Speaker 1: A lot of them quoted of lead flat little cell
Speaker 1: members and an individual lots. This is the show. Oh right, everybody,
Speaker 1: welcome to your one book show on this what is
Speaker 1: it Saturday, December thirteenth. Everybody's having a great start to
Speaker 1: your weekend, and uh yeah, you've got a lot, a
Speaker 1: lot of planned for the week. Okay, today we're starting
Speaker 1: kind of a series. I mean, I've talked about the
Speaker 1: fact that Saturday shows when we devoted to three topics
Speaker 1: really to Western siev and and religion. Uh to to
Speaker 1: the search for meaning, search for meaning, and three is
Speaker 1: to a better understanding of capitalism, what it is, how
Speaker 1: it applies, where it applies, and so on. So this
Speaker 1: is the first one capitalism. But of course, God, there
Speaker 1: are hours and hours and hours and hours and hours
Speaker 1: and hours and hours of me talking about capitalism online.
Speaker 1: There's a ton of content already on this. So this
Speaker 1: is not really a start but a continuation of what
Speaker 1: I'd be doing for decades now in talking about capitalism.
Speaker 1: So we're going to jump in. I will remind you
Speaker 1: that you guys, we'll talk about trade a lot, but
Speaker 1: this is a this is a trade So remember that
Speaker 1: you can support the show you. You can trade with
Speaker 1: me by you know, doing things simple things like liking
Speaker 1: to show if you're not a subscriber, becoming a subscriber,
Speaker 1: by you know, financially supporting the show through us, or
Speaker 1: kind of asking a question. And questions are great because
Speaker 1: questions get to shape the show, right, You get to
Speaker 1: get me to talk about what you want me to
Speaker 1: talk about. And I do promise to read all the
Speaker 1: questions aloud and to answer all the questions in comments
Speaker 1: that are put together in the super chat. So feel
Speaker 1: free to ask about anything. It could be about this topic,
Speaker 1: it could about anything going on in the world. While
Speaker 1: this is today is not a new show. If you
Speaker 1: want to ask about something in the news, feel free
Speaker 1: to do so. Or if you want to ask about
Speaker 1: something different, that is fine. Again, don't forget to like
Speaker 1: the show, don't forget to subscribe if you're not a subscriber.
Speaker 1: And so let's jump in. Let's talk before we get
Speaker 1: the benevolence. Let's talk about capitalism because this is a
Speaker 1: concept that is so misunderstood out there in the world.
Speaker 1: There is so much confusion and about what capitalism actually is.
Speaker 1: I just saw a video this morning from some I
Speaker 1: don't know Marxist professor saying, most people think capitalism is
Speaker 1: about markets and about competition, and then she goes, oh, no, no,
Speaker 1: but Carl Marx said that capitalism is about what happens
Speaker 1: inside the factory, where capitalists are exploiting labor. And the
Speaker 1: reality is, of course, the capitalism properly understood. The things
Speaker 1: that indeed Marx was observing when he used the term
Speaker 1: capitalism are not about any of those things. Capitalism is
Speaker 1: not indeed about markets. So though markets is a feature
Speaker 1: of capitalism, but markets existed throughout human history. Markets have
Speaker 1: always been around. You wouldn't say capitalism has always been around.
Speaker 1: Competition has always been around. And yeah, you wouldn't say
Speaker 1: the capitalism has always been around. Now, you know, competition
Speaker 1: might have been restrained by various means, but there's always
Speaker 1: been some competition. It means nothing to define capitalism in
Speaker 1: terms of markets, or to define it in terms of competition,
Speaker 1: as so many people do, but particularly conservatives and leftists,
Speaker 1: center rights and the left and so on, in terms
Speaker 1: of understanding what happens inside the factory, and talking about
Speaker 1: this in terms of exploitation doesn't really teach you anything,
Speaker 1: because the reality is that again, even if there is
Speaker 1: exploitation inside the factory, and there isn't because it's fundamentally voluntary.
Speaker 1: We'll get to that. But even if it was, exploitation
Speaker 1: can't be because exploitation, again is the whole of human history. Indeed,
Speaker 1: capitalism is the first system that exploitation. It's the first political,
Speaker 1: economic social system that frees us from exploitation. But to
Speaker 1: look inside the factory to see exploitation is bizarre to
Speaker 1: begin with, given the fact that the people inside the
Speaker 1: factor you seem pretty happy with the fact that they're there,
Speaker 1: they voluntarily came there, that people employing them seemed to
Speaker 1: be happy, they employed them voluntarily. It seems like mutually
Speaker 1: beneficial transaction. No evidence, no science, unless you're a shallow materialist,
Speaker 1: as marxis, of any exploitation going on. And indeed, this
Speaker 1: is the reason, I mean, the idea that it's not competition,
Speaker 1: it's not markets, it's not even you know, the existence
Speaker 1: of property rights, property rights to some extent or another
Speaker 1: again have existed throughout and and uh, you know, we
Speaker 1: today have some property rights, but property rights is at
Speaker 1: least getting closer to what it is. Unfortunately, conservatives again
Speaker 1: center left, center right, but even even libertarians often confuse
Speaker 1: about what capitalism actually is. And in that sense, everybody
Speaker 1: thinks of it as an economic system. You know, the
Speaker 1: term capitalism is being dominated by economists. They think this
Speaker 1: is primarily about economics, but it's not. It's about human life.
Speaker 1: It's it's very much a social, political, and economic concept. So,
Speaker 1: you know, so what is what defines a capitalism? What
Speaker 1: what makes capitalism? What makes capitalism different than other economic systems?
Speaker 1: What makes capitalism different than economic systems before it in
Speaker 1: all of human history. Well, if you look at capitalism,
Speaker 1: if we observe the phenomenon of capitalism, you know, at
Speaker 1: its beginning in the early nineteenth century, as capitalism was
Speaker 1: spreading in the United States and in England, and it's
Speaker 1: no accident it's the United States and it's England where
Speaker 1: it's happening. Is what is being recognized, what is being
Speaker 1: recognized in society, Well, what is being recognized fundamentally is
Speaker 1: that force coercion is not a means by which individuals
Speaker 1: should interact. What is recognized is the idea that individuals
Speaker 1: have this right to pursue their own happiness, to pursue
Speaker 1: their own life, to pursue their own values. There's a
Speaker 1: recognition that individuals should and can be free, that is,
Speaker 1: act in pursuit of their values in the absence of
Speaker 1: cosion and force. Now this is not necessarily explicitly stated,
Speaker 1: although the Declaration Independence does a pretty good job job
Speaker 1: expressing it explicitly. But it's in the very political I
Speaker 1: guess movement that is happening in Britain. And it's certainly
Speaker 1: because of the way the United States is established, because
Speaker 1: of the Declaration and because of the Constitution. It is
Speaker 1: the governing ideology of the United States of America. Freedom, freedom,
Speaker 1: and the principle guiding freedom, the principle that defines this
Speaker 1: freedom as the principle of individual rights, a principle articulated
Speaker 1: by John Locke and developed and explained by John Locke
Speaker 1: and then picked up by the Enlightenment, and ultimately it
Speaker 1: is at the foundation, at the origin of the founding
Speaker 1: of the United States and the establishment of a government
Speaker 1: in the United States. It's not an accident the capitalism evolves.
Speaker 1: Capitalism comes into being in those places where there is
Speaker 1: a recognition of the idea of individual rights, and in
Speaker 1: particular of property rights. But individual rights more broadly, and
Speaker 1: those two places in the world in the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: in the early part of the nineteenth century, late part
Speaker 1: of the eighteenth century were the United States, the two
Speaker 1: relatively capitalists places on planet Earth. So individual rights, the freedom,
Speaker 1: the freedom to pursue your values, the freedom to act
Speaker 1: in pursuit of the values that you rationally believe in
Speaker 1: your self interest that they you know that that will
Speaker 1: enhance your life. That freedom means the absence, absence of
Speaker 1: cosion and force. So what is capitalism. It's a system
Speaker 1: that is based on individuals. It's based on the recognition
Speaker 1: of individuals. It's a system where the sole purpose of
Speaker 1: government is the protection of those individuals. It is a
Speaker 1: system where property rights are so dominant that all property
Speaker 1: is privately owned. Now we know that in that sense,
Speaker 1: no system has ever been capitalists, because no system has
Speaker 1: ever achieved this. Early America had slavery. Later America had
Speaker 1: regulations and a lot of private a lot of property
Speaker 1: that was not privately owned. It was state owned, but
Speaker 1: it came close. Much of the property, much of there,
Speaker 1: certainly used and usable property, was privately owned post slavery.
Speaker 1: The level of cosion within society, the level of cosuing
Speaker 1: inflict by government. The level of cosion allowed by between
Speaker 1: individuals was indeed minimized, and those economies, the economies of
Speaker 1: you know, mid nineteenth century Britain and late nineteenth century
Speaker 1: the United States were as close to capitalism as we've come.
Speaker 1: But capitalism is a system, a separation of state from
Speaker 1: the economy. It's from economics. It's a system where the
Speaker 1: state does not have an economic policy. It's where the
Speaker 1: state protects individual rights and other than that leaves us
Speaker 1: alone to negotiate, to trade, to produce, to create our lives.
