 Welcome to the Student Society's Focus Week, the Hidden Public Sphere. My name is Yuri Kozi and I'm the host tonight. Every semester, Student Society chooses one topic to fill up the entire week. This fall, we decided to talk about views which are not well present in region public debate. And some of the views are those that you can definitely disagree with or cannot be very at odds with. But at the same time, we still believe that it's very good to discuss them, because it's very easy to disagree with the views that you never discussed. Therefore, tonight we are going to talk about the relation between morality and welfare states. Many Norwegians believe that or are proud of welfare states, brown cheese and a national costume. While to latter things you can hardly accuse of anything. The former, the welfare state, meets a pretty strong criticism. Unlike the people who can be immoral or unjust, a state can be based on immoral or unjust principles. I am Rand, a American philosopher and writer who stands strongly against welfare states. And tonight we have a privilege to learn more about her views. Our tonight's guest is Jaron Brook, an executive director of Iron Man Institute in the United States and one of the champions of Iron Man's views. He will hold the lecture for 45 minutes, then after a short break, we'll have a Q&A section open. In order to let anyone to stick out, we'll limit all the questions to two and a half minutes. Please keep in mind. And now, let's welcome Jaron Brook with our warmest applause. It's a real privilege to be here. Thank you all for coming out on this rainy night. So I've got a tough task before me. My task is to critique the welfare state in a country that loves the welfare state. In a country that seemingly, I would argue at least, the welfare state has been an enormous success. A country where people are living relatively wealthy lives, where people seem to be enjoying these wealthy lives. A country which seems to be incredibly successful, so why critique it? Why not emulate it? Why not copy it? I'm going to suggest tonight that there may be two reasons that I don't want a welfare state. I don't want other countries to copy what you know. One, because I think, ultimately, economically, it is suicide. And two, I think morally, it is wrong. It is immoral. Now, I'm going to spend most of my time on the morality case, and I have to admit in advance, I'm not an expert on Norwegian economy, but I want to hit on a few key ideas about the economic case for against the welfare state. Because I think that leads, importantly, to some more ethical implications. So you Norwegians are pretty lucky, right? You sit on a massive reserve of oil. You have access to the latest, greatest technology to get that oil for the deep waters of the North Sea. And you've been milking those revenues for years. And you'd be smart about it. You have to give me credit, right? You'd be smart about it, as compared to other countries that have had been lucky at times in their histories. You've put a lot of the money aside. You've got this massive sovereign wealth fund that is accumulating huge quantities of money. I think the last number I saw was something like $800 billion, but who knows what it is at any given point in time. So the success of the Norwegian system is, in my view, from an economics perspective, to a large extent an issue of luck. Luck that your neighbors, for example, in Sweden, have a hand. So their welfare state basically went bankrupt in 1994, and they've been frantically, over the last 20 years, trying to unwind it, trying to undo it. You are so lucky, as are your Swedish neighbors and your friends in Denmark, that there was a period in your history, a long time ago before you guys were born, that Scandinavian countries were indeed not welfare state countries. They were quite capitalist and quite free, in which a lot of wealth was created. Massive amounts of wealth created. I know a little bit more about Sweden. But Swedish companies were some of the most dominant, most successful companies in the world during the late 19th century and early 20th century. And massive quantities of wealth were produced. So that when the shift to socialism happened, or to welfare, we don't like the word socialism, I guess, when the shift happened in the 50s and 60s and the late 50s and 60s, there was a lot of money to redistribute. There was a lot of wealth that had been created during a period of free markets during the pre-welfare state. And, you know, it was redistributed freely in the 60s and in the 70s. And as I said, by the time 1994 came around, that money ran out. And Sweden was basically in bankruptcy. Indeed, if you look at the top corporations, top businesses, top producers, top creators of industry in the world today, you do not find that many Scandinavian companies anymore. Particularly now with Nokia, which was something like a fifth of the Finnish economy, one company having kind of crashed and collapsed. So you'd be lucky because you have oil, you'd be lucky because you had a period in which you were free to create lots and lots of wealth. I think Sweden discovered the wealth that was accumulated in the past was gone. And then of course the question is what's going to happen to your oil. Oil prices are going down. North Sea oil is relatively expensive. You are going to be facing real problems. And it's a real question of how the Norwegian economy adjusts and whether the Norwegian economy is structured to adjust to lower production of oil to a situation where you're not getting oil profits on a large scale to be redistributed. I also find it ironic that the reason you can make so much money off of your oil is because other countries around the world are not welfare state countries. That other countries around the world have chosen economic systems that would distribute a lot less wealth than a far less socialist and therefore growing far faster than you are and therefore have a huge demand for that oil that you produce and therefore you benefit and therefore you can redistribute and pretend that you have a model that fits everybody in the world. It doesn't even fit you. You're dependent on other people being capitalists to some extent or another. Over the last 30 years you'll be massively dependent on the fact that Asia has abandoned systems of egalitarianism, has abandoned systems of socialism in favor of a strong emphasis on market systems whether these are the Asian Tigers initially or China in the last 20 years. That's what has given the oil price up. That's what allowed you all to become rich but there's nothing here with what you did. It's luck. Luck's good. You don't enjoy it while you can. But you should be aware that it's rare that luck is sustainable. Luck runs out and you need to be prepared for that. So what is the fundamental kind of economics of a welfare state? Take the people who produce the most, who work the hardest, who create the most value, tax them as much as you can with the hope that they won't stop working hard and producing a lot. In order to distribute their wealth, distribute their money to people who either can't produce anywhere near as much or won't because they're lazier for some of the reason I don't feel like it, won't produce as much. And it's dependent, of course, economically on the idea that some people will continue over time to produce more and more in spite of taxing them more and more that they will continue this behavior, which is very, I don't know, counterintuitive. You know, the harder you work, the more it whip you. At some point, people are going to wake up and say, hey, enough? I mean, my guess is that's already happened in much of Scandinavia where the best, the ableists, the most productive have left. Or they're just not working as hard, not working anywhere near their potential, not producing or creating anywhere near what they could. Because why? When it's just going to be taken away from them. And given that you have massive negative incentives in any kind of redistributive economy, negative incentives to work, negative incentives to produce, and of course the flip side is you have very positive incentives not to work, not to produce, not to really engage in activity that is required to sustain kind of the high standard of living that we've all become accustomed to. So, you know, Norway today has a very high cost of living because everybody expects a very high salary because you can afford right now very high salaries because of the oil, not so much in Sweden and even in Denmark. You have lots of sick days, double many other countries in terms of sick days. Because why work? You get paid the same amount. And it's legitimized. The second you're not working is legitimized by the whole welfare state. The whole welfare state says, don't worry, be happy, we'll take care of you. And we'll take care of you at a pretty high level. So, why work? The negative incentives are immense. Norway is experiencing declining productivity. Worker productivity is a decline up. And the massive undue employment. People just achieving less than they could. People working less than they should