 Thank you, and I'm curious because I'm gonna give away some of the plot of Atlas Shrugged, so I'm curious how many of you who read it, Atlas Shrugged? All right, so I don't know what to do about that because I'm gonna give away key, crucial plot elements because that's the topic I was asked to talk about, so it's his fault, not mine. Atlas Shrugged creates a world in which one individual is taken on the responsibility of basically bringing it down in order to rebuild it, and to do this, he recognizes that the world is really held up by those in society that are the thinkers, the doers, the creators, the producers, and in the way, the impact of them leaving, not just their association with the authorities, not just the association with the government, but leaving completely, utterly withdrawing their sanction, not just from the committees, but withdrawing their sanction from the society as a whole, leaving society to struggle without them. A much, I think, bigger strike, if you will, a much bigger shrugging than just not dealing with the authorities. Of course, in the novel, they have some way to go. That always helps. It would be nice if there was a gold sculpt somewhere where some of us could actually go. It used to be Hong Kong. It used to be Hong Kong. That is true. In my case, right now, I recently moved to Puerto Rico, and they're trying to create a little bit of that in Puerto Rico. We'll see how well it succeeds, but at least they've got the tax rate right. Other than that, I don't think they have anything right, but they've got the tax rate right. But that was enough to motivate me to shrug and to move away from the U.S., so the mainland U.S., and to Puerto Rico. The novel, and this is like caution, everybody, to remember that it is a novel. In the novel, there is somewhere to go. There is a plan. The plan is to bring down society as it is. The plan is to destroy and then to rebuild, and there are key individuals, the key thinkers, producers in the culture, that are convinced to shrug, to go on strike, to leave in order for this plan to work and go through. Unfortunately, we don't have anywhere to go. There's no plan. And indeed, the world, it turns out, is more complex than a few people who carry the world in their shoulders, and convincing the people who do carry the world in their shoulders to shrug would be very difficult. So we might leave for personal reasons, and I'll get to that. It's not going to bring down the world, not in the sense... This has to do with me, because last night I had the same thing. Microphone just stopped working. Even if we don't, we need this. Do you? I don't need mine. I mean, maybe for the video. No, I have a big voice. So, whatever we think about this idea of shrugging and going on strike, and I think it's an important idea because I think you touched upon it when you talked about the idea of sanctioning. And sanction is a big deal. The sanction you give people is important, and it's important to your own self-esteem and your own life more than anything else. But I think we need to distance ourselves a little bit for the particulars of the novel in this case, because, again, there's no big plan, there's no big agenda to be reached. It really is an issue of what we want to do as individual human beings. The world, like the world in Atlas Shrugged, is going in the wrong direction. I mean, one of the things that saddens me, and I spoke about this on my podcast last night, which I did for my hotel room, is that every time I come to Hong Kong, you guys are more pessimistic. Every time I come to Hong Kong, things seem to be worse. I mean, coming here, I think it's the first time, was 2005, so it's been the last 14 years. Every few years I come, and things are, you know, there was a little hope, I think, in 2005. Maybe you would indeed take over China, not the other way around. Now, that seems really funny. Every time I come, things are getting worse. And I live in the United States, and every five years, looking back, things are getting worse. And if you're in Europe right now, and I travel a lot to Europe, and I spend a lot of time in Europe, again, there was this sense, in the 1990s, as the Berlin Wall came down, this real sense of optimism, the sense that freedom was going to reign, that we were moving towards a new era, it didn't quite buy the idea of the end of history. But I brought a lot of sentiment, we had the right ideas, and the right ideas were actually going to impact the world in a positive direction, and things are going to move in the right direction. And here was the Soviet Union communism disappearing, hundreds of millions of people of freedom. And now you go to Europe, and everybody looks like you guys do. Every few years, they seem to think things are worse. Things are going in the wrong direction. I was at an event a few years ago, commemorating, it was the 25th anniversary, I think, of the fall of the Berlin Wall. And I was with Vaclav Klaus, the former president of the Czech Republic, who fought the communists, and was part of it. I was with a woman who lived in East Germany, and who was tortured by the Sika police, and now is a member of the German parliament, and they spoke, and this took commemorate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and it was really depressing. Because all they could talk about was how awful Europe is today, and how awful the direction that Europe is heading in is today. And in many ways, they can see a future worse than where they came from. I remember the organizer came up to me, I was the last speaker, and he said, you're on. This is a celebration. Please, you know, say something positive. I did my best, and I got, you know. But the world is going in a negative direction, and maybe the last few years in the United States have illustrated this more than anything. We're voting backwards to tribalism, to collectivism, to a rejection of the individualism, the freedom, the idea of the individual's ability to prosper, the necessity of leaving individuals free to live their lives as they fit. We're joining little groups, tribal groups, and fighting one another for what? Of emotion, not reason. We're banding reason in mass. In the United States right now, the rhetoric is all about fear. It's all about emotion. It's all about a negation of basic economics. If you look at the trade war, and I'd be happy to talk about the trade war if you guys have questions. But it's a scary time. And, you know, somebody asked me, somebody asked me once, you want, what's the most frustrating part of your job? This is the most frustrating part of my job, and I, you know, this will sound pretentious, and maybe it is. But the most frustrating part of the job is, I have the answers. We have the answers. I know how to fix the problems of the war. I think we really do, not just me, but a bunch of us know how to fix the problems of the war. They're not that hard. It's not a mystery why Hong Kong is so rich. Certain principles lead to certain outcomes. And it's not an exit if Venezuela is so poor and people are starving in the streets. Certain ideas, certain actions lead to certain consequences. Always. Everywhere they're tried, no matter the ethnic group, no matter their geography, no matter where you are, they always happen that way. We have the answers. And what's frustrating about the job is nobody gives a damn. Nobody is listening. Nobody seems to be paying attention, except in Brazil. I'll talk about Brazil afterwards. But pretty much country after country, continent after continent, things are going in the wrong direction with very little, with very little, you know, backlash. Nobody seems to really care. I mean, the conflict in the United States is between the collectivists of the right and the collectivists of the left. But they're all collectivists who want to impose their will on us individuals. They all want to manage our life in one way or another. They all want a central plan in one way or the other. I mean, I know a lot of Brits here. I mean, there was some optimism on Brexit. Brexit seemed like, you know, a good idea maybe. Right. And I remember commenting on Brexit at the time. I said, Brexit is a beautiful thing if the Brits do the right thing once they exit. But the probability of the Brits doing the right thing once they leave Europe is very close to zero. Because nobody believes in the right thing anymore. The right thing being turn the UK into a free trade bastion, you know, a capitalist economy. You know, have free trade with the rest of the world, including with Europe. And you could do that, by the way, with a hard Brexit. You could just leave lower tariffs to zero, tell people they're welcome, and you could leave the European Union tomorrow. You don't need a deal. But of course, that is the one thing that's off the table, is the no deal Brexit. Completely. What's that? Not completely. It's not completely off the table. It's more back on the table than it was. I hope so. I hope so. Maybe it's going to take Boris Johnson to you. Do you realize the only, the main barrier to it was the Northern Irish? Well, of course. I mean, it's not the main barrier. It is a barrier. It's a major barrier. But and it's complex, right? But it shouldn't be complex. Of course, if you have zero tariffs between Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland, and why do why does Britain still control Northern Ireland? But we'll stop there. Maybe. Maybe. I don't know. You know, since when do we care what people want? But the point is that even if they do do a hard Brexit, will they lower tariffs to zero? No. Will they actually institute free markets and lower regulatory barriers? No. They actually take the regulations that they fought against the European Union and impose them on the Brits. But everybody will say it's fine because their own government imposed it on them except the sub-foreign government over there across the channel imposed it on them. But nothing will change in terms of the regulatory regime in the UK. Now, maybe there's more possibility of change. I'm