 Thank you all for being here. It's great to see so many new people who are maybe not familiar with Iron Man, not familiar with your ideas and maybe I think what I should do is maybe give you kind of a brief summary of who Iron Man was and you know maybe just a touch of your ideas before we get kind of into the topic of the relationship with those ideas to capitalism. So I'm just gonna give you a brief bio if you will, a fast bio of Iron Man. Iron Man was born in 1905 in Russia to a middle-class Jewish family. She literally witnessed the beginning of the Russian Revolution from the balcony in St. Petersburg and lived under the Soviet Union under communism for her teenage years. In the early 20s she managed during a small window of opportunity that Lenin left open to leave the Soviet Union supposedly to go do research in the United States that everybody I think knew she would never come back and showed up in the US basically with nothing. She had some family members in Chicago that she visited but then she headed to Hollywood. She was in love with American movies. She loved American film. She goes to Hollywood, her first day in Hollywood, she goes to the Ceasabee DeMille Studios, I don't know if you know Ceasabee DeMille was but a famous Hollywood director at the time, producer director and you know she goes she has a letter of introduction and they say don't call us we'll call you you know you wash off. She walks out and there's Ceasabee DeMille sitting in his big convertible and he's driving by and she's this little Russian woman she just she stares at it because here's Ceasabee DeMille so he stops the car and he says why are you looking at me like that and she tells him I'm here from Russia just like I want to know about the movies I want to work for you he says get in the car so she gets in the car he takes it to the back lot of it was not like that he took it to the back lot where he was filming the King of Kings the story of Jesus Christ and he said well if you want to get into the movie business you better know how movies are done he has a pass you know you can come watch how this movie is being made she landed up being an extra on the movie she landed up meeting her husband on the movie set and for the rest for the next 30 years really of 20 years she worked in Hollywood she worked in Hollywood in the wardrobe department in all kinds of different nods and ends jobs but her goal was to be a writer and she landed up writing scripts for Hollywood her first book was We the Living which was the most autobiographical of her books it's about life in the Soviet Union what's that like it's a wonderful novel I recommend recommend it strongly to everybody to read it was published in the early 1930s in the United States and everybody said ah that can't be what communism survived communism is wonderful we just visited the Soviet Union everything's beautiful right this is the intellectuals in New York in the 1930s so the book did not do it she published a little novella called Anthem also didn't the Americans didn't want to publish it at all she landed up publishing it in the in Britain the United Kingdom a couple of years before 1984 very much a similar style book in terms of a dystopian little dystopian novel again highly recommend in 1947 she came out 1945 she came with a famous book the fountain cat which was rejected by 12 publishers and finally published they probably they did a small one of the book but it caught fire it became an instant bestseller word-of-mouth bestseller they weren't immediately into printing more copies and that was a huge success she made she did phenomenally well in the fountain head moved she was living in California she moved to New York and she spent the next 12 years writing this book in English her really her man so close which was probably 1957 this time 12 publishers competed who would get to publish the book she interviewed publishers to see which one would get it immediate bestseller the main thing about this book is it sells more copies today than it did in 1957 when it was first released which is unprecedented in publishing that doesn't happen so 50-something years after publication it's selling more copies than when it was a bestseller in 2009 out of short so half a million copies in the United States which is a stunning number the book is now translated into every major every major and minor many minor languages I think it's a three different Indian languages we really knew we were successful and finally after many many decades the French decided to translate it so it's now in French since last year so we know we've arrived I ran then turn this was probably 57 60s or 70s writing nonfiction writing philosophy the essay that the constant just read from who was part of that she wrote books like the virtue of selfishness capitalism not known ideal philosophy who needs it which is the book the constant was reading and many others so she wrote philosophy she wrote commentary on current events she wrote newsletters she spoke on campuses she spoke all over the United States radio television you go to YouTube and you put I man's name and you can see how and Johnny Carson I know how many of you know who Johnny Carson is a remember but Johnny Carson did late night television it was very very good see I'm filled down at you and a number of different shows that we interviews so you get get a little sense in those little video clips of what kind of a what kind of a woman she was I highly recommend that in addition to reading she died in 1982 and the Institute was founded that founded in 1985 so what's her philosophy about Simon believed that and you kind of get a glimpse of the questions he asked so the first question she asked is where am I and in a sense it's a question we all should out where am I here I'm in reality and it's real so she starts in metaphysics if you will by saying reality is what it is it's real it's here and I don't invent it I don't make it up it's not what I feel like it can be it's not you know primacy of consciousness it's primacy of reality really comes first and then the second question was how do I know well how do you know is because you have a tool for knowledge which is reason we know what reality