 You can ask in Japanese, I'm sure somebody will translate if you want. Do you think I grant would be for collectivist social policies such as redistribution if policies or collectivist policies such as redistribution leads to individualistic happiness in the end? No, she would definitely be against them. And she would argue that it's impossible that they can lead to happiness and she'd also ask who's happiness, right? Who's happiness are you measuring? So how do you have redistributionist policies? You have to take from some by force and give to others. And maybe you could argue, I think she would argue against you, but maybe you could argue that the people receiving the money are happier. But what about the money that was taken away? So you're going to average the happiness over everybody and have a measure of whether she would reject any kind of utilitarian measure like that, right? So Rand was against any form of coercion. So the idea of taking money from some and giving it to others, no matter what the outcome is, she would be against. And again, she would be against collectivistic measures of happiness, right? So if you made this person less happy, nothing can justify that even if you're distributing the happiness to other people and it's greater there, right? That's the point of individualism. What's important is the individual's right to his own stuff, to his own life, and you can't and you shouldn't ever sacrifice that for the sake of any cause, right? So yes, I think the premise behind it, she would object to the premise of the question but also to the outcome. I don't even believe that when you give people money, like welfare, you're making them happy because I think happiness isn't a consequence of money. Happiness doesn't result from money. Happiness results from the process of earning money. So happiness is a consequence of attaining your values, your rational values. So people, for example, who don't work, it's almost impossible to be happy unless you work, unless you have a career, unless you have a purpose, unless you have goals, values, things that you're striving to attain. When we take people and we tell them you don't have to work here, get a check from the government, we're here to help you, right? Here's a check, don't work. You're actually, in my view, institutionalizing them into unhappiness because they'll never go out and get that job and pursue a career that'll actually give them the kind of self-esteem and happiness they should attain. Can I go deep into that? I really do agree with the concept of responsibility is necessary in individual happiness but when you see economic studies that point to, such as the gap in wealth leads to a higher crime rate in suburban cities, can we not argue that policies such as redistribution would indirectly make the rich happier because it would not lead to a higher crime rate in suburban cities? Well, the studies are wrong. Start out with, right, the studies are just wrong. I've got a book called Equals Unfair that take on the whole inequality debate. There's just no correlation and there's no causality between these kind of features. So, for example, inequality in the United States has increased over the last 40 years, right? It's dramatically increased. Everybody says this, okay, let's assume that's all true. I'm even skeptical of that, but let's assume that that's true. Inequality has increased in the United States over the last 30 to 40 years. What has happened to crime rates in the United States during that period? They've shrugged. They haven't gone up. Inequality in Great Britain has expanded. Crime rates have gone down. I mean, crime rates were the highest in the 70s and 80s. And actually, the 70s and 80s, according to Gini coefficients, were much lower, so inequality was much lower than they were today. So, the correlation between crime and inequality is a myth. It's a myth. Now, what happens is they do these studies where they include really, really, really high-crime countries which have very high inequality and they assume causality, but there is no causality. I think the whole debate, the whole discussion of the last, I'd say, eight years, 10 years about inequality is empty. It's silly. It's detached from any reality. There is no economic theory, for example, none, zero, that links inequality to things like economic growth or to economic problems. And yet, when you run certain regressions, you can find correlations. But correlation is not causation and you have to think about inequality is high in the United States and inequality is high in Zimbabwe. But there are big differences between the two countries, right, that have nothing to do with inequality, that it may be generating the actual problems that people are observing in a place like Zimbabwe. And you really have to dig into the people who talk about inequality. You have to dig into what they're actually doing. And I don't trust mainstream economists because I think they have a philosophical political agenda and they shape their economics to adapt it. And Thomas Piketty, the guy who really made inequality the big thing when he came out with his book in about, what was it, six, seven years ago, is a great example of that. The data is often wrong. His interpretation is completely misleading. It's a completely bogus book, but he is treated like a king today. I mean, everywhere he goes in the world, he gets rid of corporate treatment. You know, it's just unbelievable to me, but it's bad economics. You'll probably get a Nobel Prize for it, but it's bad economics