 But I want to start with a quote. It's a pretty lengthy quote but I want you to think about, you know, who potentially said this or wrote this. This is from an essay. What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his, what is his worldly God? Money. What in itself is the basis of the Jewish religion? Practical need, egoism. The God of practical need and self-interest is money. Money is the jealous God of Israel, in face of which no other God may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man and turns them into commodities. Money is the universal self-established value of all things. It has therefore robbed the whole world, both the world of men and nature of its specific value. Money is the estranged essence of man's work and man's existence and this alien essence dominates him and he worships it. The God of the Jews has become secularized and has become the God of the world. The bill of exchange is the real God of the Jew. The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general. Pretty nasty stuff. And who wrote it? Anybody? Hitler? Karl Marx. This is straight out of Karl Marx, who indeed devoted an entire essay to this topic and the essay was titled On the Question of the Jew. On the Jewish question, sorry, on the Jewish question which was a, there was a series of essays on the Jewish question in the mid-19th century that various intellectuals commented on and this is Karl Marx's contribution to that analysis. Karl Marx of course was Jewish technically by birth and this is his view of the Jew. The Jew is self- interested. The Jew is egoistic. The Jew is about money. The Jew is a merchant. In other words, the Jew is a capitalist and you know Karl Marx's view of capitalism and therefore you know Karl Marx's view of the Jew. Marx even says it in the quote, one of the horrific things Jews have done indeed is that they have spread this word among the Christian nations so that the whole world now worships money. In other words, it is the Jew that has brought capitalism to the world and has distorted the world and he says in there in later in the essay he says the solution to the Jewish problem and he says the Jewish problem is not about the Jews. The Jewish problem now is about pretty much all of Europe because the problem is not a Jewish problem. The problem is a money problem. The problem is capitalism and a problem can only be solved if the Jew stops being a Jew and more importantly if Christians stop being Jews. In other words, if the world stops worshiping money, stops worshiping capitalism, stops being a merchant society, abandons capitalism. So for him, for Karl Marx, the man who the left you know everywhere in the world worships. For Karl Marx, you could not separate capitalism from the Jewish people. Those two were interlinked and the hatred of both was connected and I think this is a feature of the West, you know, not just of the left but it dominated in the mid-19th century as capitalism is starting to dominate Europe as production, trade, cities are starting to dominate. There's more and more feeling of alienation by those who kind of miss the traditions of the past. The agrarian life, life in the countryside who resent the idea of cities and money and wealth creation and dominance and she sees this both on the left and on the right. Left is the Marxism, right is kind of the conservatism, particularly in places like Germany where they write long odes to the wonders of agrarian life and farming and how life used to be. And like whenever there's massive change, whenever there's angst, there's alienation, there is a feeling of you know, things out of control, things are happening that we can't hold on to. People always look to blame it on someone. They always look for a scapegoat. They always look for someone on the outside who they can attribute everything that's happening around them that is so scary on to. And in Europe, there's a long tradition of who those outsiders are going to be. And in the case of the 19th century, the outsider was the Jew. The Jew was in the cities. They were simulating in society. They were kind of scary. They weren't easy to identify anymore. Historically, the Jew could be easily identified. They lived in their own villages. They lived in their own ghetto. They wore different clothes, but suddenly they were becoming part of European society. And they were dominant in the banking industry. They were dominant in what everybody viewed as the capitalist world. And you always want to look at an outsider. The Jew is an outsider. You want to look at somebody who's changing things, who's shaking things up. That's exactly what they were doing. Or at least that's the perception of what they were doing. And you never want to blame your own people, right? Tribalism works very effectively if we can blame others for our own problems. We never want to blame ourselves for those problems. So the Jew became the scapegoat for this rise of capitalism, both in Marx's mind and in the right's mind, in the mind of the conservative right all over Europe. And you see it to a large extent again today, with a lot of angst, alienation, concern, globalization, immigration. Who gets blamed for all this? Well, in different countries, we choose different others to blame for it. But somehow, Jews are always part of that mix. There were synagogue shootings in the United States recently, in Pittsburgh, and then in California. And what did the guy blame the Jews for there in the shooting in the synagogue? They're behind all these Mexican immigrants. They're bringing them in. They're helping them come into the country. They're behind globalization. Because another thing that Jews are always associated with, one is obviously capitalism. But the other, we'll get to why that is and what the historical origins of that is. The other is globalism. You know the term globalism now? This dirty word? Globalist. I get called that all the time. And I relish it because I indeed am a globalist. Now, they associate globalism with the word, the term now is associated with one world government and, you know, the globalist one world government and no borders and everybody moving all over the place. And what is, what have Jews been? My, you know, my family, my kids, our fourth generation, fourth generation, born on a different continent, fourth generation born of different continent. My, you know, my kids were born in America, North America. I was born in Asia, Israel. My parents were born in Africa, South Africa. And their parents were born in Northern Europe in Lithuania. Four generations for continents. What did the Jews come to symbolize for hundreds of years? Migrants. They don't have a home. They spread all over the world. And they are successful all over the world. And they have this interest in, I don't know, one world government, I guess, because they have branches everywhere. It's easy to see. It's easy to associate with this with the conspiracy, because here they are, they're everywhere. And they dominate everywhere. So today, both on the right and the left, on the right, it's more, it's definitely capitalism, we'll get to that. But it's also this globalism, this this idea of, and again, you know, I relish the term globalist because I'm a big believer in trade and global migration and, you know, I'm a big believer in free movement