One of the great mysteries, one of the great mysteries in the world in
which we live is the fact, the economic, historical, political fact,
that free markets work, and yet that everybody hates them. Free markets produce
unbelievable amounts of wealth, prosperity, longevity, human world being. Everywhere they
tried, to the extent that they are tried, they're incredibly successful. I'll
go through some examples to try to at least illustrate the point. And yet
nobody likes free markets, no country holds onto them. Make the trend over
the last over the last few decades easily is away from free markets, more
regulations, more controls, more government regulations. With me. In the United
States of America, the country that used to be very free, relatively capitalistic,
had free markets. Today it's not free at all. Generally, you
know, countries that happened free in the past decline. You know, we've
got some South Americans. Here's such a good you know, we've got We've
got some great examples of this in Latin America. So I don't know how
much you know about Latin America, but the country that used to be the
poorest country in Latin America anybody you know what that was? What's a post
country in Latin America today? Venezuela. Venezuela as the poorest country in Latin
America today on a poor capita GDP basis, Venezuela's the post country. Also
the most socialist or country in Latin America. What is the richest country in
Manilatin America today? Chile? Chile is the richest country in Latin America to
day, forty years ago, thirty years ago, what was the richest country
in Latin America Venezuela. What was the poorest country in Latin America thirty forty
years ago Chile? What's the difference economic policy? Chile adopted markets by accident,
almost in the early nineteen eighties. It adopted economic liberalization. It feed
up its markets, It protected private property, it respective contracts, It encouraged
entrepreneurship, and it basically left people alone. It even privatized it's social security.
It privatized that and it became very quickly the richest country in Latin America.
Venezuela went the opposite route. It nationalized, moved away from free markets,
and moved away from practic property, and moved away from contracts, and
it very very quickly, in a matter of twenty years, became the poorest
country in Latin America. So that's just one of I think hundreds of experiments
that we have been running in the world over the last two hundred years in
terms of what economic political policies work, if the measure of work is prosperity,
and what economic social policies don't work. You've got a living example right
now. And North ESTs South Korea. I don't know if anybody's been I
think some people being the Korea, but South Korea is a flourishing, wealthy,
successful country. North Korea is basically dead. It's nothing dead. The
best best image to illustrate the difference between North and South Korea is that satellite
photo. I don't know how many of you have seen the satellite photo of
the Korean peninsula at night, and the South is all lit up because there's
electricity. Your people have homes and offices and street lights, and it's all
lit up. In the North is all dark. A little bit of lights
in near the capitol, but generally all dog difference between authoritarianism, call it
whatever you want to call it, right and relative free, relative free markets.
South Korea's relative free. It Flower says North Korea is oppressed. It's
dead. There's nothing there, there's just popping. Of course, you guys
lived in East West Germany. Sometimes I have to tell remind people that you
know, the wall was built to prevent people from fleeing communism, not the
other way around, because young people have to still have the belief that communism
is some utopia, some ideal, some wonderful thing. And you think that
the last seventy years would have proved otherwise. In the end, communism is
still around. We still have kids at the universities here. If I was
giving a talk, if I was a radical leftist, so I was a
radical leftist Marxist and I was giving a talk here in buildin, I would
have an audience ten times logging communism is popular, free markets are not.
Even though communism led to poverty, destruction and death, freedom, free markets
have led to prosperity. So something's going on here because the system that seems
to allow for human success or human wealth, for human flourishing, for prosperity
economically is the system we hate the most. And systems that oppressive to human
to human beings that result in poverty and destruction tend to be systems that are
popular, which is to say the least bizarre. It's just strange, but
it is the reality with which we live. So one has to ask your
question, why what is it about free markets? And I'm not using this
to a capitalism because I think capitalism is much more loaded to them. But
capitalism is not just freedom in markets, but capitalism is feedom in everything.
Capitalism is a system where your individual rights are fully respected, particularly your property
rights, where you're left free to pursue your value free of COOCHI and fee
of force. Capitalism is a political, social economic system. We've never really
had capitalism, but what's really amazing is that they're closer we got to capitalism.
The more successful the economic system is, the political system is. The
further way we get from capitalism, the more destructive. And again, everybody's
against capitalism inspite of that, everybody's against free markets inspite of this. So
the question, I think an important question we have to ask ourselves as human
beings. There's people interested in ideas, people interested in the world out there
is why what is it about capitalism? What is it about free markets that
people hate so much because there's something about it that we was in, that
we was in so much that even though it's successful, even though it leads
to prosperity, even though it leads to economic success, we still hate it
so willing to override them. So let me ask you what free markets involve
people participating in markets? Fieve coersion and fief intervention, fie of government.
But why do people engage in markets? In other words, what's capitalists one
of markets really about? What is the purpose of a free market? What
is the purpose of any market, even a market that you go down to,
you know, down the street. What's what's the purpose of the market.
What do people do in a market? Exchange goods they value less for
stuff they yes, and they exchange goods. Generally they give away the stuff
that they value less they get something they value more. That's trade. It's
it's it's a win win, it's a win win relationship. But before we
even get there, why are they going to the marketplace to begin with?
So, you know, if if I'm if I'm my iPhone right, it
appears in all my videos or people laugh because they're familiar with it. So
my uh, you know, why is Steve Jobs making these? What?
