 All right, it is time and in Counter to many countries that I speak at in Denmark. You're supposed to start on time So welcome everybody. My name is Yaron Brooke, and I'm the chairman of the Einrand Institute I thank you all for coming for this discussion today about the relevance of Einrand in in today's world I'm excited about the panel. We've got we've got some some exciting speakers here, and I think this is a seems like a hot topic in Denmark right now, so So I'm looking forward to your participation the Einrand Institute for those of you who don't know is a non-profit a US non-profit that is dedicated to Spending Einrand's ideas particularly among young people really all over the world. We have a an Einrand Institute Europe, which is focused on European events. I'm Currently on a seven-country 11-talk tour of Europe where I'm speaking to a lot of young people And it's it's quite exciting Einrand is More relevant than ever, you know for young people who are Attending our universities these days, and we'll talk about that There is literature outside about the Einrand Institute But also some essays by Einrand herself So if you want to get a firsthand view of Einrand's views rather than what we say she said You can pick up some brochures outside some pamphlets of her essays Take as many as you want the you know if they're not taken here Somebody's gonna have to ship them somewhere. So I'll give them out to friends do something with them and There are seats up here in the front and there's if you want and their seats on the sides so again, thank you all for coming for coming tonight and Looking forward to a lot of a lot of good exchange of ideas and with that I'm gonna pass on the officiating to Christoph Well, we need it for the taping I think so where's your thing you need to flip the switch Many Danes by now should know where the name in Rand. She's the mastermind behind the great embezzlement Took place here in Europe whereby billions of euro disappeared from the states or other the taxpayers into a number of crooks pockets and We know this because the national Danish Public television has told us so in Rand was the person the philosopher the ideologist behind great swindle And of course it was documented on Danish national television by a little video footage where she said I'm in favor of private roads private post offices and private schools So that's it. You now know that she's the mastermind Because in Denmark we now only have private post offices. We have a lot of private schools I've always had them and a number of private However, even though she is a crook everybody knows it will give her at least the possibility of being defended by some brave people We'll have three panelists tonight. We'll have yarn broke from the England Institute I know I'm Alyssa Rosenbaum. Yes, Alyssa Rosenbaum And we'll have Lassaya Christensen who many of you know as the former CEO of Saxo Bank And we'll have Ryan Smith writer philosopher once in charge of the publication program here in Cyprus and I will try and be the benevolent dictator Each of the speakers will have approximately 12 to 15 minutes. I'll interrupt them by waving gently and After their little briefs on in Rand Where Ryan will probably be the more critical one We'll have an internal discussion between the panelists and I'll open for questions afterwards And of course questions are questions just like a is a etc. So So I'll be tough on you if you start rambling on Your own ideas, please ask questions when you come down to that. So with these words welcome. Thank you Thank you. Thank you all for coming again so I Thought I talked today about why I ran is still relevant why I ran is in the news Why I ran gets blamed for everything wrong that seems to happen after all It's not just crooks that That she has inspired But if you remember after the financial crisis at least in the US She was to blame for the financial crisis. It was her ideas that were behind everything that happened in 2008 and For a long time The press and American intellectuals have used iron rand as a scapegoat for almost every problem that exists If you follow the former economist Paul Krugman, then you know that he he you know every three months or so Blames iron rand for something going on in the world out there. So she is a regular You know I Person that he attacks and and that he uses to frame to frame the world in which we live So why is she so so relevant and why is she attacked to extent that she is I? Think she'll always be relevant. She'll always be relevant because she has presented the world with an interesting provocative radical different and I believe true philosophy With a set of ideas the challenge almost everything we have been taught For the last 2000 years She upends Much of the belief system that we have grown up with all of us as individuals have grown up with She tells us that what our mothers taught us what our preachers preached us what our philosophers have taught us is wrong is wrong and That's challenging and it's provocative and at the very least it causes people to think and re-evaluate Challenges they beliefs And not only should she do all this but she did it in the form of novels You are familiar probably with atlas shrugged and the fountain head and As a consequence of that many many many more people exposed to her ideas exposed their philosophy Then would be if they were studying philosophy at a university Or would be if they were just reading non-fiction philosophical books from the bookstore Millions and millions and millions of people have read ayn Rand in almost every language on the planet her books And I'll translate it into almost every language Certainly every major language. It was a milestone where we finally a few years ago got atlas shrugged in French And if you know that if you can get a book in French That's it. You've conquered the world basically Chinese was before French Vietnamese was before French when you got French. We knew we had every language iron-rand also is the first thinker really the only thinker Who has defended business who has defended the profit motive has Defended the individuals right to keep what he earns What he produces what he makes and Therefore she is an easy foil right a few businessmen Do something bad do something criminal something that I think everybody recognizes criminal But I'm in defense businessmen So it's easy to blame her for what they do But think about it. I mean think about whether it's in fiction in movies suddenly in philosophy Who is there? Who defends business who defends the creator who defends production who defends morally defense the profit motive and who views businessmen as heroic heroic and I think that's one of her Appeals particularly in the business community is if you read out the shrugged and you're you're in business Suddenly there's an image there of an ideal business person a successful one somebody who is no no guilt associated with making money and being successful and and and challenging the world and She presents us with a moral code that is consistent with the defense of business and profit a moral code focused Again, maybe not for the first time in history, but uniquely on Your own Value as an individual I'm all code that says again counter to our mothers or preachers our philosophy teachers that the purpose of your life Is not to sacrifice and suffer the purpose of your life is not to live for other people The purpose of your life is not to be a slave to other people's happiness The purpose of your life the moral purpose of your life the ethical purpose of your life Is your own happiness your own happiness and She provides principles By which if one lives by these principles that happiness is attained that success at living that success at being a human being is attained and that again is Rare Almost non-existent nobody provides those kind of ideas Ryan will talk about I think later about the connection of that to Aristotle But really they are few the exception of Aristotle and Rand that have focused on what does it take for you as an individual? Human being what are them all principles the values and the virtues as you as a individual human being to be successful? We hold this dichotomy in our minds We are taught that to be virtuous to be good to be just Means to sacrifice and and to suffer and to think about other people constantly, right? Yeah, I always ask people, you know, you got museums here in Copenhagen. You've probably been to museums, right? You've seen paintings of saints saints moral heroes. That's what saints are right moral heroes Have I seen one of smiling? Saints don't smile because that defeats the purpose the whole point of being a saint is the suffering you're endured in Attaining your moral goal supposedly. It's about sacrifice real sacrifice painful sacrifice Rand rejects all that why why is the purpose of life to live for other people? Why is the purpose of life to sacrifice? Why is the purpose of life to suffer? Why is the purpose of life? To place the well-being of other people ahead of your own I care more by myself than I do about you guys Doesn't mean I don't care about you, but it just means I care about myself more than I care about you And I think all of you should care about you more than you care about me It's you You only have one life Live it So Rand is about the individual living his life living his life to the fullest as a human being Which means as a conceptual being which means as a rational being using your reason to live life Fully and make the most of your life Produce create think innovate and therefore when you see when we when Rand's heroes Architects who create in the realm of art or construction and create beautiful things functional things and are successful Who heroes of business leaders? Who change the world? Make the world a better place for everybody By following their vision by making their own life better by making a profit profit For and is a sign of virtue It's a sign of creating It's a sign that you reshape the world in some way created a value that other people Think is good. Otherwise, they wouldn't buy They wouldn't buy so for who? Businessmen the value creating businessmen are the heroes Now again the association with crooks You know for and the number one virtue the number one value and the number of virtue the value is reason the virtue is rationality And we can get into this and you can ask me questions about this But it defeats the purpose of rationality defeats the purpose of reason to lie steal and cheat Like stealing and cheating are not in your self-interest They undercut your ability to live fully as a human being they undercut your ability to really make it in life When you steal money You're undercutting your ability to attain self-esteem You you are Rejecting the idea in your own mind that you are capable of producing for yourself and Making your life meaningful You're now depending on other people to produce and then you are using muscle, which is all stealing is it's muscle rather than reason to take from them and Most crooks most crooks are pretty pathetic people. I Know Europeans are kind of cynical, but See you think crooks have a good time. I hate movies You know like movies with good guys and bad guys and the bad guys always have fun Right and the good guys always good guys always divorced and miserable and sad because they have to fight for the good, right? And that's that's horrible. It's a bad guys. We're having fun constantly Well, that's not true. If you know Lars, he's a good guy. Any ass fun. So It drives me nuts when I see that in the movies because it's exactly the other way around But again, it comes from that idea in morality that virtue is suffering that Virtuous sacrifice that good guys don't have fun that good guys don't get the girl but That all morality is built around a false premise a false idea and Results in a very very bad Approach that our culture and we all have towards the most successful individuals in our culture So why is rain relevant because Because her ideas are Interesting because her ideas are true because ideas challenge us to rethink our most fundamental premises and they challenge the people who disagree with her and Because they challenge it did people