 I am, was from 2000 until 2017, the executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. I am now the chairman of the board of the Ayn Rand Institute. So I travel around the world speaking about who ideas and applying who ideas to the topics of the day. I have a podcast, I have a YouTube channel, I have everything, social media that exists all with the real idea of trying to apply Ayn Rand's ideas, Ayn Rand's philosophy to the world in which we live and to help people discover who ideas and make them better in applying their ideas to their own lives. No, I haven't always been and to some extent I still don't consider myself a libertarian. So I'm an objectivist, which is Ayn Rand's ideas and I think there's significant differences between objectivism and libertarianism and I'm not even sure there is such a thing as libertarianism because I'm not sure there's one ideology that captures everybody who's under this big tent called libertarianism. I'm an objectivist but I discovered Ayn Rand's ideas when I was 16. Before that I was a socialist, I was a collectivist, I was, you know, everything I Ayn Rand and the free market movement is against. I was living, living at the time in Israel and when you grew up in Israel, when I grew up everybody was a socialist. There was no, nothing else. The Labour Party wanted re-elections and this was like the standard stuff that you studied in school. So I read Atlas Shrugged when I was 16. I was with a friend and we were talking and he started talking about capitalism and free markets and I said, where are you getting this nonsense from? And he said, you got to read this book and he handed me a copy of Atlas Shrugged and I read it and it changed my life, completely changed my life and changed everything I thought about the world and after that I read everything for Ayn Rand and then after that I read Mises, I read all the free market economists but my real focus is on the philosophy of objectivism and its application to economics, to politics, to morality, to really everything to do with life. Yes, it is very difficult because the Spanish translation was published in Argentina and it's hard to get here. Now we're working on a solution I'm hoping in the next few years that Ayn Rand's books in Spanish will be available. There is a website in Spanish, Objuctivismo, which has a lot of articles in Spanish, a lot of Ayn Rand's works in Spanish. There's a kindle through Amazon Spain, you can get a lot of Ayn Rand's works in Spanish on the kindle. So while it's hard to find the hard copy, you can go online and find a lot of material in Spanish and I think it's interesting because she's more popular in Latin America than she is in Spain. So in Latin America they found her and discovered her and they read her and they're engaged and in Spain we're still struggling to get the word out and this is why it's good that I'm here and it's good that I have an opportunity to talk to people. Because economics is tainted in people's minds, particularly in countries that have remnants of religion because what is the essence of a free market? What is the essence of an economic transaction? The essence of economic transaction is the betterment of self. The essence of an economic transaction is self-interest. So trying to make your life the best that it can be by making money or by buying things that will make your life better through a trade. So trade is about self-interest. Nobody produces to benefit the world. People produce to benefit themselves. They produce because they love producing because they want to make money because they enjoy the process. And yet, particularly in Christianity but really in secular philosophy across the entire board, the idea of self-interest is viewed very, very negatively. Self-interest is bad, being selfish is associated with lying, stealing, cheating, being a nasty person. So the assumption is if businessmen are self-interested, they're trying to make money, they must be crooks. They must be lying, cheating, stealing, right? And we don't trust them. We don't trust money. We don't trust bankers. We don't trust anything to do with money because money is associated with self-interest, with greed, with profit, with benefiting myself. And if you think about what morality, the conventional view of morality is, the conventional view of morality is, what's good, what's virtuous, what's noble, what gets you into heaven, right, is to sacrifice. It's to be self-less. It's to help other people without expecting a return. So if you're charitable, that's good. But if you're a businessman and making money, that's bad, even though the businessmen help other people much more than charity ever does, right? Because of the trade principle because trade is win-win. So the only way to become a millionaire is to help other people by selling them goods that they want and that makes their lives better. So I believe, I ran believe, that the real barrier to capitalism, the real barrier to free markets is not a lack of understanding of economics or lack of political understanding, it really is a moral barrier. As long as we hold a morality, a Christian morality, but also a Kantian morality, a morality that's kind of in our culture, a morality of altruism, which is otherism, the placement of the well-being of others ahead of yourself. As long as we have that kind of morality that says that self-interest is bad, we cannot have capitalism. So what is acquired is a moral revolution, an ethical revolution, not just an economic political revolution. I mean, my view is simple, your moral responsibility in your life is to make the most of your life, to live the best life possible for you. And only you can make decisions about how to live that good life, how to pursue the values that are going to make you happy, that are going to make you flourish as an individual. So it makes sense for you as an individual to want to live free of force, free of coercion. You want to be able to use your mind and use your reason to pursue the best values, the best things that will make your life the best life that it can be. Reason functions