Welcome to the Rational Egoists. I'm your host, Michael Liebowitz. One of
the main purposes for this show is to promote freedom, to promote capitalism,
and today's guest is here to talk to us all about capitalism, and I
could think of perhaps nobody better to do. So. He's the chairman of
the board at the Iron Ran Institute, where he served as an executive director
from two thousand and twenty seventeen, and he has also written several books,
including Equals Unfair and Free Market Revolution. Uron Brooke, Welcome to the show.
Thanks Michael, Thanks having me on. So there's so many misconceptions out
there about what capitalism is. The first thing I think we should do is
tell me what is capitalism. Well, capitalism is a system of government or
a social system in which individuals have free to live their lives. And what
that means is it's a system of government where the sole purpose of government is
the protection of individual rights, the protection of individuals ability to their lives based
on you know, their own judgment, their own rational mind in pursuit of
their own values. And that requires that the government that all property be privately
owned. That requires that the government, uh not never engage in occasion other
in self defense and defending individuals. Uh. That acquires a complete separation of
state from economics. That requires a pretty radical state of the world, something
we we don't have and probably and really have never seen in the world.
It's a it's a capitalism really is a radical new idea, and but it's
it's it's essence is the sanctity of individual life. It's interesting because it is
a new concept. And it's interesting to me because the people who defend capitalism
are often called conservatives, and the people that call themselves conservatives I wouldn't call
defenders of capitalism. And if you're really defending capitalism, you're actually quite radical,
no question. I mean, really, those of us who defend capitalism
are progressive. We believe in progress. In some ways, were liberal because
we believe in liberty and were anything but conservative. Indeed, the opponents of
capitalism in the era that was closest what we got closest to capitalism. If
you were the nineteenth century when the world was being freed, was being liberated,
where people getting rich, wealthier, living longer, gaining health. The
biggest opponents of capitalism were the socialists. You'd expect that. And the conservatives,
you know, the conservatives were writing during the nineteenth century, Oh,
we got these cities people, and we the cities. We're losing this this
wonderful, traditional, family oriented, little village life where people died when with
thirty uh and and nobody could read, and and and the quality of life
was horrible. But that's what they were. They were painting for it.
And they still paint. You know, you have today in America. People
call themselves back porch conservatives or front sports conservatives. You know, they just
want a relaxing, simple, unchallenging life, just sitting on that front porch
and walking in the chair. Who the hell wants to live like that?
Life is too fascinating and interesting and exciting to want such a boring existence.
But the conservatives, you know, they they resist that. They they resist
change. By the name, they're traditionalists. They're conservative. They want to
conserve the past. And uh, the past really is anti capitalist. I
might be that in the sudden period in the twentieth century the past looked relatively
capitalistic, but that couldn't last. And conservatives the more the more time passes,
the more status conservatives become because they're not connected by any philosophical connection really
to liberty and freedom and individual rights. No, it sounds like the description
you gave is what they want is security. And I've said more times than
I could count. You know, I spent twenty five years in prison.
I was relatively secure. I wasn't free. Yeah, give me the risk,
give me freedom with the risk that comes with it any day over prison
and security. It just seems like an absurd No, You're absolutely right.
You're the most secure when when when you know your your choices are taken away
from me. Now, that's not really true, right, because I'm sure
you're that secure in prison. And if you live a good, rational life
in this world and you are free, not like you are here, but
even more free. If you're really free, you're probably the most secure as
well, really right, because you then control your life and you can you
could choose how secure to be. And you know, if you have a
government to protects individual rights, it really does protect you, right, It
protects you from from from the things that you fear most. So there isn't
at the end of the day, we really think long term and deeply,
there isn't a trade off between security and freedom. But in a superficial way,
there is, in a in a shallow way, there is, and
what they really want, what they really want is that shallow sense of security.
But they also they want predictability, They want they want not to be
challenged. They want not to be challenged. They don't want their values challenged.
They don't want their ideas challenged, and they don't want they and they
don't want their life those ten But they also don't think very deeply. I
mean, I did a show on what's his name Knowles? I forget his
name? Is his name Matt Knowles? No something Matt anyway, he is
a conservative. On the Daily Wire, he said he wants social conservatism like
they had it in the twelve twenty, Right, that's what he wants,
right, But he wants the Internet, and he wants uh, you know,
his automobile, and he wants electricity and he wants all that, but
he wants the social conservative as a twelve twenty where we burnt witches and where
where anybody who was innovative in any kind of way was killed and murdered.
