 He was fully ready for like 300 people protesting outside, you know, with Ann Rand, anti-capitalism, you're in state of California. So having said that, let me ask you a question. I know you got the book at 16 years old and you were inspired when you read the book at 16 years old and you said, okay, this is an interesting book, you know, can I believe something like this exist? And then from there in Israel you go and you go become a first sergeant in the military there. And I don't know a lot of people know this or not. You did very well in the military and you come out, you go to University of Texas, Austin, then you go and teach at Santa Clara for seven years economics and you go run a hedge fund. So you've had that transition from a kid who was inspired by a book, you're introduced to her, and then years later you go teach finance in Santa Clara, San Jose, and then you start a hedge fund based on the papers you're writing. Now you live in Puerto Rico because you're smart and you pay 4% taxes and all this other stuff with them, right? What part of Ann Rand's philosophy do you disagree with? In terms of philosophy, none of it. None of it? None of it. I mean, nothing's really changed since I was 16, except now I understand it and then I didn't. First of all, I'm not a philosopher, so a lot of the technical stuff, it makes sense to me. Right. But no, there's not a portion of the philosophy-quo philosophy that I would disagree with. It's a whole. It's a system. It's logical. It all makes sense. Right. You connect it together and it just, it fits. It works. You know, 40 years later, and it's 40 years, I went in 77, so 41 years later, now I understand it, and I'm still as dedicated to it as I was back then, more so. So one of the things I like when I talk to a pastor, and I'll say, okay, listen, I mean, I understand your believer, I understand your pastor, and you believe in the Bible, you believe in the Koran, or you believe in Scientology, you believe in whatever it is that you believe in. Sure. Book of Mormon, Moroni, all this others of God. Right. I don't know any philosophy that doesn't have any contradictions. I don't know any religion, and I know, you know, the Ain-Ren community is not a big community on religion. Some are, not all of them are, but you mean to tell me there are no single contradictions in any of Ain-Ren's philosophies that she had? I'm saying there are no contradictions. I'm also saying there might be something wrong there. Right. I haven't found it. I'm saying that Ain-Ren's philosophy is the truth and will always be known as the truth. I mean, suddenly philosophers in the future might discover that this aspect is, needs improving or this here, they might be, you know, disagreement about this virtue or that virtue or this idea in epistemology or that idea in epistemology, but I certainly haven't found any. She was a genius. I'm not. And when I look at her philosophy, it all, right now, based on the knowledge I have today, everything I see there is true, but I don't treat it as a Bible. I don't take it on faith. It's true because what I see in reality, what I test in reality, when I live the philosophy, it works. It's, and I haven't found a contradiction, and I've debated many, many, many people about various ideas, and they've never poked a hole in the philosophy. You know, it's the same as it was like me saying, you know, capitalism works. Does it work always? Yes, it works always. You know, there are no exceptions. It just works, and it's true. It's the only social system appropriate for human life, and it's not, we've internalized this idea that they have to be flaws, but no, they don't have to be flaws. The problem is that most of our philosophies, most of our ideas indeed come from religion, and because they're based on faith, there's no even methodology to discover the contradiction other than the whole thing contradicts reality. That's a mistake. So why don't we just talk about the basic fundamental philosophies that she had when you break down objectivism, right, with reality, you know, all of that. Why don't you go through that a little bit? Sure. So reality is what it is. It is not what you want it to be. It's not what you invent it to be. Your consciousness doesn't create reality, but neither does some other consciousness create reality. So our reasoning capability is the way we know reality, not our emotions. Our emotions are products of past decisions we've made, past values that we might have had, and it's not unknowable, right? It's not reality is there, we know it, and we have the tool to know it. And only individuals can reason. You know, we can't, we can't really, we don't have a collective stomach, and we certainly don't have a collective mind, we don't have a collective consciousness, we don't have a collective reason. So each individual can reason, each individual therefore is responsible for his own mind and responsible for his own life. So in morality, Ayn Rand was an egoist, she believed in rational self-interest that your moral responsibility was to live your life to the fullest, to flourish as a human being, to survive qua human being, not to live for others, for the sake of others, and not to expect others to live for you, but for you to live for yourself. And then what kind of world do individuals like this who want to live for themselves, who want to make the most of themselves by using their reason to discover the truth? What kind of world do they want to live in? They want to live in a world free of the one enemy of reason, which is the fist, the gun, force, coercion. So capitalism is a system where coercion is outlawed. And so she's against socialism, she's against fascism, she's against any kind of statism she believes in government, but government that only does one thing. And that is protect us from coercion, protect our rights. And our rights are freedoms from coercion, freedoms of action. So we're free to act in pursuit of the rational values necessary for our own life, free of what? Free of force, free of coercion, free of authority. So self-interest, let's talk about this. So meaning I do whatever I am interested in, and if it is my interest to want to help somebody else, so be it. That's okay. Yes or no? Yes, but let's first figure out what self-interest means, because self-interest, a lot of people think what self-interest means is do whatever you feel like doing, whatever comes into your mind, whatever, or some people in the culture today think, well, I feel guilty that these people are poor, so I'm going to help them and that will reduce my guilt. So none of that to a grander self-interest. Self-interest has to be rationally shown to be in your long-term benefit, that will long-term benefit your life, right? So it has to be based on reason. So helping other people can be in your self-interest, can be, can be, but it has to be for the right reason. It can be because you want to reduce the guilt that you haven't earned. But who cares what the reason is, right? Well, you do. So I don't care what your reason is really, right? Or me. But you should care about your own reason. I got it. Because if you do something that is ultimately not in your self-interest, then you're working against your life, you're working against self-interest, and you're hurting yourself. What about helping others? What about the poor? Why? I mean, you always respond to everybody. I want to say, why do you care? I mean, why isn't the first response- That's not my concern. It's Ayn Rand's philosophy sustainable to run a nation. Yeah. I mean, wow. You really believe that? I wish. So let me ask this. I wish we had the opportunity to show. You really believe Ayn Rand's philosophy is sustainable to run a nation. The government's role, only playing cops, you know, military, only doing that. Absolutely. I wouldn't be advocating for the philosophy otherwise, but absolutely. And it's, again, the purpose of the philosophy is not to run a nation. The purpose of the philosophy is to run your own life. And the focus should always be on my life. The only nation, the only kind of nation appropriate for my life and appropriate for your life, and to maximize your opportunities and my opportunities to make the most of our lives is a nation that is free, that is free, of course, and that leaves us free to pursue our dreams as individuals. So that kind of nation, of course, works because it's a nation where every individual is free to make the most of their lives. And what a beautiful thing that is, right? Because how do we make the most of our lives? We make it by producing, by creating, by building, and by trading with one another. Here's a follow-up to that question. Is the concept, is the philosophy of Ayn Rand? Is it to attract only the Navy SEALs, is it to only attract the Navy SEALs and we go live in a small place by ourselves, you know, who is John Galt, you know, find all the John Galt's in the world, and we go live together because we have a great understanding of each other and how we're wired, or is it to help, you know, and I know help is a sensitive word in this community, but is it to, is it to help and inspire others who are not non-believers yet to convert and say, this way of thinking works, I will also like to be part of this community. Which is it? Because that's the, and by the way, for me, you've got to realize where I'm coming from when I ask this question. I'm 100% capitalist. Yeah. Okay. I grew up in an environment where I know what it is, what socialism and what communism does. I know what it is to make people feel guilty, to force, to tax. If you don't, I left the state for a specific reason, 