and it's bad data. But let's say it was true, just for the sake of argument. Let's say what you argue is true. That is redistribution of all the lowest crime. Well, if that were true, right, and if that were the real causal mechanism, and you would argue that the rich then are better off because crime against them is lower because there's redistribution, then they would do it voluntarily. They'd have an incentive to do it voluntarily. But there's never, and this is, I ran very much thought in principles and I think it's really important to think in principles and unfortunately we're not taught to think in principles. We're very much taught to be so-called pragmatic. Whatever works, whatever. You never use force against another human being unless you're acting in self-defense. So even though you think, you philosopher king, think, or if I take money from you and give it to him, you will be better off. No. The only thing you can do is argue, is convince, so you could go to rich people and say, if you take a bunch of money and you give it to poor people, you'll be better off. And some will agree and some won't and some will do it and some won't, but it's their individual personal choice. And it's not like in a free society, a completely capitalist society, there wouldn't be some redistribution. It just wouldn't be cursed. It would be charity. It would be voluntary. Right? So you can never, in Ayn Rand's world, you can never use coercion even when you think it's good for somebody else. Right? So force is out. It's not a means for interaction between human beings. The only means to interact between human beings is reason. It's rational argument. It's debate. It's discussion. This is why free speech is so important. Right? Crucial to the foundation of civilization is our ability to reason with one another, to debate one another, to convince one another, because when we can't do that, what do we resort to? You know, a gun. Force. So... Just on that point, I've just come from Japan, sorry, New Zealand, and the Prime Minister there has just prohibited people from reading the manifesto of the Australian action. The guy who killed the Muslims in Christchurch. And she's prohibited people from reading. And I've downloaded that in Japan, so that's perfectly okay. And their arrangement is that white supremacist killed. And his background is actually communist, eco-fascist, hates capitalism, hates individualism, identifies with China. So I think that supports it. I mean, I think there's a massive attack today in the West, all over the West, against free speech. And yeah, I mean, you can say these ideas are despicable. They're ugly. They're disgusting. Nobody should have to read them. Ideally, nobody would read them. But once you ban them, then, A, you're making it sexy. You wouldn't have downloaded it if it wasn't banned, probably. I certainly will never download it, unless just as an objection to the limitation. You make them interesting by banning them. And secondly, once you establish that you have the authority to decide which ideas people should read or shouldn't, then it's a very slippery slope. If you look today in Europe, the laws against certain types of speech are only increasing. Particularly, if you say anything against Islam, anything against religion or anything against certain issues, you could go to jail in Europe today. But what's interesting is what were the first laws against speech in Europe post World War II? All are done with good intentions. What were the first laws? Yeah, against Holocaust deniers. So you say, well, who wants to read Holocaust deniers? It's okay if we ban them. Yeah, nobody wants to read Holocaust deniers. They're a bunch of idiots. They're a bunch of evil liars. But once you accept that the state has the authority to tell you you can't read something, then first it's Holocaust deniers, then it's something else. And now it's anybody who wants to be critical of Islam. But there's a lot to criticize about Islam. I mean, it's okay to criticize Islam. Just like you should criticize Christianity, criticize Judaism, criticize any religion, any set of ideas. You should be allowed to criticize. So once you allow in the name of good intentions, like this manifesto, which I will never read because I'm not interested, right? Or Holocaust deniers or whatever, you've given the powers, the authority now, to determine what is appropriate and what is not appropriate and it's a disaster. And I think you're seeing all across the world, you're seeing shrinkage of freedom of speech. I don't know what the situation is in Japan. In the United States, the only reason this is not really happening kind of at a national level is because we have it in the Constitution, right? We have a First Amendment that makes it almost impossible to rule out reading certain books or not to be able to download certain materials. But if we didn't have a First Amendment, I believe there would be a lot of states in America who would be passing what's called hate speech laws and laws that restrict freedom of speech. So people don't believe in the First Amendment anymore in America. The legal system protects the First Amendment because it's the value of having a Constitution. Because even when people stop believing in the ideas, it still functions. Now in the end it won't and in the end it will be written out if enough people don't believe in it. But for a long time, it's sustainable, right? So you still have free speech in the United States in spite of the fact that I think a significant number of Americans, maybe