who disagree with her They have to be knocked out and she has to be knocked out and that's what they do time and time and time again So we're here to try to set the record straight in terms of who I am and is and what her ideas really Represent so thank you Good to be here Questions I'm underlying a rationale in the philosophy speak to those guys But I would like to speak a little bit about it from a practical perspective because that's how I have I have predominantly found found iron rants philosophy very useful Because what is interesting about iron rand is that you can actually use her thinking for very practical purposes in this world and and I have seen with my own eyes Both how her ideas can improve organizations and how they can give you know more More clarity also in in an individual's lives about how the world really How the world really works and and and what things are worth pursuing and what things are less worth pursuing of course you got to do your own You got to do your own mistakes and you got to find your own solutions in in this world And I had a quite a clear idea about what was what I thought was right and what I thought was wrong Or even before getting acquainted with with iron rand's works But but having read an awful lot of philosophical and political and business books Prior to that I must say that that Atlas rock is a single most valuable book. I have I have ever read in terms of understanding Why the world is is the way it is and how it's put together So if anybody in here hasn't read Atlas rock do yourself the favor to do that and and maybe that can lead to also reach some of her other excellent books but But it's really a quite specific Ideas that I ran come up with and and we have deployed them quite extensively in Saxo bank over the years and I've seen them seen them work our joint very good friend John Allison Who who ran one of the US largest banks BB&T bank for for three decades? I think something like that and brought it up from a small local bank to being probably in the top 12 or 10 even in in the US I was actually quite delighted to find out years later that he had done pretty much the same thing and deployed the ideas of iron rain Into into BB&T bank also and had the same experiences I had that it actually was very useful for the organization and for the employees to to have a clear set of values to to relate to When you do a business and I often speak to you know want to be entrepreneurs or startups or Even accomplished business people and I would say for me one of the most important things in a business is really the value set and the Principles that you drive that business with of course. There's a lot of there's a lot of technical detail There's a lot of Competencies you need to have there's lots of Various people you need to build a successful business. You got to get some good ideas along the way and build some great products but at the end of the day Those come and go the people come and go the products come and go the services improve over time But what should should hopefully be consistent in a business is a value set that that drives the understanding and The direction of the business and then I work with my partner Kim for me Also prior to to having having discovered iron rain on various ways to define the values in Saxo Bank and I do believe that that most successful businesses have a pretty decent set of values because I don't think really they could be successful if they didn't But I also found that if you as a leader of an organization as a CEO or the owner or whatever Put you in a position of leadership if you're not very specific about how you want that business to function if you're not very specific about the value set that you want to to kind of Go through this organization at all levels if you don't give that guidance You can be sure that some values will build by themselves You know people will grab a little here that grab a little there some of it might be good some of it not so good Not a very coordinated approach not a very integrated approach So I would certainly recommend very much if you're in a position of leadership to think very closely about the values You that you set as a guideline for for your for your colleagues and employees Not to always knock them on a head with a set of values But to give them some guidance as to how do we want to interact the between ourselves? How do we want to build this business? How do we want to treat our clients? How do we how do we want to how do we want to drive our innovation process etc etc and If you're not very explicit about that then then you will get a set of values that that may not be explicit But they'll be there and they may not be the values that you want So I think that's very important You can probably choose other similar values and still still get a good result But but both for Kim and me it was quite an eye-opener when when we actually Sat down and thought closely about the the seven virtues that that I and Rand Reached as a conclusion after many years of thinking were the key driver for a good human life And we actually said these values also work for organizations and in a way Organizations are just groups of people that have chosen Hopefully freely to cooperate and freely to build something together And hence it's quite logical that what works for those individuals will also work for the organization. So those seven Virtues that we also implemented quite specifically and explained to people in taxa bank over many years and Iran has been there also on frequent occasions speaking to our management groups and to colleagues in general Those are are very specific And I'm pretty sure that you can't run a very successful business if you're consistently Negating one or more of these virtues. So what are they? As Iran said that the primary one is rationality So it was really in business terms means you have to look at the world the way it is you have to if your Competitor comes out with a better product the way to address that is not by trying to avoid it or lie to your clients and Tell them that's not really a great product ours is far better because ultimately Ultimately the client will work it out and and you will lose to the better competitor So the rational approach to that is sit down analyze it What is it that that those guys have built now that is actually better than ours? How do we address that? How do we improve our own office? So so we are back in the driving seat always rationally assess what's going on in the world around you and and react to it by an organized Rational approach to to simply meet those challenges instead of the alternative which you see far off and then you think wait You say well, let's try to avoid it as long as possible. Let's try not to address it Let's try to to tell our clients that we are actually the best even though we know full Well that there's somebody out there with a better product This will eventually kill you if you don't address if you don't address somebody that's actually better than yourself and then from that derives a series of our virtues that that I think are very Useful in business and very specific, you know, there's the virtue of integrity meaning if you promise something you deliver it if you Manage that you have an expectation with your clients to make sure that you meet that expectation that you manage it correctly We should be what you're going to be delivering later on in in life So, you know the connection between what you say and what you do integrity independence You should think individually you should you should spend the time to sit and analyze could I improve this process? Could I do I just have to do it like somebody always did it? Or can I actually can I think of a good way to improve a given thing in in my business or in my workflow or whatever? Think about the stuff that you're doing far too many people actually go in do something that they know Is not really a very good way to do it, but they've been told to do it So why not just do it and not think more about that and and that independent thinking is very important Another virtue is justice And to me that means that you you recognize people for what they are if they do well You reward them and if they don't do well, you certainly don't reward them You may give them a few warnings and you might give them some some some additional chances But you have to be sure that you make a difference between the people that do well and the people that don't do so well because if you Don't have that justice In your organization everybody will notice very quickly that it doesn't actually make any different whether I do my job Well, I'm not so well. I afraid that that is probably what is One of the reasons that many of our public services are I'm not functioning very well because there's very little recognition Of actually going the extra mile and and the way you get paid is according to how many years you've been hired Not whether you did a great job or not and even as you see frequently If you sort of have a bonus opportunity in the public sector, it seems that you you get the bonus Well, you do well or not, right? I mean this guy that just lost. I don't know how many billions of our tax money actually got a phone So so justice is very important and that's also about about telling people that you think they do well and Recognizing in front of their peers And other value is Honesty and that is obviously in the traditional sense, but particularly in the sense of intellectual honesty, you know If you're if you're sitting and developing Ideas with a group of your colleagues and and you have a really great idea you think and then you realize shit She's got a better idea than me over there, you know, but then she's gonna get the promotion Let me let me just blindly push my own idea. Although I know Honestly, I do know that that the other person's ideas better And that intellectual honesty that you pursue what is what is the best thing to do? What is the most rational thing to do that degree of honesty is very important in an organization? Productiveness is a virtue at the end of the day It's very much fun to sit and discuss the projects and make power points and have meetings and Analyze the situation but at the end of the day there has to be a productive outcome There has to be a dollar Somewhere at the end of the process because otherwise we can't pay people salaries We can't pay our rents. We cannot we cannot progress our organization again Certainly in a private loan business, that's a fact of life If you don't at the end of the day deliver a dollar somewhere everybody's gonna be in a not so great place And finally if you do all of that most of the time Then you can deserve to to be proud of that that's kind of more resolved of that But but I think it's very important that you celebrate your successes in businesses So we in Texas Bank if there's one thing we're pretty good at is it's partying if we feel that we have a reason to party And and I've always said to people if your team has done a great delivery For God's sake take them out Friday night and and have fun and have a good dinner and get drunk and celebrate as long as you're back Monday morning looking forward and and Creating the next big project, right? And you must never do it if you actually have been miserable or you actually have failed at what you did and just have a party because It's Friday because that is a terrible signal again If you are celebrating non-performance because then you you have to distinguish between these things So that's kind of a practical way that I saw this working I saw that people actually like that in general people people people like that their company has values They talk about it still even people that have left us and gone elsewhere because it's a big world out there Many people I'm have says come back and say well I really enjoyed that we had all that all those values and all those those sort of more Philosophical points to work back in sex of bank And I think that that I've seen that actually many people take it too hard and and trying to deploy that also in there in Their own private lives and and having improved from that However, you had people that quit sex of bank because of that