13.3% to force me to pay for it, and you don't want to fix the road. Yeah, you're not important. What am I paying for? You're not a real capitalist. Yeah, I'm not a 4% yet. Not a 4% yet. But absolutely. But that's the real question. Are you just trying to attract the Navy assaults? I'm trying to attract any individual who takes their life seriously. I'm trying to attract anybody who's open to these ideas. You know, it's, and ultimately, look, even if a majority of people don't accept these ideas, but I introduce to them, and their lives is made better because these ideas have political influence and we have a more capitalist environment, or their lives is better because they take their responsibility for their own life more seriously rather than obsessing, obsessing constantly about what their mother told them to do, or how to help other people. But first and foremost, focus on themselves. Then the lives of everybody become, all of those people become better. And of course, the political life becomes better. So no, the philosophy, the philosophy fits any human being willing to engage in his own reason. This is not some elitist, you know, let's go critical. But it sounds like it. No, but it sounds like it. For me, hypothetically, the moment you make a hundred million dollars, you start getting invited to weird parties. And you go to these meetings. I haven't, I haven't got there yet. Yeah. And you go to these meetings and I say, do you honestly know who I am? I'm a 1.8 GPA guy. All I did is work my ass off and I read 1500 business books and I got in this situation. Okay, great. I don't think of myself as this special guy that did this, but sometimes I find guys and gals who came from a family a lot of money and they feel their elite because they were raised in that environment. Make sense? So for me, when I think about this philosophy, I say, is this a philosophy to just attract all those free thinkers to come together? Let's create a community together because logically, based on reason, which is what the community of Ayn Rand likes, I just don't see a nation sustainable to run it based on this philosophy. That's because you're pessimistic about human nature and I'm optimistic about it. Absolutely not. So I believe every individual is capable of reason. I believe every individual is capable of taking care of themselves. I mean, put aside the less than 1% that for whatever reason were born with some defect and it can't do it. Every individual is capable of taking care of themselves. Every individual is capable of reasoning. Every individual is capable of achieving their potential in life. This philosophy is for those individuals. Since every individual is capable of reason, every individual is capable of getting this philosophy. Will it happen in my lifetime? No. Right? In my lifetime, if I could to live in a community of people who get it and sure, I mean, I'd say that. But you know and I know that nobody's going to leave that community alone. So that community is not going to be able to survive as a standalone entity because the bad, the guys who don't want to leave it alone have big guns and big weapons. But there's absolutely zero reason why this can't be the dominant set of ideas in a culture. The dominant view of the people in the culture and look, most people are not philosophers. Most people are non-intellectuals, but they are influenced by the philosophers and intellectuals. So my view is when we get to the point where substantial number, maybe a majority of intellectuals and philosophers and thinkers in the culture are advocates for these ideas, the culture will follow. That is the rest of the nation, the country, however you want to call it, the community will follow and you will get a society based on these ideas. There's nothing in the ideas that prevents that. There's nothing hard or impossible or anti-human in the ideas. On the contrary, the ideas are built to be practical. The ideas are built in a sense they work because they're derived from reality. So here's, it's okay. So every time I come to LA, if I go to a place and I see this world peace stuff, right? It's a world peace, world peace, world peace. And I see it everywhere. I'll always go to my, so tell me how you're going to get world peace. Well, you know, and I'm asking them. So tell me how you're going to get what we did. The way we get world peace is this, this, this, and all these rich people, you know, all these, this, this, and if we got rid of religion and if we got rid of this and we got rid of this, this is how we could get world peace. I said, so what you're pretty much telling everybody around the world is the only way we can get world peace is for you to think like me. OK, that's what they're saying. That that's the idea of world peace. OK. So how do we get world peace? Well, let me give you an example of world peace. So so after Napoleonic Wars in in the 19th century until World War One, it was basically on the big picture, pretty much world peace. Why? Because we had capitalism or as good as close to capitalism as we've ever had since World War Two until today. And certainly since the fall of the building while we haven't had major wars and today is actually the least violent period in all of human history. We've had fewer wars right now. So we're as close to world peace as we've ever been. Why? Because more and more countries around the world are becoming free. Think about 40 years ago, if I told you that if China wants to become rich, it has to become capitalist. That is, they have to change the way they're thinking. They have to abandon not only Mao and communism, but to some extent, they have to abandon Confucius and all the Eastern mysticism, which they have implicitly in their system in order to adopt capitalism. You'd have said, that's crazy. China will never do that. But the reason they're successful today is to logic. They're not completely not 100 percent. It's not perfect yet. There's a long way to go, but they've moved dramatically in that direction. In a sense, China now is more of a land of enlightenment values in terms of the way people live than is Europe, France, where the enlightenment came about, right? So if you look at the fundamental values that work for human beings, they are spreading. They can go anywhere in the world. Why is Japan rich? Why South Korea rich? Because they've adopted a certain set of values. They've adopted reason. They've adopted individualism as the core values that have made it possible for them to become rich. Now, we're still at the beginning of a process. There's still 100, maybe 200 years, maybe 300 years. I don't know. But if you take that projection of people, better understanding these fundamental ideas, reality is reality. Reason is efficacious. The individual is what counts. If they get those three ideas, wonderful things happen. Africa started starting to turn. And this is going to be an evolution. It's going to take a lot of time. But there's, again, no reason why in 300 years, 400 years, people won't adopt a completely different philosophy than they have today, which I hope is mine, right? Because I think that'll be good for the world. Ideas are what shape history. What do you think about religion? Has it done more good for the world or bad for the world? Well, it depends when, right? So religion, religion thousands of years ago served an important purpose in human life. Human beings need a philosophy. They need guidance. They need some explanation for the world around them. And religion provided that explanation for a long time. Maybe you could argue until the scientific revolution, there was some need for some kind of religious explanation where there was the Greek gods or where there was the monotheistic religions, human beings needed some guidance. They were also slaughtering each other at the same time, right, over this. Starting from the Enlightenment, right? And starting with the scientific revolution, people discovered, wait a minute, we don't have to get guidance from authorities, the Pope, the preacher, what we can actually use our mind to discover the truth by ourselves. We can learn about the world without this. And since and you know, so religion lost its purpose. So there is no purpose to religion today. So when Nietzsche says God is dead, good riddance. I mean, overall, religion does a lot of damage because it highlights for the individual the opposite of reason, which is faith. Faith is the opposite of reason. So you're not a fan of faith? Obviously not. OK, so let me ask you a question. Let's go on faith. So Ayn Rand is not a person that's driven by faith. No. What brought her to US? Knowledge. Knowledge of what? Knowledge of the freedom that existed in the United States. How does she know that? She saw it in the movies. But that's not that's not an absolute, though. That's a movie that could be a propaganda. It's it's it's it's not an absolute. Could it be a contradiction right there? Oh, no, it's not a contradiction. Well, to me, first of all, first of all, faith and probabilities are not the same thing. So so she had evidence. Faith is the absence of evidence. Faith is when you have no evidence for something. There is no there's plenty of evidence on a lot of different religions. If you don't know evidence, of course, there's no. There's plenty of them. There's zero evidence. There's plenty of them around you. But there are plenty of religions around me. And there's zero evidence for the truth. No, but if you think about because this is the contradiction where I see it, I believe she is a woman of faith. I ran as a woman of faith. She is living in and I'm not I'm a God. I'm