 All right. Thank you, Pata. And thank you to our panel, to the panelists. I really appreciate everybody's thoughts about this topic. And I think it's fantastic. I mean, one of the really amazing things about Georgia is that an event can be organized about the virtue of selfishness, and people can discuss it respectfully and in an interesting way, when an audience shows up, because in many places around the world, you say selfishness and what happens? People go, oh my God. That's horrible. My mother told me, and I think your mother's taught you, that selfishness is really, really, really bad. What is good? What does it mean to be good? To be selfless. Always think of other people first. Think of yourself as last. Now no mother believes that, because she wants you to be successful. And to be successful, you have to think of yourself. At least some of the time, right? But every mother tells you this, every preacher tells you this, no matter what religion you're part of, and every single philosophy professor tells you this. Think of others first. Think of yourself last. Indeed, if you really want to be virtuous, if you want to be a saint, never think of yourself. Suffer for others. That's the ideal, right? Ever been to a museum and you see paintings of saints? Ever see one that's happy? No. They've got arrows sticking in them usually, right? And they're dying and they're suffering, and that's what makes them a saint. What makes them virtuous is the suffering. So we live in a culture where the idea of selfishness is horrific. It's really negative. But what does selfishness mean? What does the word actually mean? Because if selfless means, what does selfless mean? Don't think of yourself. Think of others. What does selfish mean? It should be the opposite of selfless. Think of yourself. Take care of yourself. It's not what you'll find in the dictionary. What will you find in the dictionary? It'll say, think of yourself at the expense of others, exploiting others. They've connected the two. They've connected the idea of thinking about yourself and your own being, your own happiness, your own success, with exploitation of other people. And look, nobody wants to exploit other people. Yes, exploiting other people is evil and bad. But I wonder if we can separate those two ideas out. Can you think about yourself and about what's good for you? And I'll get to what I mean by good for you in a minute. But can you think about yourself and what's good for you without coming to the conclusion that you need to exploit other people? Iron Man says, absolutely. I say, absolutely. The two are not connected. Indeed, I would argue that exploiting other people is not good for you. It's actually harmful to you. You suffer when you cause, when you do harm to other people. Real harm, violate the right somebody mentioned in politics, lie, cheat, steal. Not good for you. We'll talk about why if you want. So to me, selfishness means taking care of yourself. And I'm all for that. I think you should all, every single one of you, take care of yourself. You know why? Because you're all you have. At the end of the day, it's all you have. Yes, we live with other people. And those other people might be very, very important to you. But at the end of the day, and as you get older, you realize this more and more, it's you. You're inside your head. Nobody else is inside your head. And indeed, you can't get into anybody else's head. It's your values. It's your life. It's your life. You're the one who's miserable or happy or sad. It's you. You're feeling it. You can have empathy towards another, but you can never feel what another person feels. You can only be you. At the end of the day, your life matters. Maybe not to other people, but to you. Because what else do you have except your life? So selfishness fundamentally means taking care of self, taking care of you. And what is taking care mean? Well, it should mean living a great life. I think somebody said, maybe Anand said, you only have one. And hey, it's short. As you get older, you realize that too. It's short. Goes by like that. And you never get anything back. Like sometimes I make a mistake and I go, maybe in my second life, I won't make that mistake again. But then I realize in the second life, if there is such a thing, I might return as a cockroach. I don't believe in a second life. I don't think anybody here really believes that we come back and we get a second chance at things. One shot. Don't you want it to mean something? Don't you want it? Everybody wants. Everybody wants. No, not everybody. We'll get to that. Don't you want it to actually add up? Don't you want to actually feel good about it? Don't you want to be happy? You'd think everybody would want to. Well, that's selfish. You want to be happy. Happy for whom? For you. That's selfish. But I don't think, as Rezzi said, I'm going to disagree with Rezzi, I don't think we're all selfish. Because I think selfishness is hard work. I think it's really hard work to know what's good for you. I think it's really hard work to figure out what will make you happy. I think it's hard work to know over the life, over your whole life, how to live a good life. And it's particularly hard in a culture and a world that tells you don't do it. Because you're going to be selfish and that's bad. So selfishness is, in my view, an achievement. We should strive towards. It's something that we achieve by committing ourselves to certain principles that lead us to live a good life. Because, look, we have, there's a million things we could do. There's a million ideas we could hold. There are a million actions we can have. Every time you make a choice, you could make any other choice. You could make lots of choices. I'm a big believer in free will. You make choices. You get to decide about your life. You get to choose the path you're going to