX employees. "The CEO wanted his school to teach according to students' individual aptitudes, so he did away with the grade structure entirely." Musk was asked in a Chinese TV Interview about his fatherhood and opened about his new school, in existence since only one year. The Interview covers all kinds of topics, they talk about the school beginning at 24m 42s. https://youtu.be/3UxL-0--oQo?t=24m42s https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=17&v=3UxL-0--oQo Articles http://uk.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-creates-a-grade-school-2015-5?r=US http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/22/8646683/elon-musk-school-spacex-children

This might be an interesting event to attend. What? European Students For Liberty Conference Where? Humboldt University, Berlin When? 10-12 April 2015 How much? 35 Euros (45 Euros Non-Student) Why? Quote:" The goal of our conference is to bring pro-liberty students from all across Europe together, to learn about interesting topics and to exchange their experience, to train students through workshops, and to help them grow their pro-liberty student movements in Europe." http://esflc.org/ I am in no way affiliated or profit from advertising this event. I might attend myself though. Is anybody else considering to attend? Here is an RussiaToday YT Video of the 2013 Event:

Just want to share what garbage regime might be coming to your country soon or has it already arrived in similar form? The neighbors enforce correct sorting among themselves. Neglectful sorters are ostracized by their neighbors by angry reprehension. If one of the 4 sorts of garbage (Paper=blue, Compost=brown, Residual=grey, Plastic=yellow) is not in the right garbage can than all garbage cans of same colour from that house are refused by the garbage collection service and the whole neighborhood is left is with full garbage cans. Angry neighbors would be the obvious result. . To be exact there are three different garbage tons and specially signed yellow bags. The yellow bags cannot be bought they have to be exchanged for vouchers. At the beginning of each year you get a stack of 3 vouchers. Usually you can redeem a voucher at certain assigned stores in your area for one stack of new yellow bags. My foreign flatmate might have unknowingly disposed our 2015 stack of yellow bag vouchers and we need to call a hotline to get again 3 vouchers. In the internet you also find a 24 page “garbage magazine” that gets distributed to every household that explains the sorting rules in detail. So the whole sorting is even more complex than I explained it here. Besides this garbage procedure we also are required to sort our "one-way" glass bottles by color, (white, green and brown) and bring them to a sorting containing area usually ca. 1km away from your home. Then there is also the bottle deposit system with certain reusable glass and plastic bottles which have have one deposit return system that only at certain shops integrated with a slightly different "one-way" plastic bottle deposit system. This whole system hast to be judged with the fact in mind that automatic waste sorting is already used in some countries as is described in this news article: http://sciencenordic.com/machines-are-better-people-sorting-household-trash Writing this article has cost me ca. 30 minutes and reading costs you ca. 5 minutes but if this regime gets implemented in your area it will cost you ca. 10 minutes a week with sorting and recycling, thats ca 8 hours per year. Of course that pales to the percentage amount you have to work just to pay taxes. I attached images of a garbage service calendar and garbage bag vouchers. Here is a link to the garbage magazine: http://www.osnabrueck.de/images_design/Grafiken_Inhalt_AWB/OSB_Muellabfuhrkalender_2015.pdf Just want to share what garbage regime might be coming to your country soon or has it already arrived in similar form? The neighbors enforce correct sorting among themselves. Neglectful sorters are ostracized by their neighbors by angry reprehension. If one of the 4 sorts of garbage (Paper=blue, Compost=brown, Residual=grey, Plastic=yellow) is not in the right garbage can than all garbage cans of same colour from that house are refused by the garbage collection service and the whole neighborhood is left is with full garbage cans. Angry neighbors would be the obvious result. . To be exact there are three different garbage tons and specially signed yellow bags. The yellow bags cannot be bought they have to be exchanged for vouchers. At the beginning of each year you get a stack of 3 vouchers. Usually you can redeem a voucher at certain assigned stores in your area for one stack of new yellow bags. My foreign flatmate might have unknowingly disposed our 2015 stack of yellow bag vouchers and we need to call a hotline to get again 3 vouchers. In the internet you also find a 24 page “garbage magazine” that gets distributed to every household that explains the sorting rules in detail. So the whole sorting is even more complex than I explained it here. Besides this garbage procedure we also are required to sort our "one-way" glass bottles by color, (white, green and brown) and bring them to a sorting containing area usually ca. 1km away from your home. Then there is also the bottle deposit system with certain reusable glass and plastic bottles which have have one deposit return system that only at certain shops integrated with a slightly different "one-way" plastic bottle deposit system. This whole system hast to be judged with the fact in mind that automatic waste sorting is already used in some countries as is described in this news article:http://sciencenordic...household-trash Writing this article has cost me ca. 30 minutes and reading costs you ca. 5 minutes but if this regime gets implemented in your area it will cost you ca. 10 minutes a week with sorting and recycling, thats ca 8 hours per year. Of course that pales to the percentage amount you have to work just to pay taxes. I attached images of a garbage service calendar and garbage bag vouchers. Here is a link to the garbage magazine: http://www.osnabruec...lender_2015.pdf