not against Brexit. I just think the probability of something good coming of it is very low. My friends who are pro-Brexit tell me that the probability of something coming out of the European Union is basically zero. So a little bit above zero is better than zero. So what the hell led to the Brexit? And I'm sympathetic. But that's a sad state of affairs. If we're debating between zero and a little bit above zero, those kind of probability functions. Things are going badly in the world. And things are going badly in the world in my view to a large extent because the people who know better, the people who shouldn't know better put it more accurately, let it happen. They let it happen. They don't speak up. They don't oppose. They don't challenge. They don't withdraw their sanction. They continue to accept the will of the authorities and the authorities are different in different places. I mean, one of the reasons I love organizations like Lion Rock and Lion Rock is the only one in Hong Kong is because they're not silent. And I think the only way to deal with what's going on in the world is not to be silent. But there's way too much silence. And the group most responsible for the silence in my view, and this comes somewhat out of it, I have to show. The group that has the most power but doesn't recognize it and won't take on that power are the business leaders in every single one of these countries. Business is silent. Or worse, they play the game. They cooperate with the authorities. They encourage more regulations. Greater complexity in the tax system. Trade barriers if you're on the right side of where the trade is headed, right? And yet, it is businessmen who keep society going. You look at Silicon Valley, what would the United States economy be like without Silicon Valley? If you take that piece out, I mean, the United States would be a disaster and a mess. And instead of, and the reason Silicon Valley is, you know, why Silicon Valley is so successful? Why do you have, of all the industries in the United States, this technology, the one industry that has just continues to take off and has done very, very well? Because it's the one industry that it has almost no regulation. It's one industry that's being left alone. Do you know that in the United States we license government licenses? You need a license to pretty much do anything. I mean, kind of understand doctors and lawyers. I don't really, but let's assume that, you know, there's some kind of rationale to license doctors and lawyers, but we license in the United States, people shampoo hair, we license nail salon operators, you know, God forbid you get some fungus in your nails or something. They need a government license in order to do this. You know what profession? It's not license. You know, the people that ultimately respond to it are responsible for their planes staying up in the ground, although I guess they're both boring, they failed. People responsible for finding nuclear power plants, the people responsible for your iPhone and everything else are not license. Programs. Programmers, there's no license. Government doesn't give permission for you to program. You just program. It gets permission to you to shampoo somebody else's head, but you can program. The reason Silicon Valley is Silicon Valley, the reason it's been a success is because we have left technology alone, at least in the United States and the West. And I think China will discover as it starts meddling with its tech industry more and more that innovation will decline and progress will decline. You know, is that not because they don't understand it? No, they don't understand finance, but they meddle constantly with finance. I would have loved, remember when they brought after the financial crisis, they brought all these CEOs of the banks sat in front of Congress and Congress asked them about CDOs and about options and about all this stuff. I would have loved if one of those CEOs would have turned to one of the sentences and said, and what if you could tell me what a CDO is? You're asking questions about it. You think you know what it is. None of them know what these things are. I mean, Alan Green's fans argument, it's a weak argument, but Alan Green's fans argument in the late 90s about why they shouldn't regulate derivatives was that the regulators weren't sophisticated enough and knowledgeable enough to be able to regulate the derivatives. But that's true of all finance. They have no clue how finance works and they regulate it anyway. No, it's basically, technology happened very quickly. It happened fast and they didn't get an opportunity to do it, but that's going to change. They're talking now about breaking up Facebook, regulating Facebook, regulating Google, regulating Apple. They tried a little bit with Microsoft and that's going to intensify. So you're going to see that change and you'll see innovation and everything else go down. And yet, here the greatest beneficiaries are freedom, free markets, unregulated markets. They're all a bunch of radical leftists. They want, I mean, Zuckerberg said he wants to regulate himself. Maybe that's an act of self-defense, but they constantly are advocating for policies that would have destroyed the industry if they had been passed the region. Imagine if the CEOs of Silicon Valley stood up and said, no. Imagine if Zuckerberg had refused to come and be questioned by a bunch of ignorant, do-nothing, unproductive congressmen who had not employed anybody in their life, have not created anything in their life, but it actually said, I will not sit in front of you. You want to subpoena me? I've done something criminal. Sue me. Come after me. But I won't come and testify in front of you. I don't have to justify anything to you. The world would change. If one of them, if one of those Bank CEOs stood up and said, who are you? What's that? Would it? I mean, I mean, maybe in the short run, well, what we're lacking right now is arrogance. What we're lacking in the world right now, not arrogance, not arrogance of wealth, not arrogance with arrogance of ideas, people who believe in something and stand up and state it. You know what? The left is unbelievably arrogant. Well, maybe I'll read the title. Well, I know. I would say the tone should be as aggressive and hostile and arrogant as possible. Again, the left is unbelievably arrogant. They don't have any qualms about declaring truth to be what they think it is. And people just accept it. Now, it's true because they have what I even called the supposed moral high ground. They can get away with it. But the only way to recapture the moral high ground is to storm it and take it. You're not going to capture the moral high ground by being merely mouthed by accepting the authority of people over you by accepting a system that is going to destroy you. The only way to change the dynamics is for the business community to stand up and say, enough is enough. Not to go on strike as they do in our shrug, because I don't think there's a plan for that, but to actually argue against what is happening. You would have to argue against the right. Of course, you could not go. You could. So what? The same people, they make the laws. So it's like a book and his plan are actually in there. Yes. And there's a consequence. They will be regulated. The question is, they're playing the system. I agree with you completely. But this is the point, right? But this is the point. The point is that as long as business plays the system, as long as you participate in the commissions and are just a member and are just trying to skewer things a little bit better or a little bit in your favor, as long as you play the game, that short run game, because in the long run, they're all dead. But if you, now he'll be rich dead, so maybe it doesn't matter. But as long as you play that game, nothing will change. So I'm not saying I don't understand what Zuckerberg's doing. I understand completely what Zuckerberg's doing. I'm just saying He's less intervention, less regulation than would have been the case if he'd opted out. And he's what? He's actually less regulation than if he's, some of his knows that the empty seat at the table and being on the menu rather than at the table. You know, I disagree with that completely. I think we get more regulations. And once you, once you open up the level of regulation, it is a flood. Again, businessmen, and it can't be just one granted if it's just one and it seems arrogant and out of touch. But there's no, you don't have to go and testify in front of Congress. There's no law that says you have to go and testify in front of Congress. The consequence is if you don't. I don't know if you know the Microsoft story about testifying in front of Congress. So Microsoft used to, in the mid 1990s, Microsoft used to spend zero dollars on lobbying. They didn't do anything in Washington, D.C. They had no building in Washington, D.C. They had no nobody. Washington, D.C. was a desert from the perspective of Microsoft. And they were brought in front of Congress. And they were told by on hatch of a public that they had to start lobbying, that they had to build a building in Washington, D.C., that they had to hire lawyers, that it was their responsibility as citizens to bribe it, you know, to bribe on hatch. And Microsoft said to their credit, we're not interested. And they went away. They didn't give a reason. They didn't argue against it. And they just went away. Six months later, knock on the door, we're here from the Justice Department and we're suing you for antitrust violations. What was the violation in this case? Anybody know? What's that? Yeah, they were giving it to the explorer, wait for free. Can't do that. Particularly when Netscape is charging me 80 bucks, you know, to download the, you know, in those days for those young people, in order to browse the Internet, you had to pay, right? Now you can do it for free because Microsoft introduced the Internet for free. What lesson did Microsoft learn from this? And this is the lesson Zuckerberg supposed to be