Speaker 1: It entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships,
Speaker 1: because physical force is the only way in which rights
Speaker 1: can be violated. And I'm including under physical force fraud.
Speaker 1: And it basically says nobody can initiate force, no group,
Speaker 1: no tribe, no collection of individuals, no business, no government, nobody.
Speaker 1: The government can only use force to protect those rights
Speaker 1: as retaliation. So, as Zion puts it, the only function
Speaker 1: of government in such a society is the task of
Speaker 1: protecting man's rights. That is, the task of protecting him
Speaker 1: from physical force. The government acts as an agent a
Speaker 1: man's right of self defense and may use for us
Speaker 1: only in retaliation and only against those initiated issues. Thus,
Speaker 1: the government is the means of placing retaliated to reuse
Speaker 1: of force under objective control. So that is capitalism. It's
Speaker 1: again to quote imand a full pure, uncontrolled, unregulated las
Speaker 1: efat capitalism with a separation of state and economics. So
Speaker 1: when we talk about capitalism, that said, now, when we
Speaker 1: think about the modern world, what we see in the
Speaker 1: modern world are remnants of this attitude, elements of it.
Speaker 1: We have some private property, or at least we have
Speaker 1: a pretense to some private property. But you know, those
Speaker 1: private property is limited by state initiation, of course, whether
Speaker 1: that state invitiation, of course, is through zoning regulations, taxes,
Speaker 1: property taxes, you know, in all the other ways in
Speaker 1: which the state courses and forces forces us. Now, this
Speaker 1: is not you know, well understood out there. I mean,
Speaker 1: people believe that this is what we have today is capitalism,
Speaker 1: that we are living in a capitalist world. It is not.
Speaker 1: We are moving away. We have moved away from capitalism
Speaker 1: and are steadily moving further and further away as the state,
Speaker 1: our government intervenes more and more and more in all
Speaker 1: areas of our life, our economic life. But generally our lives. Now,
Speaker 1: what does this all have this have to do with benevolence,
Speaker 1: because one of the things that we're seeing out there
Speaker 1: in the world, I think quite clearly, is the real
Speaker 1: collapse of any kind of benevolence in our society, particularly
Speaker 1: if you're in social media. But I think it's in
Speaker 1: the world that there is will. People resent one another,
Speaker 1: they're angry at one another, they're afraid of one another.
Speaker 1: They wonder, you know, are you one of my tribe?
Speaker 1: Are you one of the other tribe? Are you are
Speaker 1: legal immigrant or just an immigrant? Or you are you know?
Speaker 1: Who are you? What are you? What we're seeing is
Speaker 1: a real collapse of any kind of sense of what
Speaker 1: is benevolence. Benevolence kind of a good will towards man,
Speaker 1: goodwill towards others. You know, some definitions a disposition to
Speaker 1: good to what being of others, according to these dictionary definitions,
Speaker 1: expressed through acts of kindness or generosity. But just I think,
Speaker 1: well than anything, it's just a sense of other people
Speaker 1: are good, They're good for me, other people are beneficial,
Speaker 1: they're beneficial to me. I mean, it really is this
Speaker 1: deep sense of hostility. It's why people. It's the only
Speaker 1: reason you can explain why people can stand around and
Speaker 1: cheer as ICE agents just you know, invade places of
Speaker 1: business and just handcuffed people and pull them down onto
Speaker 1: the ground and drag them out and put them under arrest.
Speaker 1: Whether those people are quote citizens and not citizens, immigrants,
Speaker 1: not immigrants, illegal or legal or whatever you want to
Speaker 1: call them. The relishing of that, the pride taken by
Speaker 1: some people in this activity, the Twitter thing where they
Speaker 1: say this is what I've voted for on the videos
Speaker 1: of this kind of abuse, is a clear lack of
Speaker 1: any kind of benevolence towards those people. Remember, the people
Speaker 1: being arrested, for example, by ice, they're not people who
Speaker 1: violated rights. They might have violated the law, but they
Speaker 1: haven't violated anybody's rights. They've not they've not violated property rights.
Speaker 1: So what we get today and what I think we
Speaker 1: see really everywhere it is kind of a suspicion of
Speaker 1: other people, a distancing and generally and anger at others
Speaker 1: targeted at others, a hostility towards other people, particularly if
Speaker 1: we suspect in the world in which we live today
Speaker 1: that they might belong to the wrong tribe, to the
Speaker 1: other tribe. There's no spirit of goodwill, spirit of benevolence,
Speaker 1: spirit of treating other people as equal to ourselves, as
Speaker 1: human beings, as you know, not knowing anything about them
Speaker 1: as an assumption of that they are productive, good, healthy,
Speaker 1: I mean healthy in the spiritual sense. Traders who benefit
Speaker 1: my life and therefore you know, view them as positive.
Speaker 1: The the the whole attitude of people today is again
Speaker 1: a negative, angry, malevolent view of other people. Malevolent view
Speaker 1: of other people. How does this relate to capitalism? Well,
Speaker 1: I think that capitalism is a system of benevolence. It's
Speaker 1: a system that encourages, nurtures, and sustains it's sustained well,
Speaker 1: it's sustained with ideas, but it's product is benevolence. One
Speaker 1: of the great products of capitalism is a benevolent society.
Speaker 1: It's society way people feel good about other people, where
Speaker 1: they feel good about the relations with other people, They
Speaker 1: feel good about just the existence of other people. It's
Speaker 1: very much the merria can attitude towards social interaction, which
Speaker 1: is benevolent and positive, kindness and generous and even charitable. Now,
Speaker 1: why is that? What's the relationship between capitalism and this world.
Speaker 1: Capitalism is the exact opposite of what call Marks claims
Speaker 1: it is. Capitalism is the first system of government, first
Speaker 1: system of economics, first system of social organization, which eliminates
Speaker 1: the one threat that other people post to you. The
Speaker 1: one threat that people post to you is the threat
Speaker 1: of physical force. That is the one thing that destroys
Speaker 1: human life, destroyers ability to use our mind, destroys ability
Speaker 1: to pursue values, destroys our ability to act based on
Speaker 1: our own judgment. Physical force, violence, I mean, that is
Speaker 1: what's the big challenge that human beings face when they
Speaker 1: form societies, when they come to groups, and you know,
Speaker 1: the primitive way of solving the problem of how do
Speaker 1: I deal with other people who might use violence against
Speaker 1: me is to join a tribe, I mean, tribal society
Speaker 1: was a primitive mechanism by which we try to solve
Speaker 1: the problem of violence. We appoint a leader who responsibility
Speaker 1: is the protection of the tribe from violence. Now, this
Speaker 1: only extends the violence one degree further in a sense
Speaker 1: of tribes now a violence towards each other. And of course,
Speaker 1: by giving the tribal leader too much power, we often
Speaker 1: experience the fact that the tribal leader uses his that
Speaker 1: power to inflict violence on the tribe members. But that's
Speaker 1: the attempt. This is why anarchy it does not work,
Speaker 1: cannot work, because the first thing we do when we
Speaker 1: get into large groups is we try to come to
Speaker 1: arrangements that exclude violence. And if we don't have a
Speaker 1: standard by which to do it, the way we do
Speaker 1: it is through the joining of tribes and the use
Speaker 1: of tribes to inflict violence and on others or others
Speaker 1: on ourselves. It doesn't actually solve the problem. The problem
Speaker 1: of violence is only solved through a massive intellectual feet,
Speaker 1: and that is the discovery of the concept of individual
Speaker 1: rights and the creation of a government who's of a government,
Speaker 1: an institution, a man made institution whose sole purpose is
Speaker 1: to protect those rights. That's the reason it exists. Maybe
Speaker 1: it should have a different name other than government, because
Speaker 1: government has such a bad rap right, but in an
Speaker 1: institution that rejects violence, all violence. So capitalism provides us
Speaker 1: with that kind of government. And therefore the one thing
Speaker 1: you know is that violence will not be afflicted upon
Speaker 1: you in living in a capitalist world. And that is liberating,
Speaker 1: that is truly liberating. That you know makes you want
Speaker 1: to deal with other people in a much more harmonious, benevolent,
Speaker 1: positive way because you know, yes, there's still gonna be cooks,
Speaker 1: there's still gonna be bad guys, but the numbers are
Speaker 1: going to be shrinking because there's an entity responsible to
Speaker 1: catching them, imprisoning them, distancing them from all other interactions.
Speaker 1: So almost all your interactions on a day to day
Speaker 1: basis are ones that are done in peace, ones that
Speaker 1: are done free of violence, and that instills a positive
Speaker 1: sense of the world, that instills a benevolent sense of life.
Speaker 1: You know, it's now easier and more fun and more
Speaker 1: exciting to engage. Whereas if you live in a corrupt
Speaker 1: country even today, and you know the police are not
Speaker 1: enforcing the laws, you know the laws are co upt
Speaker 1: to begin with. You know that, you know, cooks and
Speaker 1: criminals and thoughts dos just bribe their way out of
Speaker 1: whatever laws against them. You don't know who you're dealing with.