is because we have senses we have a mind which is our tool for knowing reality and we know it so she doesn't believe in the primacy of emotions or a privacy of our knowledge comes from mystical revelation no knowledge come from our senses and our reasoning mind who has reason well you do as an individual all of us as individuals can reason have the ability to reason a competent enough to now I'll tell you more about a philosophy in a minute so I just want to give you that background a sense that to clarify the question that we asked but let me get into a free market revolution and we'll kind of tie in her philosophy into that as we go along and if I'm speaking too fast and let me know if somebody wave at me and say slow down you're on a cost so if we look at history if we look at the last 250 years one of things that we one of things that we discover is that that mankind has really in a very intense focused way if you will run this massive experiment of the last 250 years we've experimented in which political economic system work and which political economic systems don't work and when I say work what I mean is which systems produce wealth human well-being longevity highest standard of living so which economic system produce material well-being really for everybody in those societies and we really over a short historical span managed to try lots of different things for better and for worse we tried the closest we've ever come to free markets to capitalism now when I say free markets free of what what do I mean by free markets free of what I can't hear you free of the state free of regulations free of control free of government okay so a government is not controlling regulating manipulating so we got close to free market say in the 19th century and we saw the results the results for a dramatic rise in standard of living a massive creation of wealth poor people rising into the middle class during a short span I know if you've ever seen this graph there's a famous graph of kind of income per capita over human history and it looks like this you state starts out 10 000 years ago and it and it goes like this it's flat and flat and flat and we goes a little bit like the Roman Empire and dark ages but it's basically around three dollars a day is what income was for all of human history pretty much until something happens and then it goes like that like that I have to get away to and what that is is free market that turning point is sometime in the late 18th century I like 1776 America's founded but what else happens in 1776 what book is published in 1776 Adam Smith's worth of nations is published in 1776 so it's a nice nice symbolic date if nothing else right and wealth goes like that so free markets we've tried them and what we get is massive quantities massive creation of wealth we've also tried the other extreme we've tried complete status whether it was communism or fascism we tried it and we know the results death destruction poverty that's the consequence you know we've tried communism over many many years and we know what happened you guys know what happened because it happened right across the street in a sense very very close so we know this extreme we know this extreme and then we've tried lots of mixtures in between some free markets lots of status and lots of control lots of controls or or liberty controls lots of free markets we've tried kind of all kinds of mixtures in between and you can plot the results on a graph and basically the graph will show you that the more economic freedom you allow people the greater the wealth the better the outcome for the poor the higher the standard of living and there are indexes like this that are published and you can plot the graph and you can see it so this is the question if that is true i think it is and i think it's pretty evident that it is why are we in the west so committed it's a status why are we in the west so committed to always moving towards more status and less free markets certainly in the united states this has been a long term trend for a hundred years the united states used to be pretty free market in the 19th century and since the early part of the 20th century has been moving away from free markets towards more and more status and i think we have to ask the question why and it's not even that you have to learn history to see this relationship between freedom and economic prosperity you can see in the world we live in today to travel a little bit if you go to hong kong anybody here being to hong kong you guys should all go to hong kong once in your life you should visit hong kong it's an amazing place to hong kong 70 years ago it's a little fishing village 20 30 40 000 people lived there today's seven and a half million people live on this rock it's an island no natural resources has nothing on it except that when the british took it over they established the rule of law they put together they respected property rights and they left people alone and boom people from all over asia came in they swam if they could they were in a raft they went on old boats that have sunk just to get to this place no safety net no socialized medicine no you know retirement lucrative pensions nothing promised except they were left alone to be entrepreneurial to create a business to build something to keep the rewards seven and a half million people live on this island gd people capital gd people capital an estimate of their income their wealth higher than germany equal to the united states no natural resources tiny little places more skyscrapers than new york and one of the reasons they have so many skyscrapers is because they're wealthy but also because how do you fit seven and a half million people in such a small space you have to build high so you can see the success and you can cross over into china 30 years ago if you've crossed over into china what you would have seen is devastation what you would have seen is the consequence of collectivism starvation nothing and then what china did about 1978 79 80 is that area close to hong kong they said this area we're going to experiment we're going to leave them alone we're going to withdraw we're going to see what happens and you today cross over from hong kong