not I'm a God. I'm not the fact that God exists. And look, I'm in the fire. I'm going to complete opposite place right now. You guys are on the same page. I'm I'm trying to challenge you and you have control over me right now because there's more of you. There's only one of me. But but I sit and I think about and I say, here's a woman that leaves Russia. I mean, all you've been watching is movies that you have control over. It's a fantasy. I'm going to go to U.S. Not a fantasy. A culture that produces has no idea. A culture that she has every idea. She how would she have the A because because when she was a child, they left and they they were in Western Europe. So she saw Western European culture versus Russian culture. She saw with her eyes. Plus, you've got a culture that produces these movies. Not every culture produces these movies. Russia can't produce these movies. Other cultures don't produce this kind of movies, plus you've got books and stories. You've got newspaper articles. You've got pictures even before the rise of communism. They were there were newspapers. So I'm not saying she has certainty. She might not have certainty, but she has massive quantities of evidence. But don't equate faith with a probabilistic. You know, I might not know something with certainty, but if I have a lot of evidence, then I know something and I can act based on that. I mean, I'm a finance guy. I don't have any certainty about where the stock is going to future. But I don't consider that faith. I consider that I have evidence and I put a probability on the ability on where the stock is going to be in a year. But that's not faith. So faith would be if I had no evidence. And I'd say, you know, I, you know, Coca Cola, I just love the name. They're going to go off. Some could argue with that to say there's plenty of evidence for faith. But I don't want to go make this a religion thing. I want to keep it specific to economics right now. So going back to the contradiction side. Okay. So she's not a fan of saying that people helped her. Like she's been quoted writing about saying, no one helped me. No one helped me. That's not true. I'm sure she asked her husband for help. You can easily find it where it says, I wasn't helped. No one helped me. In that sense. Yeah. Yeah. She was trying to make a specific point. Absolutely. But the fact that she never, she never was helped. Okay. Yeah. But she comes here, you know, and she lives with a family in Chicago. While she's living with the family in Chicago, who owned a movie theater. She went to watch a couple hundred movies and she was inspired and some pop, you know, she borrowed money from some people and all this other stuff. And so the biggest challenge for me while she's on her second interview with Phil Donahue. Yeah. Okay. And so she's wearing that baby blue dress and a lady gets up there and she says, I used to be a believer. I'm no longer a believer. There are parts of your stuff. I agree. And she says, why are you telling me? I don't care. She says, I'm just sharing it with you. Yeah. But go say to another crowd that also disagrees with me. I don't want to hear it right now. This is my show. I'm here because you have to hear from me. And in that level of intolerance to me, if I can't share my opinion around you, then this is what happens. Let me finish this question. And I want to hear you out. Sure. This is what happens. It becomes either one of two things. Years ago, the Republican Party kept getting their tail handed to them because they had a campaign called anti-abortion. Democrats, the liberals came out with pro-choice, right? And they were getting killed. So they got together and they said, listen, this anti-abortion campaign doesn't work. We have to change it. And they went from anti-abortion to pro-life. Once they went to pro-life, boom, everybody said, I am pro-life. I'm not pro-life. These words are better. So do you think a part of the reason why maybe, and by the way, you're selling more books than ever before, you know, 30 million plus copies sold. There are people around the world are more interested. Library Congress talking about this being the second most popularity with readers with all this. OK, credits there. Believe me, I'm a big fan of content. But do you think there's got to be a little bit of a repackaging of the content being sold to the world to embrace the content? Do you think part of the packaging and the story that's being sold, it's tough for people to embrace when you say virtues of selfishness? Yeah, it's tough for people to embrace. Absolutely. But it's tough for people to embrace. This is not going to be easy. So so I don't think I don't want to soft-pedal this, right? If you're going to become, if you're going to take on these ideas, these ideas incredibly valuable to your life, incredibly valuable to your life. But it's going to require you to do real work and it's going to challenge your existing beliefs. Your existing beliefs set is going to have to be turned upside down. Phil Donahue is standing there and he's challenging her constantly and he's basically saying, you're wrong and I don't agree with anything. And she takes it and she answers and it's great. But a woman in the audience stands up and basically insults her by saying, I used to believe in this nonsense, but I don't anymore. Well, what are you telling me that she didn't say like that? But that's exactly what she meant. There was another person that insulted. I was like, listen. But that's an insult to say that to somebody, to stand up and say to somebody, I used to think what you say makes sense. I don't anymore. Then why are you asking me a question? Why are you here to listen? What's the point? So if you listen to Iron Man's Q&A's, and particularly if you read her letters, we've got a book of all her letters, she would take questions across the board from religious people and leftists and writers and all kinds from teenagers and every politic of you, every philosophical of you, and she would patiently write them an answer. And some of those letters are beautiful and some of them have been incredibly philosophical. But she was very, very sensitive and she could hear it to somebody just, somebody just wanting to insult her, somebody just being, you know, being, you know, being obnoxious. And she dealt with that. Now, would I deal with this question the same way? Probably not. I'm not sure which one of us is right, but that's not, but that's not the point. The point is for the viewers, right, is engage with the philosophy, engage with her ideas, put aside whether you think she was a little gruff or she was a little rude or whatever. That's not the point. Our ideas, true. Our ideas, you know, beneficial to human life. Our ideas, some of them are unbelievable. Well, some of them, some of them have been life changing to me. I mean, I can't even tell you what it's done to my life. And I know, I know thousands and they are hundreds of thousands of millions of people would say that whether they accept the whole philosophy or not, of course, they are who ideas have touched millions of people and sometimes only some of her ideas. Now, I think the entire philosophy is consistent as a system. They're no contradictions and I've embraced it all. But I completely accept the fact that people take a part of them. And that's better because to the extent that somebody takes Iron Man's ideas seriously, to that extent their life becomes better, to the extent that better human beings and my world is a better world as a consequence. It's in my selfish interest that people take her ideas even a little bit seriously. So go read her books, go engage in ideas, you know, nonfiction fiction, watch our videos online. But let's get away from Iron Man in a sense and in talk about the ideas, that's that's what's important, right? And that's what's going to change the world in the future. The reason why I came over here was a following reason. I went from do you believe this is sustainable to run a nation? Do you believe this can go out there and you know, get to the masses? Is the goal for you to be in a small community of jungle type of a thing? Hey, we have our society, it's just going to be us. Hey, why don't all of us go put our money together and go buy Belize and we run the nation and we build that. Honestly, we can go buy Belize. I've thought about it. If you think about it, Belize could be a place we can do this at. You can't do it out a lot of other places outside of Belize. Okay, let's go do that part. That'd be kind of great. And it's all entrepreneurs, free thinkers, creative thinkers and Peter Thiel wants to create an island and all the people get together. I understand that concept. If that's the goal, if the goal is for us to create a community and go out there and think about it, this is what we're, let me ask you because libertarians bring this up all the time, so we might as well put it on. So let's say you do that. And let's say you have real freedom. And in my, my world, real freedom means private banking. It means if you want to withdraw more than $10,000 in cash, nobody should have to fill out a form. And let's say you have real, all of that real there and you're building a wonderful capitalist community. How long you think before the Marine show up? And in the name of money laundering, drug smuggling, I don't know. Why does anybody bother in Dubai? Because Dubai plays by the game. Dubai plays the game. Dubai banks are registered at the Federal Reserve. Dubai banks play by the Federal Reserve's game. Dubai is not a free market. It's not capitalism. It's, it's part of the system that exists out there in the