Speaker 1: You're always on the lookout. You're always potentially going to
Speaker 1: get screwed. If you live in a war zone, you know,
Speaker 1: violence could erupt at any point in time against you.
Speaker 1: You could be caught in the middle of it. Between gangs,
Speaker 1: you deal with other people with trepidation. You want multiple
Speaker 1: ways in which to secure in the arrangement. If you know,
Speaker 1: for example, that a contract that you sign with somebody
Speaker 1: else is if he in terms of whether it will
Speaker 1: ever be protected by a court, it's if he, because
Speaker 1: somebody might bribe the courts in a different direction, or
Speaker 1: by the police or the government to step in to
Speaker 1: disavow the contract. How can you plan long term? How
Speaker 1: can you engage with other people on a long term
Speaker 1: basis when you know that it all could go up
Speaker 1: and smoke because the use of force is implicitly legitimized
Speaker 1: in that society. The more fraud, the more corruption, the
Speaker 1: more violation of rights, the less your relationship with other
Speaker 1: people is based on this non aggression, this idea of
Speaker 1: non aggression, this idea of peace, this idea of banishment
Speaker 1: of physical force. Physical force now can be used, and
Speaker 1: therefore you act, you behave in suspicious ways capitalism by
Speaker 1: protecting you, by saying no, no other contracts. We've got a
Speaker 1: court system that will protect your contract, your rights. You
Speaker 1: could plan for the very long term because that court
Speaker 1: system is probably not going to change dramatically. The invitation
Speaker 1: of the laws is stable, the protection of your rights
Speaker 1: is stable, and therefore we can plan long term. We
Speaker 1: can interact with one another not as potential enemies, but
Speaker 1: as allies. And the more we interacting with one another
Speaker 1: as allies, as jointly working for some for each own interests,
Speaker 1: but mutually doing it mutually, the more you're going to
Speaker 1: generate goodwill, the more benevolence you're going to have. So
Speaker 1: by banishing physical force. By banishing physical force, capitalism creates
Speaker 1: an environment in which we can deal with the best
Speaker 1: in others, with the best, with the best that they
Speaker 1: have to offer. And as a consequence, we are going
Speaker 1: to make an assumption about most people that we meet
Speaker 1: that they have some value, they have some value to give,
Speaker 1: they have some way in which they make my life,
Speaker 1: our lives better. So the primary way in which capitalism,
Speaker 1: you know, creates an environment of benevolence is by banishing
Speaker 1: physical force. That is number one. But it doesn't just banishing.
Speaker 1: It banishes physical forts not just from our interactions, but
Speaker 1: also for an interaction with the tribal leader, from my
Speaker 1: interactions with the government. Banishes all physical forces. What's another
Speaker 1: way in which benevolence is encourage supported created under a
Speaker 1: capitalist society. Well, it's the very fact that in order
Speaker 1: to achieve anything under capitalism, one has to be a
Speaker 1: value creator. One has to work, one has to produce,
Speaker 1: one has to create something. And the only way in
Speaker 1: which you know that becomes something that sustains us is
Speaker 1: then we trade it. So the very idea that everybody
Speaker 1: in the capitalism is a trader, a value cretor, and
Speaker 1: then a trader means that it's likely that when I
Speaker 1: meet people in the street, when I'm hanging out with people,
Speaker 1: when we're doing stuff together, the people that I'm hanging
Speaker 1: out with unlikely to be parasites, unlikely to be living
Speaker 1: off of other people. That system just doesn't exist in
Speaker 1: a capitalist society where there is no welfare state. I mean,
Speaker 1: we live in a world today where our money is
Speaker 1: taken from us by for us through courgion, and then
Speaker 1: redistributed to who knows whom, and some it's redistributed to
Speaker 1: some people who just don't work, some people who are
Speaker 1: just completely parasitical on those who do. But it's also
Speaker 1: distributed to some people do some work because somebody in
Speaker 1: higher ups decided that what they do has more value
Speaker 1: than what other people do call it subsidies. I mean,
Speaker 1: when you met business leaders, farmers, how many of them
Speaker 1: are being subsidized? How much of their value creation is
Speaker 1: artificial versus real. We live in a world in which
Speaker 1: the dollar, the money that we have, is constantly being
Speaker 1: inflated away, its value constantly changing. We live in a
Speaker 1: world in which there are moochas and parasites. And it's
Speaker 1: not clean in any kind of sense. It's not clear
Speaker 1: where the line is. It's not like, Okay, those people
Speaker 1: over there, they're that, and then these people. Everything's mixed up.
Speaker 1: This is the mixed economy. There is no clean line
Speaker 1: because everybody is intertwined with what the government is doing,
Speaker 1: with the redistribution of wealth, with the regulations, with the controls,
Speaker 1: and therefore it's not clear who's the value creator, how
Speaker 1: much value is creating, how much that value is worth
Speaker 1: to me? In the world in which we live today,
Speaker 1: contracts are not invulnerable, you know, they can be violated.
Speaker 1: We're not exactly sure how the courts are going to
Speaker 1: treat them, or how Donald Trump is going to treat
Speaker 1: a fraudster who he could pardon on a whim and
Speaker 1: and and therefore re enter society and commit fraud. Again,
Speaker 1: we're not really protected from those people. I mean, we
Speaker 1: live in a world in which it's very hard to
Speaker 1: tell the value creator, the real trader, from the mucha
Speaker 1: and the looter, which means that to some extent, all
Speaker 1: their interactions are done with a lot of trepidation. And
Speaker 1: you can see that by the way in a lot
Speaker 1: of the contracts you sign. I mean, you get a
Speaker 1: mortgage contract. You ever signed a mortgage contract, it's like
Speaker 1: five hundred pages long, all in language you don't understand.
Speaker 1: You never read it. Nobody reads a mortgage contract. You
Speaker 1: go and you read where they're real. That tells you
Speaker 1: you have to read you know, the interest rate and
Speaker 1: the down payment and the things that have immediate monetory impact.
Speaker 1: But you're signing a thirty year contract and you don't
Speaker 1: read it because there's no way to read it. There's
Speaker 1: no way to read it and understand it, comprehend it.
Speaker 1: And the reason for that is the regulations, the controls,
Speaker 1: and all the overlays of distrust that exists in the
Speaker 1: system that are imposed one on top of the other
Speaker 1: and create one on top of the other that make
Speaker 1: it impossible to have a trust of benevolence with the
Speaker 1: institutions that you're dealing with. You don't know if it
Speaker 1: ever went to court, what's actually in there, and whether
Speaker 1: you'll be in the right or the wrong. I mean
Speaker 1: you can kind of estimate. So benevolence is destroyed by
Speaker 1: the mixed economy. The mixed economy encourages us, as we've
Speaker 1: talked many, many times on the show. It encouraged us to,
Speaker 1: you know, to try to figure out which group, which gang,
Speaker 1: which tribe we should join in order to try to
Speaker 1: access the goodies being handed out by the government, the
Speaker 1: stuff that the government is taking from some to give
Speaker 1: to others. Well, how can we get in on that.
Speaker 1: Inland has a great lecture, really encourage you to listen
Speaker 1: to it. It's it's online as part of Inland Instruye
Speaker 1: Campus AI Campus. It talked about I think it's called
Speaker 1: a nation's unity, a nation's unity, and she describes what
Speaker 1: happens to kind of a benevolent neighborhood, a neighborhood where
Speaker 1: you know, you like some of your neighbors and you're
Speaker 1: kind of nice and friendly to them, and you don't
Speaker 1: like others. You don't like other your neighbors so you
Speaker 1: just ignore them. But everybody basically lives in peace and
Speaker 1: in harmony. But once the mixed economy gets involved, then
Speaker 1: some of your neighbors might be organizing, you know, to
Speaker 1: to to tax you, or to regulate you, or to
Speaker 1: or to re educate your kids, or to do something
Speaker 1: that offends you that you you must fight against. Other
Speaker 1: neighbors might be doing, you know, some other kind of
Speaker 1: political or community activism that might attack you in a
Speaker 1: different perspective. And given that they all now have power,
Speaker 1: they all have now the ability to use physical force,
Speaker 1: i e. Use government force. It is very difficult to
Speaker 1: maintain that benevolence nice atmosphere in a government. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can understand why the right hates the left so much.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's completely understandable when people want to take
Speaker 1: away your stuff and redistribute it to groups that they
Speaker 1: hold dear and that you don't know anything about and
Speaker 1: don't care for and don't want to be involved. And
Speaker 1: you know, if you want to do charity, you can
Speaker 1: do charity yourself, or more than that, if they want
Speaker 1: to take your money and they want to impose on
Speaker 1: your kids a type of education and ideas. Let's say
Speaker 1: about gender that you find offensive. They go against your principle.
Speaker 1: But given that all kids go to be a government schools,
Speaker 1: what choices do you have? But now somebody else is
Speaker 1: imposing their values on you without you having any kind
Speaker 1: of real say in it. So what happens You start
Speaker 1: resenting those people. I mean, it's fascinating that they ultimately
Speaker 1: would really cause people to get upset at the left
Speaker 1: when not it's socialist almost communist ideas about economics, but
Speaker 1: it's ideas about culture. That's interesting. But it's the same
Speaker 1: since they can impose those ideas by force. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're you're making it possible for me to pursue my values.
