 Thank you, Iran. Gene Epstein will now make the negative case for 12 minutes. Well, my friend Jaren Brook is a force of nature in the cause of freedom and free markets. And I put Ayn Rand in the pantheon, and not just because of the enduring impact of her novels. In her objective writings, Rand reminds us that there is a real world out there and that the only way to understand it is through reason. But is selfishness a virtue? Jaren says yes, and so did Rand. She applied reason to this question in her book of 1964, The Virtue of Selfishness. So let's go back to the seminal text. We'll find that on the rational terms, Rand herself said selfishness is clearly not a virtue. Rand begins by confronting the question of why she chose the word selfishness to, quote, denote virtuous qualities of character. In characteristic fashion, she answers, quote, for the reason that makes people afraid of it. She continues, the meaning ascribed in popular usage to the word selfishness is not merely wrong. It is responsible for the moral, for the arrested moral development of mankind. Yet, she continues, the exact meaning and dictionary definition of the word selfishness is concern with one's own interests. This concept does not include a moral evaluation. Now, Jaren has at times referred to selfishness as Rand defined it, but in her own statement, Rand made it clear that it would be unreasonable for her to define an English word according to her own preferences. That's why she cites the, quote, exact meaning and dictionary definition of the word, which does not include a moral evaluation. Now, Jaren just commendably did cite the exact meaning and definition of the word because it always includes a moral evaluation. It always means ever since Samuel Johnson's dictionary was written in 1773 and on through all of Webster's dictionaries, it always means moral disapproval. The dictionary writers were doing their job by reflecting the fact that all written records of the word have used it in this way. The only difference between what Jaren just said and what Ayn Rand wrote is that she was quoting what she called the exact dictionary definition of the word and she defined it as concern with one's own interests, full stop, not concern with one's own interests to the detriment of others, not to the expense of others, full stop, just concern with one's own interests. So Rand was being rational, she was pinning a definition on the dictionary but she was misquoting the dictionary. Now, why the sleight of hand? Why did Rand pretend she was citing the dictionary when she was clearly not doing so? Think of the heroic struggles she went through as an immigrant from the Soviet Union. Imagine that like Rand, you and I grew up with the suffocating idea that anyone who refuses to serve the state is selfish. Also imagine that even in the U.S. we witnessed President John F. Kennedy in his 1961 inaugural address to much acclaim that we citizens must all ask what we can do for our country. If we had these experiences, we too might want to shout from the rooftops that selfishness is a virtue just to jolt people out of their civility to the state. We too might want to rail against what Rand called the arrested moral development of mankind by calling selfishness the virtue given the popularity of Kennedy's statement. But since we don't bear Rand's scars, we don't have to go down that false and destructive root and neither does Yaron. To echo the words Rand herself used in her book, her use of the word selfishness is not merely wrong. It's done serious damage to public perception of the set of beliefs that Yaron and I both share. The use of the term needlessly antagonizes people by making it seem as though we who advocate freedom really do endorse a world in which people act in disregard of or at the expense of others. It does harm in another way. I've met followers of Rand who know what the word selfish really means and like to flaunt their indifference to others. These people do us no service. In a speech Rand delivered, she attacked Kennedy's statement which read in full, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. And in 1962, two years before the virtue of selfishness was published, a free market economist Milton Friedman took a principal stand against that statement in his book, Capitalism and Freedom, a principal stand Rand had taken. But he declared that the free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. He will ask rather how can we keep the government from destroying the very freedom we establish it to protect. Joining Friedman and picking up on a phrase she herself strongly endorsed, Rand might have declared that the individual's pursuit of happiness is a virtue. We're picking up on a popular word in the 1960s, she might have argued that quote self-actualization is a virtue, especially since self-actualization has been defined as the achievement of one's full potential through creativity, independence, spontaneity and a grasp of the real world. There are of course greedy and selfish people, but we don't have to endorse Gordon Gekko's view that greed is good any more than we believe that selfishness is a virtue. Instead, we cite Adam Smith's concept of the invisible hand. As Smith pointed out, in a market economy, greedy and selfish people can satisfy their aims only by selling us products we want to buy. The selfish are therefore led by a hand that is invisible to them to advance the interests of others. Yaren has written that business is a selfish activity and is a simple matter to correct Yaren's abuse of the English language through Smith's classic insight about the invisible hand. For Smith, who deplored selfishness, business can't be a selfish activity precisely because it advances the interests of others. And as he explains, the marvel of the market is that through the invisible hand the efforts of the greedy and selfish are channeled to serve the interests of others. The distinction is simple. People may have selfish motives for offering others products they may want to buy, but the activity is not selfish in itself. And plenty of people are in business for idealistic motives. Think of Steve Jobs, who, by the way, spoke about money only as a means of investment in the products he wanted to sell, or of John Mackey, or of Howard Rourke of Rand's novel The Fountainhead, who consciously devoted themselves to offering products that enhance the world. Now, oddly enough, Yaren's tough-mindedness yields to naivete when he says, well, honesty is the best policy for all of us. Unfortunately, even in a market economy, the moral does not work that way. Yaren may decide that dishonest people and selfish people in this world are personally unhappy, but I wonder, economists Thomas Piketty and Paul Krugman have been made millionaires by the market for services that are without merit and have in fact done great harm. You can bet that if these two con men or countless others like them ever do pay the piper, it won't be until the afterlife. What do Harvey Feier, Weinstein, Jack Warner, Harry