learning, right? You play the game. You play the game. So now, how much money does Microsoft spend on watching D.C.? They have this beautiful building, funnily enough right behind Cato. Cato understood about equal distance from the White House and Congress. Massive glass modern building. They spent tens of millions of dollars on lobbying. Is the world better for Microsoft having done that? Microsoft might be better in the short run. But is the world better for Microsoft having folded? I don't think so. And of course, Microsoft shouldn't have been alone. Again, I'm not arguing that one person do this. Business people have to do it. If you don't, then we'll keep sliding along on a slope. And maybe the slide will be slower because you participate and slowed it down a little bit. But the direction is the same direction. He have to start standing up and saying, no, or not participate or saying, okay, you want to regulate me. I'm not going to sanction that. I'm not going to be at the table. And here's why. You have to give the why. Because otherwise you come across as just, you know, just obnoxious. You have to give the reasons. So if by striking and shrugging, you mean stopping to cooperate with those who are trying to destroy you, then I think it's about time business stood up and did that before you're really destroyed. And you can't do it by yourself. You can't do it one at a time. So there has to be a movement. And businessmen and unbelievable be powerful in society. Not only because they produce the revenue, they produce the jobs, they produce all the innovations that we have. People respect businessmen. They still do, particularly in America. You think it needs to come from the business sector and not political reform? No, political reform will never work, never has worked, and won't work. It has to come from the people. And, you know, you get the politicians you deserve. Well, Friedman said that you create rules in such a way that you're the worst people can't mess it up. Yeah, how did that work out for Milton? Well, he gave us the negative income tax. He gave us the withholding. I mean, I love Mr. Friedman, right? But all his little proposals all backfired against us. All of them turned out to be tools for the enemies of those of us who believe in freedom. Because in exactly that, he played the game. And you play the game, you're giving the enemy the tools to come after you. You're not, you have to challenge what they're actually doing. I'm not saying you can do it all at once. But you have to start speaking up. You have to start arguing, not for an incremental change, but for radical change. You won't get radical change. But if you don't argue for it, it won't even move in that direction. I know. I mean, that's my frustration in life, one of the many frustrations in life. So what you're asking them to do is act other than their rational self-interaction? No, I'm asking them, I'm asking them to act in their rational self-interest, not in their short, if you, it's not in their rational self-interest to do any of that. They lose both self-esteem, they lose integrity. And at the end of the day, their businesses become, I mean, look at what's, look at what happened, look at what happened to the banking industry in the United States. I mean, is it fun to be a banker in America? Not fun to be a banker anyway. And there's a reason for that. Why is it not fun to be a banker anyway? Because of regulations. Because of regulations, because of their take. Now initially, they played the game. Oh no, they were just trying to survive. But they destroyed their own profession by doing it. It's a disaster to be a banker anyway. 150, 150 regulators go to work at JP Morgan every day. It's not a private bank, it's a public utility run by the government that pretends to be private because it has shareholders. But nothing that is done at JP Morgan is not done without the approval of some bureaucrat who signs off. Now, how did that happen? But you've got to redentize. So right now in Hong Kong, SFC is proposing complex, complex product regulation that banks will no longer be allowed to accept reverse order inquiries unless they've done due diligence on the related products. So I work for a bank. What we need is either a bank or a client through the regulator to tell them we will not accept. You're telling us we cannot pass an order of all free will. Now, find me the bank or the client who's going to sue. I'm with you. I know. I'm just expressing my frustrations. I'm not disagreeing with any of you think this is not going to happen tomorrow. My argument is it should have. Not will it or won't it? But my argument is deep but unless it happens, we're on the slippery slope and I don't see an end to that slippery slope. I don't think things just go back and forth and there's a nice little pendulum and we'll turn against socialism and then we'll reach a certain point of wealth and then we'll turn towards socialism and it is. It's nice. No, every time the pendulum swings, it swings more left or more status or more interventionist or every time there's a financial crisis, the solution is not, I wonder what the regulations were that caused this crisis because if you really study it, you know that all these crises happen because of the structure of regulation. It's what more regulations can be imposed on the industry which of course will cause the next crisis and of course no banker is going to say, I mean, I know like one who said this. No, no, no, it's this. It's the original regulations that caused this crisis. And you know, John Allison, I don't know if you know John Allison, John Allison was the CEO of the 10th larger financial institution in the United States and he went on stage and he went to the regulator and he said this to everybody who would listen but he was one guy and he left BB&T, he left his bank with a lot of self-respect and a lot of self-esteem because he fought the fight. He didn't win but he fought it. John, can I just accuse you of being part of optimistic in this problem which is normally my role here that having been on various business chains in Hong Kong, the point that's been discussed here is very limited by my mind that you would never find anyone who would go against the system. They were doing what David would do which is to melt the system for their own benefit and think they were being borrowed during that which is and we haven't talked about the morality but the reason I think it's worse is we don't have business people not speaking out today. We have business people in the newspapers every day saying capitalism has failed, right? They are now joining the chorus to destroy themselves. Now where is that coming from? Well to some extent they're not going to destroy themselves in this short term in a short term perspective because they've already made their money what they're destroying is the capacity of young people to follow in their footsteps. I don't know if you've been watching Ray Dalio make the circuits about the evils of capitalism. All the evils he lists are statist evils. All the evils he lists are caused by statism or caused by government intervention but he names capitalism as their source and by doing so he is destroying the system that made him the richest hedge fund guy in history. He's on a guilt trip. What's that? He's on a guilt trip. Well but they're all on a guilt trip and this goes to the this goes to the to the to the moral essential of Atlas Shrugged and the less we learn the moral lesson in my view they were all on a guilt trip and much of the motivation around this is not I'm gonna scheme the system so I can stay rich and score everybody else it's exactly I feel guilty and I'm gonna fix the world by you know by regulating by redistributing wealth by whatever I'm gonna fix it so other people don't have to feel the guilt that I feel but life is not about money I mean I know that something weird coming from me you know life's not about money should pay is financially to feel guilty but it sucks when it comes to happiness I'm just surprised that you think that this is an easier route than trying to get those ideas well it's not easier well who is going to get political ideas changed who is going to do that no I'm serious it's just another thatcher coming through but thatcher did nothing or at least thatcher did more than Reagan but but in a big picture what did Reagan do he gave us five to ten years of of semi sanity and reduced regulations a little bit reduced taxes a lot of it increased spending so then immediately after he left office taxes were raised so what did Reagan actually do no most of the deregulation actually happened under Jimmy Carter so what's it thatcher did a lot and when you elect Corbyn when you elect Corbyn you will realize that political change well you know you won't but you go to political change political change does not last I think your your political change does not last you're not going to get a single panacea but you can get incrementally if you can get the ideas okay so again I mean rather than getting the internet business community to suddenly go against the road in there I mean what is the incremental change that you got that you got the increments they went through through thatcher immediately upon thatcher leaving things started to at least flatten out there was no really incremental change after that then they started reversing but very slowly under Blair and now they're in freefall right now they're in freefall or potentially could be in freefall nothing fundamentally changed why it's an opportunity you know why you know why Jeremy Corbyn is for brexit because an opportunity to move toward socialism faster than the European Union would allow I mean that's the reality you're looking into the socialist angle I'm looking at the politics of the reality of politics the proportion of the world living under socialism or central planning at different levels of it like it's much lower than it used to be China we're left with pockets of it that's happens that have visibly failed Venezuela won't stay