into this part of china and there's not a big difference skyscrapers industry people have moved it from all over china they've come into this area close to hong kong and it is amazing tens of millions of people are now middle class who used to be starving in the fields of rural china when government steps back and leaves people alone protects property rights to extent that china does respect contracts rule of law boom you get enormous amount of industry creativity wealth standard living twice and you can see it with your eyes this is not hard stuff more people have risen out of poverty in china in the last 30 years because a free market where they've allowed them that in any period in human history hundreds of millions of people this is stunning and yet we in the west choose to ignore all that to pretend it doesn't happen and to grow our governments and to increase our welfare and to increase welfare state and to increase our regulations and to increase controls and to limit the sphere of freedom more and more and more in the economic realm and it's not even that we don't understand why markets work i mean we do this is my one positive point about hayek right hayek's a great economist a fantastic economist explains to us how markets work how prices are such beautiful things that they allow for clarity of supply and demand and how all this happens in a beautiful way to create the wealth so we know this from vameez's and hayek and both freedmen there's no shortage of great economists we'll explain these things to us so we have the economic facts we have the economic theory we have history on our side those of us who believe in free markets and we're still losing if you believe in free markets you're losing i mean china you might be winning but here in the west where we live we're losing so why why are we losing and this i think is is is iran's you know this is where iran's philosophy enters because iran says it's not about economics it's not about history people don't vote they pocket people don't vote what they think or make them money what people want is to believe that they're good they want to believe that they're fair believe that they're right and there's something about free markets that we find morally ethically offensive wrong we don't like because what are free markets about what are markets any market what is it about for why does Steve Jobs wrong i think use this why does Steve Jobs make one of these real question why does he make it you can say yeah but what's how's that reflected you're jumping ahead what's that yeah he's trying to make money right right he's trying to make money these things have huge profit margins right 65 percent the first like from here a lot of money but it's not just about money what else why else is it making news what's that competition but competition is competing to make money right but there's more Steve Jobs didn't get up in the morning and say every morning say i'm going to go out and make more money right i mean it's part of it but that's how we're motivated every day to go to work why did he do it well that's the outcome but do you think i don't think that motivated him that everybody else knows what motivated him creepers party for the people and you think he's got up every morning and said i want to make i want to make other people better off i doubt it yeah passion he loves this he loves it right he loved going to work he loved creating beautiful things he loved creating beautifully technological things right beautiful technology that's what he was about so for Steve Jobs this is about money but more than that it's also about passion beauty aesthetics great technology innovation but at the end of the day this is for Steve Jobs about whom you said it about Steve Jobs this is about Steve Jobs he made this for himself i mean we are benefit from it and because he wants to make money he sold it to us this is about Steve Jobs now when i bought my first iphone it was 2008 and the economy was spiraling out of control going down my maker was heading towards a recession and i wanted to stimulate the u.s economy so i went to buy an iphone because i know all of you go shopping because you care about your fellow man you want to make sure people have jobs all those people in the mall they have to have employment and if you don't buy stuff they lose their job here right of course not right why do you go shopping to make whose life better your own you're going shopping to make your life better you go shopping to benefit yourself to increase your productivity by buying an iphone or to buy nice clothes because you look good but it's about you so what's the marketplace about what's the marketplace about buying stuff for yourself and this guy is selling things for himself and what is it so it's all about the pursuit of what social well-being yeah it's about self interest markets about self interest markets about people going and selling and buying for themselves i mean adam smith in 1776 wrote about this in the wealth of nations he said the baker doesn't bake the bread because he cares about you he doesn't know you he doesn't care what i order about you he bakes the bread to make a living for himself he might enjoy baking but he's trying to make money so he can feed his family he can feed himself make his life better and the guy who sells you the bread doesn't care about you he'll smile he'll smile because that might increase the sale but he's not smiling because he loves you he doesn't know you so people come into the marketplace every marketplace to try to make their lives better for self interested reasons marketplace is a place in which we pursue our self interest and yet what do we be taught about self interest from when we were this big what did our mothers teach us self interest is what yeah it's not good self interest is not good it's not moral it's not just it's not ethical what is ethics what is ethical we're taught what did our mothers teach us is everyone altruism and altruism means what yes be interested in the well being of others but really placing the well being of others above your own well being so giving others the primacy that's what altruism means it means you should act for the sake of other people