 Welcome to another episode of Yaron Debates Europe. Today, the topic is democracy. What has been democracy's historical role? Has it been a progressive one towards more freedom, towards a better life? It has coincided historically, the rise of democracy with things like individual rights, the industrial society, but at the same time, when does democracy become majority rule? We know that some people are very skeptical of democracy for some suspicious reasons. Like, who are these people who think they know what to do with their lives? And we saw it in the recent past with specific referendums in particular countries where the skepticism of democracy was basically the skepticism about can people actually think? But to discuss all this today, we have with us Mo Lovat, Mo works in the Academy of Ideas. See, you can see here on, I've seen here on GB News, on Sky News, on BBC, I've lost count, you're quite popular lately, your views, so we're very glad to have you. Mo, thank you very much. And on the other side, Yaron Bruc, Yaron is the chairman of the board of the Andran Institute and the host of the Yaron Bruc show. Now, the format Mo starts with an introduction, some like 10 minutes, Yaron replies, then we're gonna have a bit of back and forth within the panel and make sure you send your super chats and then we're gonna go on to your questions, the questions from the audience. A big thank you to the Andran Institute for supporting this series, for supporting these events. Make sure you follow ARI Global on Twitter and Facebook for short clips and highlights from all these events. And of course ARC, UK, social media for these discussions every week. Mo, thank you very much for being with us. The floor is yours. Thank you, Nicos, and thank you, Yaron, for agreeing to this debate. Tonight I'm going to make the case that democracy is the best and the only legitimate way to organize political decision-making in society. Not that it is the least-worst form, as Winston Churchill famously said, but that it's an unalloyed good. You can call me a radical Democrat. What's more, I'm going to convince you as objectivists that democracy is the only system of decision-making based on reason, and that it is the only way to realize one's potential through pursuing rational ends. In other words, I'll be arguing that democracy is inseparable from reason, from liberty, from individual human flourishing, and from happiness. And just to ruffle some feathers, I'm going to suggest that those who are anti-democracy are the ones who ultimately become the barrier to human flourishing and to progress. Now, let me start by stating that political concepts such as democracy are not static. They are not frozen in time, nor universally agreed upon. They are living concepts. From Aristotle to Locke, from the founding fathers, to Ein Rand, the concept of liberty is not agreed upon. It is discussed, debated, and contested. It is modified by reason and through material circumstances and historical context. As with liberty, so too with democracy, we do not agree. We cannot agree, not universally through time and place. To do so would be to separate the analytic and the synthetic, what is conceptually true and what is true in practice. Moreover, to agree to some static definition would be dogma. So it is no point pinning our concept of democracy on a single definition. Therefore, I will state the concept for my concept of democracy and try to convince you that it is the best definition and the best form of self-government. However, although the term is contested, there are of course some core tenets. At the very least in its meaning, democracy contains the word demos, meaning people and kratos, meaning power. Democracy at its most basic means power to the people. Do my citizen Smith thing there at that point. So who are the people? What is power and how is it to be used or manifest is always contested. And perhaps we will have a little bit of that contestation tonight. I will leave the issue of the people to one side for a moment, as I think between us, it will be the lesser contested concept, except to leave you with one consideration. If we are to agree that people are rational beings, even while accepting limits to knowledge and human fallibility, and we are to agree that reason is a fundamental human attribute, except for those who are perhaps mentally incapacitated in some way, then exclusion from the concept of the people sets its own logical limits, at least outer limits. But what do we mean by power? Is it about the ability to oppress others? Is it the authority to impose one's will upon others? Or is it about individual sovereignty, the ability to act as free agents of our own destiny? I believe it is the latter. This is encapsulated in the definition of sovereignty, which for me is a central concept of democracy. And in European thought, we see from as early as the 16th century, with the Protestant revolution and the emergence of mercantilism, that in thinkers such as Jean Baudin, concept of sovereignty becomes central to the modern notion of democracy. For despite his reputation as an absolutist, it was Baudin's theory of sovereignty, which gave rise to the modern notion of popular sovereignty. It was his thinking, which would go on to influence the proponents of the English Civil War, the French and the American revolutions. In fact, it was Baudin who came up with the suggestion that it is the position of sovereignty within the body politic that determines the characteristic of the state. And to apply this to a modern day concept, I would argue that the more individual sovereignty is free-flowing and when restricted within the body politic, rather than contained within a single autocrat or oligarchy, the less the need for a strong central state. Whilst we know that the concept of sovereignty in feudal society rested with the king, the 16th century Europe, it was the economic and political forces of mercantilism that gave rise to Protestantism and placed the concept of the individual and the power of reason firmly in the center ground and subsequently planted the seeds for the modern notion of popular sovereignty. Moreover, it was the power of reason and the individual as well as the Protestant work ethic, which gave rise to individual craftsmen, to industrialists and to modern mass production methods based on science and technology. All of these, of course, essential in the emergence of the industrial revolution and the development of capitalism. Each stage of economic development consecutively expanded the notion of the individual, the freedom and of democracy. Let me just restate that point in other way. A meaningful concept of the individual arose at the same time as the concept of mass society. They are inextricably intertwined in a state of nature in a feudal or medieval society, even within some of the societal configurations that we see around the world today. The individual does not exist in any meaningful way, not as a self-actualizing, sovereign being capable of self-determination and agent causation. In those other societal configurations, the clan or the tribe is the mode of identification. It is through group identity that people exist, draw meaning and survive, whether they are ruled by an individual