They think they can separate the things out. They think they can they can
keep the stuff they want and discard the stuff they don't want. But it's
all based ultimately on emotions, it's all based on dogma. So yes,
conservatives bottom line is a no friends, particularly mono conservatives, no friends of
capitalism. It's interesting the analogy you just gave, where they want to keep
what they want and get rid of everything else. It reminds me off.
I watched the debate that you had. I think the guy's name was Packman,
but I'm not I'm not positive David pack yet. And he said,
don't tell me about how the poorest today are better off than the people were
in the Roman Empire, because today we which is a misnomer, but he
says, we, you know, have far more stuff than they had back
then. And to me, it's like saying, well, basically, what
he wasn't saying is that there's enough now to read distribute to everybody. But
to me, it's as if there's a golden goose and people love the golden
eggs and they say, Okay, we no longer need the goose. Let's
kill it because we don't like it, and we'll just keep the eggs and
spread them around. But then you're not going to have any more eggs.
And if you get rid of the capitalist system that produces the wealth so that
you can redistribute it, pretty soon you're not going to have the wealth at
all. Well, they would deny that. They would basically say, and
this is true, right, I think. I think the clever one want
to keep the goose just alive enough so they can lay the eggs and they
can steal it. And of course they realize they might have to give up
a few eggs because under freedom, the goose would lay a lot more eggs,
but so by stealing them, you know, but they still want the
golden goose alive. And that's why somebody like Elizabeth Waughan will say, oh,
no, I'm a defender of capitalism. I believe in capitalism. I
just want to control it and regulate it and tax it and manipulate it.
But they realize there's something there. And that's why almost nobody will call themselves
a communist, and nobody, almost nobody will call themselves an out and our
socialist. I'll call themselves a democratic socialist. And they'll think that they want
Denmark right and and and Denmark taxes people very highly just to keep them alive
just enough. So that they don't leave. They don't, they don't stop
laying the golden egg, some eggs at least, and then they do massively
distribution. But Denmark's not all the way socialism. It's not all the way
communism, and they all pretend they don't want that because they realize that they
need the entrepreneurs to keep on producing, and they also think that entrepreneurship would
happen even with just a little bit of freedom. You know, most most
people out there pretty ignorant of history and pretty ignorant of I mean very ignorantive
history, Pretty very ignorant of history, but also ignorant of how other political
systems and how other cultures have evolved and produced. So you just mentioned history,
which brings me to my next question. Now, I know pure capitalism
has never existed, but people, in order to survive have always done some
measure of producing and trading. When do we see the emergence of the closest
that we've come to capitalism? And you know where the freest markets were?
When and where did that happen? Well, again, I don't think capitalism
is markets, right, Markets are one aspect of capitalism. Capitalism is the
protection of individual rights. And you don't really get that. You don't get
it until there's an explicit recognition of rights, that rights exist, that there
is such a thing as rights. And the first recognition of that really comes
about probably in the works of John Locke, maybe a little before that,
and some of the thinkers and philosophers coming out of the Netherlands, and and
then you know, so then there's a recognition, but it isn't manifest itself
politically. Really, the first manifestation politically of the concept of individual rights is
in the Declaration Independence of the United States. So the closest we've ever come
to capitalism fully, you know, fully implemented, was in the intense of
the founders. Now they didn't live up to that intention. The primary primary
deficit they were slavery. But that was what the documents laid out. They
laid out the principles of capitalism, They laid out a capitalist system. And
then once it gets laid out in the US, you get some of those
elements picked up in other places around the primarily in Western Europe, primarily in
England, uh to some extent, in some of the other some extent more
or less in other countries, but really, once you get rid of free
of slavery. In the United States, I'd say, you know, the
most the closest way've come to capitalism is probably post Civil War, you know,
pre anti trust laws or pre Woodrow Wilson, somewhere in that period.