or could be working. So, a lot less economic growth than what's potential. So, as rich as you might be, as rich as you think you are, you're a lot less rich than you could be. In fact, you're a lot less rich than a lot of countries that redistribute wealth a lot less than you do. The United States, for example. Now, the United States is not a capitalist country by far. It's a mixed economy. In many ways it's a welfare state. It's just less of a welfare state than you are. We redistribute less than you do. But by almost every measure, we're richer than you are. Which is not surprising, because all the incentives suggest that we live in bigger houses. We have more toys. We have nicer cars. I suppose a late income in the United States is significantly higher than in Norway. Significantly higher than Scandinavian states. There's just numbers. These are just fact, too. You can dismiss them all you want. And you can go into the research and discover that they're true. In real terms, the average, and I'm talking about average standard of living in this, the average is being pulled down in America in ways that it's not being pulled down by a four and a half million population of pretty homogeneous people. In the United States, the averages are pulled down, and the average is a higher, substantially higher than they are in Norway. But even more so, you know, if you look at states, they have a lot of Norwegians. Now, I don't actually know that this is true, because nobody's done research in Norwegians for whatever reason, but they've done research in Swedes. So people look at average life expectancy in Sweden. It's higher than America. But Swedes in America live longer than Swedes in Sweden. Swedes have a pretty high income. Average Americans have higher income. But Swedes in America have even higher income than average Americans. Happiness, there's a lot about happiness indexes. You guys seem to be really happy. Same thing. If you ask Scandinavians in America third generation, fourth generation, it doesn't matter how happy they are, they score about the same as you guys do. And it's not surprising. The whole idea of asking people how happy they are, it's predominantly a cultural phenomenon. And I can tell you, and I'm Jewish, I grew up in Israel. And if you ask people from my culture, if you were happy, we'll always say no. Because we're supposed to complain. It's a part of the culture. If you say you're happy, people look down on you. They look, you know, something's wrong with you. So another measure that measures that you think you're incredibly successful, that the welfare state has been incredible success, when you actually look at the numbers, when you actually get the figures, and you take away a lot of the noise around them, yes, you know, you're doing well. But economically, from a purely economic perspective, you could be doing so much better. For a highly educated population, for a population that was as productive, as innovative, as creative, as Scandinavian countries were when they were capitalist, in the year 1960, you're just scraping the surface of what you could be, where your life could be from an economic perspective today. And all in the name of equality, redistribution, and so on. And I'm not even, you know, and we could go on and on with this, but, you know, most innovation, let's take healthcare, for example, where I'm sure you pride yourself on your socialized healthcare. There's most countries that have socialized healthcare that do, and yet you're completely dependent for every innovation, for new drugs, for new techniques, for new medical devices, on the least socialized medical system in the world, which is the United States, which generates well over 75% of all medical innovation. If we socialized our system in the US, innovation would collapse, everybody would suffer, including you. You would, because you have less innovation. Offer the fact that the United States doesn't have socialized medicine. And good for you for freediving. I have no problem with that. It's just worth pointing out. So, two points I make on economics that will move to the ethical issue. One, you could be richer. You probably could be happier. You could be more prosperous. You could have more toys. And I'm not sure what you have is sustainable. Given all crisis, given the future, if the world economy starts, growth starts shrinking in China and other places, and all crisis collapse, I don't know if what you have today, if what you take for granted today, if this is sustainable. And I don't think that you have an exit strategy, because you're so committed to this redistribution of wealth. You're so committed to this pool of money coming in that you can massively be distributed on a regular basis. What happens if it goes away? And what happens to the mentality that is developed, this entitlement mentality when you can't afford to feed it? So, not sure it's sustainable. I'm pretty sure it's not. And you're missing out. It could be even better. But what is this welfare state really built on? What are the assumptions behind it? Because at the end of the day, nobody advocates, oh, I shouldn't say nobody, most people, most economists, don't advocate for a welfare state because they believe it generates the most economic growth. Most people know it doesn't. They don't advocate because they believe that the welfare state is not there to produce wealth. It doesn't do as well as free economies. We know that. That's a given, I think, in the world of wealth. So what does drive this desire for a welfare state? And I think at the end of the day, this is about ethics. This is about morality. This is about what we think is right, what we think is just, what we think is fair, not about what we think about money and how much money we're going to have and issues like that. It's about fairness, justice, morality. And what is it about morality? Well, what have we been taught? Goodness, fairness, justice, nobility. What ethics? What we taught ethics is about. From where we're basically, when this big toddler is growing up, what did our mothers teach us about being a good person? Well, she taught us, well, I shouldn't talk to you, I'll talk about my mother. My mother taught me that to be good, to be noble, to be just, to be a good person, moral person, you should always think of others first. You should think of yourself last. You should work to make other people happy. You should make be sure that other people are not in need, are not suffering, are not, and not think about the cost to you of helping them out, that the focus from an ethical moral perspective should always be on other people, how they are doing it, taking care of them. And indeed, this is what we're taught by every moral philosopher, by almost every moral philosopher, by all the preachers, all our religious leaders, and all our mothers. We're taught that the essence of morality is to take care of others. And this is the essence of the welfare state. The welfare state is based on this notion. There are people, we are all in reality in the real world who are unequal. Some of us produce a lot, some of us produce a little. Some of us work hard, some of us work a little. Some of us make a lot of money, some of us never do. For variety of reasons, we're all unequal. And as Morale tells us, in some fundamental sense, that's just not right, those who have stuff should be helping those who don't. Those who have stuff should be giving to those who don't. It's their duty, their moral duty, their moral obligation to sacrifice. And the welfare state is a way of institutionalizing sacrifice. Because the fact is that left alone, people don't sacrifice enough. We know this, they just don't give enough. I mean, there's a lot of charity that happens in the free market, but nowhere near as much as would generate the kind of relatively egalitarian state, for example, nowhere Sweden or Denmark are. What we need is the state to come in, and help us sacrifice more. And indeed we don't object to the state doing this. Or very rarely do we object. We encourage it. Because our mother taught us that helping other people is right, that sacrifice is noble, sacrifice is good. Being selfless is the standard of morality. And therefore what I should do is give to those people, but I don't really want to because you know that new iPhone 6 is coming out and I want to buy that or I want to buy a new car. And I know I won't do enough. So when the state comes to me and said, look, we'll just raise your taxes a little bit. That'll make you feel better because you're helping those other people. Then we say absolutely, and we vote for it. And it's self-perpetuating. There's always somebody who has less than you. There's always somebody who needs something. You are always going to be filled with guilt. Because what? You're living one life. You're living, creating, you're producing for you. And I'm giving enough. They come to you and they, you know, and it's fun if we all vote for it. In America, now again, most of my experience is in America, in America this happens all the time. We just had a referendum in California to raise taxes on rich