of people, not a big believer in one world government. But that doesn't stop anybody from calling me what they want to call me. But that, that whole idea of freedom is now something that the white condemns, particularly in the United States. And on the left, Jews associated with, again, capitalism, and Israel, we'll talk about why they hate Israel. That's on the left. But both left and right are going back to hating the Jew, a symbol of something they despise even more. So why this link between Jews and money, between Jews and banking, between Jews and capitalism? Well, there's a real long history and you can see the history in some of the great artworks of Western civilization. You know, go back to Dante, I don't know if anybody's read Dante's Inferno. But in Dante's Inferno, the moneylander, right, the moneylander is in the seventh rung of hell. And he's got a big bag of money, you know, around his neck. And because it's heavy, it's dragging him down towards the fire, right, to really get burnt. It's that money is evil, money is destructive. And who is the moneylander? He's a Jew. It's obvious. Shakespeare, of course, immortal, you know, creates this amazing character in the motion of Venice of Shylock. Shakespeare had never met a Jew, right? Because Jews were banned from England for 200 years, there were no Jews in England during Shakespearean times, there were no Jews in England. But he creates this moneylander, Shylock, who is, you know, depending on who is depicting it in a particular frame of the production is basically the bad guy of the play. He's greedy. He wants his money. He dares, he dares as the Christian. There's a Christian hero of the play and the Christian kind of condemns Shylock. What's so bad about Shylock? Shylock owns money, and what does he expect in return? What's that? income, interest. He actually wants to get interest on his loans. The Christian says, when somebody needs money, I just lend their money, I don't expect anything in return. I just make a loan, no interest. And this goes back to this idea that in Christianity, interest charging interest, which was called usury, historically, any interest was called usury was banned. It was wrong to charge interest on a loan, going back to the beginning of Christianity. And this is there's a passage in the Old Testament, where God says to the Jews, he says, you cannot charge interest on a loan from your brother. From a stranger, that's okay. Now, the way you interpret that is what is what does it mean to be a brother in Judaism? It means from other Jews. So the prohibition originally was you cannot charge interest from other Jews, but you can charge interest from non Jews. Now comes Christianity, and Christianity, who is your brother? Who's your brother under Christianity? Or everybody Christianity, universal religion. Judaism is a very, you know, exclusive religion. So a very tribal religion. Christianity is a universal religion. So if everybody's your brother, who can you charge interest from? Nobody. And indeed interest charging interest on a loan is a mortal sin. This is why the money lender in Dante is in the seventh rung of hell. You go to hell for charging interest. So it's only in the late 19th century that the Catholic Church say, okay, charging interest is okay. It's just excess interest. Now they call that usury, which is not good. But you can charge only in the late 19th century. Did they acknowledge just now? You know, if you study history, you'll find that the Catholic Church was lending money all over the place and charging interest. Indeed, they would often burn the usuries in different towns, as a form of getting rid of the competition, so that they could dominate the banking trade. But they always did it in a way that wasn't explicitly interest. So there are all kinds of, you know, you know, Islamic banking today. I don't feel familiar with Islamic banking. Islam, you're not a lot of charge interest on loans, either. And they still stick to it. What's that? Yeah, it's a, it's a center charge interest is like in Christianity. So what the Islamic banks do is they don't, they don't charge you interest. You get a loan, they don't charge you interest, but they take a dividend or they take a percentage of your business. So you know, they find a way to get the interest, but they don't call it interest. And they're very successful Islamic banks out there that but but it's all and the Catholic Church did exactly the same thing for hundreds and hundreds of years. Monks used to be some of the biggest money lenders, but they never called it interest. They always took a stake in your business or something like that. The Medici Bank never actually charged interest. They charged an interest without calling it an interest. They found a different way to get around the prohibition. So who did do most of the straight up banking during the time when it was banned on the Christians? Well, the Jews did. And the Jews did it because one, there were very few professions open to them. They weren't allowed to own land in many places. They weren't allowed to to to to engage in many of the professions available to most people in in you know, in the in much of the period after the fall of their own empire. And use it. What's that? Yeah, university was very limited. But you know, very few people went to university until very late, right? I mean, remember, this is agrarian society. This is up until the end of the 18th century. Very few people went to universities. It was very exclusive and it was primarily religious studies that you studied in university. It wasn't. It wasn't actually a liberal liberal curriculum. So they were limited to this to few professions. But the real reason they did usury is because they were allowed to. And the Christians recognized that they were allowed to. So Jews were allowed to charge interest from non Jews. So they did it. Now think of what it must have been like for Christian to go to a Jew to borrow money and then pay them interest. According to the Christian, these people are committing a mortal sin. This is really evil of them. But we need the money. So we have to go to them and ask. And then we have to pay them back interest. I mean, all of us, none of us like paying interest on our loans, although I kind of think it's cool. But you know, because I like I like the fact that I can get a loan and I can, you know, transact what most people resented. Now on top of that, you resented doubly, because in your book, the New Testament, it says it's a mortal sin. By your interpretation, what they're doing is wrong. Because according to Christianity, they should be giving you a loan and charging what for it? Zero. Asked a Christian in the merchant of Venice. It's exactly what he says. It's exactly what he argues. And you can see the build up of resentment towards the Jewish money lender who's making money, getting rich off of Christians by committing a sin that's going to put him in hell, seventh rung, to be exact. Now, this is not the only source of anti-Semitism, to be sure. But it's a big one. It's a big one. And it builds over time. And as more economic activity is engaged in, the more you need loans, the more finance becomes more and more important. And the more the Jews are involved in that. And the more the resentment against them occurs. And think again about