the way it is for long because the people won't take it yes Tunisia and spring was about the price of bread and the there is a dynamic complex system in the books not a pendulum but see this is why we're not going to win this battle people I mean you're not going to win this battle you're not going to win the battle for freedom you're going to yes you might get away you're going to thatcher who will move it a little bit but of course we've you know we'll always be we'll always be shifting left we'll always we'll always be moving towards greater and greater statism yes it'll happen slowly it'll be a boiling frog and once in a while the water temperature will go down and the frog will think how things are getting better and one day you'll wake up and it'll all be gone because you don't want fundamental change you you want it you want a little political stuff politics doesn't change anything but we want the second straight no i'm not sure we know my way of getting there is i don't think you can get to freedom without philosophical fundamental philosophical change i don't think you can get there without convincing people of new radical changes human nature no i'm not talking about human nature ideas are not human nature ideas are consequence i think the ideas of the left are anti human nature so i'm i'm for showing the left illustrating to the to people that the ideas that they hold they're actually against human nature because every time they practice they lead to death and destruction but it's not enough to show that they lead to death and destruction it's to show that they're immoral that they're actually wrong that people live yes political that's not political there is nothing in politics that shows that politics is about policy not about morality or about philosophy i'm saying businessmen should cease playing the game yes i'm not saying it's going to happen so don't worry your path is the path that's actually going to practice i'm saying the only way we're going to succeed is if people start arguing for different morality and to the extent that you don't argue for different morality the politics will fail the politics will fail not in a very short one but over time they will fail and i view a shortcut to accelerating the spread of a proper morality if businessmen actually took up this message and conveyed what's that i don't think there were more of themselves i think that actually that actually come back to consider do you mean i've always thought that the everything that could trigger people standing up for for the moral way of living would be an absolute disaster and it may happen in this way but that brazil got to such a point that people rejected all the existing policies and some people did stand up and say we're not going to take this anymore so in the west do we need a disaster before we can get it so i think i mean i mean obviously winston knows a lot more about what happened in brazil than i did but this is a winston link was very involved in what's going on right now in brazil partially responsible for i think there's a company i mean the good stuff not the best i think brazil there was a combination of things because there's been a lot of people going out into the streets there's been a lot of things a disaster we need to change course it was ukraine you remember the the the nothing came of the revolution in ukraine nothing has come of most of these in venezuela we've been waiting for venezuela to actually flip for a couple of years months certainly and the opposition leader if you actually look at what that position leader stands for he's a socialist he's just a different type of socialist a mature he's not actually advocating for freedom he's not actually advocating for free markets what happened in in brazil is winston correct me for wrong both the collapse a promise made to young people unfulfilled and massive real frustration and at the same time after the ground was prepared with the right ideas to be brought in front of those young people so winston and and other people in brazil in the 80s were working hard to promote ideas of liberty and ideas of freedom bringing them in to the business community bringing those ideas educating people about the right ideas preparing the ground for the day when people were so frustrated that they were looking for something different and when people went out to the streets a few years ago in in brazil to demonstrate there was a there was an energy about free market ideas that i have never seen anywhere else in the world and i think it is the work of think tanks of intellectuals of business a lot of the business community a huge number of the business community in preparing the ground for that so that brazilians were wearing t-shirts that said in in in portuguese less marks more mesas i mean more von mesas like nobody knows who von mesas is in the world among young people right and he were people walking in the streets with such t-shirts signifying that people knew what that meant now that was a lot of intellectual groundwork a lot of intellectual work that had been done you know to do that and look i'm optimistic about brazil and i and i want to be optimistic about brazil but we'll see how it turns out there's certainly no guarantees yeah don't you end up with then somehow people connected with their collective system they'll end up with their protective benefits and then there will be a backlash against them as well because there's this sort of privilege over there is a lot of worry that that happens in brazil and because while the intellectual foundation has been built it isn't white enough and it isn't deep enough so there's still a lot of challenges i don't know if you know what happened in brazil but bolsano is a very mixed guy became president but what he did is he appointed as his economic czar the guy responsible for everything economic probably the leading free market economist in brazil so the treatment in brazil what's that so it's it's going to be like chili and and look that's great but if you look at chili yeah i mean they this they were they've been sliding backwards they they've sliding forward again in the recent elections they go back and forth but isn't that the problem the perennial problem like you said and how do we have to stop that you stop it by changing the fundamental ideas that people hold that's not anti-human nature that's changing the ideas that exist in the culture the dominant ideas in the culture the dominant moral idea in the culture is a post status post socialist idea and and until you rid the world of that idea the idea that your purpose in life as an individual is to serve others morality is all about sacrifice and service and being self less that is the core idea together with you know with with replacing whatever mysticism is out there with with the advocacy of reason those two ideas reason and and egoism or moral egoism are the two ideas that are the foundation of liberty that a foundation of freedom it's why freedom was born at the end of the enlightenment because the enlightenment was the discover the rediscovery if you will of those two ideas you think about the enlightenment thinkers what are they advocating for in the 18th century they're advocating for reason as the way in which we know the world the the they didn't negate mysticism but they said relegate it to your private life keeping it on right reason should stay at home a mysticism is to stay home reason is what really matters and the second was it's manifested in the declaration of independence the purpose of life is the pursuit of happiness you're happy those are the two ideas moral and epistemological that ultimately underlie the foundation of liberty and unless you capture those two unless a businessman but all of us in a sense stand up and say my moral purpose in life is my own happiness and i'm not going to accept your authority over my life i'm not gonna accept you telling me i must sacrifice for this yes it's all it's all education at the end of the day i'll just say this and then i'll uh then my point about businessmen is one i think it'd be good for the businessmen i actually do think it'd be good for them not maybe in the monetary sense but in the spiritual sense but also i think it would accelerate education because we would give voice to the ideas from people who the general public respects rather than intellectuals like me who cares but people who actually produced and created and built people respect those people it would accelerate the educational process the businessmen would still have to rely on intellectuals to kind of explain it all and flesh it out but at least they would give voice to something that is implicit in what they do but would now be explicit and there'll be message across the yeah i just wanted to say something that i think picks up on and agrees with that i've got a poor memory but i think an atlas shrugged uh francisco dancote i sat down with hank levin after his famous money speech and i was talking about why it's the audience what he said and he said i'm here to give you the words when you need them most and the point is that he was trying to give these people words firstly a thought that you don't need to feel guilty about the fact that you created the world you created wealth secondly that they don't owe anyone anything thirdly that they don't have to feel because of their guilt about being wealthy that they should submit to regulation and so that was one of the key things that came out of the book for me but the next point was the point that people won't stand up and i say that people who ain't stand up in cowards you know when hong kong tried to introduce competition law here i stood up i said this is wrong for hong kong this is wrong in the shape that it is i was threatened by the central government i couldn't go to china for a couple of years because i was worried about that i'm a competition lawyer i've got a huge amount of money to make by having a competition law but i had to go to stand up and say that people do stand up and as a lawyer i think