Cohn, Alfred Hitchcock, and Louis B. Mayer have in common? Well, they're all Hollywood producers who were sexual predators against women. Now, what they don't have in common is that only one of them, Harvey Weinstein, ever got caught. So we must tough-mindedly admit that honesty is not always the best policy and that the market that people are often naivete and they buy snake oil from others. So we cannot endorse the idea that selfishness leads always to honesty. Selfishness can sometimes pay off. And to those who think government is the answer to regulating the potentially destructive effects of greed and selfishness, we cite the public choice theory of Nobel Prize winner James Buchanan who called his theory politics without romance. Greedy and selfish opportunists will also be found in government, where the absence of market constraints permits them to act destructively and further their own selfishness. However unhappy Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton are, according to Yaron, who probably hasn't had them confide in him for quite a long time. As Yaron and I both know, we advocates of laissez faire capitalism are the only ones who can truly say that we care about the well-being of the broad masses of people while the Bernie Sanders of this world are offering them snake oil that can only make matters worse. Yaron has also disavowed selfishness correctly defined. In a recent interview, Yaron was asked about whether he believed in a social safety net and here's what he said, I believe in a safety net. I just don't believe the government should provide it. I don't believe I should be coerced to help them. You want to help them, I want to help them. We can get together and help them voluntarily. Notice that Yaron said I want to help them and so would I. Adam Smith could have had us in mind when he wrote in 1759, how selfish so ever man may be supposed. There are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others. Now this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion in which we feel for the misery of others. Compassion is a virtue, self-actualization is a virtue, but selfishness is not a virtue. You must vote no on the resolution and in doing so you'll be even truer to the rational ideals that I and Rand advocated. Thanks. Thank you Gene, Yaron you now have five minutes of rebuttal and we trust you will pull no punches. Five minutes, this is going to take a while. So Gene's view as articulated is the view the most free market supporters since Adam Smith has held. How's that worked out for you guys? Not very well. We are losing the battle for liberty. We are losing the battle for freedom exactly because of this view. Adam Smith laid the foundation for the defeat of the system he tried to defend. By positing that the activities of people in the marketplace were selfish and therefore not so very positive morally. You aggregate them and you bring in something called the invisible hand, somehow they become virtuous. He laid the death knell for capitalism. Nobody believes that if you add up vices you get a virtue. It doesn't make any sense. Indeed morally it is offensive and that is why even though almost all moralists agree with Adam Smith that the individual's behavior is selfish and for bad they conclude that when you aggregate them all up you must get a bad. One plus one equals two. By inventing an invisible hand that is not explained. Morally, I'm not talking about economically, economically we understand how it works. Adam Smith laid the foundation for the defeat of capitalism and unfortunately one of the great tragedies of the 20th century is that free market economists continue with that deceit. No, the action of the baker in trying to take care of himself and his family is the essence of virtue. What is more important than living your life and making the best of your life and taking care of the people you love? That is the essential characteristic of what virtue is about. Now Jean of course has to, as all opponents of selfishness, have to create strawmen in order to attack Iron Man's view. Yeah, Steve Jobs didn't care about the money but nobody said selfishness was about money. Selfishness is about human flourishing. That's not money as a component but money is not everything. So of course Steve Jobs didn't care about the additional dollar. Though he cared in terms of measuring his success in the success of his products. But yeah, Steve Jobs did what he did. Why? Because he loved it. He did it for himself. Hopefully you all go to work and love what you do. For whom? For you. It's your self-esteem. It's your job. It's your life. And that is all selfish and we can play dictionary games here. But the fact is that the people who wrote the dictionary don't want us to believe in selfishness. The people who write the dictionaries want us to believe it's a vice. Because they want us to hold a self-sacrificial altruistic morality. Because they want altruism is a great mechanism but it should control us all. By which they inflict guilt on us all. So think about why we regulate business. We regulate business because we have this confusion about selfishness. They're obviously selfish. Steve Jobs was obviously selfish. But selfish people are people who lie, steal, and cheat. And there are SOBs generally. So Steve Jobs must also be, in spite of his total neck shirts and being cool, also be a lying, stealing SOB. So we better get that government on his shoulder to watch and monitor. We need to be at wealth because you businessmen are too selfish to consider the fate of other people. I think selfish people have a huge interest in the fate of other people. It's not their top priority. Charity is not a top priority. But charity is part of life, particularly in a free market where there is no, where they're not taking 55% of our money. There's no contradiction between some charity and selfishness. So you have to create a strawman in order to knock it down. Steve Jobs, businessmen generally, of course they're greedy. They're trying to make more money. What's wrong with that? There's nothing wrong with that. But if we have a negative perception of greed and selfishness, we're obviously going to want to regulate and control. So the battle in my view for free markets, the battle in my view for liberty and freedom is not an economic battle. We won that 50, 60, 70 years ago. Maybe we even won it with Adam Smith. The battle is to eradicate the old Christian, Judeo-Christian, whatever you want to call it, morality of altruism, morality of living for the sake of others, and replace it with a morality of the virtue of selfishness. Thank you. Tell me the value of selfishness. Use another word, self-esteem. The value of selfishness is that you esteem yourself as a value that you live according to your nature, which means by the judgment of your own mind and you respect your own mind, you respect your own ability to do the right thing, therefore you respect the possibility of being a morally virtuous person and you regard yourself as a value worth preserving.