this idea of globalism. The Jews are not just in one place. They have branches all over the place. They build up banking empires, whether it's the Rothschilds or others. They now have branches all over Europe. They're not affiliated with one particular country. Are the Rothschilds an English bank or a French bank? It's not clear. Where are the alliances? Do they have any other than to themselves and to making money? And now you can see why Marx's quote makes sense in a sense, right? Why that's what we're seeing. That's what he's saying. Jews were at the heart of the world of finance, at the heart of the world of capitalism during the 19th century. So if you resent capitalism and you look at who the capitalist are and who's kind of driving this, well, they are Jews. Everywhere you look. And the hatred is combined. So from very early on, the Christian world resents the idea of the money lender. You know, often Jews are killed because they are the money lenders. You know, if you're an aristocrat and you've borrowed a lot of money from the local money lender and you can't repay your debts, what's one solution to that? Well, you organize a little program and you go kill them. And you happen to burn all the books where the debts are listed at the same time. There's no cloud. There's no backups. And now, whoops, all your debts are gone. And it had nothing to do with that because it was just a populist revolt against those evil Jews. But again, in history you can find occasion after occasion where the guy who borrowed the money manages to wipe out all the remnants of the people who actually lent him the money. So both on the right and on the left, the kind of conservative right that in the 19th century resented the rise of capitalism. And the Marxist left that resented the rise of capitalism. The belief capitalism was alienating for two different reasons. The left because of, you know, the manual labor was being exploited. The right because it was overturning traditional values. Both sides linked the rise of capitalism to this idea of Judaism. Deeper than that, and you see that in the quote I gave you from Marx, what does Marx link the Jew to? Not just the money. What else does he link him to? He links him to self-interest. I mean, in the essay over and over and over again Marx says the Jew is self-interested. The Jew is an egoist. And we live in a culture in which self-interest and egoism is what? Good? Is that a compliment? We live in a culture, we live in a world, we live in a Christian world to a large extent. A world that is dominated by Christian morality in which what is a view of egoism and self-interest? Well, we resent it. It's that's the essence of immorality. It's the essence of corruption. To be self-interested is to be immoral, almost by definition. We're all taught Christian and Jew and every other person, right? We're all taught that the essence of morality is what? Is to be self-less. Think of yourself last. I mean nobility, virtue, morality, being a good person in our world means what? Means self-sacrifice. It means to live for the sake of others. That is the you know that is the essence of the moral code in which we live. Augustine Comte and Comte, Emmanuel Comte both argued the morality, essential of morality, is to take care of others without thinking of oneself and if you think of your own interests while taking care of others, it doesn't count as moral. It doesn't count as moral. You have to do it purely out of a sense of altruism, purely out of a sense of love for the other, purely out of a sense of self-lessness. To any extent that you're being yourself, to that extent your action is immoral. Now it's true that nobody actually holds that idea. Nobody actually thinks, yeah, I shouldn't think of myself at all. I should just take care of others. Nobody actually lives that because if we did, we would all die. We can survive that way. But it is true that in a sense in our moral DNA, at the core of what we view as moral in our culture, is this view of self-lessness, is this view of morality, is this view that altruism is what makes us good, and that fundamentally self-interest is bad. I mean, in my view, you know, in Van's view, this is why people hate capitalism so much. Because capitalism, whether we like it or not, I like it, but it's about self-interest. Nobody goes into capitalism for the sake of humanity. It's not about loving your neighbor. It's about what? What is capitalism about? Trade. Well, trade is an outcome of what? Well, it's an outcome of production on the one side, which is done for the sake of what? Profit, making money, self-interest, fun, enjoying the productive process. But it's done for self-interest. And of course the other side of trade is what? One is production, the other side of trade is what? Consumption. Now I know all of you consume out of love for your fellow man, because you want to make sure people have jobs. You know, that's where you go to the mall and you have all bought into the Keynesian theory that consumption drives the economy. So you want to make sure the British economy keeps on chugging along, so you go and spend your money in the mall. Now luckily nobody does that. Luckily we all go to consume why? To try to make our own lives better. So essentially capitalism is self-interest. Essentially capitalism is about self- interest. And self-interest is denounced, rejected as evil. Altruism, selflessness is the ideal of morality. And capitalism ain't it. Capitalism is not about selflessness. It's not about altruism. Some are helping people. People are better off as an outcome of capitalism. But they're better off because of their self-interest. Because they're pursuing their self-interest. Not because of some altruistic giving. Altruistic, you know. I mean even charity under capitalism, which is a big part, you know, a significant part of capitalism is charity. I mean as a the amount of help that it provides people, it's insignificant. As compared to trade, production, consumption, actual economic activity. China did not become relatively wealthy. You're not supposed to use China these days I guess. But relatively wealthy because of charity. But because they embrace a little bit of capitalism. A little bit of self-interest. A little bit of freedom. America didn't become, you know, I always tell my audiences in America in the 1776 you guys didn't care enough about about these third-rate insignificant colonies over there to really fight a war. That's why we won. But it was a third-rate colony. And then within a hundred and you know, 40 years it was the most powerful economy in the world. Because of community service and charity. No, because of capitalism. Because of self-interest. Because of people pursuing their wealth. People trying to make money. So we have a morality incompatible with capitalism. And the problem for Jews is that we have a morality that makes the tribalists where the left or right look at the Jew and what do they see? They look at Israel and what do they see? What do you see when you look at Israel? Success. Prosperity. Strength. You know Europeans used to love Israel. I mean literally love Israel. For 1948 until 19- when the state of Israel was founded until 1967 Israel received all its arms. All the arm purchases Israel made were made from Europeans. The United States had an arms embargo on Israel. So 1967 war, the six-day war, was fought with barrage airplanes. With British tanks. All the weapons Israel got. The Europeans loved Israel during that period. They were the biggest allies Israel had were Europeans. America was kind of lukewarm. And what is it about Israel between 1948 and 1967 that Europeans loved? It was a bunch of pathetic Jews. Struggling. Poor. Weak. And Europe felt guilty for World War II. But it's their weakness that attracted. Because altruism tells us. Self-lessness tells us. Love the weak. Help the weak. Hate the strong. 