can only function when free from a gun, when free from coercion, when free from authority, when free from force. So if you want to live the best life for yourself, if you want to flourish as a human being, then you need to liberate your mind. To liberate your mind, you need to liberate yourself. You need to be free of force and free of coercion. All lazific capitalism is, is a society based on the principle of no coercion. All lazific capitalism is, is that the government exists to do one thing and one thing only, to protect you from coercion. We call this individual rights, to protect your right, to protect your freedom, to pursue the rational values necessary for your own survival and for your thriving. So I wouldn't even get into economics. This is about how to live the best life you can live. And to live the best life you can live is to be free. Nobody who wants to, to, to make the most of their life, to flourish, to, to live a great life wants mother government telling them what to eat, what to drink, what business they can buy or sell, who they can hire, who they can hire, how much they can pay people, how they interact with other people. You want, if you, if you have any self-respect and if you believe in yourself and if you want to live a good life, you want to be free of that. You want to be able to make the choices for yourself and sometimes you fail. And you learn from that failure and, and you move on. But, but it's your life. You should be fully responsible for it. So I would add it just to add to your description of the looters. I would also add that she describes certain businessmen, the businessmen who, who are cronies, who, who use government in order to get favors as also the looters, as part of the looters, right? So yes, I, I definitely think we're getting closer and closer to that vision where society is divided between the makers and the takers, the looters and the looters and moochers and the, and the producers. And it's, it's not just an issue of taxation because taxes are not how you measure your worth. My ideal is to pay zero taxes, right? I don't want to pay taxes. You wouldn't call me a mooch if I didn't pay any taxes. I got to keep my own money as long as I produced my own wealth. So the real distinction is those who produce and create for themselves real values. And, and, and therefore live by their own efforts. And those who live off of others, those who either through business like businessmen who pay a lot of taxes by the way, but get favors from the government, exclude competition, manipulate the market by government courage and in order to be able to make large profits that they are mooching, they are looting off of, off of the, the, those who are productive and those who actually compete fairly. But it's, it's everybody who is, who uses government for their own advantage, whether it's the welfare recipient or whether it's the crony, it's the crony businessman. All of them are looters and moochers. And, you know, to be a producer, you can be, you can be a worker. You're working for a living. You're trying hard. You can be self-employed. You can be an entrepreneur. You can be a, a, a, a, a, a, see-over-large business. You can be an artist. You can be a philosopher. You can be a economist. As long as you're working for yourself, as long as you're producing values, then you are a producer. And yes, I think the, the world is becoming more and more divided. The sad thing is that a lot of people are both, right? That a lot of people produce in one part of their life and are looters in another part of their life. For example, they vote for socialist political parties. They vote to take from you and give to somebody else. So they vote the looting. That is a looter. He is a looter, but he's also producing. So they're mixed. A lot of businessmen are very productive on one side, but they also try to manipulate government on the other side. Now part of, part of that is the government's fault because the government is intervening and they don't have a choice. But part of it is, yeah, they, they, they wanted some favors, but they also are very productive. So the world is becoming gray in a sense of all these people are mixed. It's hard to find the pure producers. It's also easy to find the pure looters, but most people are gray and kind of in between and both get what they don't deserve and they produce some of what they do deserve. Well, because they're liars, right? So, and, and, and communists are liars and they're primarily liars who are lying to themselves. So, Inran has a concept called evasion. It's when you don't look at reality, you don't examine the fact. You're not interested in truth. And I think that there are a lot of intelligent people out there who don't want to know the truth, who are not interested in the truth. They have a platonic ideal of what the world should be and they're not interested in evidence, they're not interested in facts, they're not interested in truth and they lie to themselves. And fine-rand evasion, evasion ignoring facts, ignoring reality is the essence of evil. Evil comes from not looking. The good is about being rational. It's about looking, it's about facts, it's about evidence, it's about truth. Evil is about the negation of truth. And I think anybody who's a communist and over 25 and certainly if they're an intellectual is basically evil. These are people who are ignoring facts, ignoring the truth. They know that communism leads to slaughter and murder and destruction and poverty. They know it and they ignore it. And that, I can't think of anything more horrible than that kind of mentality. Yeah, I mean, again, it goes back to morality. The common thread of morality in the world in which we live is sacrifice, it's to worship the suffering, it's to worship the poor, the meek shall inherit the earth and we always look for the underdog, the suffering, the downtrodden. They are virtuous, the strong, the able, the productive, the creative, they're no good, they're the bad guys, right? So Israel is a good illustration of this. Before 1967, Europeans loved Israel. They loved