Why? Why did why is the Apple building? Why did Steve Jobs initially
invent them? Think of them, produce them, create them, sell them?
Who did he do it for? Yeah? I mean he deserves the
need of a customer? Yeah, I mean I didn't know I needed an
iPhone before Steve Jobs taught me I needed and I needed an iPhone. The
beauty of production is that. The thing about great producers is they create demand.
They don't satisfy demand. Demand isn't there until they actually create the product,
and then the demand shows up because they're teaching you. One of the
beauties of production is it teaches you the things you need. You don't know
what you need. Steve Jobs knows what you need or you when he was
alive, you didn't know what you need? Yeah? But but why did
he satisfy demand? What? Because he can't about me? Did I did
Steve Jobs build the iPhone for me? Yeah? So the product? Because
can do so much things forever because real benefit from So did Steve Jobs build
this? Or I could benefit from? No? For money? Well he
built a Suddenly part of this was for money, right, and it's it's
it, you know, he made money off of this, Like the first
iPhones had a profit margin over fifty percent. He made a lot of money
off of iPhones. He could have sold it to me a lot cheaper if
he cared about me. So it's Steave Jobs built us for money profit right
now, we off feel a little uncomfortable even thinking that, never mind saying
it, which says something about the world in which we live. But we'll
get to that. But it's not just about money. What else did Steve
Jobs? Why else did she Jobs build us? And he looked for something
that's fulfilled himself. Yeah, he loved it. This is great. Create
something that looks great for the public. Yeah, he had a vision.
He wanted to create something new. He wanted to create something beautiful, right,
I mean this is a beautiful thing. You wanted to create something conductive.
You wanted to create something that people would love using. But who did
you build this? Fall see Jobs? So see Jobs could make money.
S Steve Jobs did have fun sy Steve Jobs could be satisfied that he produced
this amazing thing. Steve Jobs produced this And at the end of the day,
you go to work, not for your customers, hopefully you like your
wook you're gonna work for you. You enjoy it, you like it,
It fulfills something in you. It allows you to pursue certain values. You're
making a living, and then if a production work, it's something we do
for ourselves. And I remember the first iPhone I bought was in two thousand
and eight, right, and the economy was spiraling into a session. Many
of you are too young to remember two thousand and eight or two thousand and
eight was a great recession, and you're kind to be spiraling into a session.
And I went out and I bought my iPhone because I wanted to make
the world to bed place. I wanted to help my fellow man. I
want to make sure people like jobs. And I be taught by the Keynesians
the consumption drives drives the economy. So I wanted to help boost economy because
I know that's why you guys go shopping. You guys shopping because you want
to help make sure that people employed and have jobs. And no, you
go buy stuff for whose benefit, your own benefit. You're going shopping because
you want to go buy something that you believe will make your life better.
See Jobs sells his products because she's that's to make his life better. You're
buying his products to make your life better. And this is not a unique
crowd, any crowd in the world. If I ask people why they go
out and buy their shoes or buy their clothes, they say, because we're
trying to make our lives better. So markets are places in which we go
in pursuits of our own values, our own interests, our own well being.
Markets are places we go in pursuit of self interest. Markets are all
about self inches. They're all about people pursuing someone Just this is this is
not a new observation. And a smith in the Wealth of Nations, written
a long time ago, wrote he wrote that the baker bakes the bread not
because he cares about you. He makes the bed because he's trying to make
a living and hopefully enjoys baking bed. And of course you don't buy the
bread because you care about the baker. You buy the bed because you want
to eat. You're better at buying the bed, he's better. I'm baking
the bread, win win, but you're not doing it for the win when
you're doing it for the you. Fundamentally, markets about self inches. Fundamentally,
everything about markets are about pursuing your own values on your own terms,
and you don't transact if the terms are not appropriate. Everything about capitalism smacks
them self inches. It's all about people, but being selfish, to use
the term nobody likes. So Adam Smith told us this town or something years
ago. But Adam Smith said, the same as everybody else. It's so.
Adam Smith said, yeah, it's all about being selfish, and selfishness
is bad. We know selfishness is that we've all, I mean, our
mothers taught us that, our preachers teach us that a philosopher has taught us
that. So if we jervid philosophers have taught us that selfishness, being self
interested is bad. Pursuing your own self interest as an end is bad.
It's not mom, it's not virtuous. And a Smith says that's okay,
because when you add up all of the stelf interested activities of all these different
people, which you get as a sum, is society's better off. So
the sum of vices is a virtue. And let me tell you, nobody
believes that capitalism's problem. The reason we hate capitalism, the reason most people
hate capitalism is because they know that capitalism equals self interest, and they know
because everybody teaches it. The self interest is evil, bad, or the
very best aimal. What is morality? If we talk about morality, talk
about ethics. What is it to be ethical? What is it to be
moral? What do we be taught to be outrusted, to be outrusted,
to think of others first, to live for the sake of others. The
whole focus of morality is on how we treat other people. So, benefiting
other people that is virtuous, right, Benefiting yourself that is not virtuous.
That's what we taught. So you would think that when you benefit of the
people, you would be considered a moral morally a good person. Who is
the greatest Who are the greatest beneficiaries of mankind? Who have who has benefited
human beings? What profession has benefited human beings more than any other profession at
least materially invents? Yeah, inventors importance, But inventors often them inventures,
sits in their garage, and nothing of appetite, say investors, investors finance.