monarch or by an oligarchal regime. It's only through a democratic society where people take responsibility for themselves and their communities through democratic decision-making that individuals can be truly free. Within the concept of democratic sovereignty lies both individual responsibility and social solidarity. It is in my rational self-interest, not only to pursue my own goals, but to live in a society where I'm not the only person who can pursue their own goals. The alternative is, I would argue, anarchy. But democracy is not simply a way to vote for a government, it is a way by which we decide how best to live the good life. Nor is it simply a structure, a system of checks and balances around lawmaking, such as the concept cleaved to by advocates of liberal democracy. It is a process, an organic evolving process, an arena where debate, discussion and decision-making occur, where contestation and consensus are played out between individuals who share a society. It is the most creative way of getting things done and it is liberating. Whilst for radical Democrats like myself, we have not fully realized our democratic potential as a society, it remains an unalloyed good worth fighting for and it is under threat. Most notably from those who would say that people are too uneducated to unaware of the consequences of their decisions, too duped by demagogic messaging to be taken seriously, as if there is some innate quality or divine inspiration that gives legitimacy to our current lawmakers rather than we the people. When some in society seek to have their voices heard when they say the current system is not working for them, democracy is relabeled and dismissed by those in power as populism. Without the vision or self-belief to embrace a world where everyone's right to self-determination is possible, popular sovereignty is denounced by those in power as simply right-wing nationalism. Furthermore, democracy is embroiled in a modern day war of tribalism between left and right, arguably at a time where those concepts mean far less than they have ever had since the French Revolution and from the imposition of a new politics of identity which aims to put us back into our boxes and into our clans. These group identities are posited as the most meaningful way in which we can understand our place in the world at once destroying the notion of the individual and of the universal. Anti-democrats stifle rational debate or they engage in bad faith arguing. They tolerate no differing views and preside over a worldwide censorship and cancel culture prevail. Polarization passes for contestation but has no common aim in mind. People feel politically homeless and socially alienated. They self-censor and withdraw. Chaos and unhappiness prevails. It is only through embracing a concept of democracy that is a living, breathing one where debate, discussion and decision-making take on both the needs of the individual and the society where individual liberty and social solidarity are entwined where each individual is treated with the capacity for creative and rational thought that true human flourishing and self-determination is possible. Thank you. Thanks a lot, Mo. Jaron, what's your take on all this? Excellent. So on much of this we are going to land up on some of it we're going to land up agree which is nice. But I think at the heart of the disagreement is going to be this question of power. As you said, democracy is the combination of people and power but what is power? Power is more than sovereignty. Power is the ability to cause. Power is the ability to use force to engage in authority over others. The power, whether that power is the power of a autocrat, a dictator, or whether it is the power of a majority. It is the power of the state, in this case democracy, at least at the political level. It is the power to force one's views on someone else. When it comes to politics, now we can talk about democracy in a sense once we put politics aside. But politics is force. Government is coercion. Government is the gun. One cannot, one does not have choices when it comes to government. And it's not an option to say you can leave the country. That is not a viable or just a solution to the issue. So while democracy might have its place in corporate life, in, I don't know, I live in a condominium in our building votes on certain things. We all have signed a contract that that is kind of how we're gonna do things. When it comes to the state, democracy is a significantly flawed method of adjudicating and determining laws and adjudicating determining behavior. The majority can impose in a democracy its will over the minority. And it has, whether it is penalizing Socrates for corrupting the youth, or whether it is in Texas right now, taking away a woman's right to choose her ability to have an abortion or not, or whether it's in every single country, the majority's restrictions on the ability of entrepreneurs, businessmen to start a business or choose what business to start and how to run it for themselves, the state through a democratic process seems to restrict and intervene. Or whether it's how much of my income I get to keep. Or whether it's how much I get to pay my employees and we go on and on and on to the thousands, if not millions of different democratically imposed restrictions through a democratic process that are inflicted on individuals. And, you know, now in the United States and in Britain and so on, usually these are not directly democratic, these are through representatives, but it's still the democratic process. The same, but the same is true about referendums in California, referendums, I don't know how often we have them in Britain, I don't know if Brexit was an exception or whether they're frequent, but in California they're frequent. And often the issue is, should we impose these new restrictions on group acts or should we lift particular restrictions in group Y? That is the majority gets to decide how individuals should live. And yes, they might be a rational debate, but the fact is that people do not always vote, do not always respect the rights of their neighbors. So here I think we need a mitigating concept and the mitigating concept, the most important concept in my view in political theory, which Mo did not mention, which I found interesting and she probably has good reason for it, is the concept of individual rights. That is the Lockean concept of rights, not the modern concept of rights, which basically has emptied the concept of all meaning by granting us positive rights to everything. But the Lockean concept of rights, where one has a right to life, liberty and property, where it is a positive right in the sense that protecting these rights is a means to our happiness and that is the positive aspect. But the role of the state is primarily negative. That is the role of the state is protection. The role of the state is the elimination of forced corrosion authority from society. And the whole point here is to protect the individual from the majority or from the sovereign, from the king, from the council, from the tribal leader, from whoever happens to be in the position to abuse the individual. And history is filled with examples of abuse from every system of government. Every system government