Israel. It was this little country where poor, pathetic Jews lived who had survived the Holocaust and somehow were scraping by and making a living. And then the war of 1967 happened and these weak, pathetic Jews defeated the armies of six Arab countries and proved to be pretty strong, powerful, successful, competent Jews. And Europe looked at that and said, oh, we don't like that. We don't like competence. We don't like ability. We don't like success. So we can't like them. Who's miserable? Who's pathetic? Who is struggling? Oh, Palestinians. So suddenly they shifted to the Palestinians. It was like almost that day. It just flipped. Before 1967, people don't know this. The United States had an arms embargo in Israel. So the United States sold no weapons to Israel. All the weapons that Israel fought were French, German, British, European weapons. In 1967, the Europeans stopped selling weapons to Israel and luckily the United States started. So what do Europeans hate about Israel? Is that it's successful? What Europeans hate about Israel is it's an example of what Western civilization, even in a primitive place like what Palestine was, can be incredibly successful. What Europeans hate about Israel is themselves. It's a form of self-hatred. And Europeans don't like themselves because they're Westerners and they're imperialists and they've done all these horrible things to people. This is European guilt reflected in the hatred of Israel. And this guilt leads them again to embrace anybody who's suffering, anybody who's more primitive in terms of culture than they are. And therefore they embrace Muslim immigration, they embrace the Palestinians, they embrace anybody who is struggling. And then because of multiculturalism, because of this idea now in multiculturalism, supposedly is all cultures are equal, but all cultures are not equal. Some cultures are better. The standard for what cultures are better should be human flourishing. What cultures allow the individual to be successful and to flourish and to achieve things. And by that standard, Western civilization, the post-enlightenment West is the best civilization in human history because look at what we've done, look at what we've achieved, look at what we've created. It's an amazing culture we have. So what multiculturalism does is it doesn't raise other cultures because they're terrible. For human life, they're terrible. What it does is it lowers our valuation of Western culture. So what multicultural really is is a doctrine of hatred of Western civilization. And what's interesting about Western civilization is any country, anywhere in the world, in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America, anywhere in the world that's not the West that adopts Western values, succeeds. And I think Western values or the enlightenment is represented by two values, individualism and reason, the respect to the human mind. If you think about how and the political manifestation of that is freedom, because you wanna free the individual to use his mind to achieve his values. So if you look at Japan or to some degree China or to some degree India or the rest of Asia or even some countries in Africa today, wherever they allow their people freedom, wherever they respect the individual and respect the human mind, they succeed. So it's not a racial issue. It's not an ethnic issue. It's not an issue of geography. It's about ideas. And the enlightenment discovered the best ideas ever and anybody who embraces those ideas succeeds, but multiculturalism is a doctrine that tries to denigrate those ideas, try to push them down. And as a consequence, leads the Europeans haping themselves and hating Israel. I mean, to the extent that it's a social healthcare system, it's terrible. And I don't even have to know the details because the fact is that socialized anything doesn't work. You know, you cannot provide a true service, a value for value where there are producers and consumers through government. Whenever government gets in the middle between producers and consumers, it is destructive. Healthcare is a service that is produced by doctors, nurses, hospitals, scientists, radiologists, all these different functionaries and consumers who want their healthcare service. It functions best when it is free. There's also insurance companies and all the mechanisms of insurance. It functions best when it is free, just like technology, just like the internet, just like any other industry. If you leave it, you know, I ask audiences, what do you think the iPhone would look like if the government produced it? I mean, everybody laughs because they know it, it would be ridiculous. Well, why would we want the government to produce healthcare? Healthcare is a more important product than the iPhone and they're not competent to do it. It's a more complex product. It's very hard to produce healthcare. Why not let the same principle that allowed for the creation of an iPhone, markets, relatively free markets, to apply to healthcare and to everything else that is a service where there's a producer and a consumer. Look, I have a lot of sympathy for the immigrants, right? They are escaping horrible conditions. They're here, yes, for economic reasons, but there's nothing bad about economic reasons. Economic reasons are good reasons. So I have a lot of sympathy for the immigrants and it's sad to me that in small quantities, like 600 people, anybody's making a fuss about it. You know, if there's mass migration, if there are millions of people coming, like there were two years ago into Germany and Sweden and other places, then suddenly there's a role for the government to block borders and slow it down to figure out what exactly is going on, make sure there are no terrorists and so on and just pace it out. But 600 immigrants, what's the big deal? The problem in Europe is one, is your welfare state, right? So if you could allow immigrants to come without giving them welfare, without giving them a house, without giving them checks, without giving them all these goodies, then only the immigrants who are willing to work would come here. And