An Austrian political satire music video that picks up the metaphor of a human/animal farm. This video contains some blood and graphical violence. “The song is primarily concerned with the phenomenon that even in modern industrialised countries a large proportion of the population is longing for a strong leadership (see the "Mutti" ("mother Merkel") in Germany , or Obama in the US or even Putin in Russia). This scares us and is what we rise up against!” "Where is the difference between, dictatorship - democracy? The name is different, but the content is almost the same."

Thank you posting the first chapter of "The Nurture Assumption". This book published in 1998 with a foreword by Steven Pinker and a 1999 Pulitzer Prize finalist seems to be some long time popular book of Developmental Psychology, that I did not know before. I researched for only 10 minutes, but it seems the book's main message seems to be that that parents only are a small part of the nurture aspect that influences a child. Analysing the book's arguments would be helpful since its conclusions are probably deeply embedded by now in the mind of many interested people and parents.

When I was ca. 20 years old a 25 year old friend told me: You only then transition from childhood to adulthood when you become financially independent. When you do not anymore require the financial support of you parents. When you start to pay for all expenses with your own paycheck. This viewpoint fits well with the theory of the welfare state infantilizing its citizens.

After month of searching and researching I would like to recommend a podcast software to FDR listeners who use their Android phones or tablets to listen on their way to work and missed the possibility to continue listening to the same podcast at their PC. The software works like the podcast part of iTunes, but additionally offers an Android app and a browser based interface. The app is called Pocket Casts. URL: http://www.shiftyjelly.com/ I used the Android app for ca. 6 month and I tested the new web app for 3 days. Pocket Casts is the most reliable and effortless podcasting experience I have encountered. Pocket Casts offers features like: offline listening on mobile device variable listening speeds automatic downloading of new episodes saving and syncing progress in the cloud (even for deleted episodes) cloud backup of podcast playback progress Until now only iPhone users had the luxury of syncing PC and phone by using iTunes on both devices. Until now I used iTunes on Windows and had to remember and manually set my listening progress if I switched listening devices during a FDR podcast. Fellow forum member Magenta recommends Pocket Casts as well: source: https://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/40167-android-device-unable-to-play-podcasts/ Example of a hyperlink with timestamp of an FDR podcast: http://pca.st/DsdI The Android app is €2.99 one-time The web based app for Pcs is ca. $9 one-time. There is a full feature 14-day free trial period for the web app. The iOS app is $4.99 one-time. If you know any software that can sync Android and Windows as effortlessly and reliably, please post a link, especially if your app is cheaper. By the way if you are not happy with the YouTube automatic resume function to your last playback position I recommend the free Chrome Browser extension Video Resumer. I am using the extension for ca. 6 month and it works reliably. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/video-resumer/bongjkoajofkfpofginnhecihgaeldpe?utm_source=chrome-app-launcher-info-dialog

"I don't believe neither in Venus nor Mars I don't believe in Karl Marx I don't believe in Jean-Paul Sartre I don't believe in Brian Weiss"

I would guess that the downvoters feel betrayed. The video can be interpreted as having a fake emotional tone. I guess many viewers react badly to obvious "acted" fake emotions. I understand the commercial as a joke on the tone of videos that for example try to raise donations to fund education for poor children in Africa. Probably many downvoters felt that it is misplaced to mix a joke with an "elicit-empathy-and-donation-tone". I see it also as a self deprecating joke by Kim regarding her own superficiality. That said, I guess the video was meant to polarize viewers to increase views and shares.

The publisher Gabor Steingart of the newspaper Handelsblatt (biggest German business newspaper) sent all readers the book "Prosperity for All" by Ludwig Erhard as Christmas surprise present. Furthermore it was accompanied by an article focusing on topics similar to this presentation. Some excerpts: Those virtues to which Germany owes its economic success and social balance are no longer in demand. The governance of Ludwig Erhard, which was based on fair competition, entrepreneurial freedom and compassion for the losers of society is gone out of fashion. The politicians do not want to convince the voters, but to buy them. The consumer must pay the energy transition at higher and higher prices.But also the price of industrial electricity is 150 percent above that of the United States. The birth rate has halved since the 60s of the 20th century. The contract between generations - son and daughter pay the pension of mother and father was crushed. The aim of the German social policy must be to preserve all social groups against a development in which they become merely objects of state welfare. This dependence on the state welfare may be annoying for the financiers, but it is especially dangerous for the recipients themselves. They forget forget what it is like to achieve, it reduces self-esteem, it creates dependency ranging far beyond the financial. Here is an English Google translation of the article http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.handelsblatt.com%2Fpolitik%2Fdeutschland%2Fhandelsblatt-aktion-erhards-kompass-fuer-die-kanzlerin-seite-all%2F11144114-all.html&sandbox=1

I was searching for well researched Bitcoin videos on YouTube and found one of Stefan's videos on Bitcoin, probably "The Truth About Bitcoin". I was fairly knowledgeable about Bitcoins already and rarely found a video where the person knew well what he/she was talking about. Stefan made a good impression because he knew the facts and added some of his own thoughts on top of it. Since this was a rare occurrence in autumn 2013 I looked at his other videos.