back to nazi germany and the criticism that was made of lawyers is that people did not stand up lawyers did not stand up they did not say this is wrong and so i think it's wrong to say business people will not stand up some people will i think you have to look at the people who are not standing up you have to say why they're not standing up and when will they stand up and i think people sometimes will and it comes back to the point in the book it's here to give you the words for when you need them and for if you are prepared to stand up and so i agree with all these people are saying here there's a lot of people who are too scared to stand up in the world but i say some people will well and and they need the courage it's about the point about going on strike the people who went on strike with the people who went on strike against the government they were not the people who went on strike against ideas those people kept working they kept spreading their ideas they did not go on strike and those to me are the fundamental points out of this book i mean i agree completely and it's it's uh they're always courageous people if you study the history of nazi germany they were the businessmen who stayed and cooperated and helped germany build the war machine and helped help them produce the gas that killed people and all of that and then there were some businessmen who stood up and they left or they you know and and they took massive risks and they know what's that fine but the question is the question is did you as an individual now imagine imagine if all of those businessmen stood up and walked out then you wouldn't have had nazi germany imagine if if if the if the chemical industry had refused to produce the stuff that they wanted or it's certain that would be amazing and but it's easy to sit back and say that wouldn't be amazing but i'm not going to stand up right if it wasn't if it wouldn't be amazing then do it we're not maybe faced with nazi germany but we're faced on a slippery slope heading in that direction and the question is what is it going to take you stand as president what's that stand for president would i stand for president i mean i wouldn't for two reasons i often get that question asked that question for two reasons one is i would lose in a landslide and second i i was born in the u.s so i can't um what's that i i you have to be born in the u.s to stand for president can i ask um question on ideas and business we just said business as a single bucket but if you if you look at individual business people who started up their own business some in this room who still own and run their own business they will be far more inclined to believe in free markets and present regulation it's the large listed companies that are on stock exchanges that have governance impositions from those stock exchanges otherwise you'll get digistic and superberg is just one of those that that effect on business is so corrosive um that it means that many of us here have worked in many large businesses which are full of people at senior levels who are basically socialists because the regulatory environment that they live in is socialism but that's different from small businesses everywhere in the world where their natural information is to accept the ideas we're talking about say yeah of course i don't think i want to keep what i make and i don't want it i mean i should we be distinguishing different business i don't completely agree i mean two things one i don't think it's exchanges and i i don't think it's exchanges fault the exchanges have no choice the scc basically runs the regulatory environment the exchange is just a facilitators it's it's it's government i mean i wish the exchanges were the regulators because then they'd be competition for regulation different exchanges would have different regulations and you could decide on the who to list based on what kind of regulatory regime you wanted that's the solution to getting rid of insider trading laws and all these laws that i think are uh a horrific because they're what size fit all and they and they're not objective whereas you could self-regulate through exchanges to deal with all of this but i've met many small business men who say who typically say this to me they say and this is why it's about ideas they say yes i don't need to be regulation i am an honest guy everything we do is by the book it's always really good but that other industry over there they're a bunch of damn cooks and if we didn't have regulations then they would all cheat and everybody and and and and i see this over and over and over again i don't i shouldn't pay more taxes but those guys should because you know the bankers they're the real bad guys if you want bad guys it's always you should read my book uh called uh the more case of finance it's always the financiers right so so there's always so so even among small business men even among people who are known business there isn't that commitment to freedom because it's not ideological it's it's more on the on the practical side and among the listed companies there are exceptions right it's true that for the most part they are forced in a sense to tow a line and uh they're afraid to stand up i mean one of the things john allison would always say is he was running a publicly listed company and he'd say i'd always have to think about am i gonna say something that hurts my shareholders because my fiduciary duty is to my shareholders and it's it's it's a it's a massive challenge i think he you know when uh you know the u.s supreme court ruled on eminent domain the kilo decision was a famous decision in the u.s where the supreme court said we're gonna allow the taking of people's homes in order to build a walmart in order to build a mall right for for private benefit and john allison the the next morning bbnt came out with a press release saying we will not lend any money to a project where eminent domain was used to take the property of some for the sake of others now that took balls and he could have lost a lot turns out a lot of people who like that statement sent their money to bbnt so their deposits actually grew as a consequence of taking a model stand and i think what business would discover if they did it is that they would actually get support and they would actually find it you know find it it it confident that was probably a commercial calculation on this he never made the commercial calculation he didn't make the yes but i am suggesting that to the point that um well in some ways hong kong might again be an example of what you're suggesting um and i'm not sure if hong kong is the same today but a certain point in time perhaps we do owe what freedoms we have in hong kong to businessmen that did exactly what you're saying because jadein brook moved the domicile wall of their companies away from hong kong that showed china what might happen on mass um uh if they didn't do things properly most of the big chinese tycoons had a word in the ear and i think it was well understood in beijing what would happen if they didn't do things in a way that preserved certain freedoms now i'm not sure if that's happening today when those threats might be bigger but i think in many ways it was pretty clear that the reason hong kong has the basic law that has that preserved some of the freedoms that it does is because the business community in hong kong made it clear there would be no business community in hong kong if china didn't play things within some constraints i think that's i i mean i don't know the history but it would not be surprised at all and i'd say the flip side it works in the flip in the reverse as well when businessmen start compromising is when you get the biggest when they don't stand up is when you get the biggest interventions you know i you know think think in the united states in the history of the u.s you know i'm i'm i you know come in opposition to militant freedom i don't believe in central banking great and the united states only got central banking in uh in 1914 it was only the capitulation of jpey mogan and the big bankers in new york who said okay we give him we're gonna play the game now and we're gonna help you structure the central bank in a way that helps us that we got that if they had stood firm who knows what would happen uh we're now facing a situation where the internet is going to get regulated one wonders if the zuckerbergs and the googles and the amazon's world actually stand firm not just by saying no for the sake of no but actually making an argument against it and declaring their independence if that would slow it down or not to even stop it in its track right by by saying we're going to participate the act of what jp mogan did in the nineteen in the teens which got central bank uh you're going to get massive regulations the internet coming down the pipe both republicans and democrats want it now and and the industry's capitulating so when the industry capitulates is when you get more forceful government and i think when government when industry actually stands up and shows the consequences is when you get is when you get a retreat so i mean businessmen have an enormous amount of power intellectual power pr power and it's the guilt but it's also the lack of confidence the the lack of confidence and of course more than anything it's a lack of you know they have to believe in it to have the courage to do it so first comes the belief and then the courage and if they're feeling guilty they don't believe it and therefore they can't be courageous and i'd say our job right as as think tanks as intellectual is to give the business community the knowledge and to help them with the courage to actually stand up because again i don't think you'll get fundamental change unless you do the whole thing's got the luxury of a low tax very simple system we fill out our tax returns it's about three minutes yeah um very straightforward it seems like every other country including the us it's just one big bureaucracy that just sucks everything in and nobody has any way of