people from 10% to 13% as an income tax on top of the federal income tax. And California's voted to increase taxes on rich people. And you'd expect rich people to vote against it because why would they want to increase their own taxes? And yet rich people overwhelmingly voted for it. Why? Because they felt guilty. These people over here need stuff. I have it. I'm not giving out of my own free will. So force me, that's okay. And that's the key to the welfare state. The welfare state is about forced sacrifice. It's about coercion. It's about taking money by force from someone, giving it to others. Now we vote for it, but it's still coercion. See, my view, if my neighbor has a problem, I don't know, he's sick and he doesn't have money to pay for the operation or he doesn't have food to feed his kids or whatever the reason is. He's short on something. He needs, he's in need. I believe he only has two options. He can come and he can ask me for help and I might help him or I might not, depending on what else I have going on in life. Or he can come to me with a gun. You know we just have lots of guns, I understand. Like Americans a little bit. And he can take my money, but those are the only two options. Now, when we're dealing with one-on-one situations like that, we all say, well, him taking your money is wrong. That's called stealing. And since we were this big, we were taught that stealing is bad. But then there's this magic that happens. Instead of actually pulling a gun on me and taking my money, he hires a third party to do it. Call it the IRS, I don't know what you call it, it's annoying. They steal my money from me and give it to him. Of course, there's a bike, there's a process in between where everybody votes to steal my money. And as long as the majority votes that it's okay to take my money, somehow we pretend that it's not stealing anymore. Something happened because we voted that took something that if we did one-on-one, we'd consider it stealing and made it suddenly something that's legitimate. But that's what it is. The welfare state from a moral perspective is a theft. The stealing of some people's income, some people's wealth for the sake of other people. It's not an appeal to some people's generosity and saying, hey, you want to help them? No. It's a direct appeal to the gun, to force, to coercion. In the name of morality. Because morality means sacrifice. And if you've got a lot and you have to give a bunch of it up, big deal, who cares? You're only doing what is right and what you should be doing all along. So the whole basis of the welfare state, in my view, is theft. It's organized theft, legalized theft. In the name of a morality of sacrifice. And the marcoed selflessness of sacrifice legitimizes that. Everybody says that's fine, who cares? Now it also has this whole redistribution of wealth. It has negative moral, I think, implications to everybody involved in it, as theft will. Theft is bad for you, both if you're the crook who's stealing the money or if you're the person who's getting mugged. All parties, in my view, at the end of the day, are worse off for stealing. The welfare state creates an entitlement mentality. A mentality that says, I deserve, give me. I don't think that's healthy for human being. I don't think it's productive for human being. I think it's hard to be happy. It's hard to be successful when you expect people to give rather than you do. Rather than creating, rather than working. It's an environment of envy. Because even in Norway, not everybody's equal. You can't be. Just look around the room. We're all different. There's no way to make us equal. No way to make us equal. I like to, I like to, you know, how do you make me and Michael Jordan, remember Michael Jordan? LeBron James, you probably know who LeBron James is. How do you make me and LeBron James equal in basketball? How do you make us equal? I want to be able to play one-on-one with LeBron James and have a chance to win. How are we going to do that? You're never going to train me to be as good as LeBron James. We're not equal. We're not the same. So the only way to put us on a basketball court and for us to get close to one another is to break his legs. Now, if you'd ever watched me play basketball you would know that that's probably not enough. You'd probably have to break at least one of his arms. Now, we find that unpleasant. Yuck, breaking people's legs. That's horrible. It's okay to take 50% of their money. That's fine. 50% of their money that they spent 50% of their time producing and making. It's okay to enslave somebody for 50% of his time for the sake of somebody else. That's fine. But breaking legs, oh no, we'd never be better. I'm not sure what I'd prefer. Having my legs broken once a year or 50% of my income taken away from me once a year. Think about it. I'm not sure. Money buys, money's life. Money buys you time. Money buys you life. Money buys you the ability to live and thrive and succeed. It's not just the pieces of paper that people are taking away from you. It's a time. It's a time living that is being taxed away from you. So this whole entire mentality produces a society in which these kinds of sacrifices are taken for granted. We shrug at them. We break people's legs and we think nothing of it. It also produces a society, as I said, because we're not equal at the end of the day, even after we try, even after we break legs. Of envy. Of resentment. If I'm still poor, might be told I should be as wealthy as everybody else and somebody else is wealthier than I am, then how dare he? How dare he? He owes me. My Mark Cote says that he owes me. Because he has more than me, because I need and he has, that creates a debt. And when you have that kind of mentality, that only creates a sense of envy and resentment and people be unhappy with one another. So, I know of this state creates a horrible environment. A horrible place to live, a place where people don't respect each other at the end of the day, because they know some of some of some some money to be taken from some of the civilians and everybody presents everybody else. The people whose money is taken away from is that the people who are getting it who are not working, the people who are getting it want more. Because the people who are being taxed have more. So, why not get more? Finally, I want to say something about the harm I think that the wealthy does to those who receive wealthier, particularly to the poorest who receive wealthier. So, I believe I'll elaborate this in a little bit more. But I believe that one of the ways one of the most important ways in which we attain happiness as human beings is by tainting self-esteem is by tainting a certain sense of confidence in our own ability to live, to be productive to take care of ourselves to be in this world and know I mean, I get a lot of sense of knowing I'm feeding my family. I'm working and I'm feeding my family. They are not going to go hang hungry because I can take care of myself. That gives me an enormous sense of self-esteem of self-confidence and ultimately I'm happy because of that because I know that in this world, I'm competent enough to survive. This is not a hostile world to me. I can do pretty well in it. What happens when you take somebody and you give them a check and another check and another check and you tell them, don't work don't produce don't take care of your family we're taking care of them so don't worry about it what you're telling them is that they're useless what they're telling them is that they're incompetent and they shouldn't have self-esteem because they never will have self-esteem because they'll never have that sense of taking care of themselves they are dependent and they know it and it destroys them now in the United States this is evidence because what we've done in the United States through this welfare system is created a class of poor people who are always poor not because they're not evil not because they can't produce not because they can't create not because they can't become rich but because we've made them dependent why should they try when they keep getting a check and what we've done is not just institutionalize them into poverty enough what we've done is institutionalize them into unhappiness we've institutionalized them into low self-esteem we've institutionalized them into a horrific way of life and that's what happens when you keep handing a check to people I mean this is parents who know this and I don't know how your parents are but at some point you gotta tell your child go and make it for yourself and if you don't then they'll never gain the self-esteem and happiness and success that a human being is possible to a human being is capable of human being is capable of so to me the fact that we deny a class a whole class of our fellow citizens fellow men and women the ability to work and produce and create for themselves you know it's easier to amount to them it's a crime against them and in my view the biggest the biggest victims of the welfare state the biggest victims of the welfare state are the ambitious poor who will never live up to their ambition who will