take. There are lots of paths. How do you know which one's good? How do you know which one's right? How do you know which one will lead to happiness and which one will lead to destruction and sadness? Well, you could say I'll just try them all and see which one works and which one doesn't. Wouldn't you want a roadmap? Wouldn't you want a guide? Wouldn't you want some principles, some ideas of what can lead you to achieve happiness, to achieve success, and which ones are likely to fail? Because we have a lot of human history. We have 100,000 years, or we suddenly have, you know, 4,000 years of written records. We have, what, 8 billion people on planet Earth? We should be able to identify what seems to work for living a good life and what seems to not work for living a good life. Avoid the things that don't work and do the things that don't work. We have a ton of empirical evidence. We also have knowledge about what kind of a being human beings are. Like all animals. But what particular type of animal? What makes humans human? What's that? Kindness. Have you ever seen dogs and cats? They look like they're pretty kind. What makes human human? What makes us different than any other animal? Intelligence. Now what do we mean by intelligence? What can you do that a monkey cannot do? We can communicate. What makes it possible for us to communicate? We can make sounds, but what makes it possible to communicate? Language. What makes language possible? We're a unique being. What makes it possible for us to communicate that they have language and to think? We all think. I think, you think. I assume you think. Again, you use language to think. But all of that depends on our ability to abstract, our ability to create abstract concepts. Our ability to take the stuff that we see in reality and form it into concepts, words, language, and then even when there's concepts we might have, I'll give you an example. Animals don't have a concept of chair. They bump into stuff and they know kind of how it works, but they don't have the idea of a chair. And what's interesting about the idea of a chair is you're sitting on one kind of chair. That over there, that black thing is a chair as well. When I say chair, you could probably come up with a thousand different chairs. And we all know they're all the same. They're all the same. And they all serve the same function. And that's something only human beings can do. We have the ability to conceptualize. We have the ability to abstract. And then we can take a chair and we can take a table. And what do we call those? Furniture. No animal has a concept of furniture because that's complicated. And we can go all the way to love. Well, that's complicated. Having a concept of that happiness or virtue. What the hell is virtue? Can anybody point to virtue? Not like chair, right? This is human intelligence in action. This is a capacity to reason, a capacity to think. Like if I take all of you and I put you in the middle of the Amazon jungle and take all your clothes, take your iPhones. I know that really hurts. The clothes is okay, but iPhone, God, can't take away from my iPhone. How are you going to survive? Because not a single one of you here has the gene for hunting. I can guarantee that. You don't have a gene for farming. You don't have a gene that tells you what food is poisonous and what is not. Because most animals do. They know it's instinctually exactly how to hunt. They don't go to school. They observe maybe their parents, but they know it's genetically programmed. That's the beauty of evolution. It's genetically programmed every single species out there to do what they need in order to survive. Except for one species, they forgot to give us the programming. Human beings. We don't like programming. What are you going to have to do? Use your mind to figure out how to maybe, like, you know, if you look around the room, if you look around the room, this is a pretty average group of human beings. If you look around, you can see how weak, pathetic, slow. Anybody have claws? No claws. Fangs. You know, fangs are the big teeth in front. You know, you try running down an animal and biting into it. Can't do it. What do we do? How do we kill an animal to eat? We throw things at it. Try throwing a stone at an animal. Good luck. So what do we do? We build weapons. We build traps. We organize in groups and go hunting together and have strategy. What are all those things require? Intelligence, thinking, reasoning, figuring stuff out. And then if we need even more food, then we discover agriculture. Somebody mentioned the richest man in the world. Imagine a long, long time ago some guy or girl discovering that if you drop a seed on the ground and you water it once in a while, a plant will grow from it. You know, that was a major discovery on the level of Einstein and Newton and all of those because to you it's obvious and to me it's obvious because we were taught that. But somebody had to figure it out and then somebody went and said, okay, huh, I wonder if I can do this on a big scale. I wonder if I can create agriculture, right? Lots of seeds and grow food for everybody. That was the richest man. My guess is that the person with both those things, what was done to him? Probably burnt at the stake because that's what we do with great innovators typically in our past at least. We're a little bit better today. But we used to, anybody who came up with a new idea? Burn them. We're a very conservative species, right? So reason, reason is the way in which we survive. So if you want to be selfish, i.e. you want to be the best human being you can be. If you want to be, pursue your own interests, then the number one virtue you should follow is to use that intelligence that evolution has given you. To use that intelligence that you have in order to figure out how to live. In order to figure