And in the twentieth century. The country that comes closest there's probably Hong Kong,
where there is definitely protection of individual rights, protection gets violence and theft,
but also uh, you know, no no government regulations, no government
control of protection of free speech. You can't vote in Hong Kong. But
if all the rights, you know, a whole topic. But if all
the rights, I think voting is probably not at the top of the of
the of the list. It's a derivative rights. It's a derivative that the
primary rights of property and liberty, which is free speech, which includes free
speech, those are the primary rights and those are protected in Hong Kong and
protected in the United States during these periods. So that's when we come closest
to it, as as political systems are encompassing, and the consequence and once
you protect people's property rights is markets is now We've always had markets, but
markets have always been constrained and limited, and innovation has been constrained and limited.
Entrepreneurship has been constrained and limited to what's acceptable within a particular society,
to what the authorities allow and permit. Capitalism is a permission less society.
Capitalism you don't have to ask for permission. You do. And you only
really get at permissionless society in that sense in the US, post funding in
the UK late eighteenth century, early twentieth century, and then sprinkled Hugh and
there throughout you up and then places like Hong Kong. One of the most
powerful illustrations of the wealth producing effect of capitalism I've ever seen. You had
in your book Free Market Capitalism, and you had a graph and it showed
GDP growth. I think, you know, the entire history of the world,
you had a flat line basically, and then with the advent of the
free markets, as hampered as they may have been, but they were freer,
the GDP growth just skyrockets. I mean, it goes. It's like
the hockey stick that we've heard so much about. It's just an incredible thing.
But beyond the GDP, I mean, what was the effect of these
relatively free markets in terms of poverty, standard of living, life expectancy,
etc. Yeah, I mean the challenge of the GDP is that dramatically underestimates
how big the advance was, because you don't get in GDP as life expectancy,
which more than doubles right at the beginning of the industry revolution. Life
expectancy in the most advanced places in the planet is thirty nine and fifty percent
of children die before the age of ten. Women die at childbirth is very,
very prevalent, and suddenly within a hundred years most of them that disappears.
Life expectancies doubled, and then another one hundred years. We now live
into our eighties pretty comfortably and arguably without all the regulations we have today.
I think many people could, most of us could live well into our hundreds
without all the constraints placed upon us. But Daddy doesn't even really capture it.
How much value do you put on running water right on, on facets,
on toilets. Now, the Romans had running water some extent, at
least a wealthy Romans had it, But then running water, pipes and facets
disappeared for a thousand years, more than a thousand, fifteen hundred years so
how much value the fact that you go to tap open and drink the water
out of a tap, wash your hands were soak, have a shower every
day. That's unprecedented human history, the idea of washing yourself. How valuable
is it to have toilets, flushing toilets, I mean, that's huge in
terms of quality of life and stand up living. That's a big step forward.
One hundred years ago. Even a hundred years ago, most Americans didn't
have flushing toilets, right, you still had a pit in the ground,
and with all that that entails, and the smell, everything that that that
entails. And then go on from the electricity. How valuable is electricity?
Now, notice that none of this is captured in the GDP numbers. There's
no measure of water, right in GDP captures how much you spend on your
water bill, but doesn't capture the value to you of water, which is
massive. Same with electricity, same with computers, cameras, iPhones. I
mean GDP captures the fact that you spend a thousand dollars on the iPhone,
but the iPhone in terms of quality of life stand up living is far,
far exceeds one thousand dollars that you spend on it in terms of the values
that it provides to you. That's why you're willing to give one of the
reasons you're willing to give up a thousand dollars. So, if you actually
calculated what some economy is called consumer so plus the actual value to us of
all the stuff that's been created in a semi free society, we are much
wealthier than the GDP graph shows because because of everything that's being produced and all
the value that we capture from that production. And so yeah, it's it's
thousands of times greater in terms of stand up living, quality of life,
in terms of the time we have, I mean simple things that people don't
realize. Right, Nobody went on vacations one hundred years ago, certainly not
one hundred and fifty years ago. There's also things vacation You worked, you
know, and it wasn't even a five day worked day. You worked six
to seven days. You work twelve hour days. We worked so many few
hours. Today we go on vacations, like restaurants. The first restaurants ever
was I think in Paris in seventeen, something that's pretty late. Already in
the beginning of the industry evolution and restaurants don't take off until the twentieth century.