that has ever existed has done its best to abuse the individual. I think the Lockean attempt and the founding fathers of the United States's attempt and really much of modern democracy's attempt through constitutions and a variety of legal structures has been to limit the ability of the majority to inflict itself on that minority, to violate the individual rights of the minority. Now, what is a right? A right is the freedom of action. It's the freedom of action as an individual to pursue their values, independent of those people's agreement, to pursue their values, unless the agreement, of course, is necessary, but to pursue their values free of corrosion, free of force, in pursuit of their happiness, in pursuit of guided by their reason, guided by their rational mind. And here's where democracy often intervenes. I wanna start a particular business. The state, through a democratic process, has decided that I can't. That is a clear violation of my rights. That is a clear use of corrosion against me. I meet up with my employees and we decide on a fair exchange. I will provide them with X dollars per hour. They will provide their labor. It is voluntary transaction. They have agreed through their rational decision-making. I have agreed my rational decision-making. We've agreed on it all. The state steps in and says, no, that's not acceptable. You have to pay them health insurance and you have to give them X and you have to give them Y and there's a minimum wage and there's a million other things that we, in our own free will, given our own rational faculty, have decided that we don't not want. So the democratic process has to be constrained and limited. So at the end of the day, yes. To the extent that we elect representatives and the representatives pass laws, they should be voted in democratically. But the laws that they can pass need to be dramatically constrained by the concept of individual rights. They should be a complete separation between the state and one's personal behavior, unless one's personal behavior isn't fringing on other people. So the group, the society has no right to tell me how to behave, has no right to tell me what I can do or can't do, what I can negotiate or can negotiate. Outside of the threat I might pose to other people, physical threat that I might inflict damages, physical damages, again, coercion, force, fraud on other people. So democracy is dangerous. It certainly is, for the most part, better than a variety of different authoritarian regimes and autocracies. But there is a significant improvement on democracy, which we see with the founding fathers of the US. And I think the closest we ever come to an ideal system of government is the founding of the US, where you have separation of powers to keep the democracy in check. We have guiding principles articulated in a constitution. I think they're flawed. I think the constitution could be a lot better, but it's about as good as anybody's ever come up with. Limiting the power of government, limiting based on the principle of the rights of individuals to live their life as they see fit, guided by their reason in pursuit of their happiness. And where representatives are chosen by a variety of different democratic or semi-democratic means, where they are not influenced directly by the whim of the majority at any given point in time, but they have some at least incentive to think about the long term. That is as close as we've ever come. I think it could be better, because I think the constitution could be more limiting of what the governing powers could do. I would love to see the state exit much more of our lives and leave us much more free to engage in all activities. And again, as long as we're not using coercion and force on one another, it has no business intervening. So democracy might be better than most systems, but it is dramatically flawed. And certainly democracy that is pure majority rule is almost always gonna result in some kind of authoritarian tendencies and significant violations of individual rights. Thank you, Yaron. So there are many topics on the table. Our audience, if you want to add something more on the table or to ask specifically something more or Yaron, send your super chat. More, now is your time to pick anything that you want from Yaron and place your disagreements, your objections or why you think he's wrong and something maybe he has missed. Okay, yes, thanks, Nicos. So Yaron, you're right. I think there is a lot we agree upon. I will also add a small state is something that we agree on. I don't think we need an interventionist state. I certainly don't think we need busy body state telling individuals how to lead their life, which is something that we've seen very much in the kind of modern concept. I would suggest to you that the founding fathers were incredibly influenced by de Tocqueville's democracy in America. So I think democracy in some form was certainly behind and what you would say was the ideal situation. And I'm not gonna disagree with you too much about that. Let me pick the points where I think we might disagree. So first of all, you posit the state as the biggest problem to the inability for human liberty and the government is only ever, well, the government is false. Now, I don't disagree with that entirely, but what I would say is it is not the only threat to individual liberty. And perhaps even now in a globalized world, which includes a world connected by the internet through global trade and all the rest of it, the state may no longer be the biggest threat to individual liberty. I'm thinking, of course, of things like the tech giants. I'm thinking about the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few. What Joel Kotkin refers to is the coming of neo feudalism. And as well, when we see things like cancel culture and denouncing unorthodox views, so much of that is now coming from the professional and managerial classes who've fully embraced identity politics from the artists and the intellectuals who are really sort of establishing their new ideology upon the rest of us. And we see that that is one way that debated discussion has been heavily constricted. And your example of Texas was a good one. And I agree that that's gone in a terrible direction. One thing that's often forgotten, I think, in modern democratic theory is the debate and discussion and involvement in that debate and discussion is an essential part. It's not just a transaction between here is a decision, now take your vote. That debate is really, really important, that rational sense. And it was, of course, rational thought, rational discussion, decision making that allowed women to have reproductive rights in the first place. You are correct, I didn't mention rights. It's a concept that, whilst I think the locking concepts of rights to life, liberty and property are something that I would want to cherish, they very much emerged out of that enlightenment thinking and with kind of the social contract kind of thinking. Now we've moved so far away from that, which I think you acknowledge too. Who guarantees our rights today, if not us through our own kind of democratic body? Because if we leave it to the United Nations, to transnational bodies, to governments that we both don't like very