because they said now I want to be the big entrepreneur the big leader and that's fine because if that inspires people to go out and build a great business You know, I'm very happy to have just played some kind of role in in leading to that to that ambition and to that That decision so so for me Apart from being very interested in the philosophy of course for me that the really interesting thing is how can you deploy this practically? How can you improve your own life? How can you improve your business life? How can we how can we teach people to run better businesses by deploying some of some of the of iron rand thinking? So with that, I'll hand it back to the philosophers Thank you I think Ryan is Going to speak without headsets Free only not in Randy on in the panel. I am a classical liberal though So I guess I hope a friendly discussion, but we'll see Maybe I will be blamed just like and rain is blamed taxation scandal if any of you ever looked into the philosophy of and rain, I'm sure you also encountered one of the criticisms of her philosophy which are voiced from the standpoint of modern modern philosophy Which will typically say something like It is not possible to derive objective values There's something such as the is or divide and Of course rain believed that she was able to derive objective values. So Where's the technician? Assume that the computer I used to have this job and I also used to be very angry with the technicians so For example And one at one hand you could say something like human beings evolved as meat eating animals That is a fact Can you infer from that fact that it is a value that we should be eating animals? Most modern philosophers would say no there's a divide between those two things. That's a logical error But on the other hand nor can you derive from the fact that animals have capacity for pain emotion and so on that it Is not right to eat animals again. They would say there's a divide and you cannot reach this divide Can't get a value from a fact and as I just said of course rain believed that she could get a value from a fact She believed that you had derived an ethical value that was objective. So In this way modern philosophy is kind of in a quackmire it is unable to prove the fundamental value that are operative in ethical analysis So this is actual modern philosophy and you get more and more painstaking and exacting Definitions and arguments teasing out of implications, but you can't actually prove the foundations It's like if you've read the fountain head by Henry So you could say modern philosophy is kind of like one of one of these magnificent skyscrapers But with the exception that no one has figured out how to actually lay a foundation for these skyscrapers so you And for this reason it has also been said that modern philosophy is in many ways the most intelligent way to be unintelligent Which is something that rain would no doubt have agreed with don't you think yes? Yeah So as rain herself once said these This this thing that set us on the path to modern philosophy and during the enlightenment. It is actually treason She she was if you if you look at her notes to reason of things like canton humus is it's obvious that she was enraged by By there that's driving to separate these facts and values to limit the sphere of reason it was Fundamentally opposed to what she thought was should be the purpose of philosophy and by extension should be the purpose of man, so of course you could say What her actual words were that they're striving to prove that man's mind and reason is impotent and Of course, they wouldn't say that they would say that they're trying to take the consequence of the is or divide They're trying to take the the the logical consequence of a problem that they cannot solve And so they don't agree with rain that she solved it But then they don't claim to be able to solve it themselves either Hmm So these are the guys that she'd like and thought they were treasonous and this is the problem We have they say it's insurmountable getting from a fact to a value and of course and we thought she fixed that so As I said, I'm not going to be focusing on these modern criticisms that we see because they've been voiced a million times before and In my opinion a lot of them have barely read and rain They're like rehashing the same things that other people have said so what I'd like to do instead is to explore the reason why and rain thought she could bridge this gap between facts and values and In my experience at least that is something that is seldomly explored in with regards to and rain and the reason Philosophical method by which she thought she had bridged this gap was through Aristotle and Well rain didn't have many positive things to say about other philosophers She always was very public about the fact that she had adept to For example at one point she said If there is a philosophical atlas who carries the whole of Western civilization on his shoulders It is Aristotle whatever intellectual progress men have achieved rests on his achievements He may be regarded as the cultural barometer of Western history Where wherever his influence dominated the scene it paved the way for one of history's brilliant eras whenever it fell so did mankind and In a very famous interview that I'm sure many of you have seen Mike Wallace asks her where where what does your kid philosophy come from? Out of my own mind with the so in acknowledgement of adept to Aristotle the only philosopher who ever influenced Me I devised the rest of my philosophy myself Now on the proper face of it We could presume that rain was therefore inspired by Aristotle's ethics, but that is not the case She actually doesn't like his ethics What she likes instead is Aristotle has a lot of scientific observations primarily about biology Where he looks at diverse biological phenomena And says that we should explain biological phenomena with basis and reference to reality And we should explain biological phenomena with regards to the aim purpose or function that these phenomena have He calls this the T loss or you could also call it a goal so But on the other hand Aristotle didn't think that it was possible to use this kind of method to derive ethical values But that is a what reigned actually for what you could do so Aristotle would call the dealers a purpose set in advance in nature Which determines physical phenomena, and I'll come get to an example now So that would be something like you look at a duck and you say, okay, this duck has webbed feet Why does it have webbed? Why what is the T loss of these webbed feet? It allows it to swim faster It allows it to traverse water to escape maritime premature perturals and so on so you could say the aim and Purpose of these web feet. This is probably conducive to the duck's existence to have this web feed. That's how we explain it That's why we see it's it's good for a duck to have web feed It's better to have web feed than it if it had no web feed So it's a better duck in a way and this method is especially evident in this quote from in rain Which he says man's essential characteristic is his rational faculty man's mind is his basic means of survival his only means of gaining knowledge so she would say something like just like a duck has web feed or an all-needs night vision if it is to catch rodents as a nocturnal hunter then man has reason as his primary faculty and This is what defines his T loss And if we can accept that then we can actually derive some objective ethical values about man so and rain would hold that it is a rationality that has allowed us to go from caveman was I animals and to civilization She would say something like Human flourishing is connected to what goes on in modern civilization if we are removed more and more from the status of mere brutes We admit art we we are we create affluence we invent technologies that allow us to live longer with better lives and so on And She would appeal to the self-evident fact that life is better today than it was in the Stone Age and it's hard to disagree with that But then she would also say that reason is of course the main wellspring of ethical values But it's also sort of a tool or a precondition that in order to realize reason You must apply it as Lars mentioned. So you get to productive enterprise productive purpose, which is What allows us to create civilization and technology? So you could say productive enterprises a subsidiary ethical value if reason or rationality would be the wellspring So as brain herself would say The defining characteristic is reason and the T loss is the productive enterprise allowing man to invent civilization and technology Which brings in closer to that's not a direct quote, but the previous quote So you could here's another one in order to sustain its life every living species has to follow a certain course of action required by its nature The action required to sustain humans life is primarily intellectual Everything man needs has to be discovered by his mind and produced by his effort Production is the application of reason to the problem of survival. So you can see the depth to the Naturally scientific and biological method of Aristotle is especially evident in her method as well You must ground everything in reality You must try to figure out the rational reason why things work as they do and then try to optimize your own lot According to what you found out So through this some would say peculiar method and rain declares that she has in fact discovered Objective ethical values something which the majority of modern philosophers would deny We'll skip a bit so I Would like to use the remainder of this presentation to explore whether this Method is in fact valid and I would do that By contrasting and rain to another philosopher who works in this Aristotelian tradition And so this is Alistair Maggantire. You might know him and what he says is Now what I would say is that he is not part of the philosophical mainstream either he does not represent The the common four among modern philosophers because he like rain also believes that you can if not rich then at least Narrow the divide between facts and values by using this Aristotelian method So if we compare the two we might be able to find out a finger too So His argument is basically that Somewhat different from rainstow because rain goes purely through what she believes to be rationality and logic Then Maggantire says now another way we could do this is we could nest the moral weight of ethical values within traditions so for example Prior to the scientific revolutions a lot of ethical values and propositions they were carrying the weight of untold previous generations cultural stigma and taboo and That would in itself have an effect of making ethical values seem objective to people But then what happened is that we have the scientific revolutions of the Renaissance and and the Enlightenment and then We have philosophers Coming out of those who are so inspired by the breakthroughs in natural science that they say okay We're going to do ethics just like natural science But in Maggantire's Opinion that is not possible because then you make the ethical questions Hologurgical fully individualized and then all sorts of problems start to arrive Arise and that is for example the problem here Which we've seen is of central importance to to gap for anyone who wants to postulate in objective ethics so If we take a question like why shouldn't I steal Maggantire's point would be like Formerly before the scientific revolutions before your ethics were individualized you get a collectivist answer you would say No one here would want you to steal none of your forebears would like you to steal We're part of our culture where we have certain taboos about stealing so Don't do it and it would carry a certain weight and then after the revolution It's more or less up to the individual to say okay. We found out there's no actually no Objective ethical values and you as the individual you are the arbiter of what is Moral or sensible to you you might steal but then you must say that's what I want to do with my life Who cares so his point is that? Individualizing ethics like this paved the way for the failure of modern philosophy to