 Hi, we are with Dr. Yaron Brooke, and he is executive president of the Eindland Institute. Dr. Brooke, what is capitalism? Capitalism really is a social system. It's a social system based on private property. So in a capitalist society, all property is privately owned. The government's only role under capitalism is the protection of individual rights. So you could also view capitalism as the political system that implements the idea of individual rights, the rights to life, liberty, property, and the right for every individual to pursue his own happiness. In a capitalist society, the only role of government is to make it possible for people to pursue their lives, to do the best, to make the most out of their lives. The government has no role in interfering, in positing some kind of positive agenda. They're supposed to step back, let people do whatever they want, and as long as there's no violence, as long as there's no violation of rights, the government has no role to play. That's what capitalism really means. Evidence shows that capitalism produces magnificent practical and economic achievements. But that seems not to be important. I mean important enough to defend capitalism. Why is it that the moral defense of capitalism is necessary? Well I think you've indicated the problem. The fact that capitalism is successful is not in dispute. All you have to do is look at Hong Kong versus China, pre-China freeing up. All you have to look at China when it was more communist and China when it's freer. All you have to look at is East Europe under communism and Eastern Europe once it became free. So the practical benefits of capitalism are not in dispute. So why don't people accept it? And I think the reason people don't accept it is because they don't accept the moral basis behind capitalism, which is self-interest, which is the pursuit of profit, which is the pursuit of one's own well-being. So what is capitalism? How do people function under capitalism? What do people do under capitalism? Under capitalism people go out and do the best that they can do for themselves. They try to make great products. They try to make a lot of money. They go into professions they love. They do things to further their own life. And the funny thing is, yes, that that is perceived as evil because we have been taught for at least 2,000 years that the standard of good, the standard of morality, is other people's well-being, is devoting one's life to other people. Mother Teresa is the classical example of this. Mother Teresa is considered a moral saint, a moral hero. Because she gave up her middle-class life, she gave up the values, her kind of Western values, and went out and gave her life to other people. She spent all her time helping the poor out of a sense of duty that that was her moral responsibility. We live in a culture that places the ideal as the ideal of sacrifice, the ideal of giving the idea of duty to other people, rather than what capitalism, the results of capitalism are, people pursuing their own self-interest, people doing what they want to do, people making the most out of their own lives, people pursuing their money. So even though that leads overall, even to the poor people, for a better standard of living overall, it's done in the name of self-interest and self-interest. Every philosopher, since Aristotle was the last defender of self-interest, every philosopher since then, both in religion, if you look at the Christian religion, the Islamic religion, if you look at Immanuel Kant, if you look even at the better philosophers, every single one of the philosophers has said, your moral duty, your moral obligation is not to live for yourself. Kant actually said that if you think about your own self-interest in an action, it's outside of the realm of morality. Morality is self-less. Well, capitalism is not self-less. Capitalism is about self. And if we don't accept that, if we can't accept self-interest as a moral ideal, we can't view businessmen as heroes. We can't view pursuing one's own life making the most out of our lives as a good thing. And therefore, we can't accept capitalism. And look at every time some legislation is proposed by the left in order to reduce freedom and reduce capitalism. How do they do it? They always appeal to two things. They appeal to the fact that people don't trust those greedy businessmen because they're too selfish. And they appeal to the fact that everybody wants to see the people who are suffering helped. Because the ethic that they are brought up and the morality that they're brought up on is a morality that says help the people who are suffering. Christianity tells us the meek shall inherit the earth. And restrain the people who are successful, who are rich, who are pursuing profit because they're being self-interested. And again, every religion, every philosopher has said self-interest is a bad thing. So to really win capitalism and battle for capitalism, we need a revolution, a moral revolution. We need to abandon what I call altruism, the idea of the standard of value being other people, and adopt Ayn Rand's code of ethics, which is rational egoism, which is self-interest as the standard of morality. Now you mentioned the poor, the helpless. Should we forget about the poor and the helpless? Well, I don't think government has any role with regard to the poor and the helpless. And then it's up to us as individuals. The question is, why are they poor? The fact is that under capitalism, there are jobs for everybody. If you're willing to work, you'll progress in life, you'll get better. So I don't think there's such a thing in real capitalism as the endemic poor, as the poor who stay poor forever. The poor have every opportunity under capitalism to rise up, to go to work, and to improve their lot. Ultimately, it is capitalism that created the middle class. What about those who are truly helpless? Those who can't, they're born with a defect, or they've got some problem, or they've had an accident, and their house is burnt down, or something bad has happened to them, and now they're in real trouble. That's where charity comes in. And I'm certainly not against charity. I think it's in our self-interest to help people who deserve to be helped, or help people who for real reasons cannot help themselves. But then it's still about us pursuing our values. Each one of us will help the people that we think we wanna help, that we value. We're not helping them at the point of a gun. We're helping them because we want to help them because it's in our self-interest to help. You have been mentioning capitalism, but many other systems look alike capitalism. How can you distinguish capitalism from others? Well, I don't think there really is anything that looks like capitalism. I think there's confusion today about what capitalism means. A lot of people think of today, for example, that America, the United States, is a capitalist country. And it's not. It's a mixture between some capitalism and a lot of socialism, and I call it the mixed economy. A mixture of socialism and capitalism. I think capitalism in its pure form is unmistakable. It's a system of private property, of individual rights, and therefore freedom. And there really are no imposters to that kind of mixture. For example, what's going on in China today is a mixture, again, of a lot of socialism and remnants of communism and some fascism and some capitalism, some freedom. But that freedom is very limited, so what they have is a mixed system. Pure capitalism is very rare. It existed maybe for a little while in the 19th century in the United States and maybe in Great Britain. It's never really existed in its purest form. It's something that we're striving towards. And when we see freedom, when we see a little bit of capitalism, we see the effects it has on people and how much prosperity and wealth is created as a consequence of even a little bit of freedom. Imagine what it would be like if the shackles came off of business, if we could really be free, if we could really produce. It's hard to imagine the kind of world, the kind of progress, the kind of standard of living that we could. Thank you, Dr. Brook. Thank you.