Speaker 1: You're imposing your values on me, and people get upset,
Speaker 1: and when they get upset, they look for allies. How
Speaker 1: am I going to fight this? I can't fight it alone.
Speaker 1: I mean, the whole point of democracy, is the whole
Speaker 1: point of you know, a majoritarian democracy, is we form
Speaker 1: groups and we need voting blocks. We need numbers. It's
Speaker 1: all about numbers, and therefore we have to join tribes
Speaker 1: in order to get our way, in order to in
Speaker 1: order to defend ourselves. Again, it's almost like we're returning
Speaker 1: we're voting back to old tribalism, the tribalism of ten
Speaker 1: thousand years ago. We need a tribe in order to
Speaker 1: protect us from these forces that in their values on us.
Speaker 1: I mean, none of this happens in a capitalist economy.
Speaker 1: If somebody wants to teach I don't know, radical crazy
Speaker 1: gender stuff in school, well you pull your kids out
Speaker 1: of that school and you send them to another. You
Speaker 1: get to choose the school your kids go to, and
Speaker 1: there's competition between those schools, and those schools have to
Speaker 1: appeal because of competition to at least they have to
Speaker 1: make the case for you to send your kid and
Speaker 1: your dollars to them, and therefore they have to appeal
Speaker 1: to you in one way or another. Under capitalism, you know,
Speaker 1: private owners and bathrooms can label exactly who they want
Speaker 1: in the bathroom and who they don't want in the bathroom.
Speaker 1: It's simple private property. And if you don't like it,
Speaker 1: don't go to that establishment with those bathroom rules. It's
Speaker 1: the abandonment of capitalism that makes any one of these
Speaker 1: cultural issues an issue of coursion. It makes it an
Speaker 1: issue of for us. It makes it an issue of
Speaker 1: the imposition of values on you. By the way, if
Speaker 1: you want to ask a question, Superchat is open. Very
Speaker 1: little super Chat is going on, so please be free
Speaker 1: to We've got very few We've got three questions. So
Speaker 1: but when I'm finished speaking, the show's over. So if
Speaker 1: you want richer, longer, more content in the show, ask
Speaker 1: us a chat question's that's how you get it. And
Speaker 1: I see people have questions in the chat. The way
Speaker 1: to get me to answer them is put them in
Speaker 1: the super chat. You can do it for two dollars,
Speaker 1: five dollars. It's pretty cheap to get me to answer
Speaker 1: a question, So do it. Do it. So most of
Speaker 1: these issues are issues of Most of the issues that
Speaker 1: people get upset about not only really issues because we
Speaker 1: lack private property, because we lack capitalism. It makes the economy,
Speaker 1: destroys that. It makes the economy in which the government
Speaker 1: owns a lot of private a lot of property. It
Speaker 1: makes the economy in which the government owns a schooling
Speaker 1: owns a healthcare where the government decides on you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Let's take another controversial issue, vaccines, where
Speaker 1: people hate each other over vaccines. It's very simple. In
Speaker 1: a free market, you don't want to vaccinate your kids,
Speaker 1: don't vaccinate your kids. Private schools will then have vaccination policies.
Speaker 1: Some private schools will require vaccines. Other private schools maybe
Speaker 1: won't qui vaccines, and you'll seguegate. But more than that,
Speaker 1: I mean, they might be private parks that requires your
Speaker 1: kids be vaccinated. I don't know. But the point is,
Speaker 1: once you take away government ownership, once you take away
Speaker 1: all decisions made through the democratic process, but now you
Speaker 1: elevate property rights the way they need to be as
Speaker 1: an essential right that needs to be protected. A lot
Speaker 1: of these disputes, a lot of the angst, a lot
Speaker 1: of the disagreement ultimately goes away, and benevolence can fill
Speaker 1: in the gap because at least you know that this
Speaker 1: person over there, you might not agree with them, you
Speaker 1: might have different values, but they do not have the
Speaker 1: ability to impose day values on you. They do not
Speaker 1: have their ability to impose day values on you. And
Speaker 1: that's that's huge. That's the difference between benevolence and lack
Speaker 1: of benevolence. If I'm living in a society where all
Speaker 1: around me people can impose their will on me, they
Speaker 1: can use force to impose their values on me, I'm
Speaker 1: always afraid, and I'm always scared, and I'm always angry,
Speaker 1: and I'm always worried, and I don't trust anybody. But
Speaker 1: if I know, my interactions with everybody else again free,
Speaker 1: free of imposition of force, benevolence. Treating other people, you know,
Speaker 1: with the assumption that their value create is is natural.
Speaker 1: It's just part of it. And look, one of the
Speaker 1: greatest evils of call Marks, maybe the worst thing the
Speaker 1: car Markus did, of all the things that he advocated for,
Speaker 1: in all the things that he uh you know, talks about,
Speaker 1: probably the most evil of them, the most destructive of
Speaker 1: all of them, is the idea of exploitation, the idea
Speaker 1: that people who voluntarily agree to a employment contract are
Speaker 1: somehow being exploited, that the managers and the capitalists are
Speaker 1: inherently exploitative of the workers. I mean, think of how
Speaker 1: much you know suspicion and and and angst that has
Speaker 1: created over time, that people hold that and believe that
Speaker 1: they resent going to work, employers worried and cautious, and
Speaker 1: how they deal with employees. And of course we've to
Speaker 1: loge extent institutionalized that in the mixed economy, with all
Speaker 1: the label laws, all these label laws are basically created
Speaker 1: under the assumption of exploitation, and that makes the whole
Speaker 1: employee employee relationship tenuous and filled with suspicion and instead
Speaker 1: of harmonious driven by value creation. Marx could not see
Speaker 1: this essential in capitalism, which is the traded principle, the
Speaker 1: idea that one is providing value for value in voluntary transactions,
Speaker 1: again in the absence of fraud and the absence of error,
Speaker 1: their mistakes. We all make mistakes, but in the absence
Speaker 1: of error and in the absence of fraud, the reason
Speaker 1: we engage with other people, the reason we engage in
Speaker 1: transactions with other people, is because we're gaining value. We're
Speaker 1: giving value, We're gaining value. We're trading value for value,
Speaker 1: win win relationships. That's the employee. That's true with you,
Speaker 1: you know, in contracts, that's true in you know, going
Speaker 1: into store and buying something. Once we understand that these
Speaker 1: relationships are fundamentally trade of relationships, value for value, win
Speaker 1: win relationships, it changes the entire dynamics, you know, negotiation.
Speaker 1: And we want to negotiate because we want to try
Speaker 1: to benefit ourselves the most that we can, but we
Speaker 1: have no interest in the other side losing. We have
Speaker 1: an interesting benefiting the most that we can't, given that
Speaker 1: the other side is trying to do exactly the same thing.
Speaker 1: And then we settle on the right price, on the
Speaker 1: right wage, on the right level. But we do so
Speaker 1: in a benevolent, goodwill kind of way, under the assumption
Speaker 1: that I don't have to do this. I can walk away.
Speaker 1: I don't have to buy your stuff, I don't have
Speaker 1: to come to work for you, and I don't have
Speaker 1: to employ you. That knowledge that we can walk away,
Speaker 1: that knowledge that prosion cannot be placed upon us, that
Speaker 1: physical force we cannot be forced, like in feudalism, where
Speaker 1: you are forced to be on the land, you were
Speaker 1: forced to work, you were forced to do what your
Speaker 1: law told you. Businessmen are not lords. You can leave,
Speaker 1: you can resign, You can go in and negotiate a
Speaker 1: higher wage, and you know, if you don't get it,
Speaker 1: and if you feel strongly about it, you leave, you
Speaker 1: design or you can be fired if the you know,
Speaker 1: the business person doesn't believe that you're adding value. So again,
Speaker 1: the whole premise of capitalism is voluntary exchange, win win transactions,
Speaker 1: the trade of principle. We trade for everything, and that
Speaker 1: is that is an unbelievably benevolent principle. Think about think
Speaker 1: about the idea that every transaction in the world in
Speaker 1: a free society is at least intended to be when
Speaker 1: when intended to be value creating for both parties, For
Speaker 1: all parties involved in a transaction, the contract is not
Speaker 1: meant to screw you. It's meant to benefit you and
Speaker 1: benefit the other party. That's an incredibly benevolent system under
Speaker 1: which to live. And every time we move away from that,
Speaker 1: anytime we allow physical force to enter into our relationships
Speaker 1: with other people, anytime we allow redistribution of wealth, even
Speaker 1: a little bit regulation, even a little bit government in position,
Speaker 1: government subsidies, government controls, government ownership. Anytime we allow that,
Speaker 1: we chip away at the idea of a traded principle.
Speaker 1: We chip away at the idea of voluntary exchange. And
Speaker 1: therefore we chip away at win win. There's no win
Speaker 1: win when you pay your taxes. There's no win win
Speaker 1: when the government forces you to fill out, you know,
Speaker 1: one hundred different forms in order to get a business license.