He is so capitalists. People will look for the good idea and give
the sign to look for the good idea. Suddenly, I think that's a
category within a goat a category that I've talked about. I'd take business people,
of which I agree with you. Investors are actually the most important.
And not just investors because we love it to capitalists, but bankers the people
we love to hate. We hate them more than anybody. I've got a
book it's called The Mall Case for Finance, and and it has essays there
about why banking is virtuous and why finance is the noblest profession because exactly for
the reason you said that the inventor doesn't get out of his garage without capital.
The inventor also doesn't get out of the garage without a CEO, without
a business business expertise, without their knowledge how to build a business. It's
one thing to invent, something else to build a business about it. It's
one thing to invent, is another thing to turn that invention into the type
of thing that people want to use, that people can use. I mean,
think about Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was not an innovator. He didn't
take it in his garage. That was Wassniac. We barely know wassnian We
know Steve Jobs because he knew how to organize, He knew he had a
vision, he knew and he knew how to market, and you how to
sell. You have to get it into the hands and consumes. But that
all that category. You put that category from bank to innovator to ceo,
businessman, other people who've taken us out of the mud, out of the
hut, out of subsistence farming, and brought us into wealth into the world
in which we live. Without them, none of this exists. Without their
knowledge, their energy, their willingness to take risk, whether it's risk of
capital, risk of their time, nothing exists. You don't even have labor
without capital, and without businessman, labor never comes together starts a business.
It just doesn't happen. Somebody has to have that idea. You have to
have an entrepreneur. You have to have the capital to pay the labor until
the problem the business become profitable. And yet we all hate businessmen. I
mean we not maybe in this room, but generally the culture. Why again,
because business an't pursuing a profit worse than all of the financiers. Because
the financiers are turning money into money, so you don't even see a product
right that behind the scenes, that's why they're always behind every conspiracy theory as
well, because that the people that are unseen. A businessman who produces like
steam jobs, who produces a product and hide behind the product and say,
look, I'm doing something good for mankind. But a financier whoses behind that
has a much harder time. It's a much more abstract roll, much more
difficult to explain to people how productive of a function he's he is actually pursued.
I mean, so think about this. The most the people who benefited
society the most, other human beings the most. Our business people, we
still hate them. So I don't know about this altruism stuff. They say,
what they what you should do is help other people. Will steep jobs
out of the other people. Bill Gates helped other people? How did they
help other people? We talked about this, right, I buy an iPhone
for a thousand bucks? How much is this worth to me? Much more?
I mean, this is what tens of thousands of dollars to me.
Don't tell Apple, but tens of thousands of dollars to me, just in
terms of the quality of life improvement. I remember you guys don't, but
I remember what life was like before this. This has improved life dramatically,
particularly for somebody like me who travels a lot. This is a life changing.
When I moved from Israel to the United States in nineteen eighty seven,
all my families in Israel never called them. I would never talk to my
parents, not because I didn't like them, but because it was too expects
it. Long distance phone calls were super expensive in those days. They couldn't
afford it. I couldn't afford So we talked about give me two months.
Right now, I can talk to anybody anyway in the world for as long
as I want by video at a cost of it's zero. I have access
to every piece of music I've eybotten ever produced at a buntional cost of zero.
I had maps navigate any city in the world without having to look at
a map. Again, you guys don't remember driving and looking at a map
at the same time. It was very, very dangerous. I mean the
benefits of this through the I know you have a question. Can we leave
it for the question at period? Or do you want to question? Oh?
Which one? Which question? You? You just asked Paul my Chris,
you are doing this video closed down? I wanted to answer the question.
Yeah, okay, okay, Um, so I my life is better
off by tens of thousands of dollars. Steve Jobs made some money off of
this, probably less than tens of thousands of dollars, because they're on cost
of thousands. Right, he's better off. I'm better off. Every time
a businessman makes money in a free market, he is making the world of
better place. The only way to become a billionaire is to make a lot
of people's lives better. You cannot be a billionaire in a free market and
not have made other people's lives better. Hundreds of millions of people's lives better,
sometimes billions of lives better. I would argue Bill Gates by creating the
PC revolution, change the lives of billions of people on planet those. He's
not a hero. He's not a mall hero. We're not building statues,
we're not naming Rhodes, Like, who's a mall here? If I say
mall hero, what name comes to MINDA what's that? Hercules? Okayculees is
a ma all hero, okay, because he helps other people, he goes
fight for them and all of them. But Mother Teresa is a great example.
Mother Teresa comes to mind, is a mall hero. She's she's saved
after all. She uh, you know, they're all a lot of statues
of Mother Teresa out there. Why is she a hero? Because she helped
a lot of people I love so altruistically, which means what without any self
interest? Yeah, without any gain to herself. On the contrary, she
did it while suffering. She did it while not being happy. She did
it clearly as a sacrifice. If she had been happy, holding parties,
celebrating her successes, being you know, and really helping people at the same
time, she wouldn't have been a saint. What made her a saint is
she was as poor as the people she was helping. She seemed like she
was suffering. If you eat her diary, she was in agony the whole
time. That's what makes you a saint. Like if you go to the
museum, he had Bill in there, probably some Renaissance paintings of some saints,
any of them happy and it was smiling. You know, they're doing
fun stuff. No, because the whole point of being a safe is not
to help other people. The whole point of being a saint is to suffer.