world. It is not true capitalism. It's not certainly not the kind of society I would want to live in. Panama, Panama's got a 2% unemployment rate. Panama is the same thing. And if you look, and it's great that Panama has a 2% unemployment rate, but it's not a real capitalist society. So, but you believe 100% this philosophy. Absolutely. How big, how, how sustainable is it on how big it gets? A globe? I mean, I don't, I don't believe in one government for the whole globe, but I believe that every government in the world could have this philosophy and sustain it. How do you feel about the way the US government is set up? I think originally the way it was set up is, is pretty good. I like it. Which part of it? Which part do you like? I like, I like that the fact that no one branch of the government has very much power. I like the fact that they're all a little impotent. I wish they were a little bit more impotent. You know, I saw, I like, I like you have two houses. I like you have a president that's separate, an executive branch that's separate. I like the fact that you have a Supreme Court. I would like that, I would like to have a stronger constitution that was clearer and more articulate and stronger on what individual rights mean, what the purpose of government is, and how do you actually enforce the role of government, which is the protection of individual rights? So how would we write the constitution? Can it be clearer than what it is today? I mean, the way it was written, it is unfortunately it could be, it could be much clearer partially because remember they wrote this in, in, in, you know, a long time ago, before capitalism really took off, before you had the institutions of capitalism, before you had the institutions, you could write it a lot clearer. For example, I give you an example. I believe there should be complete separation of economics from politics. Politicians have no power over the economy, like the government, not, not even a limited government. But no, let's just take in one realm, in the realm of economics. I believe that you should have a treasury secretary other than, you know, distribute to the different departments or whatever, it's an accountant, you don't need a, but basically the government has no regulatory role in, in the economy, it just doesn't intervene in the economy. It would be nice if in addition to the separation of church and state that exists in the economy, which in the constitution, which is great, there was a separation of economy from state, right? And there was a separation of science from state and there was a separation of economics from state. So I would have four separations in the constitution instead of just one. And that would be clearer and it would keep government in its place. Get out of the minds of my kids, get out of trying to run doctrinaire schools for home schooling. No, I'm for private schooling. I'm for private schools. Okay. Home schooling is fine as an option, but I'm for private schools, privatize the entire system. Why, why, why do we, why do we have private insurance companies, although, you know, you're heavily regulated? Why do we have private insurance, but not private schools? Private schools are much more important, right? I want competition. I want innovation. I want choice. I want people to care about the education that kids get. I want, I want to have innovation. In your world, there would be 100% deregulation. Yeah. 100% deregulation. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I'm not saying there wouldn't be laws because in the world we live in today, there's confusion between regulations and law. Regulations are there to try to dictate to a business how to run its business. Often it's a preventive law. It says in advance, this might be a problem, so don't do it, right? No, I want, I want laws to exist on the books that enforce it. Who enforces a police and a judicial system. So I don't, I'm not an anarchist, right? So I want laws on the books that protect property rights, that protect individual rights. So if I'm doing something that clearly harms you, whether it's poisoning you with, with dirty water or dirty air or something, then yeah, you have recourse against me and the government has recourse against me. But, you know, the government just can't, can't out of nowhere say this is okay and that's banned and this is banned. No, there has to be proof. There has to be a system. There has to be a methodology to determine when something is banned. It has to be proven that it hurts somebody, you know, that it's actually damaging to human life. Rights are being violated. So their job is to protect property rights, which is hard. It's not easy. So you need a government, you need a court system. You need a legislative branch, you know, to figure out, for example, with the internet, what is property? How do you apply property to intellectual stuff? How do you apply property to the internet? You're simplifying it. You're simplifying it more than like, you know, it may be easy to do that with 50,000 people in a country, but 330 million. It's the other way around. It's, the more complex the system is, the more important it is that you have freedom. The more complexity you have, the more capitalism is important. I can, I can centrally plan, probably. Don't hold me to this. I don't think it's right. I don't think it's model, but I could centrally plan a 50,000 person community and do, okay, could I centrally plan a 300 million people? No way. So even, even from the perspective, yeah, so the more complex the less economic justification there is for any kind of planning, the more you want freedom, the more you want capitalism. The bigger it is, the more this philosophy in a sense, quite economics works. So let's say your house burns down and you didn't buy insurance for whatever reason. And you're a nice guy and you've got neighbors. What happened in America before the government stepped in and provided you with welfare and everything else? Your neighbors got together and they said, he's a good guy. We like him. No fault of his own. He should have bought insurance, but okay. And we're gonna, we're gonna come together. I'm gonna help him build a new house, but you shouldn't expect some guy, you live in Dallas, you shouldn't expect somebody in California to pay for your new house. If your neighbors want to help, you're great. But what if you're a jerk and your house burns down and your neighbors actually hate you and you're not worthy of their help, then you're not gonna get the help. So virtue is rewarded on the capitalism. If you're a good person, if you're a nice person, then people will help you when you need that help, but it's not automatic. Your suffering does not place a moral claim on other people. That's what happens though. Unfortunately, that's what happens. You know, you're gonna have, yeah, but that's sad. But that's always happened. That's not just today. It's all, you're telling me there's never been people that have exploited other people. No, I'm telling you, I'm saying always, there's people that have exploited other people. Okay, so let me ask you this. When we're free, there's less exploitation because when we're free we get to make decisions for ourselves and we're much more focused on our own self-interest. But when you have a system where my money is taken from me by the point of a gun, which is what taxes are, money is taken from me. And then some bureaucrat decides who to help and who not to help. Then I'm being exploited all the time every single day except in Puerto Rico. So if seven billion plus people today all believed in the philosophy of objectivism what would the world look like? Oh my God. You wanted world peace? You got world peace? It's the most boring world ever. No. Are you kidding me? It's the most exciting world ever. It's the most boring world ever. Think about the innovation. Are you kidding me? Think about freeing up billions of people, freeing up to think and to be entrepreneurs, to create, to build, to make. That sounds utopian. No, it's not utopian. Of course, it's the same thing when liberals say that we have this utopian. It's the same. You asked me. I didn't say I expected this to happen tomorrow. But think about what has happened again in countries in the world that have adopted just a little bit of this philosophy. Not the whole thing, just a little bit of it, right? You see beautiful skyscrapers. You see massive innovation. You see production, wealth creation, you see people rising out of poverty. So every place that's adopted just a little bit of this, a little bit of freedom, a little bit of capitalism, a little bit of reason and science and thinking, boom, now extrapolate. What would happen if they just, just do a little bit? What happens if China tomorrow? Forget my philosophy. What happened if China tomorrow said, you know what? Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and Hamilton, they were right. We're going to adopt a constitutional government we're going to separate state from economics and we're going to adopt the American constitutional model. China would almost instantaneously become five times richer, more innovation, more production, more creation. So why do you say yes on that, right? Now, okay. Now take it even one more step further and wow, what an exciting world. It's so much fun, so much excitement, so much innovation, so much dynamism. I don't see it. Yeah, I know. You know why I don't see it? Here's why I don't see it. Okay. By the way, I mean, the world today is interesting because people are killing each other in Syria and in other places for no absolutely no reason because their God doesn't agree with somebody else's God or whatever. That's extreme. I want all of that. I want all of that. God is their extremist. Well, we have extremists in capitalism as well. I mean, you know, chronic capitalism doesn't work like. Well, chronic capitalism doesn't exist. Let me just say, there is no such thing as crony capitalism or conscious capitalism or any capitalism. This is capitalism. Chronyism is a feature of the state. Chronyism is a feature of statism. That's so extreme. Chronyism is a feature of socialism. No. Chronyism is not an extreme of capitalism. Chronyism is a feature of uncapitalism, of the opposite of capitalism. When you take capitalism away, what you get is cronyism. If you have a... Capitalism purely is a separation of state from economics. If government doesn't have control over the economics, how much cronyism would you have? I have totally with you. Zero. I am totally with you on that side. So you can't... There's no downside. No, but don't say the concept of Assyrian. I say that's not a religion. That's the extremist. Well... Listen, I was an atheist 25 years of my life. Okay? I'm giving a whole different standpoint for me. I'm not going faithier. That's an extremist we're talking about. And unfortunately, sometimes in capitalism, guys come up, they go too far. I'll give you a perfect story. I'm at Harvard. I'm at their OPM... No, I didn't go to Harvard. I went to an OPM program. It's a three-week program. I'm not bragging that I went to Harvard. This was entrepreneurs that came together. It's a $40,000 course. You go for three weeks. And it's 144 different entrepreneurs from 65 countries. And one of the guys says, you know, instructor, I'm really struggling because I used to have 31% of market place. And this one business came in and he took 17% because it's two different businesses combined at 17%. I only have 13%. Really taking it. What do you think I should do? So the instructor says, what do you guys think you should do? You know, this is about, you know, us talking to one another. What do you guys think you should do? This one guy from Brazil says, let me ask you a question. Who's running for office? And by the way, he is not laughing. So everybody's sitting there saying, let's just see what's gonna happen. Who's running for office? And he says, what do you mean? Is there anybody that's running for Congress, Senate, governor, office, anybody? He says, yeah, of course, there's a couple guys. He says, listen, very simple. You go tell him right now, a million dollars. Okay, what is a dollar a month for you? You give him a half a million dollars up front, half a million upon passing the bill to make the barrier to enter for the other guy, then he gets the other half a million dollar bonus, those two guys will be out of business. I'm sitting on like, the way he said it was so nonchalant, like, you know, just go out there and do it. But there's- And have you been to Brazil? I have not. Well, if you go to Brazil and you see the level of poverty and you see the level of the lack of production. I'm not on this page. No, so my point is, yes, that's how the world works and it's a disaster to the extent that it works. So we reject that, we want pure capitalism, we want a capitalism where that is impossible. Great, what is the downside of that? There's no downside here. You're looking for downsides, but if I make that impossible by making those senators impotent when it comes to the economy, make them so weak that they can't impact the economy, there's no point in bribing them. I'm still a leader by the way in your society. Is it a president or is it like a chief of command or chief like a military guy, not a president? I think the American system is a good system. So you like the system here. I like the American system as it was at the founding. Again, I think it's being provoked and distorted. The executive today has way too much power. All these regulatory agencies are unconstitutional. So I'd like the original system where the president had some power but it was weak. But look, and you need a military because you need to defend yourself. But the point is if you recognize that what this guy said about Brazil is leading to poverty in Brazil, then if you take that out, you would lead to more wealth in Brazil. So why can't we have the whole world be capitalist? I'm 100% here with the world being capitalist. I'm going back to the concept of there being still some contradictions in it that there's gotta be some contradictions in it that's not being addressed. Let me give you another one here, okay? Virtue of selfishness by Ayn Rand, right? Virtue of selfishness. Do the virtues of selfishness work in every aspect of life? Yeah. In your personal life? Absolutely. In the bedroom with your wife? Absolutely. Okay. I get it, I get it. Ready? Ready. I'm happy to go. I'm happy to go from politics to sex. I've got mine, babe. But I didn't get mine, but babe, we believe in virtues of selfishness. But wait, what does selfishness mean? I'm satisfied. Yeah, so are you satisfied? Are you really satisfied? It felt amazing, bro. Let me tell you, I am like solid. I'm ready to go to sleep. So, is she important to you? If you love somebody, are they important to you? Sure. Is their happiness important to you? Of course. Does their happiness contribute to your happiness? Sure. They're making them happy. In bed, is that gonna make your satisfaction even greater? Of course. If I'm married, yes. So if I'm single, you're saying forget about if you're single? No. Well, that's what you're saying. So we got it. So if I'm single, all the young fellas, No. Go get yours and forget about her, right? That's not what I said. If you're single, it depends, right? It depends. Is this a one night stand? Or is this something, some woman that you're sleeping with that you expect that you're gonna marry or you expect you're gonna have a long-term relationship with, do you love this other person? My point is this, if you love another person, then their happiness becomes part of your happiness. And it's completely selfish to take care of this other person, to make sure that they're enjoying the sex as much as you're enjoying the sex. Because the fact is you'll enjoy the sex more if they're enjoying the sex. If they lie there, you know this, right? If they lie there like a cardboard and you're having some physical sensation that is nothing as compared to they're having the time of their life and because you're gonna have the time of your life. So the idea that selfishness means you don't care about other people. That selfishness means that you actually ignore other people. It's not packaged right. No, the point is let's think about what the word means and let's think it through. Ayn Rand is challenging us. She's not, you can't take morality and put it in one word and hand it to somebody and they're gonna get it. Morality takes work. So the word selfishness is a challenge. What do you mean? What is a self? Is a self just the momentary pleasure of an orgasm? Or is the self, the entire life, all my values, everything that I encompass, my consciousness, my future, my life? And then what kind of behavior and what kind of values do I need to adopt in order to make my life meaningful and joyous and happy over this period? And do other people have a place in that? Well, of course they do. But they have a place in that because, because they have a place in my happiness because it's selfish for me to care about them. So you have to unpackage it and it takes effort and it takes work. But that's beautiful. It's a challenge. We learn that morality is simple. Just take care of other people and don't be selfish. Don't think of yourself. Just take care of other people. And that sucks. Nobody wants to actually do that. Everybody wants to take care of themselves. Everybody cares about themselves. So we learn from a very young age to be cynical about morality, not to take morality seriously. And we go to church and we do our thing and we pretend and we say, oh Jesus, right? But nobody wants to be Jesus. Nobody wants to be Mother Teresa. I haven't seen anybody volunteering to become a next Mother Teresa, right? So we live our lives but then what happens? We've got this moral ideal that we'd be taught and we're living this life and we feel guilty. And that's unearned guilt. Why should you feel guilty? And we can't achieve happiness and we're frustrated with our lives. And you see all the social problems that that's great. I'm saying that's a consequence of religion. That's a consequence of religious morality. It's crap. It's wrong. It's immoral. Your focus needs to be on making your life the best life that it can be. And of course other people have a wall in that. Do you think Ein Rand? Yes? The only plus I'm getting for pronunciation. You guys are amazing. Do you think Ein Rand lived her life according to her philosophies? Yeah, I do. So then why do you 30 minutes ago tell me, let's set aside the way she lived. Let's focus on the philosophies she taught. That's a contradiction again. No, but it is. No, because the ideas need to stand on their own. Whether she did it or she didn't, the ideas need to stand on their own. I think Ein Rand is an example of a philosophy. I think she's a heroine. I think she's somebody to look up to. But I don't want to get into the debate about this personal aspect of her life, for that personal aspect of her life, because I don't think that's the core. But that is your example though. Like when I come in here and I come to your conference, this is your conference, everywhere I see Ein Rand. So Ein Rand is your Jesus. Ein Rand is your