David Guetta - What I Did For Love (Lyric Video) ft Emeli Sandé As I interpret the song it is about recovering from an unhealthy and abusive relationship. The singer is perplexed why she so desperately held onto this bad relationship for so long and invested so much time and effort, all the time overlooking the relationship’s bad sides. According to 47 year old Guetta, his Album Listen (published in November 2014) is reflecting his 2014 divorce from his socialite and night club manager wife of 22 years, Cathy Guetta. Guetta said: "Until today I was doing lots of songs about happiness and love and sexiness and just having a party – it was basically my life, you know? And lately, my personal life has been a little more difficult, so it reflects also on the album." The divorcees are still arguing about the division of the $30,000,000 fortune. I think this video touches on many relationship dysfunctions that are frequently covered at FDR. Would be great to see a review by Stef on it, to get the interest of new listeners.

Here is an article from the December 2014 issue of ELLE magazine on a 35-year old single mother needing food stamps with a master in avant-garde poetry. She barely makes enough to feed herself and her disabled son. The article is currently advertised as a "must read" #1 on the top of the Elle.com frontpage. She had some unfortunate, difficult events in her life: she was adopted, a former boyfriend got murdered and her son is disabled, but should not some responsibility be attributed to this woman for the life she is currently living? I did not find one sentence in the article that does attribute some responsibility to her. If you study only english literature and deliberately decide to be a single mother, should you not anticipate that you are having a lot of challenges ahead? HYPEREDUCATED AND ON WELFARE: http://www.elle.com/life-love/society-career/debt-and-hypereducated-poor Some excerpts from the article: "When I see couples who have jobs," she says, "couples who look perfect, I want to ask them: 'How did you do it?'" “Brianne Bolin thought her master's degree in English would guarantee her at least a steady income.” “She just learned that the woman and Finn's father, a blacksmith, are getting married in a few weeks, and they won't be able to take care of the boy during that time. It's all on her, again.” “At the moment, she has $55 in the bank and $3,000 in credit card debt. “ "My dreams did this to me." “I was living an extended youth." “Then, at 28, she got pregnant, the result of a random hookup with a 20-year-old in a band she liked. “ “She knew she'd be raising her child mostly on her own, but Bolin says she never considered not having the baby.” “She has thought about supplementing her income with some kind of retail job, but Finn's child-care costs would eat up her paycheck.” “Being poor takes a huge amount of mental work. There is a constant need to weigh the merits of spending even the smallest amounts of money. … The point of the social-psychology research is that when so much mental activity is devoted to basic survival, little is left to engage in long-term thinking or to muster willpower—which Bolin well knows.” “Lately she's been looking into work as a campus union organizer, to capitalize on her interest in improving adjuncts' lot” "I need to smoke to relieve the pressure," she tells me as she feverishly rolls her own cigarettes one evening when I take her out to a bar, where she also finds relief in the form of plentiful margaritas.” “She's self-medicating, she says; other times, she uses Xanax for anxiety. She also takes a daily antidepressant” “She stops in a feminist bookstore, wishing she could spring for a book on sex and feminism.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am not really surprised by the tone of the article, but I find this is a sad example of "It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others." This reminds me of the following video by Stefan hosting the Peter Schiff Radio Show where he talks about a similar situation, beginning at 14:22

An 8 minute video from 2007 with Stefan talking about the beautiful world in 100 years without religion and government. https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=7284471678

The work is done. FDR published the video. Thanks again to everybody who posted in this thread.

Content removed by me, the author.

I cannot vouch for the quality of those books, I just discovered the list last week: http://thechildofdivorce.com/resources-child.html Its a list of books for children of different ages + books for adults. These are the Categories: Children Books(4-6 Year Olds)(7-9 Year Olds) (10-14 Year Olds)+ Parent Books

The video features a child reading a "Dear Mom & Dad" letter describing his emotions regarding the divorce. The video was published by "The Child of Divorce Inc." a nonprofit organization dedicated to mending the heart of the child of divorce. The organisations website (http://thechildofdivorce.com/) encourages you to send them your own story on how divorce has impacted your life. Furthermore it offers a book list on the topic.