No point of morality as we understand it, is not to help other
people. If that was the standard, just helping other people, then our
businessman would be moral giants. The whole point about morality is about individual suffering.
It's about not being self interested in a sense, it's a negative.
Don't pursue yourself injest, don't be successful, don't be happy. And if
you can help other people while not being happy, while not being successful.
So even somebody like Bill Gates, when he's an entrepreneur and he's helping hundreds
of millions of people, and we hate his guns. And when when when
an American Justice round goes after him to try to break up Microsoft, everybody's
excited. Everybody thinks that's great. When does Bill Gates become a little bit
of a hu for a little while until COVID right for a little while,
when he when he starts and stuff, When he goes he leaves Microsoft,
God forbid you do anything productive. He leaves Microsoft and goes and starts the
foundation and starts giving his money away, giving money away. That's good that
we love charity. We love production, not so much for charity. That's
cool. How many people will help in his charity? I mean a lot,
probably does some good work, more or less than in his business a
lot less. The world was not changed by charity. I often tell people
you know in the in America, at least, this is more of an
American story. In seventeen seventy six, when America was founded, it was
a third grade colony. The British didn't care that much about it. That's
why they did really fight. It was poor, it was meaningless. Within
one hundred and thirty twenty thirty years, it was the strongest military and economic
force of planets. By World War One, America was the top country in
the world. How did that happen? How did that transition happen? Because
of charity, because of community service, because of by the traces of the
world. No, because as a business, because of the Carnegies and the
Melons and the Rockefellers and the people who built America and who made a lot
of money doing it. And what do we call those people in America?
Rob the barons, they're crooks, they're bad guys. We hate them why
Because they built America. They made the country, and heavy country has the
same story. We resent the people who actually are responsible for the success.
And that's all driven by this morality. The morality of altruism is anti markets,
it's anti capitalism, it's anti i would say, human nature. It's
a morality, you know, arguably it comes from Christianity. It's a morality
that worships sacrifice, it worships pain, it worships suffering. And yes,
if you have some of the people on the side, that's okay. But
success, pospherity, happiness, wealth, those don't count. Again at best
amol which usually IMO. So why do people hate capitalism? Why do people
hate free markets? They hate capitalism and free markets because capitalism and free markets
are based on an emoal system. They're based on self interest. They're based
on people pursuing their own well being, both in the production and the consumption
side, but on every part of every part of a market. What you
see is self interest. And yes, people might be better off, but
they must be a catch. They must be something wrong because you can't have
it without sacrifice. It's not all so there has to be something evil going
on. So in my view, you know, we can, we can
continue to teach the value of free market economics. It's good, but we
won the monk the economics debate a long long time ago. In my view.
I mean, the economics proficient doesn't know it, but they're just they're
just spinning wheels. Like we've had great economists high Economeesis, and Freedmen and
lots of others who've articulated the case of free markets as well as anybody can
have shown that Marks and Canes and the neo Keynesians and all the rest of
them are just wrong about economics. Let's be done. There's not a lot
of more work to do there. You can do another equation and show another
stupid economist why he's wrong. Right, but it's not gonna lean anywhere because
most of the important workers already being done. We've we've got you know,
we know the economic history. I mean, anybody with eyes can see the
economic history and the chief fact of the success of capitalists and versus the failure
of any other system. And one of my favorite stories there is I don't
know if any of you have been in Hong Kong. Sadly I used to
say to your audiences, you've got to go to Hong Kong at least once
in your life, because it's such an amazing city. But sadly the Chinese
have taken it over, so I don't recommend going to Hong Kong anymore.
But Hong Kong, like at the end of Old War two, was a
fishing village. There's nothing there and it's a walk in the middle of Norway.
There's no natural resources, there's no gold, there's no oil, there's
nothing. And yet before the Chinese to go go Hong Kong. Hong Kong
gdpeoper capital is higher than New York City, I'm sorry, high than the
United States. Hong Kong head most skyscrapers than New York City and it had
seven and a half million people living on this shock. Where did they come
from? They swam. They emigrated from every other country in Asia just to
get their white because they will offer them free healthcare, well welfare, well
any other socialists benefit. Why did they go to Hong Kong because there was
some free markets. They could actually they could actually go out there and exist
themselves and be entrepreneurs and be successful. And they could. It was all.
Their taxes were very low, regulations were very minimal, the welfare state
was as minimal as you would get anywhere. And this place took off.
It created massive amounts of wealth in a very short period of time. What
it took American to do in two hundred fifty years, they did in seventy
five. So the evidence of the success of capitalism and markets is all around
us. All people left did is open their eyes. They don't care.
They don't care about the economies, they don't care about their evidence. What
people really care about is morality. What people really want to be as good.
And they won't believe that capitalism is good because capitalism is self interest.