resisting because there's a permanent there's a permanent sort of um civil service permanent bureaucracy permanent sort of vested interests is true so you know how do you blow it up because that's my objective my my objective is you know destroy them and blow them up they'll only wait but blow them up you know politically figure yeah i think like i mean the only institutionally blow up the institution destroy the institutions of of bureaucracy that has the uniparty structure that just kind of likes to bring you know interchange everybody and i mean so how do you blow up the institution i agree with you that it has to be blown up because i don't think incrementally it's going to change right and i don't think steve forbes running on a flat tax on a postcard is gets anyway because it doesn't get anyway because the institutions are too powerful to attack the only way it gets blown up is that people stand up against it if people say if people you know there was a beginning of this where companies in the u.s with domiciling outside of the u.s right now they passed laws that make that almost impossible but imagine they did that in mass but said why right declared the reason for it not just did it stealthily in order to avoid but actually said imagine if apple said no we are trying to evade taxes in the u.s because taxes in the u.s are nuts they're insane that's why we funnel all our taxes to island we're not ashamed of it we're not embarrassed right when you fix your home here in washington dc you know then then then we'll consider it now glad it that's scary to do that it's really scary as a business person to do that but imagine and i'm not saying it's going to happen because it's not unfortunately anytime soon but the only way to blow it up is for people to stand up and declare that the system is corrupt that they are not willing to play the game and that they will find any means by which to escape it it's not going to blow up because a bunch of intellectuals and think tanks say it's a corrupt system it just won't blow up i mean maybe we're making criminal changes but we're not going to blow up the system so if you want to blow up i think that's the only way to do it everybody should move like i did to port uico where i don't pay federal taxes anymore less less than hong kong yeah but less than america as an american as an american i know if you you're screwed because you should have moved to port uico so there are only three places on planet earth where an american citizen does not pay federal taxes guam the u.s virgin islands and port uico because these are all territories of the united states where you as an american citizen living in them do not vote in federal elections i don't vote for president i don't vote for senate and house therefore no representation no taxation so there's no federal taxes in those three jurisdictions on top of that port uico is in order to attract people to come to the island has said if you're an american who moves to port uico and sets up a business that is a service business that x that brings money into the the corporation pays four percent taxes your capital gains taxes are zero your dividend taxes that is your distribution taxes from the corporation are zero you pay yourself a small salary i pay myself a very small salary you pay taxes to put a week on the salary other than that you put the four percent and that is it so my effective tax rate today is less than four percent because i get a significant amount of money from capital gains four percent if you're interested back on the island is is i didn't move i didn't move until the electricity was back oh he brought a generator no my building hasn't generated it had a generator quite a few seconds i'm hearing businessmen disrupt all this sort of stuff i'm just curious what's your school card on top because he is certainly a disruptor you don't watch his but he's a disruptor for what what what is he what is he trying to achieve that's what i'd like your viewer but to me he's all over the place yeah i mean i mean he is a disruptor in the name of statism he's a disruptor in the name of central planning he is a disruptor that will bring america more statism more control less freedom than anything who cares if you cut taxes when you raise spending i mean really guys if you cut taxes and you raise spending you're not cutting anything you're still sucking money out of the private economy through the issues of debt economically you're not changing the game i would argue that it's better to raise taxes and actually reduce debt than it is to lower taxes and by the way every republican president in human history has cut taxes there's nothing unique about about trump bush cut taxes uh the only the only republican who didn't was busina he raised taxes but every other republican is always that's easy cutting taxes is easy it's a kind of spending that's hard so trump in my view is a disaster uh he's going to make the country a lot worse not a lot better he's probably going to generate a massive swing to the left to to eject him where that happens this coming election i don't know but ultimately i think the country is any left woods uh and if he represents republicans then it becomes that there's an alternative to the left because what has he done he is basically institutionalized bony sanded as a general i mean the left you remember them you know the term he uses all the time fair trade who invented the term fair trade the radical left years ago because they wanted what was fair trade fair trade was at the united states you'd only trade with people if they impose the same regulatory and workplace standards that we had in the united states that was fair he's embraced that right so now everybody right left center all talk about fair trade as if there's such a thing right don't need no only all trade is fair because i won't trade with you and then i'm going to get better from it and you won't trade with me unless you're going to win from it my definition trade is a is a is a fair engagement um if you think about if you you know if you think about government spending under obama republicans held government spending low in the six years where the where they had the congress actually if you look at the economic freedom index the united states rose significantly under obama in the economic freedom index because they held spending what has happened since trump is in office spending is through the deficit you know debt is not 22 trillion it's growing at about a trillion a year just under a trillion a year you double the debt in the first two years and then it's then it's they went from nine to eight yes yes i mean yeah i mean that's a false narrative that you somehow no no no no if you you know party cycles obama's excuses obama reduced i'm not an obama fan i hate obama but obama reduced spending as a percentage of gdp during the last six years because republicans who held that legislature would not let him spend more under under under trump spending as a percent of gdp is going through the roof okay but i'll just disagree because he he completed the social security fund by putting eight more million people on disability and just drew down the reserves there i mean it's just a government gimmicks of the county i mean so my point is hey all government spending as a percentage of gdp actually stabilized under obama and went down a little bit and under under trump it is going out of control i mean just wait that numbers this is not me be partisan this is just the numbers i don't know who partisan i would be on which part but the fact is and if you look at the economic freedom index which is a you know neutral thing in the united states went from 18 to single digit under the last six years or obama not because of obama not because he believes in any of the stuff but because republicans are really good opposition party and they were terrible governing party and in opposition they hold the democratic president and they did the same thing with vote clinton vote clinton his last six years was a pretty good president not because he's a good guy he's a horrible guy but because the republicans and that new gingrich held them in check but if you look at george bush government spending tripled under it was out of control white because he had the senate and he had the house what's that i mean it's these are just numbers so uh indeed if you look at american history the best combination for government spending which i take as a proxy for economic freedom right the best proxy i think is government spending because it it proxies the size the best combination for government spending is a democratic president of republican houses said the second best is a republicans president and a democratic houses say the third the third best is all republican and the very worst is all democratic but all republican is third right divided government unfortunately works because they're so unprincipled the politicians don't have a political a political philosophy they just go with the wind and the same thing happened under reagan reagan government spending went out of control and now led to bad stuff following it look politics is the outcome if you want to change the politics you have to change people's beliefs about the world in 1838 the repeal of the corners that's fantastic but you know what you know what led to the you know what led to the repeal of the corners 130 years of intellectual work and certainly out of smith waning in 1736 publishing uh the the his wealth of nations it didn't just happen because of politics it happened because of 130 years of enlightenment education about what was going on and it wasn't 1830 it was later but anyway so we've had another 200 years no we've had it 200 years of not doing that and i'm buying into the system and be co-opted by the system and participating in the system and not fighting it and the number of voices that are yelling for true free trade is just miniscule so what's your view on the china the u.s trade what issues i mean what issues existed i think the two issues related