a majority, don't believe in it anymore. On the left in America, if you go to universities, there are ideas you cannot express. People are attacked for expressing those ideas and there's silence, there's violence involved and that's clear violations of the ideas of free speech. And it's sad when the government does not protect people's ability to speak. That's the one area in which you're seeing an erosion of free speech in the U.S. Any other, oh, yeah. Thank you. I was just wondering, what would you say is the relevance of Ryan's thought in contemporary United States? I was just wondering, much of the conclusion you have drawn from Ryan's thought and probably yourself are sometimes quite familiar to me, probably because I have that Robert Nozick's book under the supervision of my professor who is also libertarian. I understand that Ryan's thought does constitute major part of American people's philosophy but I was wondering what is so special about her thought in the 21st century, especially after the tariff before the president broke out. Especially after what? The tariff war. The tariff war. Well, so first let me say, I think everything about her philosophy is still fresh. I don't think anybody represents her philosophy including Nozick. Nozick rejects Einrann's ethics and he rejects her formulation of individual rights the way she does. I don't think, Nozick accepted some of her ideas and certainly within the libertarian movement many people were influenced by Einrann some more than others and she's had a profound impact on the libertarian movement in the United States but that's her impact on them and yet many libertarians don't accept her full philosophy and I think it's their detriment. My view is that if you look at intellectual history of the last 100 years or 50, 60 years if the key free market economists and thinkers of the 20th century had embraced Einrann we would be living in a different world today. So I think the fact that Hayek and Friedman and Mises and Mises was the closest Einrann basically rejected her philosophy I think has put the libertarian movement backwards 50 to 100 years so I think it's still going to take a longer time for them to rediscover Einrann but I don't believe you will have a free market slash capitalist movement in America or in the world without Einrann's ideas I don't think it's sustainable because nobody else in the libertarian movement is a real philosopher nobody else in the libertarian movement actually has a philosophical foundation for capitalism you have to be an advocate of egoism and you have to be an advocate for reason and most libertarian philosophers reject both of those assumptions and therefore I think will fail, have to fail so you can't just start with politics and economics Now in terms of the influence he has I think well today given tariffs I mean tariffs I think suggest that she has no influence or very little influence because she would be horrified by I think the current administration of Donald Trump I think she would reject almost everything about this administration I mean he's done a few things that are good and that she would maybe say positive things like cutting corporate taxes and reducing regulation but there's no point in cutting taxes if you don't stop spending like crazy which is something the Japanese should learn from as well if you run deficits and increase government debt then you're sucking money out of the private economy you're sucking money out of the hands of capitalists and giving it to the central planners to distribute and therefore you have an inefficient economy and therefore growth rates are very low which is true in Japan and true in the United States right now so government spending is out of control in the United States and the debt are going out of control in the United States all of which you would be offended by but she would also object to the kind of cronyism that Donald Trump is institutionalizing in the United States where he will tell CEOs where they can build plants and where they shouldn't build plants and he told what Ford or somebody that they can't shut down a plant because they were going to close a plant in Ohio and he harassed them that they couldn't shut it down and they found a buyer for it to convert it to something else but the president of the United States gets involved in decisions like that I call Donald Trump on Twitter what is it? central planner in chief I mean he really views himself as a central planner he's running the economy like he would run a business so all of that is very antagonistic to Iron Man's view of the world and certainly this idea of raising tariffs tariffs are tax they're a tax on your people it's not a tool of diplomacy it's not a tool of negotiation it's a tax and you don't raise taxes and pretend that you're a capitalist you don't raise taxes and pretend that you're pro that make America first or you're pro-american it's an anti-american tax because who's it hurting? it's hurting your own citizens Americans pay tariffs Americans pay tariffs so and nobody's defending today free trade I mean and nobody's defending free markets and the fact that we subsidize and regulate and control all of that is antagonistic to Rand's view of government and the fact that there's an erosion in America today of the separation of powers of the world of the presidency and versus the world of Congress versus the rules of the courts that the presidency is becoming bigger and bigger and bigger and more and more powerful all things that she would object to as the