much, then those rights can only be restored from above and they can be taken away from above. Yeah, Ron. Yeah, so I think that rights is a concept that we cannot give up on. It's a concept that we have to resurrect and we have to embrace. Yes, you cannot trust the UN, the UN does nothing but violate rights and distort everything it touches. It is and always has been a deeply immoral institution. And I think it shows part of the problems in democracy. Here is an institution in which you have Stalin and the president of the United States sitting at the same table with equal votes. That is not a moral institution. That is not legitimate democracy. That is not the way decision-making should be made. So from its very founding, the United Nations was an immoral and should have never been founded, should have never been created. I think part of the problems that we have in the West today are consequence of the fact that we won't stand up for our values and we appease communist dictators like Stalin and invite them or the Iranians on the Women's Right Commission at the UN, things like that, that is just a travesty. But it's the consequence of democracy, if you will. So we cannot trust those kind of institutions, but rights are crucial because you agree that we want a small government. I don't know about size. To me, it's much more important that they limited in scope than in size because I don't know what the right size is but I know what the right scope is. But the only way to limit the scope is to decide what the government cannot do, what government should do, what the only things government should do. And to me, the only limiting factor is the factor that the founders of the United States identified and that is the factor of individual rights. This role of the state is the protection of individual rights, nothing more. So it has no involvement in economics. It has no involvement in what you do with your body or what you consume with your body or what drugs you choose to take or what vaccines you choose to take or whatever. It's none of the business of the government, none of all of these issues. It's there as a protection agency. It is there to help define laws and to define limits to property rights and other rights and then protect those rights. That's it. So if we don't have the concept of rights, we cannot limit government. And I think the big problem of people today who wanna constrain government is that they don't have that limiting factor. They don't have an idea of, well, how do we do it? Well, if you have rights, then you know what to get rid of. All the stuff the government doesn't do that does that actually violates rights. It's not only not defending rights, that's what we get rid of. And that would shrink government by my estimates by somewhere between 85 to 90%, which would be beautiful thing to behold. Just one last thing, debate and discussion. I love debate and discussion. I do debates all the time and I love rational discussion about lots of issues. This is the problem. The problem is I don't acknowledge your right to debate and discuss what I am allowed or not allowed to do. You can discuss it, but you should have no power over me. That is if we all get together and say, what can Iran say in public and what is he not allowed to say in public? I know, for example, Mo you're a big defender of free speech, right? Well, who gets to decide? If the majority gets to decide whether I have free speech or not, whether I'm allowed to say what I'm not allowed to say. Well, you get hate speech laws like you're doing in Europe. The beauty of the United States in spite of everything is that we have a first amendment. So no matter what the majority thinks, and indeed in America today, I think a majority doesn't believe in free speech anymore, which is shocking and disappointing. But in spite of the fact that a majority doesn't believe in free speech, I mean, in spite of the fact that a majority of politicians don't believe in free speech, they cannot get rid of it because so far the courts have protected that first amendment because it's an individual right that you can't get rid of. I would like to see more of those, more things that you cannot vote on to take away from me. Reproduction rights is a good example. I believe that is a right. And therefore the state majorities cannot take that away from people. But I think economic rights are exactly the same. There's no difference between social rights and economic rights. And I want the state, the majority debate and discussion. We can have all the debate and discussion we want. As long as you don't have the power to enforce your will on me, to curse me into behaving in ways I don't want to behave. Okay, you can reply to this and then we'll go to questions. Yeah, absolutely. I suppose I need to pose the question. What happens when rights collide? What happens when the state's right to protect doctors from an infection and nosocomial infection of COVID-19 in their hospital means that you're putting elderly people back into care homes and spreading the infection amongst the elderly and vulnerable in care homes, which is something that we've seen in the UK. You're right, I'm a big defender in free speech. And I think nobody has the right to tell people what they can and cannot say. But how does that apply? How did the state manage to protect the right of Donald Trump to use Twitter which is, we can argue whether they're a publisher or a platform, but it is one of the ways in which we access the public square in contemporary society. Railways can be privately owned or they can publicly owned, but they are the way we get around in society. So too, I would argue with Twitter when Twitter was banned by these tech entrepreneurs from Twitter, he went to Parla, but of course we saw what happened with that as well. So, or Parle, some people like to say. So I do think that the concept of individual rights is obviously kind of weakened and I'm with you there, but I think those Lockean concepts came out of a society that was prepared to defend those values and because it was a democracy. And the fact that we live in a society that isn't prepared to defend those values and can't even kind of win that argument in Afghanistan but runs away with its tail between its legs and nobody in the West cares. They kind of scratch their head and berate themselves. And then I think that the problems that we face aren't just about concept of rights. They're not just kind of rooted in individual rights, but they are sort of endemic to the kind of society we live in. So let me just comment quickly. I don't think there was a conflict of rights in a free society. I think the conflict that you describe is completely a product of social life medicine and of the government intervening into our lives in ways that it should never have begun. The government and doctors should not have a relationship. It's not, there's no relationship there where the government has to protect doctors and not protect doctors. The government's only response to a pandemic is to identify and isolate people who are infectious. Everything else should be left a voluntary society to deal with in voluntary ways. And it would, you would have insurance companies and hospitals and doctor associations and a