67 happens. And Israel wins the war against you know depending how you count them anyway between four to seven Arab nations in six days. And what happens to European sentiment towards Israel? Almost overnight it flips. Almost overnight it goes from loving Israel to hating Israel. Because now Israel strong. It's just proved that it's strong. And now who are the weak? Well anybody else. Suddenly the Palestinians. And now our sympathies go to the weak. Because that's what altruism tells us to do. You want to look for the meek. Look for the suffering. Look for the needy. They're the good guys. Strong. By definition bad guys. Because the strong have done what? They've acted in their old self-interest. It's the only way you become strong. And the same if you look at Jews in European society and American society over the last 200 years. They're successful. They've done well. They've made money. They run banks. They run industries. They have banks named after them. So it's easy to hate. To resent. To denounce. And people in the world in which we live. You know the world's complicated. A lot of stuff happens and people don't understand. You know particularly in America. But I'm sure it's the same in Britain. You know there's this whole idea of we're losing manufacturing jobs and people are upset and I don't know there's a whole mythology around the middle class has lost income and the middle class is shrinking and all this stuff. And if you want to know why I say it's a myth then you can ask me about it. And we need an explanation for it all. We need an explanation for it all. And again on both sides. The explanation is first of all well this is capitalism. Capitalism creates inequality. Capitalism creates these problems. Capitalism creates the alienation going back to Marx. To explain how it actually happens is complicated. So it's much easier to come up with conspiracy theories. You see that on both sides of the political spectrum. It's so much easier to just explain it all by I don't know. It's the Chinese. It's the Mexicans. Or ideally it's the Jews. It's the globalist conspiracy out there. That is trying to take over the world. It's one world government. That's what they're trying to establish. That's why you feel so bad about your life right now. And you can see this now again both sides. The extreme sides of the spectrum. The spectrum that goes from collectivists of the left to collectivists of the right. More so today than ever. It's the same. It's the same thing. You have to explain these complicated complex phenomena in the world. It's much easier to come up with a conspiracy theory. Blame it on a particular group and you're done with it. And unfortunately more and more and more people again in the U.S. are buying into these conspiracy theories. So because Jews are being successful. And you can ask me why I think they've been successful. Because Jews have been successful. Because people feel alienated. Because capitalism is resented. Because capitalism and Jews being successful all lumped up in this self-interested group. The left elements within the left resent them. They lump them all together and they resent them. And the right. Some groups on the right resent them. And the more we feel alienated the more capitalism is blamed for our problems. The more anti-semitism is going to rise. Again from both extremes of the political spectrum. The only way, the only way to get over this. In a sense to say both capitalism and get rid of anti-semitism. The solution to anti-semitism is the solution to the lack of capitalism. That is to reject. To reject the morality of otherism. To reject the morality that says that life is about serving others. That morality is about being selfless. And to reject the tribalism that that always leads to. Because it always leads to tribalism. Because if I'm going to sacrifice. If I'm going to live for you. Well you better look like me. We better have something in common. I don't want to sacrifice to be selfless towards people who don't look like me. We don't belong to my little clique. That has to be rejected. And the only alternative. The only real alternative that exists in my view is Rand's morality. It's a morality of rational self-interest. It's a morality of living for yourself. And what that truly means. Living for your own long-term well-being as a human being. And what is the one tool to achieve that? It's what makes us human. It is our mind. Pursuing your rational long-term self-interest. Is the only alternative to the morality that exists, you know, in our culture implicitly. It's a morality that ultimately animates capitalism. And you cannot defend capitalism unless you defend self-interest. And it's a morality that underlies that it is implicit in all success. Whether it's success by Jews or by anybody, it doesn't really matter. If you're going to defend success, you have to defend the process to achieve success. Which is a process of seeking one's own happiness, seeking one's own well-being. It's a process of self-interest. So the only way to rid ourselves of collectivism broadly, of all forms of collectivism, and of anti-capitalism and anti-semitism, is an embrace of a morality of individualism, a morality of self-interest. Thank you. So we got we got some time for questions. Carl Marx's description of the Jew. Thank you. Carl Marx's description of the Jew. If we substitute in some iron-around style definitions. Sounded wonderful to me. I was wondering to what extent you think any of this is actually true of the Jew historically and today? I mean, there's a sense in which it's true. I mean, you know, the way he talks about money as a god of the Jew, you know, money shouldn't be anybody's god, right, in any kind of sense. But, you know, this is the problem of talking about the Jew. Who is the Jew, right? You know, my ancestors came from little stettles who were, they were farmers, they knew nothing, they did nothing with their lives. I mean, you know, until they emigrated out of Eastern Europe, they were nobody's and nothing's. So it's hard to talk about the Jew as some collective thing. But Jews in general, certainly since the, let's say, 18th century, have embraced the freedoms that capitalism has provided. I mean, think about what capitalism has done. Capitalism has basically allowed them to get out of those little stettles, those little villages, to go into the city, to, you know, capitalism, by breaking the guilt system, has allowed them to engage in any profession they wanted, right? So it's taking away this idea of you can't do certain professions. Under capitalism, they can own land. So it's freed them up after hundreds and hundreds of years, or a couple of thousand years, of being really limited and constrained, in a sense, as all humanity has