never have the opportunity to exercise their ambition who will never have the opportunity to make something of their lives because they've been institutionalized into this process of getting checks so let me end by talking about an alternative my alternative we started late late okay so my alternative goes to morality because that's where the action is that's what's important people do what they think is white what they think is noble what they think is good and my question is this it's a simple question why should I be selfless why is sacrifice a good thing why is sacrifice noble why are other people's lives more important than mine why is it okay to break my legs why should I volunteer to have my legs broken which is what happens every day why is in my life mine and in my view ethics has got everything upside down morality should be about morality should be about and this was the view of Aristotle way back morality should be about how do we make an individual's life the best that it can be for him or how do he make it that way what are the principles to guide human beings towards happiness, prosperity, success how do we make individual lives the best that they can be what are the principles what we need in my view is a new morality a new ethic because this one is corrupt and destroying us and the more we practice it the more we'll destroy it what we need is an ethic of rational self-interest of a realm of guiding our lives to maximize our flourishing as human beings now quickly what would that require and what kind of economic system would that necessity what is the one thing that makes human value possible from the iPhone you're wearing to the building that we live that we're in right now that shields us from the rain and cold out there in Bougain what is it possible what is it that makes possible human life and certainly human success how do we produce these how do we make them where does it come from look around the room if you look at your neighbor you can look we're pretty pathetic animals we're weak we're slow we have no claws, we have no fangs we have no massive food to survive the skin in any of your winter us, those who say we're too tiger just on the physical level we're finished try running down a bison biting into it so what is it that allows us as human beings to survive and to thrive have all this wealth around us and have all these warm clothes and have the warm buildings and the heating be able to drill for oil in the North Sea and figure out what used to be black sludge ugly, horrible stuff figure out how to make stuff that allows for transportation and lighting and heat and everything else that sustains our civilization so it comes from up here it comes from our reasoning mind so if we're successful as a human being I believe one has to rank reason as what's primary value one has to be rational one has to live for oneself rationally using reason using logic and so step one is when I have to think step two I've already mentioned we have to when human beings to survive have to change their environment to fit their needs we have to go chop down trees and build huts or carve out mountains to build brick buildings stone buildings we have to go drilling in the North Sea we have to produce we have to act building stuff creating stuff and we are designed to build stuff, make stuff, create stuff and when we don't we suffer and this is why it's so crucial to human happiness that you as an individual go up and produce and make and build that you create value for other people and trade with them so producing working in other words having a career, taking it seriously is crucial for human happiness and then how do we treat other people well fundamentally I think the way to treat other people is extracting without force force is the one enemy of both reason and production force is the one thing that really destroys human life coercion people putting guns to one another's faces or backs or chests or whatever force is ugly force is wrong, we all know this at some gut level but force is destructive to the human mind it prevents us from producing because it prevents us from thinking so if we are going to deal with one another without force then we should deal with one another voluntarily instead of sacrificing to one another voluntarily which means if I sacrifice I give something and get nothing in return or something less valuable in return which means kind of lose insurance actions, I'm losing your window the other way around I like the iPhone way of interacting with other people I bought this iPhone for 300 bucks how much was it worth to me over 300 silent audience over 300 otherwise I wouldn't have bought it how much is it worth to Apple less than 300 because they make a lot of profit on this who lost nobody win-win voluntary win-win transaction trade is a way in which we'll be treating one another and trade is not just about material values trade is about friendship we trade in friendship if you give and you get nothing in return you're not going to stay friends very long love is a trade love is incredibly self-interested imagine in your wedding night going up to your bride to be insane this wedding huge sacrifice I actually get nothing from you you love somebody because they make you feel good because they make you feel great what could be more self-interested than having somebody who makes you feel so good and bonding with them it's a trade an economic system that is consistent with the idea of trade would be voluntary would be productive would be rational with using reason is a system where there's no redistribution of wealth it's a system of capitalism it's a system of free markets where people left alone to produce, to innovate, to build, to create to help their fellow man if they so choose to help their fellow man but then it's out of a sense of joy it's out of a sense of trade not out of a sense of obligation and duty and sacrifice it's a healthy, prosperous, happy society it's a happy society and if people love working and trading and remember trade is a win-win so every time we trade with somebody the other person is better off nobody's made the world a better place the world a better place in the last 30 years there's Steve Jobs and Bill Gates not because of their philanthropy that's insignificant it's because they traded with us and made all our lives better because they used their minds to create great products they were productive they built stuff and then they traded with us so I believe that capitalism that freedom that free markets ultimately produce a culture of individualists individuals who love their life who love their work who love other people who are producing and are willing to trade with it's a culture of love not a culture of sacrifice not a culture of some people working for others of some people being stuff taken away from them for the sake of others but the opposite a culture on which we live for ourselves we're happy, we're productive we interact with other people in a healthy productive way so today I challenge you to at the very least rethink your welfare state there are other potentially much better options welfare at the end of the day is a sickness it will destroy you economically but much more importantly it will destroy you morally and there is an alternative it's much more fun I hope you at least think about it than you are time limits and I would just get to raise your hand or just walk up to the line and ask questions but given my limitation please my name is Tolra Eversen and I'm a member of the student society first I would like to thank you for for your lecture it certainly is quite a different perspective from what we used to hear in Norway there's frankly quite a lot of questions I would like to ask you I would like to keep to the topic where I have some professional experience which is financial incentives and compensation you say that the Scandinavian welfare model due to a progressive tax system in its growth and productivity the top marginal tax in Norway is around 60% I think 27% what's that? top tax for income earners in Norway is around 50% yes it was around 27% so I would like to take you back to the 50s and 60s in the US when the top tax income earners was 91% according to your logic we should have taken the American economy back to the Stone Age but that didn't really happen in fact quite the opposite trend occurred this is one of the great areas of the American economy with consistent growth and the establishment of a consumerist middle class society so how do you reconcile these objective economic data with your world view that's my first question can I do one at a time to hold more than one so I think everybody heard because you spoke at the microphone so thank you in the 1950s the marginal income tax rate was indeed the top marginal income tax rate in the United States is 90% but nobody paid 90% the effective tax rate that is the tax rate that people actually paid was dramatically lower well under 50% of what the rich paid because it was 90% with loopholes this big and nobody paid 90% so even at a margin so you actually have to look at what actually people paid and