variety of different ways dealing with a pandemic in much more effective ways than Western governments have dealt with it so far, which has been an unmitigated disaster. And one example is, you know, what you illustrated where basically our government has cured off a bunch of old people, you know, because they sent them to, in New York it was even more terrible than what was done in the UK. That was one. Second, we're gonna disagree significantly about Twitter. I was so pleased when Twitter kicked off Donald Trump because this is the point. I celebrate a society in which the president of that society, the political leader, the power, the person with the most power in the world can be told, you're not welcome here anymore. That is so cool. I love it. I love the idea that individual individuals, including companies can say to their political leaders, shove off. We don't like you. We don't want you here anymore because you can't do that in China. You can't do that in a lot of countries in the world. You probably can't do it in Hungary anymore. You cannot do it in countries where political power, politicians are servants. They're not our masters. And when a servant misbehaves, I don't want him in my house. I want to be able to say you're not invited to my house. Twitter is somebody's house. Now, we're gonna disagree about social media and tech. I think you overstate their power and you understate the ability to compete against them. There will be competition and you're seeing it already from places like clubhouse and a variety of other platforms. Just 10 years ago, YouTube barely existed. Within a decade, who knows what our debating platforms will be. And I would also state that we have more opportunities today, even if you're banned from Twitter and Facebook, to debate, to discuss, to interact than ever in human history. Ever in human history. On a bigger platform, to more people, there's more opportunities to debate than discussed than ever. And if we start telling Twitter and Facebook what they can and cannot carry, then we have violating death, right, to free speech and we've abandoned the concept completely and we're back towards authoritarianism. We're back towards the majority. Determine what I can and cannot say on my platform, in my house. Moa, I know you're tempted to reply to this but you're gonna get the chance because it's in one of the Super Chat. So many thanks to our Super Chatters. Danga, thank you so much. Marilyn, thank you so much. Who else? I see more people here. William, thank you so much. So here's a relevant question. Should there be such a thing as a quote public square? And this relates to the issue of Twitter because for many people, Twitter is now the public square or as other people call it, the public sphere. So Marilyn, if you want to clarify, you don't have to send another Super Chat but just with a number of comments. Do you mean public square like literally somewhere where we can go out and it's public or do you mean public square online as some people describe the internet? Actually, I would say I'm asking both questions to both of you. So Moa, I assume you agree that there should be a public square but why do you see Twitter as a quote public square? Whereas, as Yaron said, well, Twitter is private property. So it's not really a public sphere. Well, you could say the same about speakers corner I suppose in London that that is private ground but it has been established as a convention that anybody can turn up at speakers corner and have their say it can be debated and they can be argued but they can't be silent. Now listen, my desire isn't to defend Donald Trump but my point is just with when JK Rowling was canceled nobody seriously doubts that JK Rowling or Rowling is not going to work again that her life has been materially deprived by that cancelling but it's the fact that that can happen to anyone. And that is the thing with social media platforms which have become de facto public sphere is it can happen to a guy who was what was his election results 70 million voters that has been invested from the people it's not just him, the person it's the fact that as the president of the United States he embodies those votes of all those millions of people if it can happen to him, it can happen to anyone and it happens a lot to anybody who goes against the kind of new social mores of Silicon Valley particularly I'm thinking of people like gender critical feminists who want to be able to have a say I'm thinking about anybody that really opposes the new what I'd call the new ideological post-modernist ideology of identity politics. So it's not just about Donald Trump and it's not just that Twitter is a private platform it is that it becomes de facto especially when we're all locked down at home particularly when we need to have conversations across geographical borders that is one of the places best fitted to do that although not always top quality debate I will admit. So again Twitter is a private company it was built by particularly investors and particularly entrepreneurs and engineers they get to decide what to do with their platform if people want a better platform they can build it this is part of what I would consider the democracy of the marketplace if there truly is a majority of people who want to hear Donald Trump there will be platforms created Donald Trump try to create his own platform not very successful but maybe that's because not that many people are willing to make the effort to go and listen to him. So it's there is a democracy a certain type of democracy in the marketplace a Twitter response to that if we all unsubscribe to Twitter believe me that would stop. Now I agree with Moe that I don't like the fact that J.K. Wallens was canceled. I don't like the fact that 90 Donald Trump was the one exception because I like it when politicians taken off platforms left or right I don't care I like it when the people individual people stand up to politicians and can get away with it but I don't like the canceling going on on many of these platforms but I don't like it so you know I could do something about it I can speak up about it because I worry about the culture that it creates but I don't want government and this is the role of government again I don't want government to try to intervene and try to protect a culture of speech I want us us you know if we don't like Twitter let's all agree never to go on Twitter again and if enough of us do it democracy if 70 million people abandon Twitter tomorrow Twitter will change its policies or those 70 millions can start a new platform and that platform will thrive with 70 million so let's debate let's discuss and let's create a voluntary alternative solution to the problem that exists and there are a lot of people I know today working on alternative solutions and I think that in five ten years there will be an alternative solution to Twitter I don't think Twitter will be dominant the way it is today because people are upset with what it's doing but the solution is never to run to government and ask it to use its blunt force its coercion in order to violate one person's freedom of speech in order to protect somebody else's supposed freedom of speech that can never work and the consequence is always going to be