been, right? Capitalism has allowed them to, to flourish. And Jews have, you know, maybe in a disproportionate way, have embraced that and be successful at it. And if you look at Jews in most places around the world, they are very successful. They're relatively wealthy. They're very well educated. They, they, they, they've succeeded. And maybe some of that is kind of the, the, the, the resentment, the pent-up kind of frustration at not being allowed to do certain things. And now it's all embracing. And that has filtered into the culture through an emphasis on education, an emphasis on success, Jewish mothers wanting their kids to be doctors or lawyers or whatever, all the, all the stereotypes, which there's some truth to. But they've created a culture where success is expected. Where you expect it to go into fields that engage the mind. And they have been incredibly successful. So in a sense, yes, that description, there's, there's a lot of truth in that description. On the other hand, as they have done this, because the other question is, okay, if that's true, then why are Jews so leftists? And they, and they truly are, certainly in America. I think here in the UK, there seems to be a little rebellion among the Jews in the UK against Jeremy Corbyn in particular, but not against labor, not the principles of labor, just against Corbyn and the anti-Semitism that seems to exist within the labor, labor party, but not against the ideas, the kind of socialist ideas behind it. They're still embracing those, I think, the Jewish communities. And certainly in the United States, Jews are overwhelmingly left. And it's a good question of why, right? I think it's a combination of associating the right with anti-Semitism and kind of missing the anti-Semitism on the left. But I think it's also, this is the conflict you have, right? On the one hand, they're very ambitious. They want to be successful. They, they, they, in, in, and they want to be good capitalists and they want to go and do their thing and they want to produce and they want to make money because they're trying to achieve happiness. On the other hand, they take morality pretty seriously and they want to be good people, right? There's a big emphasis in Jews, you know, you got to be good. And what does goodness mean? To everybody. I mean, they're no different than the rest of the culture. It means being selfless. This is how, you know, mothers, you know, mothers tell their kids, think of others first, be selfless. They don't believe that. Not really, not in action because they want their kids to be successful. They want to, they want their kids to get their head. They want to get, their kids to be first. But they have to say it because that's what morality is. So we're torn between, and they're torn between this existential, between their, their drive to be successful on the one hand and their morality that they've adopted and whether they've adopted it, whether it's an old testimony that they've adopted it from Christianity is a separate question but they've adopted this morality and there's a conflict and that's where, you know, and to appease that conflict, they vote left. I mean, why do, why do successful businessmen vote left? I mean, think about Wall Street, think about Silicon Valley and people say, oh, they vote left because they get more, you know, Coneyism. I, I don't believe that. That's not why they vote left. They vote left to a large extent because they feel guilty for their success and they want to express their selflessness and the best way for, they can't do it in real life because they're too busy and they're too ambitious and they're too, so they express it in their politics. They express it in their voting. Plus, you know, the Republican Party has done a lot to alienate them and in, in the, in the U.S., alienated secular businessmen, you know, don't want to be affiliated but, but even here in Britain where your conservative party is not particularly religious, right? I mean, I always say, you know, you're not going to be a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and relish science and relish engineering and all of that and then vote for political party that thinks that evolution is BS. It's just not going to, you know, how can you even contemplate, you know, in the Republican, in the Republican primaries, they always have this question, do you believe in evolution? And the best candidate will say, well, I'm not sure. But most of them will say, no, I mean, God created human beings. This is ridiculous. We're not, we're not from apes, that's absurd, right? Now, if you're, if you're into science, how can you vote for these people? So that eliminates Republican party from consideration almost immediately, unfortunately, in the minds of many of these guys. But deeper than that, I think they, you know, they've, they've been successful and then they try to rationalize that away. They try to rationalize it with their morality. Some of them do it by creating big philanthropies. Some of them do it by the way they vote, some of them do it by both. So again, it's the morality that drives, that drives all this. Yeah, in the back there. He was, he was first, and then we'll go forward. Sorry. Most of your life seems explicable by your rational self-interest. But are you sure that in your work for the Institute and your political work that you're not being selfless? Isn't this, aren't you doing this for the benefit of humanity? How does it serve your rational self-interest to expose yourself to these torrents of anti-community? Torrents of anti-capitalism and anti-semitism when you could just be living a happy life? I am living a happy life. I love doing this. You know, if I didn't, I wouldn't do it. So I'm a fighter. If I wasn't doing this, I'd do something else that involved the challenge and some kind of that. That's who I am. That's what I am. So no, I'm not doing this for the sake of humanity. I mean, I love people and if humanity's better off, cool. But I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to sacrifice for the sake of humanity. If you guys all benefit and I benefit, that's the trade, right? And look, the idea that a teacher, which is what I consider myself at the end of the day, that a teacher is altruistic, that a teacher just does it for the kids. Well, if they do, then they're a bad teacher. Good teachers love the teaching. They love what it entails. They love the trade. They get a value out of their student's response. So the best teachers are self-interested. They love the teaching. They love the exchange. They love seeing the lights go on in the kids' eyes. Just like, you know, it's just like, you know, Steve Jobs not only got money out of the success of the iPhone, but I'm sure got immense satisfaction from the fact that people enjoyed the iPhone. Not because he was self-less, but because he was selfish, because it was his and he created it and he loved the idea that he was having an impact on other human beings and human beings are great value to us selfish bastards that we are, right? Because you guys produce stuff that I benefit from and just life, life is wonderful and I, you know, we love our pets. Human beings are so much better than pets. I water my plants. Why do I have plants in the house? Because I love life. I want to see life flourishing succeed. But