actually solve any ethical problems And of course rain would agree with Maggantire that modern philosophy could can't solve any problems or Hardly any problems, but she would probably have despised the collectivist elements and and the historical and traditional elements of his thinking However, they would both agree that it's Very important to have teal us to use this Aristotelian method if we are to develop objective ethical values however and That is where things get interesting because Rain looks at man's tealers and she arrives at the values that we've basically seen so we have reason But it we must apply reason to productive enterprise and this creates civilizations and technology Which in turn creates human flourishing which allows man to be more of more of what he ideally could be instead of just a caveman And we never liked the caveman. She didn't like people who just looted and plundered such as the tiller and So we get the proposition that alright civilization and technology are what Promote human flourishing and they're they're typically brought about by capitalism and liberalism therefore Capitalism and liberalism are the most ethical policies by rational extension of what we have at the root of our ethics And I said as I said Maggantire uses the same method, but he arrives at some very different conclusions so for example, he says liberalism and capitalism there are these impersonal low like structures that we just Smear on to the whole of society will say you have your rights and I have my rights and I shouldn't interfere with what you should actually do I just shouldn't violate your rights and You can earn money, but that's not my none of my business really I could go in my own money and so on so we become individualized and atomized through this Kind of a liberalism and capitalism and therefore He would say that this is not the most ethical of policies because in his opinion We should go back. We should ground ethics in a tradition as we mentioned before in the culture in the community and so on so actually liberalism and capitalism are part of part of the problem not part of the solution and They actually prevent man from realizing his tealows exactly the opposite of what a rain said Yes, so as we've seen they use a similar method none of them are in the philosophical mainstream as such But they arrive at very different conclusions. So we've had rain now. We have magnetizes Okay, we deliberate with our fellow human beings. We develop communal standards joint values and goals Which cultivates our ethical character which promotes human flourishing and I can't even read the slide because we have moved the state Therefore the the most ethical politics and not liberalism and capitalism, but but a participatory government with no limited government with no individual rights as such and So we end up in this present solution. We have a situation. We have the mainstream moral philosophers They can't prove that their values are objectively correct, but they can make very rigorous almost math like Proofs that their arguments would be correct if their values were correct, which they cannot prove and Then we have the new as to Aristotelian tradition, which both rain and Magentire could be said to work in and they claim either to Solve the question as rented or to be able to narrow the is or divide considerably as Magentire did but This is why I mentioned how Magentire using the same method arrives at diametrically Opposed conclusion to rain It is that if the weakness of foreign philosophy is that it cannot bridge or narrow to divide the weakness of the Aristotelian method seems to be that It is in practice open to having a lot of personal intuitions from the person working in that tradition smuggled into the analysis So is it really objective the valid we can discuss that and so one final point. I would like to voice here is that Using Magentire as a comparison as such would allow us to end with an observation which Many of you have probably suspected, but it's hard to corroborate and that is that if you read the criticisms of in rain Even from academics professors and so on. It's usually the same points that are being rehashed and they typically Attack her on the basis of being a poor philosopher But then if you compare with Magentire, he uses exactly the same method He just arrives at different conclusions and he is an academic insider himself whereas rain was an academic outsider So this comparison might be able to tell us something about the critique That is it really the arguments that people critique criticize when they attack and rain or is it perhaps? the relative level of erudition relatives to someone who was a professor or The the declaratory or sometimes slightly oracular way in which she watched the points or perhaps finally the very radical free-market conclusions that she reached So Thank you, everybody We'll have a short discussion within the group. I might interfere at some point as well but I mean, I would just say that I think That I think I ran discussion of the is odd gap. How do you how do you derive an art right from reality from what is? Richer than what Ryan presented now. He's limited in time. So so that's understandable And and but worth really pondering and worth really thinking about so I encourage you to read a Short essay that you wrote. Well, it's not so sure but an essay she wrote called the Objectivist Ethics Where she explains the the foundation for her? Bridging this problem. How do we know what's right to do? using reason based on the facts of reality and You know, I think central to that question Which Ryan did not bring up but central to that question is the question of survival. That is is the question of How do we survive as human beings and the fact that the choice we all face Really to some extent in every decision we make but certainly in the important decisions We can make them all decisions we make is a choice between life and death and that that is living beings We can die Without death morality means little. It's that possibility of really really bad outcomes That makes that choice really really really important and it's facing that choice facing that alternative of life versus death and then the question becomes well How does one achieve life? What is it that leads to death as a human being? What is it that leads to life is I think the crucial in the matter ethics the crucial question that I read asks and You know, I think the answer she comes to is is is one that's hard to refute and that is that you know See me wear free will which I think we all do It's the extent to which we think I mean Laws talked about the fact that to be successful in business one has to think one has to use reason one has to Look at reality and accept the facts of reality and integrate those facts and but use the mechanism that we have Ability to think rationally to succeed in whatever we do in life in business in in relationships And in in how we conduct ourselves to be successful You have to think and to survive on your end argues I think rightly that you have to think and therefore rationality or reason becomes that primary value because of that alternative of life and death and that only reason can provide life in In her story, I just say that the skyscraper With the foundation I don't I don't think of modern philosophy as a frankly right building I think a modern philosophy is a gaudy building if you ever seen gaudy from from Barcelona ugly Distorted non-functional That's modern philosophy whereas Frank Lloyd Wright is too beautiful to be associated with modern philosophy But let me ask you a question then I believe that people have different preferences I We all have different preferences no question about that Some preferences are good for you and some preferences are bad Some people have a preference for flying But jumping off of the building and flapping their wings will lead them to crash and die So the fact that you have a preference does not mean that it's going to lead to success We have a nature. We're a particular biological being and our minds have a particular nature of Physicality so you can have a preference for cyanide. It'll still kill you right so your preferences do not necessarily Automatically guide you towards success and not necessarily guide you towards towards happiness. I Believe ran believed and I think this is true based on empirical evidence That there are certain actions that human take like lying stealing cheating that lead to failure Failure at living failure at happiness, you know my favorite example, but you get dozens of these is Bernie Madoff I don't know if you remember Bernie Madoff, but he might have stole 60 billion dollars. You'd think he'd be happy He had 60 billion dollars But it turns out he's in jail today You can ask him and he'll tell you that he's happier in jail Then he was when he had he fulfilled his preference his preference was 60 billion dollars But that doesn't mean it's good for you your preferences don't mean it's good for you to evaluate whether something's actually good for you requires work requires thinking requires evaluating and it requires the guidance as laws talked about of Virtues it requires the guidance of principles because life is complicated It's hard to figure out every preference where they fit so doesn't fit and I have to do that all day It would my mind would blow up, but I know honesty leads to success dishonesty leads to failure I just I'm honest. I don't have to think every time should I lie shouldn't I lie? I just follow the principle so I think most people's preferences if I can talk about most people's preferences are wrong Most people are not happy most people screw up their lives Most people are not successful at everything that they do because they have bad preferences. They've never challenged them They've never thought about them. They've never rationally examined them and and this is some of the difference between kind of Austrian economic economists and and and Objectivism is is we don't just accept people the way they are a whole point of morality is to tell you how to live It's not just accept how you live. It's to say no You're doing this wrong. There's a better way to do it I mean all you have to do is read about Stalin and Hitler and dictators and so on and none of them none of them none of them Experienced happiness never my died happy. They might have experienced joy You know at a particular point in time, but they don't experience happy not in their vestalian sense of happiness of really Living life fully. No, I don't think any of them are happy. I don't think I don't think politicians are happy All you have to do is go to the parliament here and Meet some of them the miserable pathetic uninteresting boring people and I don't think they're happy. I don't think they're happy I've met a lot of politicians never met one that I thought was really enjoying life, you know living life fully It just you know because they're doing all the wrong things Look at Bill Clinton Oh, he's miserable look at him. Oh, you have to just look at him and see how miserable he is I Know a couple of politicians in parliament who are very happy. They're elected. They show up from time to time They don't have to work too much They don't have to worry about None of that leads to happiness. The fact that you're You don't have to do much is the opposite of happiness. Happiness is about having a purpose. It's about being driven by something It's about being engaged with the world and with reality and with other people and creating win-win relationships with other people and living Living and and these people are not living not in the false sense of what it means to be human and to live fully So that's on the individual level, but if we look at the collective level then you would think that successful countries or relatively successful countries Leaning countries would outcompete the other countries, but you don't really see You mean happiness surveys Everybody can see that How come that some countries just stick to the same old rotten policies and because it's immoral because capitalism is immoral They've been taught it's immoral people people people don't follow their monetary preferences people follow primarily