And this is why I think the debate, this is why I think we
lose the debate. I know a lot of free market guys, libertarians,
economists who try to somehow make the argument that, you know, free markets
are altruistic. Well, that it doesn't, you know, because everybody benefits,
which is true, but they don't get what altruism really is after they
don't understand the philosophical power of morality. And as a consequence, I think
we continue to fail and fail and fail and fail, and the world is
moving away from capitalism. I mean, the fact is that the only philosopher
who has challenged the philosophy of altruism and presented an alternative to it, because
you could algu Nietzsche challenges altruism, but doesn't really provide you with a I'm
all code that's an alternative is a human and this is I think why she
is such an important figure, why she is so crucial, and I don't
think it's possible to win the battle without it, because she's the only one
to actually provide an alternative to the conventional, both religious and secular moral code
that exists. Up. I mean, I man ask the ultrust one simple,
one wood question. Why why should I sacrifice to you? Why is
your life more important to me than my life? Why is your happiness more
important to me than my happiness? Why? What's the purpose of my sacrificing
to you? Where is it gaming? There's no afterlife? What credit do
I get for? Man? The fundamental question is the fundamental purpose of morality
is not to teach you how to sacrifice and die. The fundamental question is
how to teach you how to live and be successful at living. Now,
when the only species a planet Earth who doesn't have the how to live encoded
in our DNA, we have to figure it out. We have to use
our mind to figure out how to live. We have to figure out what's
good for human beings and what's bad for human beings. It's not encoded a
means of survival. Right, A plant needs sunlight and it needs water.
It doesn't have to think, it doesn't have to conceptualize that. It knows
it. It's in the DNA, so it reaches to the sun and it
goes its roots are going looking for what Every species out there knows what to
do, and when the environment around it changes, what happens. It usually
dies because it can't change fast enough. Evolution is too slow. Human beings
don't function that one. We don't have the programming. We don't know how
to survive. I mean, at the very basic level, we don't know
how to survive it. Like how many of you if I, if I,
if I dropped you into the Amazon jungle. You can't rely on your
instincts to survive. You would die in hours. If you rely on your
instincts to survive. What would you require you to do to survive the Amazon
jungle? What would you have to do? Thank thank figure it out?
Stop a minute and say, Okay, I need to figure out shelter,
I need to figure out water, I need to figure out what am I
not be that hard and I need to figure out what's gonna kill me and
what's gonna not kill me. What's what I can eat, what I can't
eat, How to protect myself nageous animals, how to maybe create some traps
to catch the animals. None of that will come to you instinctively. None
of that is in your genetic code. Human beings to survive have to figure
it out, even at the very basic material level, never mind the most
abstract spiritual, conceptual, philosophical level. We need principles in order to survive,
and the purpose of morality is to teach us those principles, the principles
for self survival and ultimately to flourish. What does it take for human being
to thrive, to live the best lives that they can live? The flourish
is a human being. I mean, this is a project that I am
in. Picks up, if you will, from Aristotle. Like Aristotle's philosophy,
Aristotle's ethics is all about identifying the virtues that lead man to be the
best that he can be, to live a life of hugemin air in Greek.
You know of flourishing of happiness, however you wanted to find him,
but fully full life so rand is saying, yeah, that's exactly what morality
is. So let's go out there and figure it out. And the first
thing she identifies is for human beings in order to live well, the one
thing they have to do, the one thing that there's no choice about,
is to use their reason. It's the thing. It's to use their mind.
It's to figure out how the world works and adapt the world to them.
We don't adapt to the world. This is the great fallacine environmentalism.
On a different topic, right, the great fallacine environmentalism is the way human
beings survive is by changing nature. We chop down trees to build houts,
We blow at mountains to build to build skyspapers, we build their conditioning so
we can live in the desert. We change the environment to fit our needs.
That's what we are as a being, as an animal. That's how
we survive. So morality should be a code of values to teach you how
to live, how to live well, how to succeed, how to be
happy, how to serve your own interests, how to be a good egoist
if you will, how to be appropriately selfish. And you know, it's
very easy to show that the kind of the caricature of the person who is
selfish, lying, cheating, stealing, just a bad person. Right.
When we think about selfish, when we think about egoism, when we think
about self interests, we think about lying, cheating, stealing, right,
thinking about bad people who do bad things. And it's interesting that we think
that's selfish, but also making money is selfish by trade. And notice that
if those two go in the same category, we may stop mixing them up.
And now we think every businessman is the line cheating, stealing thief.
What do you do if you think every businessman is potentially a line cheating,
stealing thief, what do you have to do to them? What are you
gonna do to the businessman if they potentially might be a line cheating, stealing
thief. What's well, you're gonna hate them, but what would you do
actually actually do? Well, you're not gonna take away this stuff? Control
of them? Yeah, you want to control them, you want to regulate
them, you want to look over their shoulder. I like to use the
example of I don't know if it's true in Germany, I guess as it
is, But in America, you walk into an elevator, right, and
on the wall, and the elevator is a little a little piece of paper
and it says a government inspectors inspected this elevator. It won't fall and kill
you. And I always go, pooh, I'm so glad because if not
for the govern inspector, I know that that greedy, horrible, evil businessmen
would build elevators that they dropped and killed me because I know the best way
to make money in a free market is to kill your customs. But note
that that is the sumption behind almost all regulations. Almost all regulations are based
on the idea that without them, those greedy, evil, selfish, self
interested businessmen would do something bad to you. And they don't care, of
course, because they're greedy, selfish, don't only care about themselves. So
McDonald's would poison you. There, restaurants would poison you. You need bad
means, and this idea of reputation, of this idea that you know,
somebody who has a restaurant is a pretty decent human being and it's not real
be interested in hood to you and he's trying to make a living and all
of that, I mean, that's been beyond them, and all regulations,
almost every single piece of regulation we have out there is built is explained in
terms of if we didn't have their regulation, some greedy businessmen would do something
bad, and before we need to govern to protect us. Cool good for
the elevated inspectors, so happy. That's exactly this notion of self interest is
evil. Self interest is necessarily about line stealing, cheating in but life stealing
cheating is not selfish. It's not in my self interest to lie. For
example, I don't know how many of you have lied before, and they're
not going to ask because I don't really want to know. But line sucks.