you'll see it's dramatically lower so yeah you can have on paper very high rates of income tax the question is what do people pay if you create massive loopholes it's meaningless to have that marginal rate and part of the reason for lowering marginal income tax rates in the United States was not so people would pay less taxes was to simplify the tax code to get rid of the loopholes 1984 I think it was tax code was called the tax simplification act and while the lower marginal income tax rate the effective rates didn't change that much and some rates actually went up because he took away so many loopholes so that's one second why did the United States economy do so well in the 1950s I think that a lot of reasons for it but a big reason is that it was the only healthy economy in the world at the time because all the others had just been blown up and they needed to trade it had this amazing competitive advantage over the rest of the world it was pouring money investment money, investment resources it's Europe, it's Germany, it's France it's Japan and a huge advantage to itself and it was generated enormous returns on that advantage now I'm not full blowing up the world because I don't think wars create economic growth but they just create economic growth in particular places in particular times but overall wars are always bad for the economy they're always depressed the total economically so those would be the two things and the other reasons, the 50s were generally positive in certain areas America was less regulated in the 50s than it was later on and government controls and regulations intervention in the economy were actually less than they were later on so those would be my two answers to that are you going to follow up or get another question? I think you could follow up with one question and then if you have more you're welcome to come back we'll have the same topic here which is all the first thing but that's a big question thank you thank you for informative answer now I would like to turn to social mobility I think I missed a new presentation, you did touch upon what you call the ambitious poor and for me that brings up one question that is social mobility the US which arguably is more capitalist than the Scandinavian countries has one of the worst social mobility in the world and a person in the US one person is born into a poor family and one person is born into a rich family if the person from the poor family takes a college education and the person in the rich family does not take a college education the person in the rich family still has three times the chance of ending a bridge you didn't really address those kinds of topics so let me just say a few things about income mobility because statistics are fun you can do whatever you want with them and mobility is a good example of this when you have a when you have a compressed distribution of income like you do in Scandinavia that is the difference between the wealthiest is very small then mobility is very easy it's not doesn't take much because it's compressed I mean that's just a fact just numbers but we're not talking about policies or anything the numbers just it's very easy to go from here to here to here to here because the difference is small when you have much more inequality which we do in the United States it's a much further distance to get into the next quartile because the quartiles are more substantial just numerically social mobility independent of how actually better people's lives are going to be just the mathematics of the work that the United States will have lower social mobility than other countries just because of the mathematics there is amazing social mobility in the United States primarily through education I think that's true all over the world because they're educated in college then if they're not but a lot of the richest people in the United States today are not college educated so college is not a prerequisite they're not an requirement to engage Steve Jobs and many many others of the entrepreneurial group of wealth creators but look I'm not going to defend social mobility in the United States it's terrible and it's terrible because of the welfare state because of what I said before white people checks to keep them poor they stay poor when you provide them with incentives to get rich they become rich so the real comparisons should be take the United States when it was when it didn't have a welfare state so pre-1960 or even take it further into the 19th century the second half of the 19th century and there you see math and social mobility much higher than you have today in Scandinavia every single one of the rich so-called robber barons that we know today with exception JP Morgan all born good with nothing and they all became the richest people in the world JD Rockefeller is a good example of this Carnegie is a good example of this many of the others are as well by cheating is that a question I mean I'd be happy to answer the question about whether they cheated not by cheating by producing the United States went from a third rate colony in 1776 to the richest wealthiest most successful country in the world by 1914 not because of lying, cheating and stealing but by producing creating, building and trading and yes the progressives and the socialists and the welfare status of rewritten 19th century history to present the capitalist of the time as robber barons but that's where visionist history it's not true they built, they created you don't build a culture of lying, stealing, cheating and a successful edit doesn't work that way so back to your idea when you have capitalism when you have truth free market social mobility is far greater and another way around as well there used to be a registry a New York registry in the 19th century of the kind of the people that were in like the socialites the people were rich and there was so much movement in the thing that is people would be in it in the last day of fortune and then maybe a few years later they come back and they need to skip there used to be a saying from short sleeve to short sleeve in two generations short sleeve meant poor so you were poor, you became rich but then you left your money to your kids and they lost it all because they did it's very rare, very rare to find children of rich people in the United States say as rich if you look at the Fortune 500 today or the Forbes 400 or whatever whatever measure of richness very few of them are inhabited wealth most of it's entrepreneurial wealth most of them made it or created it and many people on the list from 20 years ago are not there anymore even today but in the 19th century this mobility was immense and even in the 1950s the error that you described is very good so Jean-Billy was much higher but remember the 1950s there was no welfare state in the United States the significant welfare state the welfare state we know today in America is a product of the 1960s it's a product of the Johnson administration of Medicare, Medicaid and welfare all 60s so in the 50s there was almost no welfare in the United States and the economy grew very fast and you had much more social mobility in the US than you do today thank you next one please how I am I actually almost forgot my question because that took some time if I just say something I used to study development and I know for a fact that I was studying in Egypt but it actually gave poor people money and those people went out to do much, much better than everybody around just saying but my actual question was that there's a lot of places including one which I used to live which was the poor island nation actually the island nation was born here if you have heard of it and in that place there's absolutely no government restrictions at all for most of the poor people living there most for the regular shop owners and stuff like that why aren't these people producing so much wealth but there's no welfare system no tax no real war or anything to bring them down why isn't the whole system just rushing these people that's a good question so why do we take these countries in Asia or elsewhere where there's no welfare system there's no real intensive regulations no controls it seems like they're all free why are they incredibly rich my system would suggest that they all be incredibly rich because it's not enough not to have things there's certain things you do have to have to become rich you do need government to become rich I'm not an anarchist you need government to become rich but what should government do that it doesn't do in Bali and it doesn't do in many of these countries you need a government that helps define and protect property rights and the rule of law these countries don't have a rule of law they don't have property rights indeed if you read a book he's an economist from I think Peru and he says one of the ways in which we could help poor people all over Africa all over the places in Asia and South America is by recognizing their property rights over their homes over the land that they cultivate if we just define that as property rights suddenly these poor people who don't have any capital would have