worse for it let's go back to the demo so thank you Duncan thank you Apollo Zeus what a cool name thank you Mark thank you Marilyn another question doesn't free speech always require private property? question for Yaron but let's start with Mo um that's a question I've never contemplated before thank you for that doesn't it always require private property well does that does that matter I mean everything everything's owned by somebody buildings, land or all the rest of it I think what I'm arguing for is that we have to encapsulate the notion of freedom as well because you know there are public you know private parks are owned by the Queen or you know the Prince of Wales in this country the Duke of Cornwall you know but that doesn't prohibit our ability to act as free agents within them and obviously ideally if you're you know somebody who loves liberty and loves democracy you would want those they want there to be public spaces not just private private property spaces I would argue so you know my ideal society would have no public spaces in the sense of public property in a sense that it's owned by the state I would like to see everything privatized as much as much as possible privatized I'm not sure that I'm not sure the Queen's property is private property I don't know how to even think about the Queen and what what the monarchy actually means in the context of public versus private but I would like to see everything private property I think that the essential for free speech is not free speech doesn't mean you can say whatever you want on my property free speech means that on your property nobody can use coercion against you to stop you from saying what you want and that means that I can't force myself in the BBC it's unfortunate they will never interview me but I can't force them to do it and nobody should force them to do it it's now the BBC state owned so it's a little bit more tricky imagine the BBC was privately owned and they decided they never wanted to hear from me that is within their right just like it's within their right of Twitter if they don't want to hear my voice but also that what that means is the state cannot intervene in my BBC if I start my own channel the state cannot tell me who I can and cannot put on so at the end of the day I think most rights ultimately depend on the protection of property rights property rights are a foundational right they're not the foundational right because the foundational right is the right to life but they are a foundational right and as such free speech requires private property on public property it's very hard to tell what one shouldn't do what one can and cannot say and it becomes much more contested on private property it's clear as long as you're not using the private property to engage in fraud or incitement you can say whatever you want on your own property and broadcast it out to the world if you own the means of broadcasting that's also what makes the university such a riddle like who has the right to speak in a university so for example yeah so who is by what criteria can we decide and who is to decide on university campus whether let's say someone has a right to so Mo did you want to say something about you raise your hand there yeah sure I just wanted to come back a little bit on that Yaron because I don't think free speech is just about the ability to say whatever you want of course it is that it's necessarily that but it's not completely that because it has to be rooted in something either it's rooted in our ability to flourish as human beings to self actualize in the way we conceive of the world and our place in the world or it has to be about communication with other people so we want free speech probably because we want to win an argument because we want to have a public discussion in that sense so I so I'm worried about what I think is your kind of individualist individualistic concept of free speech that doesn't kind of broaden out to the you know that it has to be rooted in something which I think is our place in the world and our connection to other people no I agree it you know the foundation for rights is to create an environment in which we as individuals can flourish and if individuals flourish then to the extent that there's such a thing as society so is society because society is just a collection of individuals so what we want is to create a society in which individuals are free to flourish and I think property rights and the right to free speech are necessary for flourishing and the reason they're necessary for flourishing is if I have if my means of survival is using my reason to advance my life well if I can't express that reason if I can't argue if I can't debate if I can't convince somebody of something then I'm being restrained I'm being constrained in my ability to express myself but at the same time it's not true part of my free speech part of my flourishing might be you know I don't want to hear Nazis now that doesn't mean that Nazis don't have a right to free speech it means I don't have to I don't have to embrace them I don't have to invite them onto my platform I don't have to go to he listen to their talks I don't have to flip to their channel on television I can ignore Nazis part of free speech means part of using your mind is I get to choose what ideas I engage with and what ideas I don't engage with and ideas are not foisted on me and so that's true of every individual some individuals don't want to hear me great they have every right never to hear my point of view but if that's what they think their individual flourishing means I mean they'd be wrong but if that's what they think their individual flourishing means I don't have the right to override their decision making right they get to decide for themselves even if they're wrong yeah I agree it means the right not to listen as well okay so we have before we go to the last superset let's go to the category which is one difficult question for each one of you so Yaron how could we get to the point of individual rights without the point of democracy so someone would say that it was a big democratic revolutions of the 19th century that brought us the the notion of rights and they made it a political reality so how would you reply to that well I mean the country founded on the principle of individual rights I think is the country that for the revolution in order to ascertain it and the fact is that if you had polled Americans at the time about the Declaration of Independence I'm not sure if a majority would have supported it it's not clear at all that 51% of Americans wanted to go to war with Britain to establish independence the fact is that a number of intellectuals and political leaders got together and decided that that's what was going to happen and in a sense impose their will on the rest in the name of individual rights and indeed when the constitution was voted on it wasn't the people it wasn't a referendum the states had to give it a thumbs up but the states again did so not with a direct vote of the people so the way you establish a system of individual rights is to some extent from the top down that is the proper constitution has to be figured out by the leading thinkers of a time I'd hate to look I'd hate to see what it would look