Speaker 1: There's no win win when you have to go through
Speaker 1: years of government bureaucracy in order to get your product approved.
Speaker 1: It's lose lose throughout. Maybe some party wins in the
Speaker 1: short run, but everybody loses in the long run. So
Speaker 1: capitalism is the system of benevolent It's a system of
Speaker 1: good will between men. It's a system of harmony. It's
Speaker 1: even the system of unity. Were united under a principle,
Speaker 1: the principle of individual rights, the principle of the banishment
Speaker 1: of physical force, and any move away from that, any
Speaker 1: you know, attack by using force on our values is
Speaker 1: an attack on benevolence, is an attack an ability to
Speaker 1: have these kind of relationships with other people. So a
Speaker 1: fight for capitalism is not just a fight for wealth.
Speaker 1: It's not just a fight for you know, material values.
Speaker 1: You know that would be a lot, But it's also
Speaker 1: a fight for benev elevalent kind of life, a life
Speaker 1: where we view other people as allies, as trading partners,
Speaker 1: as people who add to our lives. It's a fight
Speaker 1: for benevolent society, a benevolent world. Socialism is a system
Speaker 1: of malevolence. Socialism is the system where the majority can
Speaker 1: vote away all of your rights at any point in time.
Speaker 1: Socialism slash democracy, real democracy. Majority rule is a system
Speaker 1: that can that others can take away your stuff at
Speaker 1: any point in time. That mixed the economy is somewhere
Speaker 1: in between. But the mixed economy always leans towards the
Speaker 1: socialism because it leans towards the democracy. Since rights are
Speaker 1: no longer a principle, They're only going to a road.
Speaker 1: You're only going to have less of them, and they're
Speaker 1: going to erode in the direction of socialism or one
Speaker 1: form or another of other groups gangs, collectives, tribes taking
Speaker 1: over your stuff, and that that is only going to
Speaker 1: generate angst and suspicion and fear and anger and malevolence.
Speaker 1: Socialism is a system of malevolence, and the mixed economy
Speaker 1: is a mixture of a lot of malevolence and growing
Speaker 1: malevolence and some benevolence. And this is the world in
Speaker 1: which we live. I mean, the world in which we
Speaker 1: live is a world worth growing malevolence. I mean of
Speaker 1: tribalism again, tribalism people gang up in tribes as to
Speaker 1: some extent, as a way to protect themselves from other tribes.
Speaker 1: Now it's it's a self fulfilling loop. Right, everybody forms
Speaker 1: a tribe and that only makes things worse. And you
Speaker 1: have to form a tribe just to protect yourself from
Speaker 1: the other tribes, and that creates other tribes, and it's
Speaker 1: there's no end to it. But we you know, all
Speaker 1: the angst that were feeling today, all the all the hatred,
Speaker 1: all the anger. To a large extent, this is a
Speaker 1: cause is caused by the disappearance of freedom, the disappearance
Speaker 1: of capitalism, the disappearance of private property. Private property is
Speaker 1: an over you know, arching principle that applies to everything,
Speaker 1: to healthcare and education. And you know why is there
Speaker 1: a housing crisis because a lack of private property. So
Speaker 1: you know that the reality is that today when we
Speaker 1: see debates going on between left and right and all
Speaker 1: these groups, they almost never talk about capitalism. They never
Speaker 1: talk about economic freedom. But the reality is that economic freedom,
Speaker 1: particularly properly understood as the protection of property rights, the
Speaker 1: protection of individual rights, and a shrinking role for government
Speaker 1: to just do that, a limitation of what government can
Speaker 1: and cannot do. That's the solution to almost all the
Speaker 1: problems that we have out there, all the cultural problems,
Speaker 1: all the economic problems, all the social problems, I mean,
Speaker 1: go away, not all of them, right, You still need
Speaker 1: to have a proper understanding of individual rights, so you
Speaker 1: can protect an abortion, the right of people to invite
Speaker 1: foreigners into the country or to immigrate into the country.
Speaker 1: I mean, those issues don't go completely away without a
Speaker 1: really good definition of individual rights. But just moving to
Speaker 1: a limited government, moving to the idea, I mean, the
Speaker 1: idea of limiting government control on the basis of individual
Speaker 1: rights solves almost every problem that we have out there
Speaker 1: and creates a society it has benevolent and friendly and
Speaker 1: positive and filled with love and generosity. And that anger again,
Speaker 1: the anger is driven by fear, and the fear is
Speaker 1: not completely irrational when physical force is all around us.
Speaker 1: All right, you should fight for capitalism because it is,
Speaker 1: among other things, the system of benevolence. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: a system that just makes life so much easier and
Speaker 1: so much better to live under. And all these things
Speaker 1: that people are obsessed about. I don't know what was it?
Speaker 1: Something reading our You know, why do you care unless
Speaker 1: it's forced on you, unless your course to participate. That
Speaker 1: causion is what we must eliminate for our lives. All right,
Speaker 1: Thank you, guys, I appreciate you being here. We are
Speaker 1: almost at the end of the first hour. We're about
Speaker 1: almost one hundred dollars short of our first hour goal,
Speaker 1: so please consider if you want me to do more
Speaker 1: of these Saturday shows and shows on capitalism and its application.
Speaker 1: We'll get into economics, we'll do social stuff, will do
Speaker 1: a bunch of different things. Then it has to be
Speaker 1: worth my while, so remember two fifty an hour is
Speaker 1: the way to make it worth my while. You can
Speaker 1: also support this show as a trader of value for
Speaker 1: value by signing up a Patreon to become a monthly
Speaker 1: support of the show, which is incredibly valuable. And or
Speaker 1: please consider doing that. Let's see what else. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: we'll just we'll stop there. We'll take some of your
Speaker 1: questions and oh wow, Troy just stepped in with five
Speaker 1: hundred Australian dollars. Thank you, Troy. That that really helps
Speaker 1: in terms of the making for our second hour goal.
Speaker 1: So I appreciate that, Troy. That's that's fantastic and thank you.
Speaker 1: Thank you. All right, we got a few stickers Troy,
Speaker 1: thank you in particular. But let's see, we've got a
Speaker 1: Nature Observer, thank you. We've got Catherine thank you, and
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Miller and Cepy Milking which I think is Jonathan
Speaker 1: Honey and Greg Lewis, thank you guys, really really appreciate
Speaker 1: the support and that is that is great. All right,
Speaker 1: let's jump in with your super chat questions and if
Speaker 1: they're particular topics around capitalism that you would like me
Speaker 1: to address, So particular topics around capitalism you'd like me
Speaker 1: to address, uh, then send me an oates. You can
Speaker 1: do that on you're on at your on bookshow dot com.
Speaker 1: You're on at your on bookshow dot com. I will
Speaker 1: and I will address those issues in the future shows
Speaker 1: on capitalism. Also, I want to remind you that I'm
Speaker 1: interested to see if they're if there are people in
Speaker 1: Austin or people willing to come to Austin in the
Speaker 1: first week of February to participate in a half day
Speaker 1: seminar with me, so let me know. It could be
Speaker 1: public speaking, it could be the rules for life, how
Speaker 1: to be a better how to live a self interested life.
Speaker 1: It could be just a you know, kind of a
Speaker 1: live session, four five hour Q and a there is
Speaker 1: a there's a bunch of different ways different a bunch
Speaker 1: of different topics we can we cover in doing this,
Speaker 1: but please consider doing that. And but you need to
Speaker 1: let me know if you're interested in coming, So dropping
Speaker 1: an email you're on at yourn bookshow dot com or
Speaker 1: text me on Twitter or something to let me know
Speaker 1: that you're interested. Either you live in Austin or you're
Speaker 1: willing to come to Austin. The price is going to
Speaker 1: be somewhere between five hundred and seven and fifty for
Speaker 1: the half day, depending on how how many hours we
Speaker 1: count half day is. But yes, let me know so
Speaker 1: I know if to plan for that and start organizing
Speaker 1: it and everything. I need to start making lists of
Speaker 1: names of people actually willing to commit you run at
Speaker 1: your run brookshow dot com. All right, Chasbat fifty dollars,
Speaker 1: Thank you. Chasbat was ted striker on an airplane. A
Speaker 1: hero or buffoon? Here's the guy who successfully landed the
Speaker 1: plane after the pilots were incapacitated. Well, I mean he's
Speaker 1: he's a buffoon in the end, right, I mean to
Speaker 1: the extent that he succeeds in landing the plane. It's
Speaker 1: all luck. He's only heroic and that he's willing to
Speaker 1: even take the initiative. He's willing to try. But everything
Speaker 1: else is buffoonery. The whole situation is buffoonery. He is
Speaker 1: a buffoon. I don't think a movie like that has
Speaker 1: heroes in any meaningful sense. A hero is somebody who
Speaker 1: is in a sense self determined. It's somebody who is
Speaker 1: driving the plot, who is making decisions that drive the
Speaker 1: plot forward. And you know, there's very little of that
Speaker 1: in airplanes. So I think we have to really think
Speaker 1: carefully about what a hero is. It's not enough to
Speaker 1: show bravery or courage in artwork. It's that you are
Speaker 1: moving things forward, that you are engaged in a struggle,
Speaker 1: in a real struggle, but that it is a struggle
Speaker 1: that you have initiated that if or not if you
Speaker 1: have initiated, but you are driving, you are pushing yourself.