And going out to eat and going out to eat maybe every night or
every week, that's unheard of. I mean, how rich are we unbelievably
rich and having celebrity chefs, so having not just going out to eat,
but eating good food and quality food and delicious food. It's just outstand a
living is so high and there's no way for us to fully I mean for
most people, there's just no way to fully appreciate it unless you really study
history and you think about, you actually internalize thinking about what was life like
without all this. I mean, maybe being in prison gives you a little
bit of a context, right in terms of how great life is when you're
not right, What options you have, what choices you have, what you
can do in your life on a day to day basis, because because you
don't have that in prison. But imagine all of humanity being in prison innocence,
and it's more than that. So two hundred years ago, two hund
fifty years ago, you didn't choose who you married. Your family got together
with another family and they they they made a contract. You didn't choose what
work to go into. Right, you went into the profession that you or
father was in, you joined his guild. That was it. And if
you're a woman, you suddenly didn't choose your profession, you didn't have one.
You were going to be home and that was it. I mean,
it's really really rare in human history that women did more than take care of
men and take care of the household. And one of the great innovations of
the twenty essentially is the women can go out and work and they can make
their own living and have choices and do the stuff that they want to do.
So so you know, in every respect, our lives were constrained and
limited to very very few things that we had control over before the beginnings of
capitalism. And again we don't have an appreciation of that. So how much
does that contribute our stand up living in quality of life? The fact that
you can choose what profession, you can change professions midstream, you can have
five professions. Nobody koreas, nobody need limits you or romantic love. How
valuable is romantic love to human see human life? But romantic loves is a
modern concept. It didn't really exist back then because you couldn't do anything with
it, and you could go over value. Have to value, have to
value the human beings have, and see how much better off we are as
a consequence of freedom versus before that. To be a conservative is a betrayal
of human life if you want to particularly if you want to conserve things the
way they will before, you know, before seventeen seventy six, or before
whatever date we want to pick. It's just astounding the differences and how much
we take it off for granted. So this define capitalism as the system that
upholds rights. So now that implies the question what is the proper theory of
rights? Because people throw around rights all the time. We have a right
to healthcare, right to housing, or right to this, right to that.
Now, I believe, and I think it's been clearly demonstrated that Iinrand
has A has developed or elucidated a proper theory of rights. Can you tell
us a little about that? Yes, I mean irand Iran defines rights very
clearly and rights, you know, essential concept in her philosophy. Rights a
concept that bridges morality and politics. Rights are fundamentally a moral concept, not
a political one. But they are a bridging concept between morality and politics.
And this is a great innovation. And this is what many of many people
don't really get, particularly the libertarians out there, don't really get, is
that you can't have the concept of individual rights. It doesn't mean anything,
and it doesn't relate to anything. You said. You can't defend it philosophically
unless you have a specific view of morality. And you can't have a specific
morality unless you have a specific view of human nature of epistemology. You need
philosophy, an entire philosophy in order to understand the concept of individual right,
to defend it, and to articulate it, and too, and and and
really to understand it fully. So you know why is this? Well,
individual rights protect the individual's mind in order to his ability to use his mind
in order to live, to live for his own sake, for for for
the sake of the pursuit of his own values, not somebody else's values,
not the government's values, not that the majority's value is not the triubes of
values, but his values. Now that asked, you have to you have
to think about that as being legitimate, right, me using my mind?
Oh wait to say I have a mind. That's cool, My mind's efficacious.
Some philosophers don't think so. Plato didn't think so. He thought I
was just living in a cave and seeing shadows and never really interacted with real
reality. And the Catholic Church certainly doesn't think I should have I have a
mind that I can use in order to discover real facts about the world and
guide my life based on it. No, I have to read ancient books
and listen to profits and do what the pope tells me. That's that's that's
what I have a mind for, is to listen and obey. So the
very fact that we are rational animal, the very fact that reason is efficacious
a deeply metaphysical and epistemological statements. Did you have to be able to defend
You don't have to defend rights because if you don't have a mind, if
by nature you're just an obeying entity, an entity that's just abs Oh,
some would have it, you're just a feeling entity, and all that matters
is how you feel, and you can do whatever the hell you want,
just guided by feelings. Then you know, it's not clear you should have
rights. It's not clear that we want to trust your judgment or you should
trust your judgment, right, you have to have a clear of you.