that's because those are my values. And if I didn't enjoy this, I would express it in a different way, but it's ultimately an issue of self-interest. I don't sacrifice. And you know, and one of my, you know, one of the accusations that King's College made, I don't know if you've ever seen the video of Antifa attacking me at King's College, me and Saga. You know, King's College did a whole report on it afterwards and they said that I looked like I was enjoying it too much. So, so maybe this wasn't so such a bad thing that Antifa attacked. And there's a sense in which, yeah, I mean, they're not gonna, you know, it's, you know, having, having a little bit of excitement like that is not the worst thing in the world, particularly given that they, you know, they're all, my audience landed up beating them up instead of the other way around. That's pretty cool. Thank you very much, Yaron. I want to ask you about, you spoke about Israel, how successful is Israel? So, I just want to remind that in Israel, there is no separate between the, the religion and the states. And Israel, some Orthodox Jewish don't accept gays. When I lived in Israel, I came from Tel Aviv, they didn't allow me because the religion law to buy food for my pet, for my cat in the Besach. So, Israel maybe is not so successful and the proof is that you and me left Israel. So, what's your opinion about the, that there is no separate between the religion and the states? Like Saudi Arabia, like Iran, is exactly the same? Well, I mean, I think it's awful that there's no separation of state and religion in Israel, but to compare it to Iran and Saudi Arabia is wrong. Very wrong. Because there's an implicit separation. There's certain things that you can and cannot do, but in most of your life, there's a complete separation. Women don't cover up, even though in Judaism, everybody's supposed to cover their hair. Men are not forced away, Yami Khan in Israel, like they are in Saudi Arabia, Iran, the equivalent of, right? There's free speech in Israel. You know, Israel is for the most part a free country and for the most part, there's an implicit separation of church and state. It's not, it's far from complete, which is a huge detriment to Israel. But so is socialism, so is the fact that Israel is way more two statists than I would like or that you would probably like. Israel is a compromised country, just like France's and Great Britain's and America's. Now, I think those countries, in some respects, are better than Israel. In some respects, they're not. So unfortunately, we live in a world of lots of mixed economies. Mixed economies, not just in economics, but mixed in terms of other freedoms as well. If you're gay in Tel Aviv today, nobody's throwing you off of a building, right? Tel Aviv is like this capital of gay people. It's like this huge gay parades and, you know, it's a party town and, you know, a lot of people from all over the world go to Tel Aviv to, you know, who are gay to kind of have a good time because it's known as a very open society. So in spite of the fact that they don't accept as long as the religious parties have power, they won't accept gay marriage in Israel, but it's not Saudi Arabia where they would throw you off a building and it's not Iran. So, you know, so it's a mixture and it's a, it's, it's, I hate mixtures. I want purity. I want pure capitalism and pure freedom of the individual to live his life. So Israel is far from perfect. It's much better today than when I left, right? Sometimes I go back and say, was it good that I left? But yeah, I'm happy that I left. But because it's far less socialist than it was back then. And there's a lot more people willing today to stand up against religion than they were back then. Although we were all, I mean, I remember growing up, I mean, the biggest shock I got when I moved to the United States, the biggest shock I got when I moved there was how seriously it took religion because nobody in Israel took religion seriously where I was growing up. Everybody was kind of religious. A bunch of us were, were atheists. But even the people that took religion, you religious, at least why I grew up, nobody took it seriously. Nobody thought this was really that important. Yeah, you did your thing on Shabbat and, and stuff. And you had those crazy religious people who threw rocks at you if you drove on Yom Kippur. But they were crazy and we knew they were crazy. Like in America, everybody took religion really seriously. Even the atheists were traumatized by the fact that they grew up religious. And we didn't, I never felt traumatized by religion. Religion was just this thing on the side that I'd given up when I was like six or seven. And that was it. Right. It never concerned me. It was just, it was just there. It was just, and in America, it's like, it's really a part of a life in a way. And you know, just, just it's funny because, you know, the one good thing about Jews is you can tell exactly how religious a person is by how they dress. So you can avoid certain people. It's true, right? If you see them in all black and all this stuff, I don't want to have anything to do with that because they're fundamentalists and I don't do fundamentalists. The problem with Christianity is you can't tell. She like sit, sit next to somebody on a plane and they look completely normal. And then they start Bible thumping and trying to convert you to Jesus. And it's like, whoa, you have to advertise this in advance. So I know not to talk to you. But yeah, I find religious is, religion is much more in spite of all these problems in Israel is much more in American society than it is in Israeli society, which is interesting. Israel is more European in that sense, much more secular, even though it has, it doesn't have a complete separation of church and state, which it should have. One of the reasons Israel has no constitution is because they can't resolve that problem. So and it all started at the founding of Israel when Ben-Gurion, who was a complete atheist. I mean the whole founding, all the founders of Israel were atheists, Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, Ben-Gurion, all of those people were atheists, but they, they needed to form a big coalition because they were going to go to war and this was a big deal. And so they cut a deal with the religious parties, the religious element within Israel to say, okay, you get that part of the world, we get this part of the world in the state, will never be completely separate from religion. It's a tragic compromise that they made. Hopefully one day they will reverse it. Yeah, right. But there are two there. I'll try to answer more quickly. Okay, so there is this, I don't know if it's a conspiracy here, I've heard it quite a lot from the right, repeated, where they say that the Jews were behind the Bolshevik Revolution. And this comes particularly from capitalist free market kind of right wing people, even from Solzhenitsim, I think, was one of my favorite authors. So do you have any comment on that? Do you know whether it holds any truth or is it just bogus? Well, the Jews weren't behind the Bolshevik Revolution, but Jews were leaders within the communist movement. I mean, there were big-time leaders within the communist movement. Marx was a Jew. Engels was Jewish. And many Jews were attracted to that