then you would have competition for labor, which is a good thing, not a bad thing, and Europe would benefit from those immigrants. The problem in Europe is not the immigrants, in my view, the problem in Europe is Europe. It's the lack of free markets, it's the welfare state, and it's a lack of belief and respect for Western civilization. So ideally, if Europe rediscovered the enlightenment values that made it so successful, then it would demand that these immigrants, when they came in, would assimilate. And that's the real challenge. The real challenge is how do we get these immigrants to assimilate? And the only way to get them to assimilate is for us on the West to actually value our values, to actually respect our culture, and to expect that everybody who comes in, everybody who's received in that culture, adopted. So we have to get rid of multiculturalism, we have to get rid of the welfare state, and only then can you have a truly healthy, productive immigration policy. Yeah, I mean, I'm not a fan of Donald Trump's. I think he's gonna do a lot of damage to the United States. Trump is a pure pragmatist. He doesn't believe in anything. He believes in the expedience and whatever will get him his goal in the moment. And as a consequence, he changes his policies constantly. He lies, he is the only person I know, or the only president I know who lies and thinks it's normal, there's no problem with that. He thinks it's part of the way you conduct business. Usually when people lie, they feel a little embarrassed by it. I think he's proud of his lies, which is a very strange psychology. I think as a character, he's got a very bad character. Lying is just one aspect of that. And I think that demeans the presidency and will have consequences long-term for America in terms of the actual policies. You know, they're not as bad as they could have been, right? So, you know, a lot of the regulatory agencies are deregulating, which is pretty good. So they're freeing up the economy a little bit. They lower taxes. I'm always full lower taxes. I think lower taxes is a good thing. But also we have to realize that if you continue to spend and you increase spending and you cut taxes, then the money's being sucked out of the private economy anyway through debt, through the government borrowing money, so the impact on the economy is the same. So what really needs to happen is you have to cut spending. And of course, the budget that the Republicans passed and Donald Trump signed is a huge increase in spending. So that's a bad thing that he did. I don't think he has a front policy. I don't think he has a clue about what the front policy should be. He just met with the president of North, with the brutal dictator, the murderous dictator of North Korea. What he thinks he can gain by meeting with a murderous, brutal dictator, I have no idea. It's never worked in history. It's never turned out for the good. So I have no idea what he's expecting to gain from it. I expect that North Koreans will ultimately make fun of the US for this. And then, of course, he's very pro-tariffs, which is just bizarre to me and wrong and stupid and could undo a lot of the good economic things that he's doing. It could all be undone by the tariffs that he's passing. So I think it turns the policy very mixed. Very mixed and we'll see what happens in the next couple of years. I mean, I don't believe in little countries. I just don't see the points in having a bunch of little countries. The only reason to secede is if you're going to establish greater freedom. So is Catalonia being driven by a laissez-fait capitalist mentality that they want to establish more freedom, deregulate lower taxes? No, they want more socialism. The government in Madrid is not socialist enough for them and they're pissed off that their money gets redistributed from Catalonia to other parts of Spain because the tribal, the Catalonians, as if that matters, who cares? So I'm against tribalism, I'm against socialism, I'm against redistribution. The only legitimate reason to secede from an existing country is to establish more freedom. So if Catalonia wants to establish more freedom, they have my support, but I don't think they want to establish more freedom. I think they want to establish less freedom. So I'm against it. The consequence economically, I think to everybody will be bad because, well, certainly it's gonna be a problem for football, right? Because what happens with the rivalry between Barcelona and Real Madrid? Do they leave La Liga? I mean, is that what happens? That's a real problem, right? But economically, now they're gonna have tariffs between Catalonia and Spain. That's bad for both sides, if they do. It's just, are they gonna join the European Union? Will they get the euro? I mean, the whole thing is just, yes, they have to stay in the euro, they can't. They can't. Yes, they would have to leave the euro, they'll start printing money, they'll have inflation. I mean, it's just, I think this balkanization, right? It's funding. Yes, they just want to redistribute wealth, but redistribute locally. Yes, we want to redistribute it to our own people. That is tribal, and I think that's horrible. And look, you've got precedent. Look at Yugoslavia, it broke up into these little countries. I mean, I went to Macedonia and I said, well, what was it, Montenegro even was. I said, what do you have your own country for? It's ridiculous. Oh, we have a history, who cares, right? It's the only reason to do it is if you're gonna protect rights more than the bigger government and otherwise what you want. In that sense, I'm pro-European union. If it wasn't so bureaucratic and if it wasn't so, if all it was was free movement of goods, free movement of capital, free movement of people, and really established a free trade zone, then that's great. It's the regulations of Brussels, which are horrible, right? But the idea of a bigger union where you have freedoms, that's a good thing, not a bad thing. No, I know it's, you know, the Catalonians hate me, but I am not for Catalonian independence unless the laissez-fait people win.