Speaker 1: It's your decisions that matter. And it's very difficult to
Speaker 1: create heroes in a comedy because you're on the one
Speaker 1: side of a hero and you're constantly making a fool
Speaker 1: of him. Well, there's nothing heroic about a fool, so
Speaker 1: it's very difficult. I don't think you can have a
Speaker 1: comedy with a real hero. I think the whole point
Speaker 1: of a comedy is to make fun of certain characteristics.
Speaker 1: Sometimes a lot of comedies are there to make fun
Speaker 1: of heroes. It's one of the things I don't like
Speaker 1: about many comedies is, for example, Blazing Saddles. The whole
Speaker 1: point of Blazing Saddles is to make fun of the
Speaker 1: of the model of a hero in a Western. It's
Speaker 1: to make fun of the whole, the whole conception of
Speaker 1: a hero in westerns. So I comedies are great if
Speaker 1: they're not making fun of something really good. The comedy
Speaker 1: should be making fun of something insignificant, of something bad,
Speaker 1: but not of the good, of the good in the good,
Speaker 1: which is I think, what what to logic extent in Sattles,
Speaker 1: for example, does all right? Thank you, Chez batt Andrew,
Speaker 1: I know I should read ominous parallels. Can you give
Speaker 1: the twenty dollars answer to how German culture became right
Speaker 1: for nihilism of Hitler? I mean, yes, it's it's what
Speaker 1: we talked about yesterday, a question you asked about the
Speaker 1: connection between between content nihilism. It's it's a culture that
Speaker 1: took cont seriously. They took cont seriously in the sense
Speaker 1: of the detachment of their own reason from reality, in
Speaker 1: a sense that morality was about pursuing duty, and given
Speaker 1: that they couldn't find the kind of categoricy competatives. Inside
Speaker 1: their mind, it was just a matter of who would
Speaker 1: provide the categorical imperatives that we must do out of
Speaker 1: a sense of complete and utter duty, with no thought
Speaker 1: to own well being or to any kind of reason
Speaker 1: based sense of what is right, what is just? What
Speaker 1: is mom And if you combine that with I don't know,
Speaker 1: let's say Hegel's emphasis on statism, on the nation, on
Speaker 1: the nation as the be all end all, as the primary,
Speaker 1: as what we should all be sacrificing for, and therefore
Speaker 1: the what do you call it, the the thing we
Speaker 1: should sacrifice too, the thing that determines how duty. If
Speaker 1: you combine kind of content with Hegel, I think what
Speaker 1: you get is is kind of a Nazi kind of
Speaker 1: mentality that is devoid of any kind of sense of
Speaker 1: individual value, any kind of sense of individual pursuit of
Speaker 1: values to the individual, things that are important to the individual.
Speaker 1: And what you get is a commitment to pursuing duties
Speaker 1: and to doing whatever you are told in the name
Speaker 1: of the nation, the state, the race, the collective, which
Speaker 1: is kind of straight out of Hegel. You are you know, Hegel,
Speaker 1: You're ultimately just a pawn for some larger agenda, bigger
Speaker 1: than yourself, And how are you going to argue against
Speaker 1: that when we have made it impossible utive to reference
Speaker 1: reality in your argument. So the combination of I think,
Speaker 1: the combination of contin hegel basically eviscerate the individual. Eviscerate
Speaker 1: the individual. And then it's the question of who fills
Speaker 1: the gap. And in Marxist case, what fills the gap
Speaker 1: is the politarian and in the Nazis case, what fills
Speaker 1: the gap is the Arian race or the German nation
Speaker 1: or the state. So you get that kind of you know,
Speaker 1: Nazi nihilism right out of the philosophy that that came
Speaker 1: out of it and looked alternative that the Germans were
Speaker 1: we're facing with was the complete subjectivism of the vioument
Speaker 1: of republic, which is also a consequence of cont which
Speaker 1: since we don't have categoric competatives, anything goes and then
Speaker 1: there's no more standard, there's no truth. We've separated a
Speaker 1: reality from our senses. There's no authority to tell us
Speaker 1: what the truth is. Certainly the authority is not ourselves,
Speaker 1: it's not our senses, it's not reason, but it's not
Speaker 1: other people either. It's just whatever so what you get
Speaker 1: is a left in the standard characterizations where anything goes,
Speaker 1: where you get a hedonism and nihilism of the left.
Speaker 1: And that is not sustainable, that can't survive, That can't
Speaker 1: we stand. Then somebody coming and say, no, your life
Speaker 1: does have purpose, your life does have meaning, and that
Speaker 1: purpose and the meaning come from you sacrificing, fulfill in
Speaker 1: the blank, God, the Church, your neighbor, the proletarian, the furor,
Speaker 1: the arian race, the nation. And that's how you get
Speaker 1: all these different horrific forms of Viihilism, all these different
Speaker 1: horrific ideologies, you all get them from the same source.
Speaker 1: You detached. Once you detach morality from reason, you detach
Speaker 1: morality from reality, you make it impossible to link morality
Speaker 1: to reality or to link it to reason. Then really
Speaker 1: anything goes, anything goes. And then it's just a question
Speaker 1: of which dogma of people are going to follow, the
Speaker 1: dogma of the state, the dogma of the proletarian, the
Speaker 1: dogma of Christ. Which dogma do they fall? And you know,
Speaker 1: then argument becomes which dogma is least harmful, which dogma
Speaker 1: kills fewer people? But they all kill, all of them,
Speaker 1: kill all of them. Are destructive to human beings as individuals,
Speaker 1: and it turns out as groups cure. Poland banned the
Speaker 1: Communist Party of Poland. What do you think about this?
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's wrong to ban a political
Speaker 1: party in the context in which we live, where there
Speaker 1: is no physical threat of communism, so not agents of
Speaker 1: fun power that is trying to invade. I don't believe
Speaker 1: you should ban a communist party. I don't believe you
Speaker 1: should ban a Nazi party. I don't believe you should
Speaker 1: ban any politics until it becomes violence, until they're literally
Speaker 1: using force. But just the political ideological advocacy for force
Speaker 1: is not incitement for violence, is not a reason to
Speaker 1: violate somebody's free speech or freedom of association. So I
Speaker 1: would be against against it for the same reason I'm
Speaker 1: not for, you know, banning religion, even though religion least
Speaker 1: to force, you know, whatever that religion is, unless it's
Speaker 1: a religion that is engaged in active violence against me.
Speaker 1: Right now, Islamism, for example, you can ban Islamism, jihadism,
Speaker 1: ISLAMI to Telitumanism because it is actively engaged in violence
Speaker 1: against us. Jennifer says, it's so sad the lack of
Speaker 1: imagination nowadays, how could private roads work If people had
Speaker 1: been liked that in eighteen hundreds, we never would have
Speaker 1: accomplished anything. That's absolutely right, you know, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: it is important for us to be able to articulate
Speaker 1: the case for private roads and for private testy companies
Speaker 1: and four private sewer systems and private water systems. Because
Speaker 1: people have such you know, poor imaginations, we at least
Speaker 1: need to be able to articulate kind of the principles
Speaker 1: by which they should work, and imagine a few scenarios
Speaker 1: in how they work. But it's pretty pathetic that this
Speaker 1: is the thing that really gets them, this is the
Speaker 1: thing that upsets them. I mean, the first canals, the
Speaker 1: first road roads, the first bridges were all built by
Speaker 1: private enterprise and only then monopolized by government. But what
Speaker 1: about the poor, oldand asks, Well, the reality is, and
Speaker 1: I know he's kidding, but the reality is that the
Speaker 1: poor better off under capitalism than any other system. The
Speaker 1: poor better off under a benevolent system, a system in
Speaker 1: which there are plenty of work. They get paid based
Speaker 1: on their productivity, not based on this skin color enough,
Speaker 1: based on their nation of origin, not based on their
Speaker 1: immigration status. Not based on you know, who their parents were.
Speaker 1: They get based on their productive ability and a benevolent
Speaker 1: society in which when bad things happen, when we are
Speaker 1: out of luck or whatever, we live in a benevolent
Speaker 1: society in which people are much more likely to be
Speaker 1: charitable and which much more likely to be helpful, in
Speaker 1: which they're much more likely to assist us, assist the poor,
Speaker 1: and not resented because they're doing it voluntarily, as compared
Speaker 1: to the welfare state where we do it. But we
Speaker 1: kind of we're not happy about the office there, we're
Speaker 1: not happy about our taxes, we're not happy about how
Speaker 1: they're spent. We resent it. So the poor better off
Speaker 1: because they live in a much more benevolent society and
Speaker 1: a society in which they have many, many, many more
Speaker 1: opportunities to raise themselves up. Thank you orland zg whatever
Speaker 1: rung schlang my first super chet ever. Keep thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you, Keep up the great work. We
Speaker 1: need more rationality and you're leading the way. I'm trying.
Speaker 1: We'll keep going and I appreciate the super chat. Lincoln.