I think that's a technical world foot Lying is not a good strategy to
get ahead in life, in anything. And if you don't believe me,
try spending a couple of days lying to your good friend with your boyfriend to
you as fos not good strategy. You're not gonna get very far with it.
And the worst person to lie too is woom, it's yourself. Because
if you will lie in reason, if you will lie on reality on thinking,
thinking depends on facts, thinking depends on reality. And if you're lying
about reality in fact, you're thinking is going to be corrupted, and therefore
your survival is going to be threatened. I mean, I'm getting to the
age where I could barely remember what I did last week. If I lie
about what I did last week, I have to remember two things instead of
just one. What I really did and what I lied the lie. But
it's not even two things. I have to remember the truth and who I
told the truth too. I have to remember the lie and who I told
the lie too, why I told them the truth and them the lie.
It's so complicated. I can't hold all that information and think about the mental
energy that goes into categorizing that and keeping that afloat, which could be spent
on better things, more productive things. So no, lying is not a
good strategy. If you know people who lie a lot, they're almost always
miserable, pathetic human beings. I mean. The best example of this,
which what is the only profession on earth where lying actually advances you in the
profession? In every profession, lying is a detriment. People don't want to
deal with you. Except one. What's happening? No acting found lying acting
performed. There's another profession where lying is kind of a requirement. It's done
every day, and you actually get rewarded for doing it well. Politicians.
Politics is all about lyne. Now, I've met a lot of politicians in
my life. I've never met a happy one. They're all pathetic, miserable
human beings. Just look at Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton. Just look in
their eyes and you can see it. Miserable thieves can't live with themselves.
Lying, cheating, stealing is a terrible strategy for living, disastrous. It's
not self interested, it's self destructive. It's actually self destructive and actually is
destroying your own soul who you really are. So Rand, I think is
the only one to defend capitalism Molley, because then is the only one who's
willing to stand up and defend self ages and say, self ages properly understood,
properly defined, properly articulated thought through a philosophy of self ages is the
only morality that can then justify capitalism, which is a system of self ages.
Indeed, she said she was pro capitalism because she was pro egoism,
rational egos, and she was pro rational egoism because ultimately she was pro reason,
and they will all flow from one another. But think about it this
way. If we had a culture people trying to pursue their irrational self interest
of people who are committed to making their life the best that it could be.
People who convinced that they had the capacity, the reason, their ability
to think for themselves, to live for themselves, to pursue their own happiness.
What kind of world do people like that want to live in? Would
they want mother government sitting on their shoulder and telling them what they can and
cannot do, what they can and cannot eat, where they can and cannot
go. So people are like that, people who self esteem, People who
love their life and want to make the most of their life and are convinced
of their ability to do that, and would not feel guilty about the fact
that they're pursuing their own happiness and their own life. They just want to
be left free. They just wouldn't be left alone to go out and do
the things that they know they need to do in order to achieve their own
happiness, they own success, their own flashing. They would demand freedom.
They would demand capitalism, and with no guilt, with no shame, with
no you know. You see our politicians the ones who are sometimes pro a
good policy and they're apologetic because they can't be proud of their free market position
because they know it goes against fundamentally the well. So if we want a
free market revolution, what we really need, and this is what makes it
battle so much harder than most of you think, what we really need is
a moral revolution. Thank you, uh energy, Okay, so thank you
very much. Now we're going to go into the question amounts. Maybe it
also start a debate you have allowed to controversially at the collection of your opinions,
algy um So. I mean Germany then have a really pre market,
like especially compared to the US. So I would like to know. But
do you think about the Jerman approach like having the social market? Well,
I think it's a myth. At the United States as a free market,
it doesn't open, but Germany's was. I agree. I think it's terrible.
I think it's terrible. I think it's it's it's destructive. It's destructive
both economically. You could be so much better off, you could be so
much wealthier, you could be so much more productive. Um and it's and
it's you know, destructive to the human soul. You know how many entrepreneurs
are discouraged from pursuing their dreams. How many people who want to start businesses
are allowed to start the businesses want to pursue a particular path in life,
are not allowed to pursue that path in life. I think in many respects.
Um, you know everybody suffers. Maybe the poor stuffer the most because
you know, the fear of the market is the fewer poor people they are,
if at all, if there are any poor people, because they become
more and more productive as you have more in more entrepreneurship, and you have
as you have a great and greater free market. So no, the world
is in a disastrous place because it ignores the benefits of free markets. In
Germany which has an incredibly productive workforce, hard working wolforce, very intelligent,
and you're you're barely achieving what your potential has. Yeah. Um, so
you would argue that being wealthy, of being materialistically good off is really the
ultimate goal. It's not the ultimate goal. I mean, provide the highest
utility for human beings. I don't know what utility means for human beings.
I think all that whole terminology is focused. I'm not a utilitarian, and
I think it's it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a bad way
of looking at things. No, for some people money is very important.