philosophy in spite of the quotes I read, which are very anti-Semitic. But Jews have led every intellectual movement, almost, I'm exaggerating. Right? I mean, in America, the most intellectual conservatives are Jews. Many of the socialists are Jews. Many of the feminists are Jews. Many of the wacky, leftist identity politics people at the American universities are Jews. And, you know, almost all the intellectuals and the objectivist movement are categorized as Jews. So Jews have been attracted to intellectual pursuits for the last two, three hundred years and they have dominated that world. If you look at the percentage of professors at American universities are Jews, it's overwhelming as compared to the percentage of the population. So it's easy to blame them for everything because in a sense, they're there. They're always going to be there. You know, the biggest, if I remember right, the biggest Holocaust deniers in the world are Jews, right? They're everywhere. So it's easy to kind of blame them and to attack them, but the idea that they're behind the Bolshevik revolution is ahistorical. You'd have to actually study what happened there and the dynamics of it. And Lenin certainly wasn't Jewish, neither were the people behind him or with him at the time. But they were part of this, the communist movement had a lot of Jews in it. There's no question. Okay, we got one here and then one up front. Thank you very much. I noticed you described a very, in my opinion, important historical precedent when there were three groups of people, aristocrats, Jews, and let's say peasants. And because peasants didn't participate in capitalism, when aristocrats decided to attack Jews, it was very easy to convert people. And I think the situation that we are in right now is very similar. So like we still have people, a lot of people who don't understand capitalism and who do not want to use it in their everyday lives. And they consider it to be a certain kind of a barrier that prevents them from achieving their goals. And people are not taught how to operate in capitalism, how to do stuff. And I think because of that, we again in the same situation. So we have some powers who want to control whatever they want to control. We have people who are for capitalism. I don't think they are Jews anymore. I think it's... I'm not sure they were Jews, only Jews like... No, they were. I think it was more widespread. And we have people who are not in both of these categories. And I think we are not doing enough to fight for them, to help them being integrated into this reality where you operate by a certain system of regulations by capitalism, rather than by a very liquid morality, which is very hard to gauge and understand. What do you think about this? So I think there's some truth to what you're saying. So I would view it this way. I think the mixed economy has created losers in our world. And people who are either losing or who are told that they are losers. People, economists like... I hate to call them economists because they don't really deserve the title, but people like Piketty and Paul Krugman and Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winners, spend much of their career convincing people that they're losers, that they have lost. And then they convince people that they've loses because of capitalism. So most of their arguments are false to begin with, but there's a big chunk of the American population, and particularly the working class and the lower middle class in America, that are convinced they're losers. They convince the center of living is not improved in 40 years. And I think that's complete BS. But there are economists with Nobel Prizes who are telling them this. And since they feel there's existential angst and they have to change jobs then maybe they have to move because the jobs that they used to have or their grandparents had are not exactly the jobs that they have today. They feel this angst and instead of being taught here's how to cope with it, here's how to deal with it, here are the jobs. Take responsibility for yourself, move around. We have told them don't take responsibility for yourself. The state will provide. The state will take care of you. And it doesn't. And then that is blamed on capitalism on China or on Mexico. Immigrants have taken your job or Chinese have taken your job. All BS, right? But they're told that. And they're told that is because of globalism and capitalism and all these. Yeah, and now those same people telling them that are telling them we need more statism and the more statism the more state intervention what happens to these people? They lose more. They don't gain. Yes, they might gain welfare but what does welfare actually do to you? I guess we've got a session on welfare later on. Welfare actually makes you feel more like a loser. You're depending on the state. You can't find a job. You can't take care of yourself. You can't put food on the table for your family without a check from the government. So you feel even more like a loser. So we make people feel more and more and more like losers because of the state. We blame it all on capitalism on immigrants and on globalization. And it's not surprising that it's easy at that point, right? To blame it on the Jews for certain people at the top if it's politically advantageous to blame it on the Jews to blame it on the Chinese to blame it on others fill in the blank. So that alienation that you're talking about that the peasants might have felt is now felt by certain parts of the middle class but it's felt because of what the state has promised them and it's felt because of what these intellectuals are telling them rather than anything real really happening. And if you're interested in the whole the economics of it my book equal is unfair is covers all of that and why the whole inequality debate is a bogus debate the whole explanation that people provide for why there's certain stagnation in certain places is bogus. It's wrong that there's stagnation but it's even more wrong to blame it on capitalism. It's the fault of state intervention. It's the fault of statism to the extent that it even exists. Just something that keeps I don't know but I can hear I think it's going well. Anyway I'll try and be loud enough if that helps. I've been a what seemed like a post-war consensus in Europe where socialism was just accepted. There was no debate about capitalism versus socialism. It just seemed to be a generic you know we work so that we can put food on the table for the families but it's so that we can generate a welfare society that provides free healthcare and everything else. It was never discussed that it's not necessarily free your taxes pay for it and all that went with it. Until 1989 when for the first time another system a competing system socialism capitalism the communist blocks were looked at from the inside and found to be completely barren completely empty and there was a winner for the first time in history it wasn't yours is good mine is good you can't prove it I can't prove it let's just agree to differ it was there is an absolute winner yours sucks I'm sorry to say it but that was it and it happened around the time of the push of the Reagan Thatcher years. But while they represented a philosophy it wasn't ingrained it wasn't taught like hey folks we have a