and indeed some philosophers have even said that if you think in your mind oh i'm helping this person i'm gonna feel good about it it doesn't count as it as moral anymore because morality is about being self less about self denial self you know making yourself disappear it's about other people that's what morality is about it's about sacrifice what does sacrifice mean giving getting one in return nothing or something less valuable the whole point is to lose in a sacrament no you have it again yeah we expect but to the extent that we expected the accident is not moral if we do it because we we want to get something in return it's not moral then we're trading what's a trade i give something up and expect one in return what do you when you trade i buy the iphone i gave three hundred dollars i got an iphone why did i give three hundred dollars up how much is iphone worth to me if i paid three hundred dollars for it then you think it's equal if it was equal i wouldn't care but i really want the iphone and i'm happy to give the three hundred dollars because the iphone's worth worth more than three hundred dollars to me and when you trade it's not equal if you buy a loaf of bread for two dollars a loaf of bread is worth more than two hundred two not exactly two dollars when i buy the iphone the iphone's worth more than three hundred for me not exactly three hundred i wouldn't have gotten out of bed right i had a good effort i had to put my hand in my pocket and get the money out so i get something more valuable than what i gave up i gave up three hundred dollars i get an iphone apple gets something more valuable than the iphone to them three hundred dollars is more valuable than this because they make a profit so who so you see the difference between a sacrifice and a trade is it a trade you give up something and you get something more important to you in a sacrifice the whole idea is to give something up and not to expect to get anything back i mean in the background there's this religious notion that something good will happen but if that's the reason then it doesn't count as good you have to do it out of a sense of duty out of a sense of obligation because it's the right thing to do and that's what our mother's teaches so we have a moral system that says be selfless sacrifice don't expect anything in return do for the sake of doing for other people everything's centered around other people and we've got an economic system that's focused on what people pursuing there self-interest now you've got to clash there those things don't match morality says be selfless free market says pursue your self-interest and the morality of selflessness said people who do self-interest is a bad thing right self-interest is bad it's not wrong so we've got an immediate clash and what i mean says is when you have that kind of clash between morality and between economics morality always wins people vote what they think is right what they think is good what they think is noble and what economics is consistent with the idea of being selfless with the idea of sacrifice well what does that mean it means serving others right so others might be they might be poor people who need our help they need food they need medical care they need whatever right it's our moral obligation to provide it but we're too self-interested to do it because we're too busy in the free market doing our stuff so we're not giving them all the help that we should according to the morality of selflessness so the government steps in and says hey you guys aren't doing enough you're not living up to your moral standards we're going to help you be more moral by taxing you by taking your money and giving it to them and we all go okay good makes me feel good my tax is higher those people are taking care of i don't have to worry about them anymore so redistribution of wealth the whole welfare state is built on the notion that it's moral it's just it's right to sacrifice one group people who have money who've created money created wealth have a high standard of living to sacrifice them towards people who don't have that's what the morality of altruism the morality of sacrifice tells us is noble and just and good so you can't complain about it we can argue about you know how much and so on but you can't complain about the principle of it because the morality that we all accepted as a culture says it's right it's good it's just to redistribute wealth it would be wrong not to is what the morality the marco addicted and if you argue but look free markets they they they raise the standard of living higher it doesn't matter what's important is what you're doing to help those people that's what's moral that's what's noble that's what's just so we give up some economic freedom we give up some economic growth we give up some economic war beam we give up on the wealth creation we even give up on really and the poor doing better all in the name of sacrificing one group for the sake of another group all in the name of what we think is moral and just and good so i believe that the whole welfare state is based on a morality of altruism and this morality of sacrifice that's that that's the fundamental why it's so appealing it why it grows it why it never goes away but it's not just the redistribution of state it's also the regulatory state that i think is based on this moral that controls the regulations that dictate to you how to run your business what kind of business you can open when you can open it how you do it who you can employ when you can fire them all of that is regulations now why do we have a regulatory state well think about the notion we have a free market and free market to understand that the businessman is self-interested right Steve Jobs is self-interested it's about making money he's about his own passion love for the product right so he's self-interested but what also do we associate with self-interest so it's bad but in what way is it bad what do we associate with what behaviors do we associate with people with self-interest what do they do why is it bad it's not just that they don't care about the people what what do they do to other people yeah they exploit them so in our mind self-interest is connected to