capital land and buildings and they could then use that capital to become entrepreneurs to open businesses to create to build and create wealth and indeed if you take countries like Bali who are good poor and you give them property rights and you give and you recognize their property rights because everybody's got property rights if you recognize property rights and you have the rule of law they become rich and the best example of this is Hong Kong so Hong Kong 70 years ago was poorer than Bali there was a lot of fishing village with nothing there about 30, 40,000 people lived there today 7.5 million people live in Hong Kong it has more skyscrapers than New York City and per capita GDP which is a measure of income is as high as the United States higher than Norway they're richer than you are and yet they started with nothing they started like Bali but all they got, all the British did in Hong Kong when they took it over after World War II basically is respect property rights rule of law British law separation of judiciary from governments that's it, that's all they did and people swam people came from Bali they came from China, they came from Vietnam they came from Thailand they were free there there's a tiny little safety net there's a little bit of health benefits we're very small as compared to western countries and yet they're rich and they're thriving so it's not enough to have a negative it's not enough not to have welfare not to have this, not to have that you also have to have a positive which is property rights and rule of law thank you the next one hello I would like to take a look at the welfare state and you define it in a way I don't really recognise you say that's taken away money from someone and giving it to others but I would say based on that you said that it's not rational and it's not serving self interest but I would say that our welfare state in Norway at least, self-serve interest and the three reasons I have this the first reason we have universality we have these arrangements which gives not just some people but all people tax money back and that is based on that you can work some parts of your life, others you can't you can't work when you're a child can't work when you're like 80 or above if your health is in good life that's the first argument I said it's universal the second it's rational because it's a common solution instead of every person going around and finding their solution if I had a child and I'm going around looking for childcare it would take me more energy than having a common solution for it and the third reason is that it's a trade off I think it's rational because I for example if I have children I trade my work, my tax money for someone else taking care of my children and taking care of my parents when they're old and me doing it so I look at it as rational and serving of self-interest so no question but I obviously discreet with everything you said yes you can't work all of your life when you're a kid it's your parents' responsibility to take care of you if they can't they shouldn't have you when I had kids I had to think about it I didn't have kids for many years because I was a student I couldn't afford to have them I chose when to have children when I could afford to take care of them and give them the life that I think my children deserve so it's your responsibility as a parent to take care of your children and yes I hope to work until I'm very old but there certainly are conditions in which I won't be able to work I think work is an essential characteristic if you retire and don't work don't pick up a hobby they just play golf or whatever they die very quickly it's true you need a purpose in life you need a purpose in life to keep you going so I hope I work until I'm in my 80s but who knows but you know what I've worked since I was in my case since I was 21 I've worked if you didn't tax me if you didn't come with a gun and take half my money away you know how rich I could be when I'm 80 you know how good of a life I could have in retirement it's the welfare state that's denying me the ability to save for retirement and what does the welfare state do I'll take Social Security in the United States as an example of this pitching plan it takes 12.5% of my income it spends it it wastes it it creates a huge bureaucracy around it and then I get pitons whenever I type if I take in that 12.5% and put it in a simple bank account that returns the lowest interest you could imagine I would have more smartly and got a little bit better return and I could be rich that's just the 12.5% I'm not talking about all the rest of the income that is being taxed so from my perspective nobody can take care of me better than me I'll give you some other examples when you're young as soon as you get a job 12.5% is taken for Social Security plus you pay out of the taxes I want to start a business I don't want to save right now I want to save later I want to take a risk I want to be entrepreneurial I want to start a business you the government so whoever it is the majority has decided to know you know what's good for me you guys know how I should live this is pure paternalism it's pure authoritarianism you are telling me how to live you have decided that I have to put 12.5% to the government with that spending I have to pay 50% of my income so that you can do whatever you want to do and I'm not allowed to start a business and notice that if I'm upper class if I'm rich I can always borrow from my parents I can get it from somebody else but if I'm poor and I have to rely on my own income to start the business I will never start it because you are taxing all my money away so the whole system is rigged against against social mobility it's rigged against ambitious poor being successful the biggest victims of the welfare state of the ambitious poor and other people I care about I came to America with nothing so I know what it's like it's hard work and the welfare state makes it 10 times harder than it should be now finally daycare and all this other stuff I love my iPhone as you might have noticed you said a lot of my talks I didn't need the government to tell me where to buy this I didn't need the government to tell me what features it should have I mean just imagine if the government had designed it what it would look like it wouldn't look like this it wouldn't be as cheap and it couldn't do as many things as it does so the iPhone is compared to chug child care a lot less important if they can't do this why would I want them to do child care I want Steve Jobs to do child care I want to go and find the best child care I can I'm smart enough to pick an iPhone I can certainly pick a child care for my kids and the market will deliver me child care products that are far superior look much better and a far superior look much more beautiful like this than anything the government can produce so I don't want the government providing me that stuff because it's going to be a best mediocre if you have a comment we have some time alright so thank you next question please thanks for an interesting talk you gave us it's refreshing to see someone advocating more selfishness okay I want to try and I thought you talked about this trading we should do more trading would you say that if I give money to non-profit organization to do charity I sort of trade my money to get happiness in return it's selfish by me I sort of buy my own happiness it depends but if I value that it depends why you value it so remember that from my definition of being selfish was reason, was rational so if you've evaluated rationally which most people don't do if you've evaluated rationally yes giving money to this charity is good for me and therefore I should do it so that's too caveat yeah but that was just the setup but so if I get something in return to be giving money then what if we sort of get some professionals to help us distribute this money highly professional maybe I can be a part in deciding who these professionals should be let's maybe call it state or the government and these professionals sort of take some of my money in let's just say Norway many people feel that the tax the tax system is fair and many people sort of are happy to pay their taxes so this organization, the state takes my money and gives me happiness in return so wouldn't you say that this is a good way to provide myself happiness no so I'll tell you why, don't worry I'm not going to leave it as it is I always give reasons I disagree with my reasons but I always give them what is the state, what is government what is the sensual characteristic of government we have we do all kinds of things in life and then we have government what characterizes government what is government if all forms are government from the most authoritarian all forms of government, what unites them all what is the essential thing that government is about yes but it's not about because we distribute money all the time I don't know if you paid for let's say you paid me as an example I just heard somebody use I come to speak to you, you're paid 50 bucks and I'm charging all your money we've just redistributed wealth