Speaker 1: How does their pollution work under capitalism? It's simple for
Speaker 1: land and water pollution because private owners want to keep
Speaker 1: it clean. But you can't divvy up the sky intersections
Speaker 1: and sell them off like you can with a plot
Speaker 1: of land lake. Well, there's some extent you can, right, So,
Speaker 1: if I live in a plot of land and somebody
Speaker 1: is doing something somewhere and through the air, pollution is
Speaker 1: coming to me, and let's say it's blackening my lawn,
Speaker 1: it's dropping on my lawn and making it black, then
Speaker 1: if I can find the source of that pollution, I
Speaker 1: can sue them for violating my property rights. Or if
Speaker 1: what they're spewing out into the air is clearly harmful
Speaker 1: to my health, then again I can sue them demanding
Speaker 1: that they stop or they move their factory further away
Speaker 1: from people so that they don't, you know, affect the
Speaker 1: health of the people breathing in the air that they
Speaker 1: are producing the pollution that they are producing. There are
Speaker 1: other cases where that where it's impossible to do that. So,
Speaker 1: for example, the pollution generated by all automobiles on the road,
Speaker 1: there's nobody to sue, there's nobody to go after. Now,
Speaker 1: if the pollution is such that it's really killing people,
Speaker 1: then I think the state has a rule to step
Speaker 1: in and say Okay, you can't use that pollutant. It's
Speaker 1: literally killing people. But if the pollutant is just reducing
Speaker 1: the quality of life people have, then people can either
Speaker 1: suffer it or move. I mean, one of the real
Speaker 1: options that existing life is, and I keep emphasizing this,
Speaker 1: is to move. You don't have to be stuck. You
Speaker 1: don't like the pollution in La Move to Montana. There's
Speaker 1: no pollution in Montana. Or move to northern California north
Speaker 1: of you know, anything north of the Golden Gate Bridge
Speaker 1: is pristine, beautiful and no pollution. So there are a million options.
Speaker 1: And part of one of the options you have is
Speaker 1: to move away from the pollutants. If that pollutant doesn't
Speaker 1: have a particular singular source, that pollutant is just necessary
Speaker 1: for progress, for civilized life. So you know, those are
Speaker 1: the options you have. You have to clearly define the
Speaker 1: harm and clearly define the source of the harm. So
Speaker 1: I don't think it's that hard to do. Stephen Hauffer,
Speaker 1: not a lot of questions, guys. So if you'd like
Speaker 1: to ask questions, if you have questions on anything on
Speaker 1: the topic we discussed today or anything else, please feel
Speaker 1: free to jump in anytime. We will end when the
Speaker 1: questions end. Oh but yeah, thought of a detail in
Speaker 1: Atlas during this show, the composer in Gold's gulch tells
Speaker 1: Dagni his concert is twenty five cents, and she laughs
Speaker 1: as if to say, of course life should be this simple. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's a trade and it's benevolent, and you
Speaker 1: want to pay for the stuff that you get. I mean,
Speaker 1: when you get stuff for free, it should make you
Speaker 1: a little uncomfortable, and you want to charge for the
Speaker 1: values you produce because you value your own life and
Speaker 1: your own time. It's a trade. So yeah, that is
Speaker 1: a beautiful scene because life in the valley is super
Speaker 1: simple because it's all out in the open. It's all explicit,
Speaker 1: a lot of what we take as implicit, and all
Speaker 1: the garbage is just not there. There's no underlying guilt,
Speaker 1: there's no underlying assumption that people are trying to exploit
Speaker 1: other people. I mean, that benevolence that we talked about
Speaker 1: during the show today isn't Gold guilt in spades, because
Speaker 1: they've created this community where they all, you know, not
Speaker 1: only share values, but physical forces just unaccepted and they
Speaker 1: are all under the premise an assumption of voluntary trade.
Speaker 1: Win win. They're all on the traded principle, and it's
Speaker 1: explicit that they're all on a trader principle. Let's see
Speaker 1: what I want to say. Yeah, I want to remind
Speaker 1: you of a few things. Remind you again, if you're
Speaker 1: interested in one of the one of the programs for Austin, Texas,
Speaker 1: let me know. Remind you also that I'm going to
Speaker 1: be at a Florida conference at Rands Day, the Rands
Speaker 1: Day Confidence in the last weekend in January, and you
Speaker 1: should come. It's going to be a blast. It's going
Speaker 1: to be a lot of fun. I will be speaking,
Speaker 1: There'll be a bunch of other people, lots of time
Speaker 1: to socialize, lots of time to hang out. Last year,
Speaker 1: I was sick at the beginning of the conference, and
Speaker 1: you know, didn't have a lot of time to socialize.
Speaker 1: This year, hopefully I won't be and and so I'll
Speaker 1: be there and hang out. Lincoln asked, what day in February.
Speaker 1: What day in February is what Austin. Yeah, at this point,
Speaker 1: just send me an expression of interest. Austin is probably
Speaker 1: the fourth of the fifth of February. Fourth of the
Speaker 1: fifth is February. Yep, not probably those are the dates.
Speaker 1: It's either the fourth or the fifth of February would
Speaker 1: be in Austin. All right, so yes, so rains Day
Speaker 1: you can find information about just by going to ransday
Speaker 1: dot com. I think you can find information about the
Speaker 1: conference on that website. I'm just gonna Ransday, don't come
Speaker 1: put it into the browser. Yeah, just go to the
Speaker 1: bottom of that page and you'll see Ramsday Weekend Confidence
Speaker 1: and click on that and you can get that. I
Speaker 1: think prices to attend go up at the end of December,
Speaker 1: so sign up now, and yeah, it'll be a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. And you know, you should come and engage
Speaker 1: in person with with other objectivists. There's you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's fun to do superchats. It's fun to do
Speaker 1: by video and interact by video, but in person beats
Speaker 1: all of that so much more fun. All right, let's see, Richard,
Speaker 1: in a pure capitalist system, how would you separate state
Speaker 1: from economics. Well, by the very fact that the state
Speaker 1: has no economic policy. There's no view about what interestrate
Speaker 1: should be. I think Trump said yesterday that interestrate should
Speaker 1: be below one percent? Like why by whose standard? Who
Speaker 1: gets determined. There's no setting up prices, there's no setting
Speaker 1: up wages, there's no regulating, there's no controlling. So separate
Speaker 1: state from economics is the government passes law to protect
Speaker 1: property rights. It doesn't pass laws that are preventive laws.
Speaker 1: But it only passes law that deals with real risks,
Speaker 1: real dangers, real violations or potential real potential violations of rights.
Speaker 1: It doesn't tax it in terms of compulsory taxation. It
Speaker 1: doesn't regulate. It doesn't control economic activity in any sense
Speaker 1: other than those things that are necessary for the government
Speaker 1: to function. So it enters the market to buy those
Speaker 1: things that it needs to provide the protection for individual rights.
Speaker 1: It's establishes buildings properly, you know, places, nests, say, for
Speaker 1: the protection of rights. That's it. But there's no involvement
Speaker 1: in the economy beyond that. And again it doesn't have
Speaker 1: a position on economics. It's not Keynesian, it's not Austrian.
Speaker 1: It's not free market, not free market. It's hands off.
Speaker 1: There's no federals of the Only thing it cares in
Speaker 1: terms of money is it accepts a certain denomination of
Speaker 1: money in it, you know, you know, to fund itself.
Speaker 1: But that's it. So it's just not involved in our
Speaker 1: economic decisions. Again, and except for those the spenditship money,
Speaker 1: the buying of products, the you know, the securing of
Speaker 1: manufacturing necessary for the protection of individual rights. So you know,
Speaker 1: in a war, it would buy a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: and in you know, promote the manufacturing weapons systems and
Speaker 1: all this stuff, because it was doing that not for
Speaker 1: the purpose of any kind of economic manipulation, but for
Speaker 1: the purpose of protection of individual rights and a sign war,
Speaker 1: for the protection of raising up for the purpose of
Speaker 1: raising an army and defeating an enemy. Andrew Rand strongly
Speaker 1: agreed that the great philosophical divide is between between Plato
Speaker 1: and Aristotle, is that the difference between primacy of consciousness
Speaker 1: or existence. Was Aristotle opposed to Plato or did he
Speaker 1: build on Plato? Yeah, I mean it's it's it is
Speaker 1: the primacy of consciousness existence, but it's primarily epistemologically. It's
Speaker 1: where does where does knowledge come from? For Astola comes
Speaker 1: from our census, and it comes from from using our
Speaker 1: reason to observe the world and to integrate the facts
Speaker 1: of reality and to induce from it. And for Plato,
Speaker 1: knowledge basically comes from a phone of revelation. He calls
Speaker 1: it reason, but at the end of the day, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a phone of revelation. Uh so it's it's
Speaker 1: primarily apistemological. Now in morality again, I think Astola is
Speaker 1: much more focused on the individual's well being, an individual's happiness,
Speaker 1: and what the individual must do to achieve that happiness.
Speaker 1: And Plato has the seeds of collectivism already there. So
Speaker 1: that but the primary is I think a pistemological And
Speaker 1: there's an implication of this metaphysical difference. Was Aristot opposed
Speaker 1: to Plato? Did he build in Plato? I think both right.