the idea of exploitation of lying stealing cheating doing whatever it takes to get your way taking advantage of other people bad stuff so we have self-interest associated associated with exploitation with lying with stealing just being bad and self-interest associated with businessmen and the two modes and our whole conception of businessmen in the west at least in america every businessman's a crook my mother also taught me this by the way she said nobody makes a million dollars about cheating lying and stealing there are crooks because clearly businessman of self-interest clearly we be taught that self-interest is lying cheating stealing being a crook being exploitative the two of us and what do we have to do if we know a whole group of people are really crooks what do we do we need to watch them we need to try to control them we need to make sure they don't have opportunities to screw us right so i i like the example in the united states you walk into an elevator right and on the elevator on the wall there's a little diploma and the diploma says this elevator was inspected by a government bureaucrat it won't fall and kill you and i go because in a free market people who built elevators would build lousy elevators that kill their customers right because the way to make money in a free market is to kill your customers we laugh but that's the assumption behind most regulations why do we have food inspectors we have food inspectors because we believe we all believe this that if we didn't have food inspectors mcdonalds would poison us they already are they would poison us because the way for mcdonalds to make money is to make us all sick i mean that makes no sense but if what we believe if we didn't have labor regulations every employer would tie his employees to machines and whip them three times that's what we believe that's how you get the most productivity out of people right that's how you make money off of people is by whipping them so we need the government inspectors to come in the government regulators to come to protect those poor employees from those mean nasty self-interested line stealing sobs of business so a perception of morality a perception of morality guides a perception of economics if we believe those people need to be taken care of and it's a model obligation it's a model duty it's a model imperative then it's fine to sacrifice some other group in order to facilitate that help and then if we look if we look at people if we conceive a businessman is self-interested and we have already conceptualized self-interest is a bad thing then these people must be bad so we have to control them we have to regulate them we have to look over their shoulders on everything that they do and that's the regulatory state and that states isn't right that's the modern state redistribution and regulation and both are driven by this morality of altitude and what happens to the people to the psyche of the people themselves who engage in this process because most people in the world in the western i mean they live their day-to-day lives how altruistically or self-interested leave what i mean what dominates hey today what's that yeah most of us live our lives we're trying to make money for ourselves we're trying to buy nice things in the store we're trying to have a decent life a nice life a good life right and yeah and in particular think a businessman who really out there trying to make money and try to succeed and do well and yet what are we taught that is good is selfless right sacrifice and what happens when you live one way that you're taught that you should live another and you believe that you should live another what emotion does that create insight guilt guilt and guilt is an incredibly powerful way to control people to get them to agree to be regulated to get them to agree to be sacrificed because they feel guilty this is an american in america again this is where i know businessmen are all feel guilty and the most successful they are they're more guilty they feel the older they are they're more guilty they feel i attended once this award dinner lifetime achievement awards and charleston south carolina this is one of the most conservative places in america so you can't blame these guys for being leftist right very conservative and they read these long buyers very businessman who got this achievement for big big deal and the first minute first minute of the biography is their business achievements you know companies they build the next nine minutes of their introduction their community service and charity that's guilt guys these guys spend most of their time on their business most of their achievement in their life is around business they built something they created something they employed people they changed the world in which they lived through their business we all do through our business it's what we really contribute to our lives to making our lives better but also to other people we employ them we trade with them we change the world when we do business and yet they get zero moral credit for it indeed they get negative moral credit they feel guilty about it stay gone and have to do community service and charity not because they love community service and charity but because it reduces their guilt for being profit seeking businessmen and there's nothing wrong with community service and charity it's just not that important it doesn't build economies it doesn't build societies they don't create anything it helps a few people here and there fine i'm not against it but that's not where you get your your your value as a human being that's not what's important to life it's what you build it's what you create it's what you make of your own life that's important you would think i mean i'd like to give the example of you know the united states in 1776 was a third-rate colony the british almost didn't fight it wasn't that important by 1914 it was the strongest industrial military force of the planet that didn't happen because of charity and community service it happened because of business it happened because of production it happened because people went out they can make money to be self-interested and poor people from all over europe many many many