strike what is a trade deficit i have a massive trade deficit with my grocery store i go to grocery store i leave all my money there i take the goods and they never hire me they've never hired me they never give me my money back what's up with that right trade deficits are meaningless from an economics perspective they mean zero it's actually not a bad thing to have a trade deficit it means you've got you're sending them paper money you're getting their stuff stuff is always better than paper money and they take that paper money and what do they do with it buy your treasuries i mean the united states is a massive beneficiary of the trade deficit so trade deficits are actually in the united states case right now a good thing the second issue is theft of intellectual property fine how do we do a theft by taxing ourselves how do we deal with theft how do we deal with louis v torn bags that are stolen you don't allow them into the united states if you if you receive them you confiscate them and you it's not that you put tariffs on them you don't deal with them you don't trade with them okay so if there's a high tech product made in china that you can show that is using soul on ip then boycott it ban it don't bring it into the united states but let's be honest this isn't about donald trump it's not about ip he doesn't give one iota about fp he's never thought about ip he doesn't care about ip he truly believes that trade is a zero sum negative sum game he thinks we're losing by trading with china and we're not we're actually massively benefiting with trade with china the reason manufacturing jobs what do you think does the united states manufacture more stuff or less stuff than it did 30 years ago it's manufacturing the united states has gone through the rules but the number of people working manufacturing is half why because automation because automation has nothing to do with china 90% of the so-called job losses are consequence of automation maybe 10% because of china Mexico and the rest of the world so all of this is is bogus economics what trump really is about is winning he's a narcissist he wants to win he loves when it's it's fun to win right and he has figured out that the way to win is by creating enemies this is something statists and authoritarians have known forever and trump ran a campaign on three principles and what scares me is the american people bought these principle number one everything is falling apart life sucks in america right this carnage in the streets of america that's a line out of his uh inauguration speech crime in america violent crime in america has never been lowered literally never been lowered i don't know if you visit new york and you go on a stroll in central park i remember the 1970s where you wouldn't go to central park during the day today i would have no problem of walking central park at 2 a.m crime has probably never been lower in the united states but this carnage in the streets of america life sucks we're losing jobs unemployment even in the 2016 was pretty low but we're losing jobs nobody's employees uh there's factories closing everywhere around us nonsense basically drew a picture of an america that's dark of everybody left behind of things being truly horrible okay next whose fault is well it can't be ours god forbid we americans were good guys we haven't done anything bad who caused all this carnage in the streets of america and the closing of the plants well it's those other people now in the old days you would have said it's the jews but we can't say that it's politically incorrect so we can't point to jews so it's the legal immigrants or you know really it's immigrants generally because he you know he was he attacked h1b's as the things even the legal immigrants it's those chinese it's even the japanese and koreans because they they sell us cars i mean what a hootspot right the jewish would they sell us cars we should be producing our own cars and they sell us cars at good prices it's other it's the elites now that one he's right but it's the elites right it's the other they look different than you they think differently of you you should fear them and resent them what are we going to do about it trust me i went to business i built buildings i know how to fix it and that was it no hillary was completely different she was awful she was evil i could never vote for hillary but she wasn't that he played this by the book beautifully brilliantly he's a marketing genius this is why i don't think they could resolve the trade issue with china he needs an enemy he needs somebody he could point to to say those guys are bad if he resolves the issue the enemy's gone away he needs he needs a scapegoat for the problems american has he needs to be able to point to americans in the direction of who the bad guys are and he can't succeed otherwise so he has an incentive to keep this trade dispute going and say it's their fault they screwed it up you're simplifying it down to economics but isn't it more about if you listen to men about what kind of rules of the game you're going to have for the world in the next 10 20 years because china's supply chains i was just in turkey like a month ago most of the goods in the local economy now are coming from china so in the past 10 years ago why is that a problem well no well now they've got a deficit when they divide their currency it just gets worse because now they've got an important but the problem with the turkish economy is not that they're importing stuff from china the problem with the turkish economy is that policies the turkish government the economic policies that the turkish government has implemented inside toky the common account deficit is just a consequence of of the actual problems that's not china's fault that toky has a problem supply chain that china's creating is for our benefit it's not a it's not a threat because it's economics if they were if they were marching tanks across the border into toky okay but that's not what they're doing at least not yet what they're doing is they're trading and if toky has problems the reason toky saw a massive decline in the value of its currency has nothing to do with trade with china has everything to do with the fact that ogre used the turkish central bank to print money to bribe his people it's a voting for him and he's done that election after election and he's spiked up the turkish economy by printing money and yes when you print money like that some of it is going to go to trade and the the currency declined because a lot of the a lot of the companies in toky had taken out loans and dollars spent it in dinas i guess in dinas whatever the leader the turkish leader and then when the currencies flip that you know when when he printed money and there was inflation type inflation in toky they couldn't pay their debt back in dollars that was the crisis it has nothing to do with china we can blame everything on china it's an easy but if you actually study the economics this is the point the reason the united states has problems it's not because of china the reason the united states this problem has nothing to do with illegal immigration the reason the united states this problem has nothing to do with anybody outside the united states the reason the united states has problems is because we elected f dr in the 1930s and then we left it a bunch of losers to the presidency who have slowly and systematically increased the role of the state and control and regulate and tax us to death the reason the united states is in trouble it's because of the united states because americans made bad decisions and it's it's it's a it's a fascist mentality to look for scapegoats out there to attribute your own problems with you know the reason germany had high inflation had nothing to do with the jews it had everything to do with monetary policy that the german central bank engaged in but it was easier to say it's their fault than to take responsibility for yourself and to see that kind of that kind of attitude in america is scary now jaren ideas ideas had consequences the issue when you raise sdr to me one of the most interesting things is that everyone crazes f dr today including financial times the economists or the gingrich you can reach or all of the people that would think beyond the right craze f dr so you've got nobody who is advancing any ideas i mean henry has been through books describing why f dr's program was rubbish and he was writing in the new yorker he actually had a prominent column in new york times in in in the 40s and 50s and 60s we don't have anybody like that who is writing about these ideas who get read so how do we get from the position we're in now where we need these ideas where you have a government controlled education system everywhere where you could repeat the options never hear the word libertarian or mesism right so you'll end up in the in in the government in the uk never about these ideas none of it is in the newspapers even in what people regard as business so if the ideas are not visible how do you start to do so this is what i think business and can play a role without risking their reputations and everything else and that is i think what we need is to find a massive educational effort around these ideas finding those talented young people who are going to become the intellectuals of the future who will become the henry haslitz of the future i think it's all about young people it's all about education and business or business and habit the capital and the resources to be able to fund that so i go to oxford to expose them to ideas i go to eat and i go to high schools i'm you know you got to have a thousand needs going out there into the universities into the schools exposing people because at the end of the day this is about ideas and in my view the reason we're in i think we're in bad shape and i think the reason we're in such bad shape is because the conservatives the people who supposedly were for free markets in the past completely capitulate they completely capitulate so even mogat thatcher at the end