Speaker 1: He definitely opposes Plato on some issues, and he builds
Speaker 1: and Plato on others, and he embraces certain ideas of Plato.
Speaker 1: So he's not a clean break. One of the great
Speaker 1: meeknesses is that he doesn't quite have the right epistemology.
Speaker 1: So he ironmand is the first real clean break from Plato,
Speaker 1: and Aristotle doesn't fully do it. Now, I'm not an
Speaker 1: expert enough to be able to tell you exactly where
Speaker 1: and what and so on. I encourage you to These
Speaker 1: are the kind of questions that are good when a
Speaker 1: philosopher is here to ask them about that, But yeah,
Speaker 1: he does this both. Paul, do you think the crackdown
Speaker 1: on Spanish speaking truckers results from the rights as you know,
Speaker 1: phobic and tribalistic tendencies. Yes, I absolutely think that that's
Speaker 1: the case. I mean, who cares if the truckers they
Speaker 1: make a big deal out of a few cases that
Speaker 1: are horrible, But horrible cases exist for non Spanish speaking
Speaker 1: truckers as well. So yeah, this is part of their
Speaker 1: anti immigration, anti multiculturalism, anti everybody different than I am
Speaker 1: tendencies on the right, and they're looking they're looking for
Speaker 1: any kind of example to paint, you know, people who
Speaker 1: look different than them, people coming from other cultures, to
Speaker 1: make them look bad, to make them look like they
Speaker 1: are disaster to human life, American life, you know, our culture.
Speaker 1: What else did I want to say? There was something
Speaker 1: else I wanted to remind you of, but I think
Speaker 1: it has slipped my mind. We talked about the Florida Confidence,
Speaker 1: we talked about Austin. By the way, you know, for
Speaker 1: those of you in the UK, I'm thinking of doing
Speaker 1: the same thing in London. You know, we've already done
Speaker 1: a seminar in public speaking in London. We've done one
Speaker 1: on how to be a rational egoist. I'm thinking in
Speaker 1: London on the last weekend of February of doing a
Speaker 1: half day seminar which is kind of a kind of
Speaker 1: a Q and a a ask Me Anything type thing,
Speaker 1: but live in person with a small group where we
Speaker 1: just go back and forth and you can follow up
Speaker 1: on your questions and on any topic you want, and
Speaker 1: maybe four or five hours of that on a Saturday afternoon.
Speaker 1: So if you're interested in that again, drop me an email.
Speaker 1: You're on a your on bookshow dot com so London
Speaker 1: and Austin. This is your call to action London and Austin.
Speaker 1: If you're interested in attending events like this, jump in. Oh, Andrew,
Speaker 1: thank you. I wanted to remind you of tomorrow's show.
Speaker 1: Tomorrow's show is a member's only show, so you have
Speaker 1: to be a member. You can become a member by
Speaker 1: clicking on clipping on the member button on here on YouTube.
Speaker 1: So it's only YouTube members, not Patreon, not what do
Speaker 1: you call it? PayPal? Only YouTube members. That's why I
Speaker 1: encourage you to do membership data at the minimum level
Speaker 1: five dollars, because many of you are already supporting the
Speaker 1: show in other places. So do just five dollars, just
Speaker 1: see you become a member, and tomorrow will do a show.
Speaker 1: It'll either be at one or two pm Eastern time.
Speaker 1: I'll let you know tomorrow. It'll be on Iinman's essay
Speaker 1: The Missing Link, which is one of her most brilliant essays.
Speaker 1: So it's the essay The Missing Link. So check it
Speaker 1: out and you can read it. You can find it online,
Speaker 1: and then join us tomorrow for the show. All right,
Speaker 1: Lincoln to quote from a song for my mom's favorite
Speaker 1: band called the Band is no Doubt. Oh it's my life.
Speaker 1: Don't you forget? It's my life. It never ends, it
Speaker 1: never ends. That's good. That's good. Your mom has a
Speaker 1: good sense of life. Lincoln also says, will legiop ever
Speaker 1: be able to leave Christianity even in the sixties Goldwater
Speaker 1: pretended to be Christian for political benefits, And it's even
Speaker 1: worse today. Yeah, it's much worse today. I don't know.
Speaker 1: EVA is a long long time, but not in my lifetime.
Speaker 1: I can't see them leave Christianity. Dia drevn hell sing whatever.
Speaker 1: What led to the Great Depression? I mean, that's a
Speaker 1: big question. You know, I've got an economists on Monday evening.
Speaker 1: We're going to be talking about economics. We're going to
Speaker 1: talk about the late nineteenth century, about capitalism, about tariffs.
Speaker 1: But this would be a great question to ask him,
Speaker 1: if you can make it. It'll be a seven pm
Speaker 1: Eastern time, just ask this question, what led to the
Speaker 1: Great Depression? I mean, I'll tell you what I view
Speaker 1: has led to the Great Depression? What led the Great Depression? Primarily,
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of a lot of bad policy, right, so,
Speaker 1: you know, just a lot of bad policy when Hoover
Speaker 1: was around, you know, doubling the income tax or raising taxes,
Speaker 1: let's put it that way, raising tariffs, trying to regulate
Speaker 1: business and control business. And then you know, FDR embracing that.
Speaker 1: Another element of the Great Depression is an unbelievably irrational
Speaker 1: structure of our banking system in the United States, you know,
Speaker 1: so a very rational banking system. All of those contributed,
Speaker 1: but the main thing that led to the Great Depression,
Speaker 1: the thing that caused the Great Depression is really bad
Speaker 1: federers of policy. Federals of policy, the cause banking crisis
Speaker 1: because of the bad banking structure just spiraled out of control.
Speaker 1: But you know, eighty percent of the Great Depression is
Speaker 1: a federerserve that basically kept the money supply tight, way
Speaker 1: too tight, much tighter than a free market would, causing
Speaker 1: banks to withdraw their lending capacity and force businesses to
Speaker 1: go under in an attempt to pay back their debts,
Speaker 1: which forced people to lose their jobs and for it
Speaker 1: not to consume stuff, which caused businesses to go under,
Speaker 1: which then they couldn't pay the banks money. And since
Speaker 1: the FED was tight in the monetary policy, money just
Speaker 1: got sucked out of the economy. It just disappeared. And
Speaker 1: now in capitalism, in a free banking system, all of
Speaker 1: that is self correcting. But when you have a central planner,
Speaker 1: when you have one central entity respons responsible for it all,
Speaker 1: there's no self correction, there's no mechanism to fix it.
Speaker 1: And so without the FED, and if you have a
Speaker 1: truly free banking system, there's no Great depression. There's no
Speaker 1: great depression. It's unlikely there's a nineteen twenty nine stock
Speaker 1: market collapse, but there's certainly no great depression. A great
Speaker 1: depression caused the Federals have caused the Great Depression again
Speaker 1: because the banking system was in many respects broken. They
Speaker 1: might have been. There might have been some problems they
Speaker 1: might like in nineteen oh seven. They might have been
Speaker 1: some businesses going bankrupt. There might have been some banks
Speaker 1: going out of business. It might have been all that,
Speaker 1: But that's because of a badly designed banking system against
Speaker 1: central planning. But it would have self corrected. You would
Speaker 1: have had some pain, it would have been relatively short lived,
Speaker 1: and it would have everything would have been fine, just
Speaker 1: like in nineteen oh seven. The reason this could spiral
Speaker 1: into a great depression which lasted arguably for fifteen years
Speaker 1: until the end of World War two. The cause of that,
Speaker 1: the reason for that is the federalism Lincoln. The School
Speaker 1: of Athens painting in the Vatican is a wonderful showing
Speaker 1: of this. Plato points the sky, Aristotle points down to it. Yes, Aristotle,
Speaker 1: I mean people understood this doesn't take objectives. Don't understand
Speaker 1: this that Plato is about that world, the other world
Speaker 1: in which you get revealed truths, and Aristotle is about
Speaker 1: this world, this world ism Plato. You know, it's why
Speaker 1: Christianity is ultimately Neoplatonists. It's an adaptation of Plato and
Speaker 1: the counter to Christianity as Aristotle. All right, all right,
Speaker 1: final question, looking forward to seeing the statue of David
Speaker 1: in person while I'm in Italy over spring break. Hopefully
Speaker 1: it's as wonderful as you say. No, it's much more
Speaker 1: wonderful than what I say. It is, much much more.
Speaker 1: That's great. You know that's spring break is in a
Speaker 1: few months. That'll be fantastic. All right, guys, thank you
Speaker 1: really appreciate the support. Don't forget to email me you
Speaker 1: on at your on bookshow dot com if you have
Speaker 1: any interest in face to face seminars either in Austin,
Speaker 1: Texas or in London and so I can start organizing those.
Speaker 1: Thank you again to Troy in particular for his five
Speaker 1: hundred Australian dollar sticker. Thank you to all the super
Speaker 1: chatters and all the sticker providers. I will see you
Speaker 1: tomorrow if you're a member, and on Monday if you're not. Bye,
Speaker 1: but you've got time to become a member. Bye, everybody,