like today that's why you know I don't want a constitution convention today because it would be a disaster but you know and reality is the test the test is real freedom and real liberty and we don't live in a time where we can establish a government of real individual rights because we don't have the intellectuals on our side we don't have the people who are understand and are willing to fight for the right ideas but you know it could come ultimately one day to another revolution who knows how we will establish a civilization of individual rights but you know ideally to embrace Moe's vision of democracy ideally right through argumentation and debate we would convince a majority of people to abandon democracy and fail or to limit democracy through a proper constitution and proper definition of individual rights so we would do it through debate that in that sense culture precedes politics and if we can change the culture and have a culture that believes in individual rights then the politics will take care of itself okay so now let me check the difficult question for Moe so Moe the question is does the smoking ban become okay if a democratic majority sanctions it and let me add one aspect to this the vast vast majority of people unfortunately if you ask me are in favor of the smoking ban does this make the smoking ban okay and well as a former dedicated smoker and lover of individual rights I'm going to say no but it is one of those tricky questions isn't it because if I'm sitting next to it and you know as somebody who absolutely hates smoking I'm blown smoking their face they're going to say that I'm impinging on their individual rights to breathe clean air instead of my smoky breath so where do we draw the line that is the question and first of all it should never be a question that comes up for a referendum debate by the way I mean that's you know we can have those conversations as a society I'm sort of with Yaron on his concept of government actually you know I think where we probably disagrees I don't think of everything that's public as being the arena of the government I don't have that same kind of separation I do have faith in us as a demos and so the government so you might argue that you know if you're in a government building or somewhere where there's young people and you use protect little lungs you may have smoking bans in hospitals or whatever I think it's an absolutely disgrace they're in pubs I used to work in a pub when they banned smoking and all you could smell when they finally when it stopped being smoky was stale beer and smelly feet so I'm not in favour of that do the government have the right for us to ban smoking at our own homes absolutely not but you see that if you know if care workers or midwives so you know need to go into people's homes or even people are now not able to smoke at work because they're on a zoom call at work they're not able to kind of smoke from home so no but that's why I think the best guarantee of these kind of freedoms is a limited state and you know consensus between ourselves not consensus in the form of a a kind of referendum where we count up who won three cheers for our common friend Moff who in the beginning of the lockdown lighted the cigarette on live TV and triggered many people you know who I'm talking about okay two more two more the way the way to deal with cigarettes is some pubs can be smoke free and some pubs cannot and you get to choose and restaurants used to and it used to have smoking rooms and non-smoking rooms and you got to choose and and that's the beauty of leaving these things to individuals to make decisions and private property and and figuring out what works and over time I guess is there'd be less and less smoking places because few and few people smoke because because indeed it's not good for you and it would take care of itself instead of a one size fit all government program that bans the whole thing those are those are always violation of rights and and disasters so two more super chats thank you very much Mark Yaron please respond to most position that the individual has no meaning outside society and that society should democratically make decisions on various matters I'm not sure if more said that the individual has no meaning outside society but more did you say that no no no what I said is the concept of the individual historically only sort of came to fruition as a meaningful agent of causation you know self-determination through kind of the advance of mercantilism and then capitalism and mass society so those things evolved simultaneously and they became inextricably entwined that was kind of the point I was making and just on the smoking thing as well and because if you if you don't mind me saying one of the points that I made in my introduction was that we are suffering from a lack of tolerance we are we are suffering from a lack of tolerance with council culture the ability to even just kind of hear discussions opinions that are not our own and I think that coincides with our lack of faith in western values like liberty you know I think it goes hand in hand with that and I think we I think we need to go back to that enlightenment thinking that I think Yaron would agree with me and that's that's what that's why we haven't got the intellectuals on our side anymore by the way it's because they've kind of gone into this post-modernist kind of not nonsense where where they don't believe in human beings which comes back to my point about democracy I think we have to have faith in ourselves as human beings in order to to kind of reignite those enlightenment principles but all of this has ancient roots right I mean Plato didn't believe in human beings right he believed we lived in a cave and we needed philosophy kings to guide us and and I think what we have lost the intellectual class since the enlightenment so the 19th century became the century of German philosophy German philosophy is about the collective about the states Hegel the state is everything and unfortunately German philosophy won they overwhelmed and post-modernism is just an extension of that Kantian Hegelian Schopenhauer Marx kind of kind of tradition but that tradition has won the intellectual debate and but that's where the rubber hits the road that's that's where the action is we need to challenge this German romantic view of the world that negates individuals and only sees collectives and negates reason I mean whole post-modernism project is an anti-reason project the whole project of Kant and Hegel and those guys is a anti-reason project so it's it's it is it is a philosophical deeply philosophical battle we're still battling Plato Plato still has you know has a grip on society and you absolutely right we've lost completely our you know trust in western civilization our belief I mean to me western civilization is two ideas fundamentally it's the idea of individualism and the idea of reason reason as our means of knowledge those are the two ideas that the enlightenment is all about that's what differentiates western civilization from any other civilization it's the individualism and individual sovereignty and and the idea of reason as our means of knowledge as compared to mysticism and nobody is standing up for those ideas because