out what to do. In order to make choices in life. Kindness will get you into a lot of trouble. If you're just kind without discrimination. Some people deserve kindness with all due respect. Some people do not. How do you tell? You got to think about it. You got to figure it out. Who's my ally? Who's an enemy? You don't want to be kind to the enemies. They won't treat you well. So to be selfish requires thinking. A lot of thinking. Really focusing on what is truly in the long run good for me. How should I behave? Who's my friend? Who's my enemy? What should I do with my life? All of that you're not going to get from feeling. You're not going to get that from your parents. Usually your parents want what they want for you. How often is that what you want for you? Don't always align. It's not always the same. He wanted me to do one thing. And he bugged me for years and years and years until he realized that he was not going to get it. He was a doctor and he wanted me to be a doctor, of course. Right? Until the day I graduated from college he said you could still shift switch majors and become a doctor. I'm not going to be a doctor dad. But I could have said I'll make my dad happy. I'll be a doctor. And I could have gone into medicine and I'd be miserable today. Because it wasn't what I wanted to do. He would have been okay. Ultimately he would have been miserable too. Why would he be miserable? Because I assume he loves me and he would have seen me be miserable. So he would have been miserable. Doing what other people want you to do is not going to lead you to happiness. You need to discover what you want to do. So use reason, use your mind. Second, you got to be productive in life. We as human beings, we need to act in the world in order to survive. We need to apply our mind to the problem of survival. Food does not drop as manner from heaven. We have to create it. We have to produce it. So have a career. Have something you love to do that is also rewarding enough that you can live. Something that you love and that you can make a living off of. And again, you have to find it. Nobody can find it for you. There's no test that will tell you what you should do. There's no parent or cousin or guide who can tell you what you should do with your life. Only you can decide what you should do with your life. And it's an important decision. And somebody said try different things out. I think absolutely try different things out. Because it's hard to tell what you want to do in life. Some people, I know people who from the age of 6 they know exactly what they want to be. I want to be a doctor. There was a period where I really did want to be a doctor. I think we all want to be what our parents are at some age. And sometimes we change our minds. But most of us don't. We get to be 18, 20, 21, 22, and you don't exactly know what you want. You kind of have some vague interests. Go out and experiment. Try different things. See what works and what doesn't. Where you, your passion is manifest. Where you really enjoying yourself. And where there are real opportunities to make a living. That's taking care of self. Taking care of the material necessities of life. So use reason and be productive. People who are not productive who don't have a productive activity to engage themselves in their lives are really happy. You know, there's a statistic that says that when people retire from work. Unless they pick up something to a place that work, like a hobby that they really, really love, they die pretty quickly. Because they lose energy, that excitement about living. Retirement will kill you. My intention is never to retire and to live forever. But I do, I can't imagine retiring. I can't imagine not doing what I love to do. So find something that really motivates you, that excites you. You're going to do your job. Most of your time in life is going to spend at work. So don't make it work. Make it something you enjoy doing. Make it something you're passionate about. Make it something that motivates and excites you. That's what it means to be selfish. It means to motivate and be excited about living, about life. So think, principle one. Do productive work, principle two. And I'd say just a third one and then we can talk about some of the objections. Really take your life seriously. Now, there's another concept in the world in which we live that is considered a vice that I learned from my friend consider a virtue. And that is pride. Pride is one of the seven deadly sins. I consider it one of the seven virtues. What does pride mean? Pride means that you take your life seriously. Pride means that you dedicate yourself to being the best human being you can be. It means dedicating yourself to excellence. Not excellence in a particular thing, but excellence in living. Excellence in the things that you do, the things that you're committed to. Don't wing it. Don't drift in life. Don't just accept the world go change it. Go change your life, your world, the things that you have control over. You can. You have enormous amount of agency over your life. Enormous amount of agency over the the world that surrounds you, around the world that you live in. So don't just accept it. Fight for the things that you believe in. Fight for the life that you want to live. Pride is moral ambitiousness. Again, like many things in life we accept in our culture that pride is a sin. One of the people I look to is Aristotle. Aristotle considered pride the queen of the virtues. The crown. Because it said take morality seriously. Take your virtues seriously. Take your life seriously. So selfishness to me is living the best life that I can live. Using my mind. Being productive. And having pride in my achievements and thus I think gaining self-esteem which I think is a requirement for human happiness. But you might say what about that exploiting other