deep down They're moral preferences and their moral preferences are guided by what they mother they preach and their philosophy of taught them and their mother They preach and philosophy of taught them that self-interest is bad They're pursuing your own self-interest is bad that that's thinking about the collective and thinking about those poor kids in those neighborhoods and doing all and Distributing wealth and sacrificing those are noble and good and people vote to increase their taxes all the time because they think that they're doing good in the world Rich people in California constantly vote to raise their own taxes and not because it's actually good for them But because it reduces the guilt unearned guilt that's associated with having a rotten philosophy that having a rotten moral code So the world I believe is shaped By morality and if you have a rotten moral code at its core Which I think Europe has and the United States has then you're gonna reject capitalism capitalism is about self-interest Capitalism is about pursuing your life and if that's viewed as immoral people vote against it all the time But do you say that people suffer from from? I Mean I give Marxist credit right Marxist at least have a vision of the world right They have a vision of what human beings should be like and they're wrong and they'll counter to human nature But at least they're idealists my problem is most people most people, you know Yeah, people are just what they are and let's leave them alone and let's not provide them with guidance and let's not give them Virtues and values that's not pretend that there's something that works and something that doesn't in life And you know life is just I think that's wrong. I to that extent. Yeah, I have more in common Maybe with them because they have a vision they have some ideal ideal. I have an ideal that I think is consistent with reality I have a deal that things consistent with human nature with individual human nature There's goes against individual human nature. So so yes, I think people can be better. I think people are better than they were 200 years ago and we see that and how rich we are and how we how how do we become rich? It's by individuals today if 250 years ago. I asked any audience pretty much Maybe a few who does your life belong to? Anyway in the world the answer would have been well to the king or to the state or to the church or to God or to Something right 250 years ago almost uniformly everywhere in the world today One of the great advancements I think in in changing people the way people think is you ask an audience Who does your life belong to even in China and my guess is I haven't done this even in Vietnam Certainly in Eastern Europe and they say it belongs to me so we have already moved in a Randian direction in a sense that people at least recognize That their life is theirs now We need to give them the tools by which to make that real the values the virtues and the confidence in that statement because they say My life belongs to me and then then they quickly demure because they've been taught again from my ethicist that that's not right So values change they change all the time and I think as we become freer The reason we become freer is because values change for the better the enlightenment help change values for the better I think they're not still yet good enough. They can be improved. This is the wall philosophy philosophy He's not there just to observe and say this is how people are philosophy is there to give us guidance to To help us improve as human beings and therefore as societies and cultures and we won't Fully embrace capitalism we won't fully embrace freedom, which is what I think capitalism is until we embrace This idea of self-interest we embrace the idea that our life is what's important and there are means by which to make our life better It's not just random. It's not it's not just whatever It's not just our preferences where we don't know where they came from but no rationally chosen preferences Which are values in philosophical terms rationally chosen preferences of values Using a grand in their daily life or to experience the opposite that People might actually business people might actually be guided by something else and be immensely successful nevertheless. I observe certainly people Both the boring Randian like values and other people that don't that that that is quite clear For me again, this is getting sort of very That's the radical but very very deep philosophical points right for me It's more about observing reality what what seems to work and and I mean In my view most successful businesses deploy something along the lines of what I described maybe not with such a Completely explicit understanding of that's what they're doing but but that is what they're doing if they were constantly lying to their clients or Cheating their clients or stealing from their client you could be short term successful in that until somebody found out But I don't think it would anybody would really suggest that that would be a very rock-solid basis for building a large company over decades, right? So I think in practical terms people people actually deploy pretty sensible values in good businesses That's why they become good businesses and there are other other companies that don't become good businesses because they they don't deploy Productive values and things that event eventually leads them to to succeed like for example when I Say to when I speak to a lot of young entrepreneurs many of them have this idea actually that that that the corporate social responsibility where we want to call it the Of the company is a higher value than the company being profitable the company succeeding in its in its in its In its purpose and I would run away screaming from an investment where that was kind of the proposal That was the key reason why you have the company I don't mind that you spend some of your profits on on all sorts of charity or whatever whatever makes you You know takes your box, but if you say to me that I only do it for this purpose once I will I will Generally predict that that company is not gonna be very successful and I would really like to see a company where they I know There's a lot of companies that tend that that they actually do this only for the good of humanity But in reality if they're successful that that is largely something they pretend and they actually underline that they're running Normal profitable businesses and there's nothing wrong with having a good heart or having a good good intentions But but at the end of the day, I do believe that the real life Observance of what works and doesn't work is this was relevant for me certain and I would say let's just suggest that that We all at the side of we didn't want to be productive You know, this is a stupid value and it's not grounded in anything that that we can prove or whatever But I can tell you if everybody in the world stopped being productive I would say we have about 96 hours left in humanity, right? And they won't be very pleasant either, right? So so this I think is just sort of the logical argument that if everybody was politician So everybody was was seized, you know that there were no people with any other waking up with any other idea In the morning than going out and stealing things, you know that again We would have very very short time left in in humanity and it would be very unpleasant time So look at the reality here. You can I believe that that you know for all practical means and purposes Things that you surround yourself with and things that you have to interact to interact with is in a given way, right? I mean you could speculate that what I'm sitting on here is not a chair something entirely different But for all practical means and purposes, this is a chair and I'm sitting on it I'm relatively confident that that I will stay seated on it, right? You can speculate that a subway train is actually a butterfly But go stand in front of it and find out if it's a butterfly or subway train, right? So I just think for practical purposes the world is Lastly as it is you have to interact with it rationally You have to interact with what you observe would I rule out completely that the perception we have specifically? It's probably quite easy to prove that you can look at it differently, right? This is a set of small tiny particles that that in total sort of adds up to your own brook But I can't see him as a whole bunch of neutrons and Molecules etc because doesn't make any sense for all practical means and purposes This is your own brook and I can interact with him. I can work with him or I can work against him I can do whatever but I have just kind of accept logically that he's your own brook And I take point of departure on that and for me that that goes about all business And I'm happy for other people to be irrational or dream something else They can just test it against reality and at the end of the day I think they will they will find out that there is some kind of reality out there and and it will not treat them kindly if you Don't react rationally to it So when business people talk about corporate social responsibility and are successful, are they then just hypocrites or misguided? I'm not saying you can't do that and I would say I mean I supported lots of things in my life That I thought was valid forces including this institute at some point, right? So I'm not saying there's anything wrong whatsoever with that But if you pretend that that's a single purpose of your business then then I get very suspicious because I don't believe it Fun one and secondly, I don't think it's gonna succeed and it's only gonna succeed on basis of Irrationality at least it's possible that you'd have a completely rational company But it's not more irrational than it knows how to get the straw into the compass of the state and suck support and subsidies out And in a way, you know, I don't want to mention. We're quite good at that in this country There's a number of businesses that have no practical purpose except sucking money out of the state's pockets, right? And that's also a way to make a living obviously when we have put our world together the way it is And that might be quite rational under those circumstances if you're if you're if you're new wave Wave energy companies never ever gonna make a profit at least get some politicians to pay you and that's still a rational way But is it good for the country or is it good for the world? Is it good for the humanity that if everybody deployed themselves on stuff that is completely Completely dependent on irrational allocation of resources. No, I don't think so and capitalism is really about allocation of resource That's what it's about that we make lots of mistakes in capitalism But those mistakes hurt us and and if you make sufficiently many mistakes you're out of business, right the people that that Get it right more often than wrong they keep growing and they feel better and better products They fit built better and better services and just to round off with this thing you said about Countries that are capitalistic. Why don't they dramatically outperform? Countries that are not and I think actually they do but but I mean I can remember when I first I first put out the Struct in Denmark and I said if we're gonna do this we're gonna print five thousand however many was the first round I want to have a foreword in there written by me and him right so I wrote this forward And I send it off to Lena Peacock who who actually owns the rights of all iron rand books because she she kind of left her Legacy to him and he personally wanted to approve this forward This is this is pretty pretty scary. I was quite happy to only come back with one red line really You know, I thought it'd come back with lots of problems, right, but I had written in there that something to the To the line of it is thought provoking today that probably the most free economy in the world today is China Which was my view at the time and it's my view today And that actually came back with a red line from there not because he said that is not gonna be and that was Rocked out there that says that that the Chinese economy is more free than the US economy But