we've abandoned the ideas of the enlightenment we've abandoned these these basic concepts in terms of what the question was you know I tell logic and agree with Moe individualism the idea of the individualist sovereign is a huge achievement there are only two cultures in human history that viewed the individualist sovereign the the the culture of Greece for a brief period of time not for very long and the enlightenment those are the only two philosophical cultures intellectual cultures that viewed the idea of the individualist sovereign and we've lost it in the west or we're losing it in the west and but it's the fact is that for most of human history individuals didn't matter most people nobody cared about there were a few people in power that ruled and they were the only ones who made decisions who who who everybody else lived for their sake for the sake of the few in power for the tribal leader and the witch doctor the witch doctor and the tribal leader have run the world for way too long and it's only since the enlightenment it was we the people have a say in how to run that world and to the extent that you want to call that democracy then Moe and I agree I just want that democracy I want I want to be careful that that majority is not imposing its will and destroying that individualism it would be interesting to have a discussion how individualism and solidarity because Moe you mentioned solidarity how it's a misunderstanding that the one somehow negates the other but that's for another discussion because we have two more superstars from the demos so Cori thank you so much Cori asks public quote public property entails contradiction why should I be forced to listen to someone on property I pay for and why should they be silenced by me on that same property they also pay for and again university is an example here so Moe how do we solve this riddle so um gosh okay so this is something I'm actually getting to grips with in my own intellectual development which is why I'm having a little bit of pause because for me the market which is where I'll probably disagree with some of the audience the market has always been subject to market failure and I'm sure you would have an answer to that that question and I'm possibly questioning that myself within my own intellectual development by the way just so you know and but previously I would have said where there is market failure where we need to build a dam and a private owner can build the dam and we're all protected from it there's a kind of collectivism and a private property ability there but um in the advent of capitalism there was certainly market failure in that children went uneducated and poor people died without medical assistance and all the rest of it now I'd like to hear your answer to that genuinely because this is something I'm battling with No I think that market failure is an ill-defined term I've never heard in a good definition of what people even mean by market failure I'd also argue that government failure is far more disastrous far more common far more prevalent than any market failure in terms of those and certainly the 19th century example is a bad example children want to educated before capitalism it's only capitalism that allowed children to get educated so before they were slaving if you will on the farm now they were slaving in the factory but it's only the wealth that they created through that hard work in the factory that made it possible for them to go get an education so not to mention the fact that they lived right in the farm 50% of them died before the age of 10 in the cities they didn't die that young they made it into adulthood and they actually built some capital some wealth some knowledge some ability to live a productive life so it turns out that child labor is very beneficial to societies as they emerge from feudalism as they emerge to develop capitalism and develop capitalism once there's wealth children don't work children stop working because nobody wants them to work it's not good they're not good employees and parents don't want them there and education is something that parents provide but this issue about public property is and the fact that you have to pay for it even though you don't agree with it is one of the major problems with public education which is a disaster public education in the american sense not in the british sense in britain public education meets private education you know it's all reverse but public education where the government pays for an education and therefore the government dictates the education and therefore you get one kind of education dictated from above by a government no competition no innovation no real no real challenges on the educational fund and you get a declining quality which you always get that's the real government failure the government failure is public education in the united states that's how you get public health care public health care is again a massive government failure I think I think the NHS is a great example of massive government failure and you know the united states is not the model here a truly private health care system is the model which we don't have in the world anyway but you know one could imagine what would be like and we've had it in the past but having public anything creates real conflicts real problems and you know people talk in finance about systemic risk systemic risk is a consequence of government when things are socialized because now every decision impacts the entire society whereas if a private firm fails yes some people are hurt in the private firm but it doesn't cause the entire economy to fail so one of the reasons we have systemic risk in finance is because we have central banks and central banks say another example of public failure where when a central bank makes a mistake everybody in society feels it when a private bank makes a mistake the shareholders and the customers of that private bank feel it it's bad but it's not systemic across an entire country so the failures of policy when it comes to government are far more disastrous than any failures of private enterprise of private companies but yes that's a whole that's a whole other discussion we could have so last question which is going to be super short thank you very much Christopher the shortest supersat ever do you believe in legalizing all drugs Yaron and then more yes now because I advocate for the use I don't I think for the most part pretty disastrous for you but the majority does not the majority of politicians or whatever whatever authority might be out there has no right to tell you what you can and cannot put inside your body and for that matter it doesn't have a right to stop you from committing suicide which I think taking many drugs constitutes suicide maybe slow suicide but still suicide more what about all drugs yeah I'm in favor of that too although I don't condone their use not all of them anyway some of them are pretty fun okay so thank you very much both I I have to say enjoyed this one particularly and I think it was an interesting discussion that's why we had so many questions and we went slightly over time okay thank you both thank you to the other initiative for supporting the series thanks to the viewers see you soon guys bye bye bye