of the day couldn't hold it up because she had no base of support the people underneath are completely capitulated on every single important idea and more important than anything is the other moral ideas i mean it's one thing and this is i think what henry haslitz didn't have even more impact is because he was an economist and you can do a lot as an economist but what we need is more than economists we need economists we need ethicists and philosophers and political scientists and historians you know nobody knows the real history everybody thinks i mean one of the one of the the greatest century in all of human history the greatest century in all of human history is the nineteenth century the industrial revolution for the first time in all of human history changed human life i know if you've seen the graph you've seen the graph of income or wealth per capita from a hundred thousand years ago it's basically flat nothing happens for a hundred thousand years the whole of human history i mean we study all these periods in history but nothing happened you you were born with x amount of stuff and you died with exactly the same x amount of stuff if you were lucky your kids never made x plus one they had x amount of stuff nothing changed for a hundred thousand years and then suddenly seemingly out of no way it went like this and you can't even measure it how much it's going up because how do you measure the value of indoor plumbing how do you measure the value of electricity not monetarily it's enhanced by life started for human beings in the nineteenth century i mean the industrial revolution changed everything and yet what do our kids know about about the industrial revolution child labor what were children doing before the industrial revolution they were working and dying on the farm most kids didn't make it to age 10 and they were certainly working right nobody got an education except a few aristocratic kids so they know child labor they know pollution they know slavery capitalism is the only system in human history to abolish slavery right 19th century is when slavery was abolished both by the uk and then by the united states and globally for the most part it was abolished in that period i mean everything important women liberation really quality of rights all happened during the century or immediately afterwards and in all we know about it are bad things or the heroic things so history has to be retaught all of these subjects need to be retaught and unless we capture this intellectual igra unless we have people who can articulate that case then we lose because every time people think capitalism they think of of you know slave labor i i just got somebody telling me that the only reason the west became rich was because it exploited the the colons right which is common but exactly to your point in kate bridge today the vice in our country the vice chancellor is setting up a committee to investigate how the university should give compensation for how its history is damaged the rest of the world because of the british colonial system yes so the only way they're thinking about this is let's look for damage and let's lash ourselves we're so bad so let me finish with this so the question is that you and and of course screw has come out recently said the only thing you can do is actually abolish all universities sure and start and start new and all businesses because the capital probably originated from some slave trade you know 200 years ago or something i mean you have to abolish it so it might be starting new education institutions because the existing ones are well let me let me just relate to this say something about this this Cambridge stuff for this this is the direct consequence i mean i meant talks about this she talked about this 50 years ago and she she nailed it like she often did so many things this is the direct consequence of the morality of altruism the morality that says that somebody else's need is a direct moral claim against you you are morally obliged to take care of you because then it becomes a competition of who is more needy it becomes a competition of who has had the most injustices caused upon him it's a competition about then in order to virtue signal in order to capture them all how good who can you know flagellate themselves the more because they have sinned the more and and what we're seeing that the whole intersectionality that the left has where you have these different levels of oppression who is more pressed and who's less oppressed and of course we white guys i'm a little i'm jewish i guess uh so i get a little bit of of of of pants of a little bit of marks but if if i was white and not jewish i'm the most evil creature ever and oh oh it's everybody everybody else in the world because they they are by definition oppressed but it's it's the elevation of the press that's what morality is about morality is about worshiping the need of others unless we reverse that moral thinking that that that approach to to morality we can't win right we can't sense that there is a pushback that i i sense this i think but the pushback is not a moral pushback i don't see a moral pushback and the pushback is coming from the wrong direction it's you know if you think jordan peterson is pushback right i don't know if you know who jordan peterson is i don't think it's pushback i think jordan peterson at the end of the day buys into a line hook and sinker he just is a conservative altruism but you know he wants to he wants just to happen a little slower i mean he took a moral stand but it's not a moral stand because he denies he denies the opposite of the altruism he isn't standing up for self-interest because he actually has a whole video saying there's no such thing as self-interest and self-interest if there was such a thing it would be bad and evil so he is a conservative altruist he wants things to go a little slower i think he's also postmodern and there's a lot of problems between peterson but but the point is i don't think there is a backlash not a real backlash not a philosophical backlash and if there is good you know then then hooray i mean i'm trying but should we establish new education institutions yes and i think there's a real opportunity because the flip side of all the negativity is we have for the first time in human history a tool that allows us to propagate ideas at the speed of light we have the internet and and and i i i think we underestimate the power of this tool i can put up a video on youtube and it can be watched all over the world at any time at a marginal cost to me and to the viewer of zero zero so to me one of the ways in which people can get educated through the internet rather than through actual institutions and establishments and i think i think we need to create more content i think we need to put content up use the internet get better at internet marketing get better at getting our ideas out there to young people through this amazing you know amazing tool that we have the costs are very low but i i do think that what we need to focus our efforts on is education is getting young people is getting them exposed to these ideas and then once they're exposed to the ideas then look everything's on the internet they can they can read anything they can find any video they can educate themselves they are good historians and some of that history is on the internet so in every one of these you don't need the numbers that you used to me in order to re-educate the population i mean the bad guys know this really really well so we need to learn the same thing you can just use but you need to use digital marketing you need to be able to get the word out there one of the reasons i travel and do this around the world so try it not because i think i can fit anybody in a talk but hopefully i stimulate enough of them to think about it that they go and they google right they go search on grand or they go search youtube or they go they go search for the ideas the ideas are out there now in the past we'd have to log books around now i mean there are no excuses in my view today because of this amazing tool this is saying i want to bring it to a close at this point so that you're going to sit down and recover but this is a perfect ending because this is a message to the live on the student outcome right and it's what we've been saying to ourselves is that the way in which we reach people we need to look at technology we need to look at faster ways of reaching people not writing boring articles like i write but actually getting to people directly and what we're trying to do of course is get to students before their their brains have solidified into a particular position and and give them some ideas in different ways of looking but things in hong kong and hong kong's small enough yeah that if you reach i don't know 20 students a year consistently yeah over a period of time you do you could have an effect particularly if they're the way students and the smart and let me say something in favor of boring articles you have to have the boring articles because once they consume the the candy you've put out there they need to get some real content they need to get some real meat right so you want to you want to you want to catch them with the with the with the uh you know passionate you're on book speech out there but then they need to get to be able to read something that is that they can sink their teeth into so you need everything and and the internet there's no reason not to have it you know you can have you you can link to you know adam smith right you can hang to i'm in you can link to any of these sources now that are just available out there and you could so we think of it in terms of you know we have a funnel we have a lot of you know stuff here to attract people yeah and then we have medium stuff if they want to learn more and if they really want more than there's this real hardcore stuff down here and we know that only a few people will get to this hardcore stuff but if they're the white people then the people who change the world