For other people it's not. It's why some people come teachers like me.
I could have been a financier and Wall Street could have made a lot more
money. We make choices about how we want. But the beauty of free
markets is you get to make the choice, and you have a maximum of
opportunities available to you, and you get to choose your own values. Now,
I think material wealth is really, really really important for everybody some level
of It's why we care so much about poverty. Clearly we care about poverty.
Why because we know that being poor is bad, that is, not
having enough material wealth is not good. You do not want to live in
Venezuela right now to a large extent, because they're very very very poor,
and they also happen to be very very unfree. But both of those go
together. So the spiritual values of freedom are consistent with the material values of
wealth, and both are important and one leads to the other. They're not
independent of one or not. You have to be free to be rich,
and if you're rich or not free, you won't stay rich very long.
So but yes, I you know again, material wealth is important it's not
trivial. It's not the only thing, and it might not be the most
important thing, but it's what a company is. The most important thing,
which is morality, if you know, the most one thing is gonna be
a good person. But to be a good person, a society that's built
to facilitate good people is a society that leads people free. Therefore we're going
to be rich school. Thanks. Yeah, you mentioned that mainstream philosophy basically
is very uncomfortable with self interest and the concept about selfishness away. I wonder
why that is? What is the what's the underlying reason? I mean,
you stay to it, but what is what is the reason for that?
I have my own, like, you know, the reason that I want
to hear the worst I mean, partially, I don't know. I mean
the silny is, you know, philosophy is ultimately shaped by the geniuses who
are the great philosophers, and it just hasn't been um since Aristotle, anybody
who's picked up on this thread of self interest and really made it something other
than that man. But oh, but I think the dominant theme, the
dominant reason why it has it's unquestioned, it's Christianity. Christianity is a religion
of ultraism. What's that Buddhism, Yes, but but I'm talking about the
West. In the West, what dominates it is Christianity. Buddhism is a
different version Buddhism's rejection of the material world. Christianity is an embracing of suffering.
We all Christians walk around around their neck and I'm sorry if I'm offending
somebody here around the neck for the cross. What does the cross represent?
Absolute suffering, the worst kind of possible death possible, and somebody else Jesus
in this case suffering for your sins talk about any injustice, right, So
not suffering for their own sins that I can accept, but suffering for your
sins. So Christianity is through is a m has basically made altruism the dominant
moral code in the West. It is a religion of suffering. It is
a religion that that elevates suffering to a virtuous position. Um, it's not
an accident that the saints of Christian saints in that sense, I think a
dvat even for Judaism. But it is it is the dominant force in the
worst. Christianity aped so much of Western thinking of Western culture over the last
two thousand years. So even non religious Westerns when it comes to ethics,
are completely Christian because they can't think out of the Christian box. So maybe
they've given up the metaphysics, they've abandoned God, but they haven't given up
the morality, which is the morality and Christianity will all living under Christian code
when it comes to morality today. What is the best criticism of objectivism and
is he capitalism that you have heard so far? I don't know, because
you know, I think capitalism works. It's it's the right system. I
don't know what the criticism could be. I don't have any it's the right
system, it's it's you know. It doesn't mean that everybody in their functions
within capitalicism is going to be perfect, but the systems, yeah, it's
it's not it's an easy implement. It's not easy to understand how it should
be implemented. But I see no flaws ugization of ruts relative to having them
illegal. What's better? I mean, if you so, it's not a
good the fact that heroin, that the fact that people use heroin is not
a good thing. But to ban heroin from use is much worse than to
make illegal. And if you think about Coca Cola producing heroinood and putting the
THA marketing into that, could you imagine it could have the road and effects
on society that wouldn't be worth the system. No, pay no, because
again, look, you're not gonna get a society that is free without people
taking the personal responsibility of what that freedom implies. And part of what personal
responsibility of freedom means is that you know, so for example, when I
when I moved to the US. I don't know if you've been to the
US, but in the United States, they have hundreds of different they used
to have. They've they've changed. This is probably thirty years ago. They
used to have hundreds of different Bia commercials. All the bier commercials were the
same, basically young women in bikini's running around drink Kibian and all the bea
tasted exactly the same. Now not a b a duca. I know that's
a syner German even I'm not a big Dubiduka, But to me, all
the beer tasted the same, and all the commercials had Now. I always
thought in a rational world where people actually use their minds even a little bit
would anybody run these commercials and answers to know they wouldn't have any effect?
I mean the didn't have an effect on me. I just looked at him
and said, Okay, a bunch of guy. I watched it for the
bikinis, not for the beer. Right. But it's it doesn't. Advertising
doesn't work that way. It's advertising is there to provide us with information.
We need to analyze that information, and we need to be responsible for allowing
actions. And if Coca Cola got behind heroin, as if that would happen,
I mean, that's another big step that you have to take. Right
that a marketing agency would be willing and interested in representing the heroine. Maybe
they would, Maybe they would. I doubt it, but maybe but but
and then we would all say, huh, because this marketing campaign says heroin
is good, I should take care of it. I can't google heroin and
find out how disasters and if it gets I mean, I will say this
that if you legalize drugs, one of the things that would happen is that
there would be an entire industry there would arise that would counter the effects of
a drug addiction. I think more people would try drugs okay, and then
they would take whatever medicine or whatever gimmick the industry could came up with to
get rid of the addition. Is there something inherently evil about trying drugs?