The judgment matters. So rights are the thing that in a social contact facilitate
you using your mind. But the fact that your mind is efficacious has to
be established philosophically, in reality and philosophically, And then use your mind for
what? Because it's your mind? That already sounds a little selfish? Because
your mind? Why not their minds? Why not somebody else's mind? Why
are you just listening to you? And then in pursuit of whose values?
Your values? Well, that's suddenly selfish. Wait a minute, is self
interest okay? Is it okay to pursue your own values? Is it okay
to guide your life by your own mind? Well, but that's ethics,
right, that's a whole theory of ethics. If you're an altruist and you
believe that the purpose of life is other people's well being, well, then
why would I pursue my values? Shouldn't I be listening to other people in
pursuing their vues? They need rights in order to do that. Maybe the
government is the best instrument to convey to me what other people need so that
I can sacrifice for them. Maybe maybe the group can do that somehow for
me. Maybe there's a short cut. If you believe that the proletarian or
what's important in life, well the politarian needs tell me what, how?
Why what can I sacrifice? Just show point to me what the sacrifice is,
so you know, Collectivism, altruism, various forms of unreasoned from faith,
emotionalism, all of them basically undermine rights. There is no rights if
you accept those theories. There is no purpose for rights. Rights unnecessary because
human beings are not the kind of being that even John Locke and if I
my Diane Rand thought they would. So for Rand, rights a recognition that
individual human beings have a moral right to pursue their own happiness, and they
can only do so by using their reason, and that the enemy of reason
is force is couragent. So that when individuals enter into a social environment with
the other people, and we really were born into such an environment, the
concern is what about other people trying to force me, cause me to do
things I don't want, taking my stuff, sticking a gun to my head,
And we need we need an agreement that you can't do that, and
that we need an agreement that recognizes that each one of us must live by
his own judgment in pursuit of his own values. And therefore we can't force
our own values onto somebody else, our own judgment, our own minds onto
somebody else. And you know that agreement. That agreement basically is, we
establish a government in order to do that. We establish a government in order
to basically have the monopoly of the use of force in order to preserve that
liberty, that freedom that we have h And it's it's a unique institution.
It's it's a one of a kind, but it's an institution that that's its
own responsibility. And so you can't have a right to somebody else's stuff because
that legitimizes courage and by it's it's it's very essence. It means that you
can go take that stuff or so, or you can hire somebody to take
that stuff, hire the government to go take your stuff to give it to
you. That can't be right. If writes about your own freedom, your
own liberty, his own freedom, his own liberty, how can I take
his stuff if he's free, if he has liberty, if he has rights.
See, you can never have a right to stuff. I have a
right to healthcare, my right to healthcare means that I have a right to
go out there and choose a doctor, and if he's willing, if I
can negotiate the right fair with him, the right payment, that we can
transact and I can get the treatment that the two of us agree upon.
And the FDA and the I don't know thousand other government regulatory agencies have no
business interfering in the agreement I made with my doctor, my hospital, and
whatever. And that's the sense in which I have by weight to healthcare.
And that's the sense in which socialized medicine and governments evention and healthcare, Medicare
and Medicaid and everything else is an interference and a negation of my right to
healthcare. I love Rand's theory of rights because she ties it to reality.
It goes to morality, and her theory of morality is clearly, in my
view, proven, And a lot of times when political theorists are making their
arguments, they make moral arguments in mid stream. What I mean is they
just assume that their view of morality is correct. There's no justification for it.
I watched this morning. You had a debate at Yale about the fairness
of equality, and your opponent was saying, well, it's you know,
we have moral implications to this, moral implications to that, and people do
that frequently. A few months ago, I interviewed the editor from Mother Jones,
Michael Mechanic, and we were talking about inherited wealth, and finally I
asked him, I said, well, you're you're making a moral argument,
correct, and he said yes. I said, okay, Well please tell
me by what standard of morality you're making this judgment. And he looked at
me like I was crazy, and he said, well, I you know,
that's what I like. And I said, well, if you're gonna
talk about using force, I'm gonna need a hell of a lot more than
Michael Mechanic happens to like something, you know, but a lot of people
do that. So there's been as assume they also assume we all share the
same moral code, because there's only one moral code out there in the world.