Joseph Smith. Ein Rand is your Elron Hubbard. And you may laugh at it all you want. Go look at the conference. No. Look at your conference. Ein Rand. Ein Rand to you is your God. You're seeing it as your God. But she's not a God. She is a philosopher. You could go to other conferences where they talk about Aristotle's philosophy or others, she is a philosopher. We all share this philosophy. We learn to philosophy with her. We admire her and she changed my life. She changed the lives of most of the people in this room. We have a massive amount of admiration for her. And look, you know, I don't have that big of a problem. You know, she's a heroine and I have no problem in you saying she is our Jesus. Jesus is a hero to Christians. Ein Rand and some of her fictional characters in her books are heroes to us. So in a sense of concretizing this image of what this life and what this philosophy is, absolutely she's a massive hero. But I find instead of engaging with the ideas, too many people in the culture want to nitpick her life. And I'm not an expert on her life. I'm not an expert on her biography. I love Ein Rand because what she did to my life, she changed my life. See, I don't mind sitting there and debating somebody who is an atheist and he wants to debate me whether there's a God or no God or agnostic or whatever you want to do. That's fine. The only time the reason why this is so much attracted is because there's such a 100% certainty in everything being right. If you're a free thinker, how could a free thinker say 100% to anything if you're a free thinker? It's a bit of a contradiction. Yeah, on the other hand, this cup of coffee in my hand is coffee. And this cup is a cup and it's made of paper and I'm 100% certain of everything I just said. And so this- I don't drink coffee by the way, just so you guys know. I'm not a coffee guy. Yeah, but- And I ran a sales office and never drank coffee. Do you not just walk away saying who is this guy? I don't like him at all. He's so confused. He's missing out on the point of life if he doesn't even drink coffee. Do you follow the author or have you read his book, Nassim Taleb? Yes. I like opposition is what I like. This is a quote by Jeff and Vince Graham in his book. I am at the fed level a libertarian. At the state level, a Republican. At the local level, a Democrat. And at the family and friends level, a socialist. What do you think about that? I think that is tragic. And I think a lot of libertarians have that view, unfortunately, including Hayek, Frederick Hayek had the view that was socialist in the family. And you have to abandon those altruistic socialist values in the family when you go out into the community. I'm not a socialist in my family. I don't believe in socialism in any kind of human relationship. I don't believe in sacrifice in any human relationship. I don't sacrifice my wife. I don't sacrifice my kids. They're important to me. I love them. That's why I do what I do for them. But so I think one has to hold your values and be consistent throughout. You don't sacrifice for your kids? No. So when your kids were born and they were new born babies, you slept eight hours? No. Sacrifice. You know why? Why? Because my kids were far more important to me than a few hours of sleep. Then you sacrifice sleep for your kids. No, sacrifice. Self sacrifice is something very simple. Words are important, right? Self sacrifice is when you give something and what do you expect to get in return? If I go into the Apple store and give them $1,000 and get an iPhone X, did I sacrifice? No, because I got something more valuable. I gave something up. But nobody says you sacrificed $1,000. You trade it. So I gave $1,000 and I got something more valuable. When I didn't sleep at night, I got something much more valuable. My kids. And what's more important than that, right? So that's not a sacrifice. Jesus, what Jesus did, that's a sacrifice, right? He suffered for other people's sins. I can't think of anything more evil than that. I can't think of anything more evil than that. For the individual or for the sinners? For anybody, for anybody. For a person, think of the injustice. They committed sins and I'm gonna penalize you for them and you're gonna say, yeah, great, cool. I'm gonna sacrifice it. Why? Why would you do that? He chose to do it. It's a choice. He made a choice. It's an evil choice. Yeah, no, it's a choice. I'm not gonna take away his choice. If you wanna commit suicide, fine. But particularly slow and painful suicide, that's your problem. But I still think that's anti-life, that's anti-values, it's evil, it's bad. So, again, that's a sacrifice. And I avoid sacrifice. If I once in a while, I'll do something and I'll regret it, but that was a mistake. I don't enter into a relationship with the idea of sacrificing. Sacrificing is bad. I'm for life, I'm for living. A living involves trade. Living involves giving up something to get something greater in return, right? And the person who got the stuff thinks what they got is more than what they gave, right? Apple thinks that $1,000 is worth more than the iPhone. That's why they engage in the trade. So we won, I won, they won, everybody wins. Would Ayn Rand be wearing a Make America Great hat again today? Would she walk around today saying, I am just in love with this Trump guy, man. He's just, I love, I go to sleep thinking about Make America Great again. She would go to sleep in shock and horror about the state of America under Donald Trump. I think she would hate him. Now I don't want to speak for Ayn Rand because she was a genius and it's sometimes hard to say what she would, so I can tell you what I think. Not what I think Ayn Rand would think. She would hate him. And she would say, yes, I'm for making America Great again. It would be great if Donald Trump had a clue what America was. Because to make something great, you have to know what it is first. And America's not about, America's not about steel jobs or this job or this thing or trying to tell what do you call it? Holly Davidson, where they should open a plan. America's about individual rights. America's about freedom. America's about, is the only moral country in history because it's founded on the principle of individual rights. This is a president who doesn't know what individual rights are. This is a president who has no conception of the constitution. Never mentions the constitution because he doesn't really care. He just wants to do what he wants to do. You think he really doesn't care? I am convinced he cares zero. Have you met him? No, I'm convinced he cares zero about the constitution. How do you know that? By watching him and seeing his behavior. So a lot of the stuff you just said, he's doing a lot of it for you, right? He's deregulating. Every day he's deregulating a lot of laws. Yeah, that's- He's lowered the corporate taxes from 35% to 23%. Good, he's deregulating. Good for him. He lowered corporate taxes. Good for you. Good for everybody. Yeah. Good for everybody. Sure. But at the same time, he is spending like crazy. So spending has gone up dramatically. What does that do? That sucks money out of the private economy just as if you taxed it. So the difference between taking out bonds to fund the government or taxing is small. One could argue which one is worse for the economy. But on principle, you measure government intervention in the economy about how much dollars they spend. If they're spending more dollars, they're intervening in my life more. So he may be deregulating over here, but something's going up over here, which is bad. On top of that, he's just raised taxes on all of us. It's called tariffs. Tariffs are sales tax. And he's just taxed all of us with tariffs and he intends to do a lot more of that. But it's more than that. What he does is he diminishes the significance of the presidency. He diminishes what America stands for. He's vulgar. And again, he has no sense of understanding of what this country actually is about and what this country actually means. So there's nothing this man's done that Ayn Rand would say, I'm pleased with these three areas. Well, sure. And again, I don't want to speak fine Rand, but yeah, he's deregulating. Good. I'm glad he's deregulating. I'm glad he lowered the corporate tax. That's a no-brainer. So who? Anybody would have done that. But okay. But the negatives, I think way outweigh the positives. Way outweigh the positives. So which president has been a president where the Ayn Rand community objectivism would say, we like this guy or a possible current candidate? Grover Cleveland? That would be it. Grover Cleveland. No, and none of them. And it's not surprising, right? It's not surprising. Is anybody gonna be able to please Ayn Rand? I highly doubt anyone's gonna please Ayn Rand. Well, I mean, Ayn Rand voted. Ayn Rand voted when she was alive. And she voted, sometimes, she didn't always vote, but she voted sometimes. She voted Barry Gorewater. She supported Wilkie. Was there something Wilkie? She voted Barry Gorewater, voted for Nixon. I wouldn't say she supported Nixon, but she voted for Nixon. A lot of people change their minds with Nixon. Yeah, but I think she wouldn't have, with regard to McGovern. McGovern? Yes, McGovern. Because of how far left he was. So she sometimes closed her nose and voted for people she didn't like. And she ran a campaign. What was it? Anti-Nixonites for Nixon, I think, was what she called in 1972. She had, I think, some hope for Nixon in 68, but then he disappointed her. And there were a number of people in the administration who were quite influenced by her in the 72 administration. She would