I don't know, it's a damage it does to you. But you see,
if if, if, if capitalism only can come up with people take
responsibilities their own lives and take responsibilities they own thinking, then those kind of
people, an arcanegist in mass devote themselves to self destruction. M yeah,
I'm not sure how much people really hate capitalism and how much of it is
like a you know, a play of word or work work use of language.
For example, there was a study whether they ask American students um like
whether like socialism or capitalism, and those who like socialism were also asked whether
I think soldiers are even was and Day then came up with some sort of
capitalism light you know, capitalism which is just fairer for some reason. I
mean, people really hate losing what they have. So if you are like
an urban leftist with somewhat worthy and who like to enjoy in Marcia lat and
your fairy who privately own coffee shop, you don't want to annihilate the coffee
shop. You want to have cheaper marchial lad or you want to have basic
income so that you can always play for So I think it's not to argue
against there because they're easy to argue against their back camps or against mass bubba.
But how would you argue against capitalism as well? So so let me
the two questions. Let me first address this issue of words that it's that
it's there. I don't think that's true, and yes, I agree with
you. They don't understand what the woods mean. That's absolutely true. But
if you explain it to them, if you tell them what capitalism is something
example, they did serve in the US, people hate only like twenty percent
like capitalism, forty percent like free markets, sixty percent like free enterprise.
So everybody said, well, let's stall using faniprise. It's their capitalism when
we win. But then when he asked people what they mean by fee and
a PRIs, it's capitalism light, it's socialism light, it's it's you know,
it's not capitalists. That's why they hate capitalism, right, because it
means much more to them in terms of the content. I agree with you,
it's it's very hard. And this is why I think, for example,
I'm rand resonates more in Eastern Europe and in Latin Americul and she does
in Germany, right, because the Germany life is comfortable. It's mediocre.
Right, It's not exceptional, but it's mediocre, and mediocres not bad,
particularly when you think of most of the alternatives in human history have been really,
really bad. We've barely survived, we've been good poor, we've been
in substance of pharmacy. The kind of wealthy mediocrity that we live under today,
it's not bad at all. Again, a new iPhone every single year,
How cool is that? Right? So people can ignore where that comes
from. Even the mediocrity depends on something, depends on production, depends on
some economic freedom. And therefore it's very, very difficult to convince them to
take a risk in their mind of more freedom, because then they can get
even more than what they have today. They're pretty satisfied words for Dad today,
this is it's a huge challenge. And this again goes back to morality
in my view, because a good mode rally tells you to be ambitious,
it tells you to strive in life, it tells you not just a one
of a kiato, but to want everything the freedom can provide you psychologically,
spiritually, immaterially. It tells you to try to be the best, not
just mediocre, but the best human beating you could be um and and and
this is the challenge we have. This is again why it's so hard.
It's it's so hard because it's not about economics. The economics are easy.
I can show you on a chart, I can prove equations, we can
do the economic analysis to show the free markets work in terms of creating more
wealth. People don't care and are not ambitious enough to care. So part
of it is moral ambitious. Part of it is wanting to have a great
life. And and and you know, it would be nice if if we
had more variation between countries, or more free countries and allow more immigration so
that the ambitious people could actually moved to the places where because I could have
you know, I moved to America for these reasons. Right, I was
ambitious, and I could have stated, there's all have had a fine life,
uncomfortable and everything, but I wanted I wanted more, and that's why
I moved to the US. And that's the kind of spirit we need to
inculcate in people. And that's why it's not just that it's a psychological almost
struggle that we're facing. And you know, each of Europe and South America
there's still not quite as rich, they're not quite as comfortable, and that's
why they're willing to considerable radical ideas because of that. Yeah, I think
you My question actually ties into what you just said, and if I basically
summarize the main theme of your talk, it's that everything hanges on rationality.
And what I found over the years, what I find extremely peculiar with the
human condition is me personally, but a lot of people that I know can
know perfectly well what I should do now and what the consequences are if I
don't do it, and they're fully understand irrationally, but yet I don't do
it. So what's your interpretation of that? Well, I mean, again,
people are not taught, not encouraged to be rational, not in a
not in a proper sense, and they're not told why they should be rational,
that is that it's good for them. Because they're not supposed to say
that, right, You're not supposed to say they're you're supposed to live for
yourself and they do things that are good for you. So it's it's it's
very much about education. It's about educating individuals to be self interested, to
care about themselves, and see rationality as a means to achieving that end,
indeed as the only means to achieving that end. And and you know,
and that ignoring the rational, ignoring the right path, it's self destructive.
And the self destruction matters. Again, it goes back to being ambitious people
wanting to live a good life. And how do you inculcate that? I
don't know, but you have to start young. But you you agree that.
I mean, I've studied objectives for ten years. I fully understand all
this, and I mean I find myself doing things that I'm purely irrational,
and I know that I'm in irrational or irrationally irrational. Yeah, but so
it takes work, right, it takes effort. But it's also like a
biological biological component. I mean, our souls has a really irrational animal,
but you're still an animal. Like we have the Olympic system, we are
driven to parts by we definitely have you know, So, so the default
for human beings im going. It talks about this. Befault for human beings
is a perceptual level conception i e. Being rational, being abstract takes effort,