It's it's the Mall code kind of instituted by Christianity. It was inst
you before that, because Sheianity really picked it up and made it and that
is the Mall Code of Altruism. And nobody, I mean, there's a
handful of people in all of history. Who've been willing to challenge that?
I don't know. I Rand and Nietzsche to some extent, although he doesn't
propose an alternative, and maybe Spinoza. But other than that, there's just
no nobody has ever said, Wait a minute, why should I sacrifice other
people? Why has the standard society? Why is this standard the collective?
Why has this standard the others? And so everybody assumes that we've all in
on We're all in this scam, we all get it, we all know
understand who morality is. Nobody can challenge it because nobody ever has challenged it.
So who are you to challenge it? That's why I looked at you
funny, because nobody ever questions when I say morality, I know exactly what
meant by that in the world out there. It means, Okay, who
do I sacrifice too? Who's who am I supposed to give up my values
for? That's the whole purpose for them of morality, and ieman just flips
that on them, completely changes the very name, the very weight in which
we think about morality. So there's been other, obviously, advocates for capitalism
other than I Ran. There was Adam Smith and more more modern times,
there was Ludwig von Mesis and Milton Freedman. Why is Rand's advocacy of capitalism
superior to theirs? Well, I mean you have to separate them somewhat.
I mean. Adam Smith is a moral philosopher and an economist who defense capitalism,
but very much defense capitalism from the perspective of its social utility. He's
very he does not want to embrace kind of the egoistic motivation of let's say,
the baker for breaking the bread. Even though he recognizes that ultimately what
motivates an entrepreneur and what motivates a consumer is their own well being, he
does not embrace that morally. He rejects the idea of that being moral.
And he says, look, we know self interest as a vice, but
if you add these vices up, the bakers vice, the consumer's vice,
the entrepreneur's vice in starting their business, and a pursuing their own self interest,
somehow society is better about call it invisible hand. It somehow produces an
outcome that is good for quote society. Well, that is so full of
holes. The status run all over that one, right, I mean,
how can how can how can a bunch of vices producer virtue. If you
add a vices, don't you get a vice? A big advice? And
you know, what is this good for society? How do we measure it?
How can we tell who gets to decide? Okay, maybe some freedom
is good for society? Of it complete freedom? Even Adams Smith after all
wanted there to be a central bank, and what it's certain regulations. We
can't. We can't have complete less I FAI because there's this social utility standard
that can be is completely subjective. There's no objective way to determine what social
utility actually means. We don't walk around with utility functions that I had and
I can say, okay, if I move that, then utility moves that
way, and they can add them all up. It just doesn't exist.
And that's the problem with most defenses of capitalism that are ultimately done by economists.
They're almost always utilitarian, and it they'll almost always requires some hand waving.
Right, it's good for society, everybody's better off, life is better,
you know, stuff like that, And it's true, life is better,
But is it right? Is it good? Is it model? Is
it just right? They can't answer that question. Is it virtuous. They
can't answer that question. And is everybody better well, probably not, maybe
maybe some people are worse off. Right, I like to think that the
wife beating drunk is worse off under capitalism than they are on their welfare state.
Right. Under welfare state, the state keeps them around so they can
beat up their wife. In capitalism, nobody will give them charity, and
they, you know, they either change their ways or they die at the
side of the street. Right, so be it, but so but they
have to insist everybody's better off because they can't make moral judgments right, because
there is no morality they or they don't want to touch morality. Or the
white beating drunk is a victim, really right of his circumstances, we should
really feel sorry for him, So there's no way out for them. And
all the economic arguments, even the best von mess I think has the best
right, ultimately fall in depth ears because people want moral arguments. They want
to know that capitalism is not just good somehow materially, but they want to
know, or they want to have a sense that capitalism is will sure just
and right and as long as their morality is an altruistic morality, morality of
collectivism. It doesn't add up to them, right. Capitalism is about individualism.
Capitalism is about people pursuing their own values, pursuing their own happiness,
pursuing their own values, which means their own business is their own ideas.