founding fathers would object to and there's no real movement I mean why is the president why can the president of the United States impose tariffs unilaterally without Congress that's you know that contradicts the spirit of the Constitution it's because Congress doesn't want to have make those decisions so it's basically written laws that say we're not involved in tariffs the president can do it or the president could do it for national security reasons without defining what national security is so that now Trump is saying that importing automobiles is a national security threat to the United States I mean it's insane so even though many people within Trump's administration have read Rand will say they really love Rand they don't govern that way and that was true in the Reagan administration that was true in the Bush administration many people in the administration read her, loved her didn't matter it wasn't actually applied in the way they ran government they're all statists they're all growing the size of government growing the power of government growing their interference in our lives and as long as that's happening she is not having the kind of influence I would like to have we are running out of time if there's any last question yeah I seem to have the perception that reason is not enough let's say you have a few individuals where reason has basically gained a priority in their lives is there a threshold or a point after which they begin to impact society and we actually have a push against government for example is there some kind of threshold based threshold after which you have so many people who are reasonable that actually begins to impact politics sure I think there is but I think it's not a numbers game it's who these people are so what changes the world is the minority and it's usually the intellectual minority so it's the intellectuals advocating for reason it's the intellectuals advocating for freedom so it's when you see the intellectual world dominated by people who believe in freedom who believe in individualism that's when you'll start seeing political change it doesn't have to be the majority of people because sadly majority of people are followers but who do they follow whether we like it or not they follow in a sense the writers of the New York Times or the professors at the universities or the people who show up on television the intellectuals who show up on television the intellectuals lead a culture they drive a culture the left took over America's institutions through the universities through the intellectual elites they became the professors but ultimately they became the lawyers and the judges and then ultimately the politicians but it all starts at the universities and then of course once you have the universities all the other people who go into journalism were trained in the universities and all the people who go into all the intellectual professions are trained in the universities and as long as you don't have a mechanism to train intellectuals and as long as you don't dominate the intellectuals you can't have real progress you can't really move a culture whether we like it or not intellectuals a culture and the intellectuals are overwhelmingly left and therefore even the right in America is left, I mean Donald Trump is a Democrat he's not a Republican, not a traditional Republican everything on his agenda is Democrats or Bernie Sanders thing anti-immigration was always the left the Democrats were anti-immigration, why? because they didn't want cheap labor competing with unions so that's a left, now it's also combined with a nativist type xenophobic nationalism which is on the right but it's a combination but you think about policy after policy he is, and it's no accident that he usually wrote a Democratic he was a Democrat, he was a registered Democrat until a few years ago so most of the policies of the Republican Party when they actually are in power are left that's because the whole intellectual world is left of center there's very few intellectuals on the right I mean there's some conservatives and some neocons and some paleocons but they are relatively weak in comparison, what is it 90-something percent of in certain fields in the humanities are leftists and not just slightly left of center we're talking about way out there left right and lots of make progress in a world where the intellectual space is so dominated by one political or more deeply, one philosophical view of the world and the right is being impotent when it comes to dealing with that and the whole political map is shifted left constantly both on social issues which often is being a good thing not a bad thing and on economic issues because the intellectuals control it so to me reason is the key but so we need to overcome the post-modernists and all the variety of different anti-reason ideologies that exist at universities and campuses define reason properly because I think there are a lot of people who claim they're for reason but are not really for reason they're not really for evidence facts, logic, you know, reality and when that becomes this idea of the importance and significance of reason the way in which we know about the world and coupled, when you couple that with individualism when that is the dominant intellectual that's what dominates the intellectuals in terms of the ideas then it's just a matter of time and the world will change but it's going to take a long time or way behind Thank you very much for your work for offering the essence and of course to Akizaka-san for outlining