winner and the winner is capitalism because of this now let's all remember that but people acted as though that winner was the new status quo in the entrepreneurialism took off everybody became working for themselves it was known as the greedy time people working for their own self injustice but economies flourished and economies which were more stagnant seemed to sort of rejuvenate again and that happened a lot it seems at the moment that once again we've gone back into that that malaise of socialism isn't necessarily challenged it's as good as it's a worthy philosophy we shouldn't necessarily backball it because who's to say it's no better than or no worse than capitalism what I'm seeing at the moment in America which it seems to be leading the way in a way once again is that with the onset of the Trump for whatever vices and faults on everything else that he may possess he's taken it back to some of those fundamentals again and okay he's got strange views about trade embargoes and tariffs which bizarrely may or may not worth and may turn up the you know the whole view of tariffs may turn on its head compared to what happened in the 1920s but yeah we'll see but it seems as though he's actually bringing back that debate of no it's socialism versus capitalism and this is why one is different from the other and it's a debate I haven't heard for many a many a year so do you see that as for the first time people are actually talking in terms of capitalism and socialism which haven't been uttered in normal public discourse for many a year I mean if that is true that people are talking if the Trump has evoked this discussion of capitalism versus socialism then that is very very scary because Trump is not a capitalist Trump is a statist he is a socialist in his bones there's no there's not a capitalist bone in his body and the tariffs is just one manifestation it's not just the tariff you should actually read what he writes about trade he thinks trade is a zero sum game he thinks trade you lose when you trade with somebody so I am you know I'm very I think Trump is a disaster primarily because he's associated with capitalism this is the problem I think when the Berlin Wall fell it wasn't the victory of capitalism that's not the perception if you read Fukuyama right the end of history he didn't say capitalism won socialism won I mean he might have used those words but that's what he didn't mean what he meant was communism socialism have lost the mixed economy has won this mixture of socially libel you know a little bit of socialism a little bit of freedom you know this mixture that's won nobody actually defended capitalism and of course the critique of socialism goes back to Hayek and Thatcher I mean you voted for relatively I mean only relatively unfortunately capitalist government under Thatcher well before the Berlin Wall fell downs I think that narrative really but again Thatcher and Reagan were very good at attacking socialism they weren't very good at defending capitalism and I don't think anybody's very good at defending capitalism I don't even think Hayek is that good at defending capitalism not morally not philosophically Hayek's a brilliant economist that he can show you how it works economically and it does it works economically nobody cares so there's nobody out there actually defending what capitalism is capitalism is the system of private property where the state doesn't own any where it's all private where we're really free where the state doesn't regulate where there's no redistribution of wealth there's no NHS there's no welfare state those are all features of statism of this mixture and when Fukuyama says we won he's not talking about capitalism God forbid he's not a capitalist Fukuyama he's a mixed economist he's like a centrist he's the middle of the road no we need social we need the welfare state we need socialized healthcare and we need you know we need to those suckers those capitalist suckers to go out and work hard and make money so we can tax it away from it right because that's how we fund all our beautiful social problems and this is the problem that that that morally we believe that the whole purpose of letting those capitalists run around and create stuff is to fund all the really good stuff what's the good stuff the good stuff is the social program that's the moral stuff that's what the state should be there to do and as long as we believe that as long as we don't believe that the capitalist on end in a sense and in themselves that making money that producing the creating the building and that freedom is an end in itself we can defend capitalism it's just again you know we we tolerate capitalism and most pro-market political parties tolerate capitalism there's almost nobody in politics who's an advocate for capitalism it's not capitalism when Donald Trump calls up a CEO of General Motors that says don't close that plant I don't accept that you're going to close this particular plant and fire your employees that's not capitalism capitalism is what where the president doesn't intervene in the economy he leaves it alone and sometimes sometimes you have to close plants sometimes you have to move them to Mexico sometimes you have to fire people and that's the way growth happens that's the way you know Schumteth had a you know he describes it as creative destruction sometimes I don't like the term destruction I don't think it's particularly useful but yes sometimes things have to change in dramatic ways in order to progress but Donald Trump wouldn't want them to change you know because these people vote for me they shouldn't lose their job it's not capitalism he's a statist interventionist central planner like all the rest I mean what's he what's he saying now oh we need to be like Europe you guys have negative interest rates isn't that so cool why doesn't the federal reserve in the United States give us negative interest rates because that's such a cool thing yeah if you're I don't know you guys enjoying your negative interest rates I guess UK is not as bad as I mean it's a disaster negative interest rates are like a rejection of economics it's a rejection of what money means of the nature of financial markets of finance I have to you know if you want to borrow money from you I'm going to pay you it's the opposite of opposite of usury I mean it's nuts it's insanity and the fact that Europe has negative interest rates is a huge warning sign it's like flashing red something is deeply wrong in your economies in your societies that allows that means that you have negative interest rates not something to be embraced and Donald Trump is embracing negative interest rates as if it's some wonderful thing yeah if if if maybe if you're in a stock market maybe in your real estate in the very short run it's a good thing but in the long run it is a disaster and you will pay heavily in Europe or they will pay I don't know if you guys still consider yourself part of Europe well any day now right I've been hearing this for the last couple of years it's a disaster and you will pay deally deally-deally for negative interest rates but Donald Trump embraces it so he's not a capitalist and to the extent that we think of it as a capitalist that scares me because all the damage he's going to do we're going to associate with capitalism thank you everybody