I will venture that for all practical purposes the Chinese economy is far far freer than most of the economies We have in Western Europe, and that's why they do so damn well They're coming from a very bad point of departure, but they have consistently outperformed the West and continue to consistently outperform the West Because they have capitalism they they actually interact in far more capitalist way with far less restriction than we do in the Western world That's why they're doing well. You're one of the few business people in Denmark speaking allowed about capitalism Why do you think so? Is it because most business people in Denmark are afraid or is it because most are Dependent on the state or what is the reason why they're keeping silence even though they as business people would be Some of a England's heroes. Why are the heroes keeping silence? I think it's probably all of the above You know a lot of business people actually don't really care about anything about business, and I think that's fine It's probably an aberration for me that I spent so much time doing all sorts of other stuff than business, right? Maybe I would be more successful at business if I didn't spend so much time Arguing with politicians and doing all this stuff So a lot of business people are probably just even more rational than me They just stick to business and they let the rest of us sit in and fight it out like this I remember Jack Wells told me that You know I should really focus on the business and not on all these politics You know because that was just that was just bad for business, etc So I would say that's part of it. That's simply a lot of them have worked very hard all their life They are not interested in philosophy. They're not interested in politics And they actually think the whole thing is just a stupid way to spend their time and that's fully respectable Secondly, I would say there's definitely a group that are scared of speaking up publicly I would say after a good bottle of red wine up in North Zealand You can hear people that are way more capitalist than me But when you tell them, why don't you write a bloody letter for Berling Sketeen And I say, oh, I don't like to do that because maybe people wouldn't like it Or maybe I would maybe people think I was stupid or I couldn't defend the argument I mean, I actually I won't say who but But I took somebody really on the word and I said I'm happy to I'm happy to actually Check your letter if you promise to send it I will check that you're not making any mistakes in that because you're really worried about Wrenching into the space and people would laugh at him because maybe you made a little mistake So I gave him confidence that that actually this letter was correctly put together and he sent it off happily And he was very happy when it appeared in Berling Sketeen a couple of days later So a lot of people are scared of of getting involved and of course And that's a real sad part I also believe that some of them are scared because they are very dependent on on public money And I think a lot of individual people working in the public sector In fact, I know a lot of people that we have spoken to in in politics that You know come up and say I totally agree with what you're saying about the public sector But I cannot say it because I work in the public sector and all my colleagues are gonna gang up on me and get me fired If I if I say this so there's a lot of people that are scared and in an economy We're really that the you know, we have a tax pressure of somewhere in the late 40s high 40s, right? But in reality that the size of the public economies will About 50% less as you will know So there's more public sector economy in Denmark than there's private sector So even if you want to be independent of it, it's nearly damning and Impossible not to be dependent on the state in some way shape or function and no matter what you do You can't you can't really not be dependent on it And then some people are brave enough to challenge that and some people think ah Maybe it's better to just have a quiet life and suffer the pains and try to make a good living and work great Ryan I'm going to uh Start giving the floor to the public All right, so you're running just quickly so mentioned that Post enlightenment values there are an improvement in Iranian terms and so on But what do you think about so? Yes, we've had individualism in one respect But we've also had hedonism in another, you know, I mean She she famously railed against the wood starters. Why do they need to do all this drugs? All this viscous sex and so what do you think about both the conservative? but also like the The communitarian argument that that people need to have their morals and their that's haste and their aesthetics and their lifestyles better by them Because if we seem that at least on the hedonism point the randians have a beat or a point of Yeah, I mean, I I definitely think there's a um There's an elitism or or You know, I think coming from play do really We're smart, you know, there's all those people out there. They don't know what they're doing They they don't know anything and we need to Through tradition or through religion or through something we need to provide them with this moral anchoring I you know, I think rand rejects that I think she believes that every individual has the capacity to think capacity to reason And therefore every individual has the capacity to Understand rationally why certain things are in their self-interest and why certain things are mall Uh, and and that morality is in that sense available to everybody and they don't need that morality to be Uh embedded in traditions and in religions and in authoritarianism if you think about religion It's kind of an authoritarian form of morality. Uh, but Can be taught it? She rejected hedonism because she she she she thought hedonism was the rejection of morality It was the rejection of the responsibility to think for yourself the responsibility to take responsibility Over your own life. It was the rejection of values. It was the rejection of really of pursuing values So but she didn't And she viewed hedonism as a direct consequence of modern philosophy You know as as you know when you're taught that as law said the chair might not be there and Subway might be a butterfly and whatever then Nothing exists and nothing matters and might as well have pleasure and forget about it all or in a more modern framework Are you guinealism so hedonism and realism? I think are too Related are you guinealism? Well, then I'm angry at the world because the chair might not be here and nothing's absolute nothing's reality So I just want to smash stuff. I just want to take the stuff down. I just want to knock things off I just want to yell and scream and and break stuff and I think that's what we're seeing more and more with young people particularly in In some american colleges and in in some places around europe you're seeing this anger In the form nihilism, but they're all products of modern philosophy. They all I don't think are In you know just just things that happen the products of the ideas that are being taught at our universities Okay, let's uh Have some questions real questions After Nietzsche's attempted murder of god the road, of course was paved for a philosopher like I ran But Isn't the elephant in the room really religion? I mean it wasn't slain So we still have a lot of baggage all these things like the good guys are Boring and stuff like isn't it religious baggage that is still there? Yeah, I I agree completely. I think it is religious baggage. I think that what we've got is While we killed christianity metaphysically and maybe epistemologically that is we we all accept the knowledge comes from Those of us who are not professors of philosophy accept the knowledge comes from observation it comes from From we we accept the scientific method We accept that we can discover and know pretty much anything given enough time and given the resources That knowledge is that reality is available to us epistemologically In a sense and metaphysically we've accepted secularism But where we've never really challenged the christ christianity primarily is in ethics Right, we've never challenged christianity in ethics and the enlightenment that I think the failure ultimately is enlightenment is While they while the in the founding document of the american the declaration of dependence that says You have an inevitable right to pursue happiness your happiness There's no moral foundation for that because it's still they're still christian in in a moral sense and So I think until Christian ethics are slain We will not we will not be able to to fully realize capitalism or we will not be able to fully realize Uh, and I think most secularists. I mean most secular philosophers Unfortunately can link to that christian ethic. I mean even this idea that morality was embedded in our traditions and our Communities, what is that? What was the tradition the tradition the community was christian ethics? That's what it was for 2000 years didn't lead too much We didn't get we didn't get become very successful and very rich as a consequence, but it was there so That still is what needs to be challenged and I think You know rand is pretty much the only one who does it comprehensively you have even the new atheists Still latch on to kind of the altruistic christian morality in spite of the fact that they challenge christianity and pretty much every other fund yeah, hi Lars you you mentioned that it's like seven tenets which you apply in your in your life as a businessman And one of them was individuality, right? if I I've been in a working in a company a big international one where Where I could see in my work in the excel sheet that There was no order in the way they privatize tasks And when I mentioned to my like of course like I believe in my way. I believe that that if if I do well I get rewarded, right? but My manager didn't like build exposed that that it was her that She fucked up and she did not like how subordinate came and And questioned her about the task. How do I tackle that in uh in my workplace if I want to live by the tenets? How do I actually? I think you The seven the seven virtues one of them is not individuality. I think the thing about independence, right? Uh, so independence, you know the freedom of thinking and questioning things Uh, I think you you're the one that's in the right and and and your supervisor is one that's wrong And in the long run, you're probably going to do better than her because he's a very poor supervisor If she does not take into account that somebody comes with a a constructive Suggestion for improving services, and if I ever or whatever it was that you were trying to improve And if I heard about leaders in an organization where I was the the ceo I would be pretty upset about that if I heard that people were keeping down other people coming up with attempts at improving the The The overall service, so I don't think she's going to go very far because if she does that to everyone her definition her department is going to stand still and and it's not going to Improve and she's not going to get her promotion Which is which is probably what she's pursuing and another person that that leads differently And try to get the best out of their people It's much more likely that that department will do very well And ultimately that person Will will will will get some kind of benefit from that and the people that work there will will also have benefit from that So of course there are lots of people that live Irrationally in in business also It's not like that it's only in the public sector you have irrationality You have lots of irrationality in private business as well. Trust me Uh, and the worst thing is really You know people hire Never hire people that are better than themselves or are scared of people that are smarter than themselves, etc I mean I I would love everybody in my business to be smarter than myself You know that that that that would be great, right? And and some of them definitely are so so if you cannot if you cannot look for the good in people And and and and give them chances to develop that I would say as a leader You