germans emigrated to america and generally the people who left europe to come to america were poor and ignorant and uneducated my answers because the jews were all poor ignorant and uneducated yes they were they finished little stittles in poland in russia they knew nothing and they worked hard and they built something and they succeeded without any safety net without anything not the state providing for them without anything just because they were willing to work hard they were willing to invest in what they were doing so i ran what i ran says is that that is what's driving the world this morality is what's killing the world it's the drove us towards collectivism it's what drove us to those regimes that were anti-capitalist or the opposite of capitalism it's what drives us away from free markets and it's still to this day prevents us from embracing capitalism full embracing free markets full morality drives our behavior and she says what we need to do is reject that morality not because of economics but because of a key question why is your life less important than other people's lives why should you sacrifice for those in need why is they need a claim against you why is they need to cry your sacrifice what is it about you that's not as good as them and she said that's completely upside down the whole point of morality should be she says to teach us how to live how to succeed how to be happy how to flourish how to prosper in that sense she harkens back to avastar avastar who's whole moral theory is about how does individual human beings achieve flourishing how do you achieve success how do you achieve happiness that's what morality should teach us not how to diminish ourselves not how to live for other people but how to live for ourselves so rand's whole morality more code is about self-interest what is it how do we achieve it how do we use the values how do we pursue the values that will lead us towards success and towards happiness so she rejects the whole notion of altruism as a moral code the whole idea of living for other people she rejects the purpose of life is to live for yourself it's to be happy it's to be successful it's to prosper it's to flourish as a human being and then really the question then is what leads to that what kind of value should i pursue to make myself happy what are the values that we as human beings should pursue to lead to success it's not automatic we don't know how to be successful automatically as the history of the world suggests to us there's nothing automatic we have to figure this stuff out and what is the tool for figuring you know what is what makes what is it that makes us uniquely human what is it that provides us with the knowledge to live a good life well as you know as a purely physical animal we're pretty pathetic if you look around the room we're slow we're weak we have no fairings we have no claws we're just physically not up to the task of living outside so we build buildings and we build computers and we design clothes and we develop sophisticated mechanisms to get us through and how do we do that what's the tool that allows us to do all of that education education is a step forward right what's that knowledge yes but what is the tool we want to explore yeah a reason ultimately it's a reason that leads to knowledge we have to open our eyes we have to see we have to observe we have to be willing to look at the example there we have to we're willing to look at our instruments we have to be willing to look at the sky and to the aliens and to figure it out and to decide the judge are they friendly are they not are the instruments working are they not is the sky the earth sky or is it an alien planet we need to be willing to look we need to be willing to engage our mind we need to be willing to think and only thinking people can get an education only thinking people have knowledge knowledge comes from thinking and that leads to innovation and I mean think about think about the clothes you wear where the clothes come from where the clothes originally come from well today they come from about a building yes yes people actually working for a living and producing our clothes today but who invented clothes some person 10 000 years ago figured out that when he's skin and animal and he treats the leather in a particular way you can create clothes but he was a genius and use this we don't have the gene for making clothes we need to use our minds to figure out how to make clothes somebody had a build factories even in Bangladesh and I know you think the people in Bangladesh have been exploited for making our clothes oh some of you might some of you might not but the people in Bangladesh are making these clothes as a trade you might think it's a bad trade but that's easy for us in the west to sit back and think that they're making a bad trade but they're engaging in a trade they're giving up their time they may be even risking their lives to work in some of those factories they are risking their lives right but they're getting something in return and that's something in return is worth the risk for them otherwise they wouldn't do it they could go back to the farm yes they could it's a lousy life but that's my point these are alternatives they face they're not your alternatives they're not my alternatives but the alternatives they face in Bangladesh are they could go back to the farm which is lousy or they could work in a factory that's also lousy but the factory is slightly better than working in the farm so they will need to work in the factory what we want to do in the west is make it so expensive to build a factory in Bangladesh that nobody would buy it nobody would build and they'd have to go back to the worst lousy condition which is on the farm and it won't matter to us we'll pay a few more cents for our clothes we'll still be middle-class and we'll be comfortable and we'll be pleasant but those people will die much more than what they're dying in factories they'll die of starvation in the farm they're making a choice and you want to tell them how to live trade is choices we might not understand some people's choices we might not even agree with some people's choices it's their choices nobody put a gun to