not vote for Reagan. She refused to vote for Reagan. She wouldn't have. She didn't. 1980. What was her reasoning for? She believed Reagan would bring the moral majority into the Republican Party, and it would take it over and turn it into a religious party. She was absolutely right, of course. And she said that the harm that he will do by bringing religion and associating with Republicanism and capitalism would do more damage long term than any good things he might do on deregulation and lowering taxes and things like that. How would she feel about Obama or Clinton? She would have despised both of them. So Bush. Clinton was good with negotiating with Newt Gingrich. Yeah, because he was too busy with Monica Lewinsky to bother with legislation. I'm happy when the president doesn't have time. He believed in virtues of selfishness. Bill Clinton was a big fan of virtue selfishness. No, he's not selfish. He was an impulsive emotionalist that is not selfish. And you can look at Bill Clinton and you can see how miserable, pathetic, low human being he is. But you know what this does to me, but this is what it does. See, selfishness is not about just doing whatever your emotions dictate. Selfishness is about figuring out what's good for you in your life. How many of you here under 30 years old? Got it. How many of you saw Ayn Rand face-to-face like you saw her life? Wow, listen, that's impressive. I would have loved to. If there's a few people I would have loved to set up, but she's one of a Milton Friedman's another one. Those are two of my biggest heartbreaks. I wanted to get a chance to meet them too. Well, having said that, I hope you enjoy this. We're going to do a little bit of Q&A. I think that's part of the next session that we have. Thank you for tolerating me pushing a little bit. What most of you guys don't know was a lot of the stuff I pushed. I am a supporter of. I just want to see the argument. I want to see the emotions. And what would happen if you respond to this is the way I learned. And I hope you can appreciate it. So if anybody has any questions, I think you guys have a mic over there. Yeah, Ron, you reminded us of all the positives of the 19th century, which were the result of freedom. Greatly increased prosperity, relative world peace. The short version of my question is what the hell happened? Because you look at the 20th century and you have two major world wars, other wars. The massive casualties of those wars were dwarfed by the genocide caused by totalitarian dictatorships. Can we not learn from example? Well, we don't learn from example. I don't think humanity learns much from example. I don't think individuals learn much from example because their interpretation of events is clouded by their ideology, by the ideas that they hold. So it's ideas that led to those catastrophes of the 20th century and you hear socialists today, what do they say? They say, well, those people didn't apply the ideas right. This time we'll get it right. We have a noble socialist or noble communist to be different. Yeah, so there's no, so of course they were the noble because they were consistent because socialism leads to death and destruction. It can only lead to that. But to know that you have to understand ideas. You have to understand, so what happened? I mean, you know this, right? What happened was that the enlightenment ideas that generated the 19th century were challenged by German philosophers and one French guy, a couple of French guys, but at least Rousseau and Kant and then the whole string of German philosophers that follow that, that challenged the enlightenment, undercut the enlightenment, made people doubt the enlightenment and opened the door to people like Marx and other ideologues to steer us away from the enlightenment. So communism and fascism. Now anti-enlightenment political ideologies based on that German romanticism that's anti-enlightenment. And the good thing is, and I said this in my talk the other day, right? The good thing is that we bounce back towards the enlightenment, at least a little bit, right? So if you think about what happened in 1913, we had World War I and the World War II, right? You think that would have crushed us. I mean, think about the devastation, the hundreds and then communism taking over a third of the world or maybe two thirds of the planet. I mean that would have devastated us and yet we bounce back from that and we're bouncing back from that and vast regions of the planet are bouncing back for that. And I think that's because we bounce back to those enlightenment ideas of individualism and reason and they're weak. So it's easy to, you know, the opposition is still there but the opposition today is not ideological in a sense of a passion for socialism. As I said in my talk, there are no socialists out there. They call themselves social democrats because they don't go all the way with socialism because it's so stupid and it's being crushed and it's being devastated and nobody takes it seriously anymore. So they have to moderate it but they can't give up on the altruism. They can't give up on the mysticism because those ideologies are still there and we still don't have, other than Ayn Rand, a proper comprehensive systematic defense of enlightenment values. So I view Ayn Rand as an enlightenment philosopher, as the philosopher who culminates the enlightenment. She closes the loop. She gives the philosophical justification for reason as efficacious and egoism and individualism as a proper moral ideal. And that's the power and I think if we view it that way, I think if we project it into the future, it's easier. You know, there's a foundation that people have and we're solidifying that foundation. Imagine instead of our kids reading of mice of men or that was in this as now, they read out the shrug. I mean, these kids being raised, thinking about being free thinkers. Wow, it'd be a whole different world we're living in if these kids were reading that. Yes. Hey guys, so Patrick, thanks for doing the interview. It's awesome. And thanks for sharing your story too about like your conversion, like coming back to it. I think it's cool to be able to do especially in a community where you know that's not necessarily the predominant view. I like this, but I get a kick out of it. I'm like a masochist. I like this kind of stuff. Go ahead. You know, could you just talk about that kind of epistemological point of the package dealing that happens? I think that was helpful for me in clarifying a lot of the things that Iron Man talked about. Yeah, so we have a lot of concepts out there. So concepts, think of concepts as like a fire folder in your mind. Where we put different things and then when we refer to that concept, we open up the folder and pull things out. And part of the problem is that we have in this fire folder called selfish. We have very conflicting things. So people think of Bill Gates or any rich person, right? A selfish, why? Well, because they pursued their passion because they made a lot of money. So that's kind of a good thing in a sense. I don't think of it as good, but it's in that fire folder. But also in that fire folder is Bernie Madoff, right? Scumbag, Pymid Schema, Liar, Cheetah and everything. So you have in one folder, you have all these examples of good things, pursuing your own values, trying to be happy. You know, all of us are most of the day concerned about their own happiness, concerned about their own family. I always tell audiences, right? Your kids are in the pool, the neighbor's kids in the pool, they're drowning. Who do you say first? And everybody says I say my kids. Now the only difference between them and me is, I say my kids and I don't feel guilty about that. They save their own kids, but they feel guilty about it because their morality tells them they should have saved the neighbor's kids first. Because you have to love your neighbor just like yourself. So there's no difference between the neighbor's kids and your kids. So we all have a sense of selfishness. We all pursue our self-interest. But we also think that self-interest is associated with lying, cheating and stealing. It's also associated with Bernie Madoff. That's the culture, right? So we have a problem. Majority, majority, that's what I'm saying, the majority out there. So every time you sell selfishness, the thing that pops into their head is Bernie Madoff. It's lying, cheating, stealing. It's nasty people. And what Ayn Rand is saying is clean it up. Clean the folder, right? We need to create a different folder for Bernie Madoff because there's something inherently different about what Bernie Madoff does and what Bill Gates does or what Steve Jobs does. There's something inherently different between being productive and taking care of your life and using your mind to make your life better than lying, cheating and stealing. So let's create a separate folder for the lying, cheating, stealing bastards, right? Let's call it self-destruction and let's have self-interest clean, right? Real self-interest, long-term self-interest, rational self-interest, using your reason to pursue your own flourishing. So conceptually, we need to clean up our concepts and therefore then we can use these terms and people will understand us. So part of our job is just housekeeping. My mindset from the outside is the marketing aspect of it. That's all I'm thinking about. How do you market it to get 18, 19, 20 year olds to say this makes sense and get it to them even more? So we usually say things like, oh, why would a God allow a child rapist or concentration camps or murders or any other evils or ugliness of the world when we