want to give responsibility To people for more or less defined tasks. So you have the possibility to evaluate the outcome And obviously if if you're young and and and you you are new and in a job You give the manageable smaller tasks that you know wouldn't bring down the business if if it went wrong But if that got solved well, then you would have a bigger responsibility next time You have a bigger responsibility next time and that is the way that you develop your internal Leadership over the long term. I mean it actually is a failure for an organization If it has to go outside and collect all these leaders from outside It should be building all of the leaders from the inside occasionally Of course, you may need some skillset that you don't have but if you don't build your own leadership through exactly Letting people have a chance to to to come up with improvements and enhancements You you are probably not gonna gonna do very well in the in the long run. I'm certainly people that individually Try to keep down People below them that that have have great ideas. I don't think will be very successful in the long run I would say one thing though that independence doesn't mean that you shouldn't respect that you are Some extent standing on shoulders of of somebody else It doesn't mean that everything that your supervisor do is wrong just because you want to think about independently So of course, it should be constructive and it shouldn't be so disrupted that if everybody in the business said every time I said let's do this in Saxo Bank everybody said that's completely stupid. I got a much better idea at the end of the day Somebody's got to say well, let's just go with one of these ideas, right? So it's not by independence I don't mean that you should you should rip everything apart at every single possible option, right? But if you genuinely think you have an improvement To suggest and you suggest that in a constructive way It has to be a very poor leader that doesn't listen to that, right? Now there is of course a possibility that you were wrong and she was right and actually she had the better way But but but that's also a possibility and over time I'm sure you you you'll find out who who did that and ultimately If you try that too many times and you say well, there's no way for me either You'll ask for a transfer to another department or you leave and go to another company and and if you're the good guy That's that's a company that's going to suffer. It has a culture that that leads to to those kind of outcomes Yep Hello Back to the elephant in the room religion Denmark recently banned the burqa I guess they're trying to Make sure that young muslim women are free in danish society as well What is your opinion on this? I mean i'm against banning clothes Unless you can unless you can show that force is being used and then the force is being used as individual And you you know, you put the guy in jail if he's forcing his his wife or he's using violence against his daughter or whatever But you know, i'm against banning clothing I think it's it's a sign of the west's failure To actually challenge islam and what we should be talking about Which is the fact that they have a set of rotten ideas that islam is stupid that islam is barbaric that islam is silly And we should be challenging them intellectually with with better ideas and presenting better ideas One of the one of the real, you know So on the one hand in danmark, you believe in multiculturalism, right? All cultures equal, but then you ban clothing Right. I now I don't believe in multiculturalism. I believe that a certain set of values certain sense of behavior certain sets cultures Civilizations call it western civilizations civilization the best developed in western europe in the united states Since the enlightenment that is superior to anything else that exists in the world Then no other cultures that even come close to the to the culture of western civilization What you should expect people who come here is to Is to adopt that culture It's to the melting pot the american kind of style melting pot But what what europeans do is they separate They say no no go live over there. You don't have to adopt our culture because your culture is as good as ours Oh, but we don't you know, but it's offensive that you wear this or we're gonna So it's it's neither here nor there instead of a real intellectual challenge to islam and particularly to the to the radicals a real Saying that's your behavior is barbaric your behavior is evil putting a woman in a bokeh is immoral It is barbaric. It is horrible But it's still clothing right so so you've got to judge it you've got to declare it But but it's not just the clothing It's it's a lot of the behavior that that comes with it is barbaric And you have to call it that and it's primitive and you have to say it's primitive And you have to say we've got a better model adapt to our model And you know, I think we did that a lot of the problems that we see in terms of lack of assimilation in terms of The radicalization within islam would go away I was against this this prohibition and I didn't realize that The political party that most people normally associate me with actually were in the government that put this true so I was in in clear obsession to to that because First of all, I believe that that the assumption has got to be that that that woman is in that berg Against her own will somehow which I believe that already love is covering You know, there are the laws saying you cannot force people to do stuff like that I'm sure you could have covered that by other laws if that's really the case Now let's just assume for a second that the lady actually is there out of her own pre-evolution What have you just done to her life now you have you have you have now put her into A flat where she can stay the rest of her life because now she's gonna get Now she's gonna get arrested or get fined every time she walks out So either way, I think it's a bad solution and what tops that up is of course that here in Denmark We evade from calling things the right name. So we didn't make a prohibition against bookers, right? We made a prohibition because nobody wanted to say let's make a prohibition against the birker and be honest about it We made a prohibition against face covering materials, right? So now you cannot dress up as a father christmas and you cannot dress up for for a A what is it called a passion party or anything like that Without actually running risk of being at least getting fined, you know So on all counts, I think that was a ridiculous law Although I totally agree with everything your run says about the the excesses of of islam and and so I think it was a Horrible law in in every way and and I totally totally disagreed with it and Stated it publicly also, although it wasn't super popular with my own party I'm not a rant expert. So it's perhaps a little bit simplistic, but Would you say that she is in favor of or against democracy? And what is this pretty simple argument That she may put sure I would say it depends what you mean by democracy So if you mean by democracy majority rule That is that you get a vote on everything and whatever the majority says that's what goes then yes She's very much against democracy. She's an anti-democracy If you mean just to act of voting, right? We're gonna have a president the way we select the president by voting And that's all but but that the role of government is limited, right? The president can't do much Then she would be she's pro that act of voting and then you could call that democracy So iron man believed that most of what government today does It doesn't have a moral right to do And therefore government should be Constitutionally limited to doing one thing which is what I think the founding fathers of america tried to do And that is limit government to the protection of individual rights, which means protect you from force and fraud And invasion And that's it So a randian government would have a police A judiciary to obituary disputes between us the prosecute criminals And a military and that's it right nothing else So you can use the accuracy to vote The legislature which would meet very infrequently because there wouldn't be much to do But they would have to define you, you know as property rights evolve Maybe the internet's evolving they would have to come up with some definition But no redistribution of wealth no regulation of business No No central bank no economic policy So you can't vote so what she's against is the idea That this side of the room Votes to take the money of the people in that side of the room That's what she's against and that's what democracy is Democracy is this side of the room voting to take the money of those or Voting to regulate them or voting to control them or voting to tell them what they can wear Covering their face or whatever that is democracy is where the majority gets to decide everything that she rejects Right and and what's interesting is the left gets this Like on free speech or used to get it on free speech right or on abortion, right? So they accept that the majority can never ever vote to ban abortion Right so democracy doesn't apply to that what iron man says that's right They shouldn't be able to ever ban abortion, but they shouldn't be able to take your money They shouldn't be able to regulate you they shouldn't be able to control you in any way So the majority should have no power over the individual the only job of government is to protect us That's it Don't we all Agree that there's some kind of line there. Maybe you don't think it's where iron rain says it, but let's say Let's say that that you know, there's probably more people Of one sex than the other Denmark probably a little more women than men I would imagine right so if we now had a vote and and the vote was take away the vote from men And all of the women decided that they would vote in favor of that Would you think that was acceptable even worse if they if they voted that all men should be killed Would you think that is acceptable because they had a majority? I mean that there's got to be another thing when we talk about democracy in modern sense because we've forgotten what democracy's history is democracy always rested on two things it rested on The fact that every now and again we got to make some big decisions And what is a better way than to raise our hands and and kind of agree on that because there's no other way really But the other thing was that it rested on some negative rights that there were certain things that you could not do Even if you had the the majority right and that's where that's a camp where you find iron rain, right? And I think every one of us here. I mean you could probably find a vast majority of people that were Not the red heads, right? So if we had a vote here and said everybody red heads you get executed We don't want red heads in society or everybody with a certain religion or everybody with a certain Certain sexual orientation or everybody with any kind of characteristic I don't think a single person in the room would think that democracy carried that far, right? Or am I wrong? I mean So that there is this balance when we really need to make a decision like maybe select the leader Maybe deciding on a really major item in and out of the edu or something like that. Maybe that's a good thing to ask around But if Obviously it's got to be some limit to that that interpretation of democracy as well I can't imagine anybody nearly that wouldn't agree with that You guys seem to know this character. I ran fairly well I would I wonder and perhaps you can answer that point. What would she arrive at if she lived today? Considering that the is Is now a little more complicated than it used to be because we have all these civilizations that are Very rapidly overlapping and interacting with each other in ways that seem To me at least to be moving the world in direction where we're Constructing our reality a little more than where we sort of just tried to reduce what we could see into actionable scientific That's the question. What would she do today to To manage all that I mean, I don't think they'd be much different. I mean, obviously the the issues