people? Isn't selfishness about lying, stealing and cheating? Well, let's think about it. Let's do a little thought experiment. Is lying good for you? Why not? Why isn't lying good for you? Like if I can you know, lie to my boss and you know and get I had a colleague when I was a professor at the university that he would regularly for every hour that he worked as a consultant he would bill them two hours. All the time he did this. For every hour he worked he billed two. Made a lot of money. Was he taking care of himself by getting two hours for every one hour that he worked? Why not? 50-50 so half the time it's selfish, half the time it's not. Anybody else? Is lying good for you? Cheating and lying is the same thing, right? Cheating. Teaching. How is he teaching? I said he billed the people he worked for every hour that he worked for two hours. That's lying and that's cheating. So let me give you another example. This is a true example, right? I know a guy who used to go out drinking with his buddies after work, right? A lot of guys do this. A lot of girls do this. He'd go out and he used to go home and tell his wife his wife said, where have you been? He said, you know, I worked late. My boss told me I had to work late and he was out drinking with his buddies and this happened once. Three times, four times, five times became kind of a regular thing and his wife was like you're working overtime all the time your boss is very demanding and he said, yeah, yeah, I know, it's horrible. So one day his wife called his boss got him on the phone and said what the hell, why are you keeping my husband late? And guess what the boss said? I'm not. So what this person did is he got a little bit of what would you even call it by lying to his wife? He got a little bit of less stress because his wife would have been angry with him if he said I've just gone out with my buddies and instead of that little bit of less stress now he got a lot of a lot of stress because his wife discovered that he was lying to her and what do you think their relationship was like? Once you discover your friend is lying to you, what's the friendship going to be like? I mean, I've got a rule if you lie to me, I don't want you as a friend friendship's over and that's sad and you know, if my wife lied to me regularly that marriage is over and I can tell you if I lied to my wife once that marriage is over, right? So is lying good for me? Not if I value my wife but that's not a white lie a white lie is yeah, but those that kind of lies that destroy relationships those that kind of lies that destroy your life now there are such things as a white lie kind of, even there I'm suspicious, if my wife you know, if my wife asks me how do I look in this dress which everybody asks a lot of people would consider it a white lie to say you look wonderful even if you don't think so I would never say that and my wife would be angry with me if I lied to her about how she looked in a dress if I thought she looked awful then she wants to know don't you want to know the truth if you don't want to know the truth by the way don't ask but you should want to know the truth lying is a self-destructive policy you're the one who's going to get hurt by it by hurting the people that you care about assuming you care about people and you're not going to have a happy life if you don't care about people lying always destroys you lying is the most unselfish thing you can do it's not selfish to lie because while you might get a short-term return the long-term price is much higher than the short-term return that you're getting the short-term good supposedly that you're getting it's not selfish and you can go after all these things exploiting other people exploiting other people is never good for you what's the best way to treat other people this is from economics right for those of you economics students what's the best way as a businessman to treat your customers lie to them, cheat to them, sell them lousy products how long will you stay in business not very long not so much if you lie to your suppliers if you lie to other people so what's the best way to treat your customers well maybe it's not a high quality product you know Walmart, they're places in the United States that sell very cheap products they're not a high quality market but they're not lying about them everybody knows the quality sometimes we'll need to pay a low price but not a high quality not everything has to be a Mercedes Benz I can buy a Kia and you know what Kia is not as high quality as Mercedes Benz but I get in a Kia exactly what I expect from a Kia I don't know if you know Kia the South Korean auto company the fundamental principle in economics is the principle of trade and I think it should be the fundamental principle of human relationships we trade value for value in economics it's simple I pay how much for this iPhone $1000 why do I pay $1000 for this why do I pay $1000 for my iPhone because it was more value to me than $1000 as it turns out a lot more value so I won because I got something more valuable and I gave up something less valuable $1000 and Apple won because to Apple this isn't worth very much they'd rather have the cash nobody lost that's how we should our relationships in every realm spiritual as well as material win-win no losers win-win relationships that's selfish it's selfish to want the people you care about the people you're interacting with the people you're engaging with to benefit when you benefit and indeed I think a healthy society is a society of win-win relationships it's the application of selfishness to how we live our lives in a social context when nobody when we interact with one another we're not trying to exploit somebody else because we know that exploitation will come back to hood us but there's a deeper reason why exploitation and lying is bad for us