Yeah, maybe that's somehow increases GDP, but that sounds really selfish to me.
And I don't trust selfish people, and therefore capitalism is not to be
trusted. And what about the poor? Don't forget what about the poor?
What about them? That's true? So outside of objectivism, who do you
think has made the best pro capitalism argument? I mean, you mentioned von
Mesas in the Economic Realm. I would agree, by the way, but
out but it did von Mesas make the best case outside of objectivism or as
there's somebody else? No, I think I think Mesas makes the best case,
certainly from an economic perspective. But but he has a has a sudden
understanding and respect and value for freedom, for liberty. You know, there
are other thinkers throughout the ages that have contributed to our understanding of capitalism as
a political system and economic system, going back to to John Locke and through
the ages who have emphasized the value of individual rights and then the value of
They didn't have a complete the value of economic liberty. They didn't have a
complete understanding capitalism or complete defense of capitalism. But people like Bust the Yachts
suddenly have done a lot to promote the ideas of liberty and of ideas of
freedom in economic realm but also in the personal realm. But there's there's really
there's very few people today who actually make the argument for capitalism as a whole
system. You know, so many, so many libertarians revert to anarchy in
order to defend markets. They think they have to be anarchists in order to
defend liberty and freedom, and as a consequence, I think they completely undermine
the defense of liberty and freedom. And so many of the defenders of capitalism
defended on kind of subjectivist grounds, not subjectivisms meanses talked about in economic transaction,
but subjectivesm morally, subjectivism, the way we were under live our lives,
subjectivism and political value subjectivism all over the place, and the modest subjectivism.
And then so so I don't think they are very good defenders of capitalism
today. And then you see the conservatives who undermine it or Uniki Hailey,
who's running for president, wrote and up at in the Wall c Journal about,
you know, defending capitalism, but it's filled with uncapitalist kind of things,
and filled with statist statements, and filled with the collectivism that undermines capitalism.
Same things to Hike. Unfortunately, Hike, who everybody thinks is you
know, within the free market world is treated as a god, is very
mixed and nine. Rand was very critical of Hike because of his compromises with
statism and because of the of the you know, the implicit collectivism that some
of his ideas had, in his unwillingness to be you know, consistent and
uncompromising. The same with Milton Friedman. You know, it meanses is the
great virtue of meanses is. He was not. He was consistent, he
was uncompromising, and he wasn't an analochist in spite of people people today using
his name to to to sell anarchist ideas. In my view, people will
tell me that I need to support conservatives because they're the lesser to evil,
but some even go so far as to say that they're pro capitalist. I've
had people tell me, well, Donald Trump is like an iron Rand hero
I mean, that is just so absurd to me. And I actually think
that the Conservatives when it comes to capitalism are worse than liberals for the very
reason that if I'm somebody that's coming up and I don't know anything about politics,
and I'm hearing that Conservatives are the ones for capitalism, then I hear
Donald Trump out there talking about immigration restrictions and trade restrictions and he's gonna,
you know, threaten this company and that company, and we got to keep
the social safety net and all that thing. Then that to me, I
mean, that's just socialism light right in your view? Am I wrong?
Our concert or our conservatives really the bigger threat. I mean, I think
the conservaggest threat. I think they do a small hall right. The left
is the left. We know what they stand fork, we know exactly what
they are. The Conservatives pretend to be pro capitalists. They use the terminology,
they use those names. And if I if I were young today and
hadn't red iron grand and looked at the Conservatives, and they're pro capitalists,
and they will say anti abortion, and they obsessed with you know, homosexuality
and trans issues and and and they're obsessed with all these social things. It
wouldn't be crazy for me to lump that in with capitalism. And then,
of course the capitalism is filled with uh bringing you. Jd. Vance is
now sponsoring a lot of bills with Elizabeth Waughan about penalizing businesses left and right
and encouraging in a sense and coveraging cronyism. And I would say, this
is so, this is capitalism. It's cronyism, and it's regulations, and
it's statism, and it's hatred of the individual in its personal life, hatred
of the individual's decision making their personal life. I hate. I would hate
conservatism, and I would hate capitalism as a consequence, because I would lump
it all together. At least the left says, look, when we hate
capitalism, we think capitalism is wrong. Okay, what do they hate exactly?