but that's not what we need by government government does something it distributes wealth by certain needs what is it that characterizes everything government does violence violence force government is force the sensual characteristic of government is force we can disagree but I have no right to pull a gun on you I disagree with the law that the government passes for example it's not managing my charity and I don't like how it's managing my charity I can't pull a gun, I can't do anything they pull a gun, if I want to withdraw my funds they pull a gun on me of course they are you try not paying your taxes what will happen to you you go to jail how do you get to the jail somebody pulls a gun on you if they don't pull a gun if they take you by a hand and they drag you, they use force every government is a monopoly over the use of force that's the definition of government whether it's Soviet government or the Norwegian government or the American government it's about force, the laws they write are enforceable by force I don't Afro can't force me to buy this but if this was made by the government and they decided everybody has to have one then they could force me to have one of these that's between the market which is voluntary, government which is force so if we believe in charity first of all charity by definition is voluntary and the setup you created was not voluntary anymore because you skipped a step there when you created voluntary you bought a government which now forces us to participate we don't have choices we don't get to decide I don't like that person I don't want to give him welfare I want to give them more welfare no we get to decide we the experts but what if I disagree with the experts for example I'm not an expert let's say in managing my money so I can hire experts to manage my money but if I disagree with them I can pull the money from them and give it to somebody else or manage it myself you can't tell the state oh I changed my mind please give me my taxes back I want to decide how to spend them because it's force now finally let me say this you wanted reasons I'm giving you reasons we care about minorities supposedly democracy we care about minority rights we care about the majority not overly inflicting itself on minorities we created all kinds of minorities ethnic minorities you know sexual minorities all kinds of minorities but there's only one important minority we never talk about that's me, you the individual what about if all of you want to spend money on project X and I don't I just don't want to spend money on project X I want to do Y what gives you the right because you're the majority to impose your will on me what gives you the right to take my money and put it into project X when I don't want to do it don't I have rights minority rights I don't want the majority telling me what to do that's my reasons this is sort of the nature of democracy and republics is that we can't we can't to a large degree decide on how to spend and how to use the money in the States but the republic sort of keeping in mind that we don't use force on people who don't want to sort of use the money and listen for that way but my point on this redistributing or buying happiness is that the state is just an arbitrary tool it's just a better way to reach more to reach more but if it was a better way that if it always involved with being more efficient and securing happiness then it would be a foundation in a sense kind of state foundation that would allow you voluntarily to participate or not because if you don't get happiness from it then it's not very efficient for you and therefore you would choose not to participate but the fact that it's not voluntary suggests that something else is going on here but I forget the first part of your question next question please if anybody wants to ask about democracy I'll be happy to comment I know it's hard do you think that the democracy in the western world for example is something we haven't chosen for ourselves some of you have but some of you haven't how should we choose our reform of democracy that's a good question the problem with democracy is it was made real I don't know, 2000 something years ago with I don't know I know a democracy let me finish and then you can comment I didn't know it was an order Socrates is walking on the streets of Athens and he's arguing with people he's challenging people's religion he's challenging their beliefs and the citizens of Athens get together and they say this has to stop he's corrupting our youth so they voted on what to do with it everybody's got a trial and it was a vote democracy and they voted to silence operatives but of course you can't silence operatives it's in his nature to argue so what must you do by a large majority they voted to kill him that is darkness I'm against that I believe you're right if we speak even if I and the majority of people find what you say or in this case what I say offensive and I know in no way what I say sounds offensive the question is in no way is it okay for all of you to get together and vote to kill me now we've accepted that the answer is no I hope I'm flying out tomorrow morning good place for you to have that possibility is actually not in no way not in no way because we put limits on democracy right we said you know what when it comes to speech majorities don't matter I what in no way actually matters oh it matters yeah we do well then it's sad for you it's sad for you it's horrible free speech why again because I should have a right it's my life I should have the ability and the right to say what I want to say and if you're offended by it then don't listen or go do something else but you have no right to impose your will on me just because you can convince 51% violence is never a solution even if the majority wants it even the majority thinks it's right and I think that's true a property rights just as much as it's true of speech if I have $100 in my pocket it's wrong morally wrong for 51% of you to vote to take my $100 it's theft it's stealing it's mine this is the wrong time I'm saying you have to limit democracy a lot it's both the democracy and also the result of free speech the result of free speech it's an occasion of free speech because there's no point in free speech there's no point in free speech if I can't offend you because we're never going to offend one another you don't need protection we're all going to be happy and blah blah blah the only reason I have free speech is to protect us when we offend one another when we offend one another you have a right to offend that's what free speech means and if you have hate speech you're negating the very nature of freedom you're negating and you're setting yourself up for authoritarianism you're setting yourself up for the vote to serve them it's a result so I think we can move to make it now I'll have to do something as a result 51% is gang rule you have to have a bigger gang than my gang so you get to rule over me I'm against gang rule I'm for freedom and democracy pure democracy is nothing it's authoritarianism thank you for your time thank you I don't think I'm going to thank you very much I agree with a lot of moral principles of white man and individual freedom and freedom from oppression what I would like to ask is it seems a little bit like you're trying to try to tell how people are going to live their lives when you say that it's not true to Malaysia you have to be productive can people just of course people are free and can they just let me ask you this if a doctor tells you that eating what is their consensus today in bad for you let's do this if a doctor tells you don't smoke it's bad for you do you find that offensive? no, you don't because he's an expert my view is in philosophy ethicists is to advise you not to force you not to coerce you not to impose on you any more than your doctor can coerce you into not smoking although the state is trying advise you hey by the way based on everything I know about the world based on all my experience of human psychology and philosophy and the nature of man being lazy is not good for you and that's what I'm saying on why this particular one I think you're asking a bigger question why is it okay for people to say this is how you should behave let's say just like a doctor tells you think of an ethicist whether I'm right or not is irrelevant right now I might be a bad ethicist the point is that there is a profession called an ethicist a philosopher of ethics whose job it is to say look how Aristotle do it being a coward is not good for you being reckless is not good for you you've got to find courage somewhere in between and that will build your character and make you a good person that's the job of ethics and saying this is the path to happiness this is the path to good life you don't have to follow it you can be lazy you can do whatever you want but this is philosophically based on our knowledge of human beings this is what needs to be good life to flow that's all that's what ethics does I think we should take it seriously because I think it's the most important subject in the world because it