it's not just that you're going to get caught what if you could lie and never get caught why would that be harmful yeah you'd respect yourself less but more than that I started out by saying that the most important thing to be for being an egoist for being selfish is valuing your mind it's valuing reason which means valuing facts which means valuing truth which means valuing reality when you start faking reality faking the truth lying you're doing damage to the machinery you're doing damage to this computer it's not exactly computer in your head there's a term in computer sciences there's this phrase in computer science it says garbage in garbage out if you feed this mind garbage lies you'll get garbage out and this is the tool by which we survive and thrive so don't abuse it by lying, cheating by distorting reality by distorting facts when you cheat, when you steal from your employer you're basically telling yourself I can't really work and survive in this life I have to cheat I have to distort reality I have to abuse the facts you're denying reason basic means of survival you're destroying your own capacity to think and you're destroying your own self-esteem and by destroying your own self-esteem your own self-respect you're destroying your capacity to be happy so to me the idea of selfishness and all these bad behaviors that people associate with it is bizarre it's exact opposite I'm honest because it's in my self-interest to be honest and I know it is I don't cheat, I don't steal my self-interest not to cheat and not to steal I cheat people with respect because it's in my self-interest to treat people with respect I want to live in that world and I value human beings I understand the extent to which other human beings are valued to me but when I have an enemy I don't deal with them because I recognize that some people are a threat to my life and I don't want that threat I don't want something to hurt me now I know this is a super controversial issue we live in a culture that rejects this whole idea you never get taught how to take care of yourself really, morally, ethically anyway in our culture so I'll end by encourage you to learn something about this and the way to learn about it is there's a book it's called the virtue of selfishness written in Georgian one of the projects for the future it is in English I encourage you to read it or you can put egoism in Hebrew the title has egoism in it so you can translate the title that way which is fine everybody will misunderstand it but that's true in English as well it's not like selfishness in English it's a positive word sometimes what you need in order to sell a book is a little cognitive dissonance a little slap in the face challenge people put virtue and selfishness in the same sentence and they won't know what to think they might pick up the book out of curiosity and read it and think about it but I would encourage you to read books like Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead by Ein Rand which talk about these issues which illustrate these issues that provide you with heroes to emulate who are self-interested who are selfish, who are selfish in the proper sense those are available in Georgian and some of the other non-fiction by Ein Rand is available so I encourage you to read those I'll just end with this live with a capital L not a little L a capital L live the best damn life that you can live make every minute count count towards your happiness your flourishing make your life the one shot you have at it meaningful to the most important person for you in the world you don't make it meaningful for me or for somebody else make it meaningful for you that's a good life to live so in the end you look back and say I did it, I tried I made the best I'm happy about the life that I've lived I'm proud of the life that I've lived thank you all hi we already said being selfless is really bad but being too selfish is bad too so my question is how do we keep the balance how do we not cross the line do you think there's a formula for keeping the balance because I think balance is really important in everything so thank you so the question is selflessness is bad but can selfishness become bad as well can't you go too far with selfishness and how do we keep a balance between this so my view that is not my view my view is there is no balance my view is you should be 100% selfish but being 100% selfish means to really think about your life to consider what you want to do and in terms of other people to have great relationships with them because there's nothing more selfish than being in love love is the most selfish thing you will ever do you know imagine going up to your wife or husband before the wedding and saying I'm doing this for selfless reasons completely I really have nothing vested in this I have no benefit at all I'm doing this for you and only for you now what would you do if somebody came up and said that to you the night before the wedding I'd slap them and walk away no if I were going to get married again to the same wife I have now and you know today I'm more articulate than I was back then a long long time ago I would say I'm marrying you tomorrow for me you make me a better person you make me feel amazing about the world you make me feel amazing about life you make me better I'm doing this completely for me that's what love is love is how the other person makes you feel how you feel and hopefully they love you too so it's how you make them feel and you do things for the person you love why because you want them to thrive because their thriving makes you thrive because it's a win-win relationship so I don't think there's any balance here selflessness not thinking about yourself is death it's a march towards oblivion I'm all about life 100% all in about life 100% all in thinking about every step that I take how can I