Let me study what capitalism is about. Maybe then I'd have a chance
of discovering an alternative. Conservatives money the waters in a way that makes them
more dangerous. And they also have you know, one of their gimmicks is
and one of the things that rallies people around them is they also have very
good at wrapping themselves around the flag and making themselves Americans, even though they
have no concept of what America stands for and what the founders really meant.
They wrap themselves in a flag and again make themselves appealing, I think,
to people who then get bamboozled by the rest of their agenda. So yes,
I think conservatism today is a mess. I don't think it's stands for
anything. I mean, I ran in nineteen when was this video made?
I think maybe seventy seventy one, seventy two, maybe as early sixty eight.
She writes this article conservatism and a bitchery if an idea or does a
video talk on it. Yeah, I mean she thought conservatism was dead then.
And when you look at conservatives today as competitive then like they were unbelievably
sane. Back then they were, you know they were, they were fantastic.
I would take any one of those conservatives over today's conservatives in a heartbeat.
So I don't know what she would think. I mean, I'm there's
a sense in which I'm glad she's not alivee to see how bad the right
has turned out. I think. I mean, people tell me that Iran
would have loved I would have loved Donald Trump. I think she i can't
even imagine the fury she would have had at a Donald Trump like character and
and him given the reverence she had with the President of the United States and
high point she thought that will was the way she would look at a Donald
Trump. I as much as I despise him, and as much as a
lot of people don't like him, I think that's nothing. As much as
I rand would have despised him. I think you're right. I mean,
she didn't vote for Reagan, and when it comes to these ideas, Reagan
is far superior or to Trump. Yes, So, I mean Reagan has
his flaws, particularly religion, but he is better than any Republican you know
in politics today by fall. And yeah, if I didn't vote for Reagan,
there's no way she votes for Donald Trump. No. Well, before
I let you go, I gotta ask you, what are your what are
your thoughts on the future? Are you optimistic? Can we ever get to
a capitalist society, if not an objectivist society? Could we at least establish
some semblance of what this country was intended to be? Well, I don't
think you get one without the other. So I care capitalism without objectivism,
you know, whether it's at least, it's significant influence of objectivism. It's
not the case that everybody has to be an objectivist, but it certainly has
to be the dominant intellectual movement in the culture. It's the only way you're
actually going to get full fledged capitalism. Can we ever have that? Sure,
as long as you're not putting me down on a date next Tuesday at
three o'clock. Three o'clock on Tuesday, I'm look, I'm It depends on
the day you catch me. Generally, I'm pretty pessimistic about the world these
days. I don't see any way anything positive it happens in the next decade
or so. It's just people are so I mean, it seems to me
right now that people are so mindless. People are so unthinking and much more
tribal than they used to be, at least in my lifetime. It seems
like, what peak tribalism right now and peak a mindless listen right now,
and this can end well, I mean, this asked the result in negative
consequences. There's just there's just no way around that. So so I don't
see how the next ten years don't go really badly. But once you go
out twenty years, who knows things can turn around. We know human beings
are capable of thinking. We know human beings are capable of of of doing
good and producing and being responsible. We know all that is possible, and
it is ultimately an issue of free will to get people to reverse and go
in the right direction. So I do think it's it's possible. But it's
a long term project, you know. It's it's twenty years before we see
a improvement, maybe fifty two hundred years before we actually if you see a
full fledged capitalists society. Okay, is there anything I forgot to ask you
or that I didn't let you get in? It's an important topic. I
want to make sure we cover it adequately. Well, I mean, yeah,
there's a million questions. It can be awesome. Okays, so I
I have you know, nothing's gonna pup it in my mind. Now.
I would encourage people to, uh, you know, to go subscribe to
my channel on on YouTube. I guess said you run book show. I
would recommend it as well, and just for the audience to know, I've
recently published my book View from a Cage, My transformation from Convict a Crusader
for Liberty. It's available in ebook In a week or so, it'll be
available in print. I'm going to attach a link so anybody that wants to
can buy it. If you like this show, you'll love the book.
For now, this is The Rational Egalist. I'm Michael Leibowitz, signing out.
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