could say the converse, the opposite? We can say, well, why are there paintings and sculptures and skyscrapers and beautiful things? What kind of God would allow that? So I just want to like to see if you two would elaborate a little bit more on that kind of idealism, please. Well, I mean, I don't think in those terms because I don't think there's a God. I mean, I know there's no God. And I've known that since the age of six. So to me, the question of why would God allow this or why would God allow that doesn't come into my mind, but I do find it funny, right? That when the guy catches the pass in the Super Bowl in the end zone in the last second, the first person he thanks is God, right? But when he drops the pass, he doesn't go like this, right? So we give God credit for all the good stuff, but they don't blame him for the bad stuff, which I find bizarre and ridiculous, right? You know what I mean? Either he's control and if we get credit and blame for everything, or he's not in control and if we doesn't get credit for the good stuff either. But the whole idea doesn't cross my mind because there is no God. So if you caught the pass, good for you. And if you dropped it, you know, go practice some more. We're all fans of capitalism here. What's our game plan? We're all reading a lot of books. We're coming together at conventions. We're doing a lot of talking. We're doing a lot of thinking. What does that look like going forward? How is that going to produce difference in the world? So I'll give you a perfect example here. So I am with Charlie Kerr, Turning Point USA, he's doing a phenomenal job by the way out there. He's making a lot of noise. Some people like him, some people don't like him. Marketing wise, he's killing it, period. And he's producing the content around capitalism, which is great. I was at one of his conferences in Dallas and I went up to him. He said, so let me ask you a question. This is Greg, you're talking about capitalism. This is phenomenal stuff here. I said, what percent? I said, I notice a lot of people here are white. And he says, no, they're not. I said, I notice about 90% are white. He says, no, we have 46 people here that are African American and Hispanic. I said, how many people total we got here? He says a thousand people. I said, it's 95% white. That's my point. And by the way, this is on video when you hear me talking about it. And he said, well, it kinda is, but I said the biggest challenge for me is the following. How many of you here completely disagree with INRAND? This is the problem. You guys are the problem. All these donors that gave all this money here, you need to have 3,000 seats and hamplets and let them leave and hear the presentation of capitalism. Let them make a decision for themselves. You don't have to like what I'm saying. What's the purpose of all of us coming to get and talking about this? We agree about this stuff. I'm in Greece last week. I'm talking to these kids, 20 of them show up. 20 of these entrepreneurs show up right outside of Acropolis. I said, let me ask you a question. So what are you guys doing right now to save Greece? What's your game plan for Greece? He says, what do you mean? I said, how are you guys planning on saving Greece? I mean, you saw what happened with your country. You guys don't know how to manage money. You have no clue what's going on. What's your game plan? He says, well, you know, our politicians, all they wanna do is tax, tax, tax. They don't know how to manage money. They're corrupt. I said, so what are you doing about it? He says, I don't know. I said, so the solution for all of you is capitalism. What's gonna save Greece is capitalism. So the kid, 18-year-old kid says, the other day I wore the valetainment shirt that says I love capitalism. I said, what happened? He says, I went to school. Teacher pulled me aside. I said, you gotta take that shirt off. I said, did you take it off? He said, yes. I said, you shouldn't have. But here's my challenge to you. If you guys wanna really do something about Greece. I said, pick one day. All of you guys here, the 20 of you, put money together. Create 500 posters, white, red letters that says, capitalism will save Greece. Take 10 locations in Athens that has the most traffic. Between one to three o'clock in the morning, post 50 posters at the most traffic place right next to each other. And wake up in the morning at five o'clock and record everybody that walked past it. See what happens. You guys gotta create awareness. You guys gotta come to get and talk about this. Oh my gosh, you know what happens if we do that? We'll get an arrest. So we say, that's what you're gonna have to do. Because you have two choices. Either do that, or you have to go to America. But you got one of these two choices. We're gonna keep spreading the concept of capitalism from our end. I think the way we're gonna be doing it is realizing if you go on YouTube right now, everybody took out their phones right now. If you type them the word entrepreneur, 80% of the videos will be myself talking about capitalism. Why? We want to get this message out. But, this is my last one, I'll come to you. The virtues of selfishness. To me, if you guys did a focus group and you got people that came in here and said, what do you think about this word? You have two things. Either we're gonna work so hard to change the way people think about the word, more power to you. Or why don't we repackage this messaging? What word is saving capitalism, believe it or not, is entrepreneurship. People are more receptive to entrepreneurship than they are to capitalism. It's the same exact thing, anti-abortion pro-life. The packaging needs to be better. I believe if we do that, we're gonna get the attention of the younger audience. That's my thoughts. What do you think? Yeah, packaging matters. It doesn't matter as much as I think Patrick thinks it does. Because, because people are going to hate the concept of selfishness, even if we call it something else. It's not the opposition to the word. It's the opposition to the idea. It's the idea that they find offensive. We can call it, what happens when you call it entrepreneurship? What happens when you call it free? By the way, free enterprise pulls better than free markets which pulls better than capitalism. So let's use free enterprise. But what happens when you use free enterprise is the reason it pulls better. It's watered down. And it's gonna be watered down more and more and more. So if you really care about capitalism long-term, then I believe you have to understand the philosophy on which capitalism is based. And the philosophy on which capitalism is based is the philosophy grounded on reason and individualism. Those are the two most important concepts. The reason you come to this conference is not to convert you into capitalist, but to A, give you emotional fuel because it's just fun. And B, give you more substance so that you can go out there into the world and defend the concept of capitalism better on the basis of individualism and reason, which nobody else other than us is doing. Capitalism will not survive the conservative and libertarian attempts to defend it on quicksand, on nothing. Yeah. Patrick, what, if anything, have you learned from Ayn Rand? Ayn Rand. What is wrong with you? Ayn Rand. Are you kidding me? You should have corrected it. And that would have been... You ought to be embarrassed of yourself right now, right? By the way, look at my phone. It says, I am an entrepreneur. Everywhere I go, and I put my phone like this intentionally everywhere I go. I want people to know the power of entrepreneurship. What have I learned from her? Allowing it okay for you to be a free thinker and knowing at the end of the day, there's a reason why I went on a 30-day tour. I lived in an RV and went across the country from LA to Miami to Toronto to San Francisco back to LA, spoke to nearly 10,000 people on the concept of capitalism for 30 days. My kid's birthday was there, but I went in this RV because people need to understand that this concept of capitalism can free anybody. If it did it for me, for other people as well. So we're gonna keep screaming off the top of our lungs, the concept of capitalism. You will see us doing it with the way we do it. And hopefully, five, 10 years from now, there's gonna be hundreds of millions of people sitting there saying, this capitalism concept is good. And to go back to piggyback with the point that he said, remember, Mormons are good at one thing. They bring them in. They worry about baptizing people later, not the other way around. You can't baptize them up front. You bring them in, and then you baptize them. If you had 3,000 people in this room, there's more opportunities to baptize. Who cares if 40% disagree? If I convert 20% where you had it again, we're gonna keep baptizing entrepreneurs. That's all we're gonna be doing for the next 10 years. So stay tuned. Thank you so much, everybody. Thank you. So we're gonna- Oh, you're the CEO, right? Is he the CEO? Yes, sir. I got an honor to allow me to ask the last question. We're gonna meet in a second. Did you read this book? Which one is that? Atlas Sharp. Of course, I have multiple times. And what did you think? Everybody in the world needs to read that book. Cool. That's all I have to- Everybody in the world needs- By the way, not just that book. Every one of the books, she wrote Fountainhead. And forget about just the book, study her interviews, study how she thinks, study how she responds. Anything you can find on Ayn Rand, you ought to read about. Anything. Thank you guys. Thank you so much, everybody. Thanks, Patrick.