make my life better how can I live the best life that I can live right now, right here that to me is what selfishness is and again we're too caught up in the conventional view of what selfishness is selfishness means exploiting so we don't want to exploit but selfishness doesn't mean exploiting exploiting in my view is selfless destruction and death ok questions I don't know if it's working or not I don't know if it's me projecting or if it's the mic selflessness to be like terrible like to be seen generations generations have generations have generations now it works so now generations there's a reason like can to be selfless and what do you think about the consequences of this of society who lay you in this type who live like this without selfishness without selfishness well let me say that again I don't think many people are selfish I think most people are not selfish because they don't think they might look selfish because they seem to be doing what's emotionally pleasing to them but you know how you get into trouble in life how you really get into trouble in life and you probably all know this right if you do something and you screw it up like you heard a person you care about or you go to work and you screw up your job it's almost never the case that you say to yourself I thought too much about that and I made the wrong decision it's almost always I didn't think enough about it it's almost always I followed my emotions and therefore I got into trouble see the challenges that people follow their emotions and that look selfish because they seem to be pleased but following your emotions will cause you damage long term you know the most obvious example I can give you is a line of cocaine here but you know cocaine you know what it is there's a line of cocaine here and I snored it will I feel good oh yeah all those hormones all the drugs will kick in in my brain and I will feel amazing is it good for me no we know it's not good for you it's addictive it causes you to behave in ways that you wouldn't behave if you were in control if something feels good doesn't mean it's good for you to figure out if something's good for you what do you have to do think so A I think there's almost nobody selfish out there because very few people actually think through their life in the way that I would like to see them thinking through their life really taking control of their life and doing it you say that generations today are taught to be selfless yeah but that's always been the case it's like I'm much older than you and I was taught to be selfless and my parents they were taught to be selfless no generation has ever been taught to really take care of themselves now some places particularly free countries people tend to do it anyway in spite of the teaching you know freedom encourages people to be selfish in the healthy sense so I think what you need to do today and what we need to do forever is learn about these concepts figure them out and then apply them to our own lives it's not easy particularly given the cultural pressures but don't accept the common definitions of words just because that's how everybody talks about them think about what they actually mean and then I would encourage you to think about what your life actually requires and then develop the ability to explain it to other people but you know the culture is not going to change unless we as individuals change first so I know every generation thinks they're unique but you're not we all went through exactly the same things you did all the challenges that young people have your parents had as well when they were young you know there's some modern twists on it we didn't have iPhones we probably didn't have a cocaine quite as available as it is today but all of the temptations were there right so you've got to figure it out for yourself and live it and then hopefully inspire other people to live that way as well and look all of this is made much better when you're politically free and you have economic freedom economic freedom makes it possible because under authoritarianism of any kind your choices are constrained what you want in life is maximum choices in order to live the best life that you can live we got one here and we're going to come to somebody in the back oh yeah over here I'm going to ask a question that I'm always thinking about imagine you are the best economist or best politician in your country and as you are a selfish person and for example you are dreaming and dreaming of living in the United States for example or in the European country and in that case what's more important you are a country's interest to be in your country make a change like you are the best professional in your field we know that Georgia is the most important field is economics you are the best economist you can make changes here but also as a selfish person as a dreamer that you want to live in New York for example and this is your childhood dream what's more important in that case living in London and making your childhood dream come true staying in your country and just developing your economy what do you think I'm going to say living in London look for all of us were born in a particular country and if the country is nice and friendly and we have family and we have people we like we're attached to that country you know there's a certain attachment to it and we like it and we'd like to see that country do better but the reality is you only have one life it's your life your life does not belong to your country it does not belong to the state it does not belong to the collective your ethnic group or whatever you want to define it it belongs to you your moral responsibility is to yourself not to your country not to your clan not to your tribe, not to the group it belongs to you and if your dreams means and your happiness depends on you going to London