their back if somebody had that's immoral that's wrong so back to uh back to where we get our values reason our mind so fine range fine morality is about thinking morality is about using your mind using your reasoning mind to figure out how you should live what you should do what success means for you how to flourish in this world it's about being rational so she talks about rational self-interest rational egoism but she also says the only kind of egoism is rational egoism the only kind of self-interest is rational self-interest because it's never in your self-interest just to do stuff out of emotion out of whim out of the moment because your emotions are not tools of cognition this goes back again to why we need philosophy your emotions won't tell you if you're on the right planet or if those things are aliens or they're people you need your mind to be able to do that so it's not about happiness it's not about high it's not about snowing the cocaine it's about lifelong achievement it's about lifelong flourishing that's what leads to happiness so ran is for rational self-interest and what is the enemy of reason what is the enemy of the human mind emotion and not exactly an enemy right because emotions a you control and you can change you can change emotions you've never changed your emotions have you never fallen in love with somebody and then fallen out of love with them sure you do i'll give you an example maybe it didn't happen exactly in your case but sure you fall in love with somebody and they cheat on you you get a new fact it takes a little while for that fact to get absorbed into your system and your emotions change you don't love them anymore because they're cheating us over but that's because you've got a new piece of information to your reason to your rational faculty your emotions change all of our emotions at the end of the day are products of conclusions that our mind has come to rationally are you rationally it's come to and when we change those conclusions it takes a while it's not instantaneous it can take months it can take years it takes a while but if you change the conclusions the emotions change as well and if you really think about it you can figure out examples from your own life or that has happened because we're not born with the same emotions just run with the emotions the rest of our life and our emotions are not some serious thing that we don't know where they come from they come from here maybe we don't remember the conclusions that we concluded that results in these emotions but they're not arbitrary they're not just out of nowhere they have reasons and if you want to be a good person my view is figure out where your emotions come from if we had really good psychoanalysis right really good psychology that's what they would be focused on helping you discover the source of your emotions because sometimes it's hard because sometimes it happened in childhood or whatever but it's not causeless it's a product of reason so I don't believe emotions are the enemy indeed I think the more reasons you are the more you rely on your reason the more you rely on your mind the more you integrate your ideas the more consistent your emotions are with your thoughts and emotions are great it's how we live love emotions right it's passion it's excitement it's love it's how we express our life we live through our emotions but emotions are not tools of cognition but what what can other people do to destroy our ability to reason to destroy our ability to think what can other people do to that they can put a gun to our head they can cause us if I put a gun to your back and say from now on for you two plus two equals five and every time it equals four if any time it equals four in your mind I'm gonna shoot you you can't produce you can't build you can't make you can't program a computer coercion is the enemy of thought coercion limits your possibilities coercion tells you that you can't do certain things you can't go in those directions you can't look and a lot of look if you look I shoot you reason demands that you look reason demands that you tear down boundaries reason demands that you investigate all options but coercion limits controls so I'm ran believes in free markets not just because they could use a high standard of living and it's good but because free markets are the only kind of markets consistent with human reason that the only markets in which there is no coercion and if there's no coercion we unleash the human mind we unleash our ability to be innovative to create to produce to think and that those are the ideal conditions for human success because human success is dependent on human reason so she was an advocate for capitalism because she was an advocate for individual self-interest but she was an advocate of individual self-interest because she's an advocate of reason of our capacity to think as man's basic means of survival this is how we survive this is how we thrive this is how we succeed so what ran really urges I think all of us is at the end of the day is to live our lives for ourselves to make the most of our lives not to waste them not to live for other people doesn't mean you're not nice to other people doesn't mean you don't help them doesn't mean you don't serve them you don't friend them it means your focus is on you and it's often in your interest to help to be friend to assist but it's because you want to because it's consistent with your rational values the whole idea is happiness flourishing success as a human being and whether you agree with a particular you know values and virtues the important thing is to focus on what leads to human happiness so I encourage you to read Rand particular if you're interested in this idea of morality she's got a wonderful book called the virtue of selfishness which you could say the virtue of rational selfishness if you really wanted to but she believed selfishness was rational had to be rational any other type would not be selfish or she elaborates on this so her focus is on living the best life that we can live and she's pro-capitalism because that's the only system that allows us to do that it leaves us free to do it it leaves us free to flourish stuff for protection thank you