facing us today I mean she was very concerned about communism because that was the that was the force, right the cultural force During the 20th century that that and she was she had intimate knowledge of communism because she grew up under communism So today communism is maybe not a not a force although in universities. It still might be It's not a force. Maybe there are other forces, but but I think fundamentally her positive philosophy would not have changed much She would just have dealt with different issues in terms of Of critiquing I think multiculturalism would be a big one. I mean she talked about it somewhat When she wrote but today it's much bigger It's much more relevant because of this interlacing of civilizations or interlacing of cultures The idea multiculturalism I think is once she would be very offended by and argue against quite vehemently She would be I think at the forefront of trying to defend What it is What do we mean by western civilization? What does that mean and and how do we defend it properly? What is a proper defender of that of that civilization? Um And I think she'd be worried about the nihilism and hedonism. Maybe that were mentioned earlier So I think the challenges might be a little different but philosophically they're not that different and I think her positive philosophy I don't think that's anything happened in the 30 years since she she died the 35 years since she died That has changed the positive message that she has I agree with iran that she would Have a sort of no holds bars criticism of islam that would be quite on the level with someone like Christopher Hitchens or something if not more Betrayal like on that and it would come from a place of genuine none bigotry that allows one to speak freely Because you analyze all ideas fairly and of course she would not find these ideas commendable at all One thing where I think in rain might have changed her philosophy if not the message then at least the Let's say the propositions contained therein is in the area of evolution Quite a lot have happened in evolutionary science since the time of ain rain and also Though she appeals to science a lot She actually also says I I work out the concepts philosophically. I am not a scientist And that's why also the heliological ethics that I went through they're not really evolutionary in a way They focus on man's power through his mind and through reason to better his condition So she actually says very very little about evolution in all of her work And there has been significant findings such as the fact that we are quite possibly Not just conditioned through christianity and so on but also born with a sort of altruistic instinct and We are not blank slates as a an idea that rain took from luck, which which has been definitively refuted. So of course this happens to every philosopher And I think maybe she would have changed her thinking on that point a bit But the overall message the the the you kind of exactly call it libertarian but like free market Individual liberty kind of political standpoint is Would have been the same. It's almost an arched type I'll just say that I don't think I don't think Who who of you a blank slate has been refuted? So I mean we that's a whole discussion about what it means to say there's a blank slate But certainly I think yes the science of evolution I think would have played a bigger role in the way she explains her ethics Given given our understanding of dna today and our understanding of evolution at a much deeper level than I think it was understood 30 50 years ago Actually she was right because I think a lot of the stuff that she predicts in that book has come to to to a large extent to To manifest itself, you know like the financial crisis where you had Tons of acronyms of really weird organizations and pools of government money that's not going to fix the problem This is like straight out at the shrub, right? And and the and the sales obviously of at the shrub than other books absolutely skyrocketed in the early parts of the financial crisis So in a way other people recognize that that there was some something you could learn from her thinking there and in general I think she would be extraordinarily pleased that that She's still selling a lot of books, right? Which is very unusual for for a book that's from 1957 in the case of atlastructon for a writer that died 36 years ago Is it's very unusual to have the kind of sales that she has so I'm sure she would have been quite excited that That there's still a movement and it still inspires young people to to get a different different view on On life and ultimately she was anyway very very long term in in her expectations So she was kind of hoping great me if I'm wrong that her ideas might have bigger impact a hundred years 150 years 200 years down the line and so she was seen from that point of view fairly patient And I think she would just feel rather vindicated that she's not all wrong She has certainly not been proved wrong in the meantime And I think she would have been inspired by the fact that the bulletin wall came down She fought all her life against communism. She won in that sense I think I think the fact that you know, we can we can debate the extent to which China's capitalist, but it's the capitalist elements within china that have made china Successful that is whatever it is that they wherever they've adopted capitalism wherever they whatever regions or whatever industries have adopted these ideas Of free markets. That's where the success in china has been not in the state-run industries That I mean, I think that that would have been exciting to her You know, the fact is there are more people free today than ever in human history There are more people living under some form of a free society or some form of capitalism in the world today than ever in human history And the you know, in spite of the fact that we in the west seem to be kind of Someone in decline or stagnating the rest of the world isn't I mean african now is Discovering property rights and the institutions of capitalism and countries in Africa are booming and uh, you know, Asia went through this phase So there's there's exciting things going on in the world That I think it would be fun to have her here to comment on them When you read her nonfiction essays not just out of the shrug but also nonfiction essays The extent to which she was prophetic Not in the mystical sense, but in the sense of understanding the trends is astounding I mean she has a essay called global balkanization where she talks about balkanization in the 1960s And she talks about all all the ethnic groups each one wanting their own little country and their own little thing And then you think about what happened in the balkans when when when the You know when you can stop your fellow part and then you think about even today Everybody trying to establish their little domain the tribalism that exists today Uh, you know, she saw it coming. She saw the inevitable consequences of ideas back in the 50s and 60s where they would lead down the road So I think a lot of the problems today you can find in her books She's got a book and environmentalism that in those days it wasn't called environmentalism We're called ecology, right? It was a call and and a lot of the issues that we see today in terms of the kind of some of the Extreme nuttiness You already see in a book she wrote in 1969 when this is just beginning and she already predicted where it would go So it's really fascinating and I'll ask you a question This is a question I get asked relatively frequently because I think I know what the answer is but In this country, I'm pretty much nearly the only guy that has just a little kind word for trump sometimes for his tax parts and for his For his diffusion of regulation as in that But I often get asked about what would on ran have thought of trump I don't think she would have been I don't think she would have been very very excited about him But what's your view? Yeah, I mean I've talked about this a lot and and those of you who know me know Again, I don't want to talk for I ran because who knows what I'm ran was a genius and I'm not You know, I think she would have despised them. I mean, so she wrote She wrote in the early 1960s about John F. Kennedy That he was the first Complete pragmatist pragmatist in the negative sense pragmatist a short-term thinker no principles. No ideas Anti ideology she considered JFK this anti ideological Complete pragmatist the worst president ever, right? He was terrible And when I think of JFK today versus Trump, JFK seems like an angel. I mean He also cut taxes by the way JFK did but because he was so he had no principles everything was what a work and and JFK hid that he always pretended to have principles the thing about trump is and this is You know, all politicians lie all the time The difference is the trump relish's line He he doesn't try to hide it. He doesn't pretend like he's not lie It's like it works. So i'm gonna do it again like he was asking this interview Do you think what you said was inappropriate? You said it worked What does it what does this make right if it was inappropriate on our model or not ethical or not Truth or not it works. That's pure pragmatism Oh, no No, I mean look at him You seen how his wife looks at him can't be happy when your wife looks at you like that So I I I think she would have in spite of here and there a good thing that he's done Certainly cutting taxes is good or though raising spending The u.s. Is spending more now than under obama And it's it's growing dramatically spending it kind of defeats the purpose of cutting taxes If you got taxes and you don't limit spending economically, it just doesn't work It works short term, but it doesn't work long term. He is cutting regulation That's the one thing that but but again, he's doing it at the agency level. So it's not sustainable It's not it's not legislation that cuts regulation. It's just the behavior But I think it's character his character is so coarse and so vile And and the issue of honesty and rationality. You don't think trump rationality You don't think trump thinking before he tweets you think tweet He's got one genius and and you have to recognize that he knows what people want He he is a marketing genius. He understands the american people a certain segment of the american people brilliantly And he and he feeds them exactly what they want. So just as you use this genius in marketing to To be successful in real estate Um, I think he's using his is marketing genius to be successful in politics And so far you have to say he's been successful Right and we'll see if he gets reelected, but there's a good chance here. He will get reelected in spite of everything So, yeah, so Well, I I just want to thank everybody and I want to do a few things One is to encourage you all to read on rant the best way to learn about her is firsthand and And there's there's a lot to read and it's fun I mean, I'm always jealous of people who haven't read out the shrug because you get to do it for the first time Or the fountain head or read the living or ant them any of her books They they're just they're just wonderful books to read Beyond the life changing ideas or at least some of them were for some of us life changing I'd also like to let you know that there is a conference going to be held in europe for the first time by the iron man institute On iron man's ideas in february So february 15th to 17th and prog We're going to be holding a weekend conference Dedicated to iron man's ideas for those of you who might be students in the audience There are scholarships available. So for you, it'll be basically free. We'll pay for your travel expenses and everything else So so maybe even academics will will pay expenses But but you know, I encourage those of you who are interested in delving deeper and in meetings Some of the people involved in it in in the in the kind of iron man world to come to prog laws We'll be speaking there. I will be speaking there. There'll be a number of very talented I think speakers. So it should be a fabulous event And I'd like to thank i'm automated christopher and and c-post for hosting this. So, uh, so thank you Free to go