deals with the methodology of how to live well and I don't think there's anything more important than living well thank you ethics hello there was something about taxes you said that I just didn't quite understand because you admit that people vote for paying taxes even rich people vote for paying taxes but at the same time you correct me I say that as stealing and force just saying that it's guilt I think that's a little too easy because I don't feel that guilt most successful people in America I don't know about no guilt and I can give you lots of examples of this that they do and they vote but that's not the point the point is this I voted against the taxes they're stealing from me they're stealing from the 48% that voted against 52% are saying it's okay to steal from those people they don't want their money stolen if you want your money to be stolen from you then all you have to do is write a check I mean one buffer keeps saying you should be taxed more but if you want to pay more taxes all you have to do is write a check to the federal government they will take it they will cash the check so do it but what we do and we vote is we impose the will on other people we cause other people to do what we think is right and I think that's wrong I think it's wrong to impose your will on other people and in that sense I believe in a very shrunk down democracy you shouldn't be able to vote to take people's stuff you shouldn't be able to vote to respect people's speech you shouldn't be able to vote on these kind of things government should be very small should have very little to do because it can't take people's stuff it can't impose itself by force of people thank you next question no you said the welfare state is about fairness and justice it's supposed to be supposed to be so what kind of justice so what is justice and why sacrifice yourself I would answer to preserve the collective the community the individual man according to you and I think you're right wouldn't stand a chance against the safer truth tiger but man could win this fight through working together which is also the welfare state that would support the group most moral philosophers preachers and mothers seems to focus on the fairness of outcome for the good of the group could you elaborate on why you think your kind of justice is better good question because it gets to the core because I think that is justice not that my justice is better my justice is justice and yours is not justice so let's go to the safer truth tiger for a minute if we fought the safer truth tiger democratically collectively we wouldn't be here we fought the safer truth tiger by some individuals not everybody some people it's always somebody using their minds figuring out how to hunt them down figuring out how to build weapons figure out how to build weapons collectively we didn't figure out agriculture collectively we didn't even build this collectively now yes a lot of people built this but it took one person with a vision to make it all happen and he paid everybody else to help him do it through voluntary trade he didn't force them to participate he didn't force them maybe any Apple employees but you're forced you get paid well in a trade you bring your labor they give you cash what's that so kids in Southeast Asia they don't make these things but you're right poor people in Southeast Asia make them in China but yeah you should talk to those people you should talk to them I encourage you all to go to China and go to a Foxconn I think factory and talk to people because you guys never do that you sit here I'm sorry I do know it you guys sit here in middle class Europe in a comfy lifestyle and you judge the lives of these Chinese workers who are far better off working at Foxconn than they ever were before Foxconn existed but they're enjoying the fact that they cannot create something learn skills build skills and strive to middle class lives these people love what Foxconn is doing for them without Apple going to China these people would still be starving in a system that is collectivized China used to be collectivized and it killed 60 million people in starvation because of their communes because they collectivized farming what made farming productive in China the reason people can live in China the reason more people have risen out of poverty over the last 30 years than in any period in history is because they broke up the collectivization they got rid of their communes they created the equivalent of private property over the farmland and suddenly people became creative because they owned it and they made stuff from it collectivization is death every place where it's tried to its limit it results in death and that's what you're advocating for particularly in China and the reason I'm asking is because I just was in China and you can see what's happening you can talk to people and you can see the benefits of capitalism that is had in China unfathomable hundreds of millions of people who used to be starving a nominal class and yes from Norway it's very comfortable to sit back and look it over they say they're only getting paid 3 bucks a day but the alternative is to starve 3 bucks a day is a lot of money and while you're making 3 bucks a day you're learning a skill that makes it possible for you one day to have a thousand bucks a day a million bucks a day a day there's no limit social mobility in China is very high I forgot the question do you remember the question I have some comments for you democracy and capitalism there are two things that are I should actually introduce myself my name is Ang Hu Ba Klee Ganga I'm a master of history I'm an undergraduate in public science and now I'm going to make a degree in the art of science in the University of Oregon so that's it and also from my comments it's true that both capitalism and democracy is their own enemies and but I was I had a tie break a minute ago when you were discussing the democratic problem I think the democratic issue and the symbol of democracy is to considerate the minority if you don't considerate if you don't benefit the minority all the time you don't have any democracy I agree completely but there's only one minority the ultimate minority the individual and that's why I'm a strong believer in the system of governments founded in America we're in its founding documents what are protected not communal rights not anything, not community not sacrifice but the rights of the individual you're for rights and inalienable rights what does inalienable mean in a declaration it says all men have inalienable rights what does inalienable mean it means you can't take them away even by vote so majorities can't apply to this no matter what the majority thinks and you have an inalienable right to your life now what does that mean again John Locke, this isn't even American what does John Locke mean by that it means you have a right to be free to act, to pursue your life free of coercion because it's coercion that destroys life so you have a right to be free what does liberty mean you have an inalienable right to liberty you have a right to speak even if you offend you have a right to speak you have a right to think you have a right to have whatever religion you want whatever set of ideas you want that's what liberty means inalienable no matter what the majority thinks and you have a right to pursue your happiness pursue your happiness that is you have a right to act to work to do what you believe is necessary to pursue the values that you think will lead to your success and happiness in life free of what of coercion all of those are contradicted by the welfare state all of those are contradicted by a pure form of democracy the whole idea of individual rights is to protect the individual from the majority who is going to impose their will on them not allow them to pursue happiness not allow them to pursue their life not allow them to have liberty and we're seeing it all over the world you can't speak we don't have property anymore the state can take it any time we can't pursue happiness because they decide what's happening therefore they're going to manage it for you they're going to take your money for you they're going to break your legs hi history students and I love people like you because we're so extremely fundamentally different and I think that's extremely intriguing that's really good my question is I think that what you said about poverty in the United States and how they should pursue it for themselves instead of being handed checks is extremely intriguing but this only applies for some of the individuals what about the rest would a welfare state enthuse us can I rephrase your question like this what would happen to the people who can't who literally can't work can't advance, can't produce enough to make their life something first of all I believe that very very few people very few I have a very positive view of mankind I think people can't produce they can work if given an opportunity they will people have a mind to produce something of themselves and I think history suggests that that's the case when immigrants came to America in the 19th century