or New York or wherever it happens to be do it and don't become an economist become an economist because you love economics because it's it's really interesting and it's fun and you've got great professors don't do it for somebody else do it for you otherwise don't do it and you'll never become the best economist in the world or in your country if you don't like doing economics so do it because you like it not because there's some duty your country should not impose duties on you an ideal country is a country that protects you protects your rights and leaves you alone to pursue your happiness it's not a country that demands from you that sucks the life out of you now you're talking to an immigrant you're talking to somebody who left this country so that doubles your question I was born and grew up served in the army got my undergraduate degree in a university in Israel a country in the news right now for sad reasons and all my family is still in Israel and I left I left because Israel to a large extent when I was growing up demanded that I live for Israel I was not going to I wanted my dream was in the United States I moved to the United States never regretted it because it's my life and I love Israel and I go back to Israel and I go visit my friends and family but my life is where my wife and I live and my kids live, that's my life that's me it's not about some group and some collective and something beyond yourself don't look beyond yourself for values look inside yourself for values look at reality and you and how you can make the most of your life in this world yeah when did you realize you were a voice when did I realize I was an ego so I grew up as I said I grew up in Israel and I don't think you quite appreciate what it's like to grow up in Israel we've got a couple of Israelis here maybe they appreciate this but they're younger than me so I don't think they had quite the experience I had Israel when I was growing up was an unbelievably collectivistic place the only purpose you were born for was that you could jump on a grenade some way to save your fellow Israelis or fellow Jews you were just a cog in a machine to perpetuate the Jewish ethnic group forever that was your purpose in life every song every story everything that you grew up with was aimed at training you to be a sacrificial lamb to be a collective and I believed it I bought into it I was the most patriotic I was waiting for the grenade so I could jump on it and express my duty to the state of Israel and I was 16 and I was thinking I guess I thought these kind of thoughts and I was thinking I remember I was thinking why should I do this and one day when I was 16 a friend of mine was spouting these ideas that I thought were kind of weird and dangerous and bad and I said he was talking about capitalism and economics I was also a socialist because that goes together collectivism and socialism almost always go together and everybody in Israel this is the 70s everybody in Israel was a socialist you didn't know that anything else existed and one day this friend of mine was spouting pro-capitalist, pro-free market ideas and I said where are you getting this nonsense from what happened to you and he said you got to read this book and he had me a copy of Atlas Shrugged so the answer is when I read Atlas Shrugged I read Atlas Shrugged I argued with it I debated it I didn't want to believe it I threw it on the wall I yelled that I ran she wasn't there she was changed it took me a long time to get rid of that emotion that you have that you have to sacrifice you have to do what other people want you to do and you have to live for the group it took me a long time to get rid of those emotions but intellectually once I read that book it was over and I know some of you have read Atlas Shrugged and you know that kind of intellectual experience you have, it's life changing it was for me for I think hundreds of thousands of people in the world it is that life changing and basically she said why? she asked one simple question why? why should you sacrifice your life for the sake of the group and I had no answer for that I never heard anybody give a rational answer for that why should you sacrifice I can understand why I would fight for a particular country I'm willing to fight for liberty and for freedom I'm not willing to fight for a free country but I'm not willing to sacrifice myself there's a big difference between the two and it requires my understanding I'm not willing to demand that anybody fight for me unless they understand why they should fight I don't think a country should demand of its people to fight unless they understand why they're fighting and willing to do it one of the issues I ran really fought and was really passionate about in the 1960s this was a long time ago was conscription, the draft she was really against a military draft and I say this in Israel and to my Israeli friend conscription is bad, it's wrong if you can't raise a volunteer army to defend yourself you don't deserve to exist but if you're going to serve in the military it should be voluntary, it should be a decision you should know why you're doing it it should be a decision not treating you as a sacrificial animal to be sent off into battle for a cause you might not even believe in so for me it was out of the show changed everything any other questions? pretty much anything we go one in the back he's got a mic some countries like Russia for example they have a collector who said that you must die for example that it is voluntary and it's free but you have to find somebody who is not like that and they have conscription and they have upper hand they can crush you and destroy you so what can you do how can you do it yourself and how do you can fight what so I don't buy that I think a volunteer army would beat a conscripted army every single time because a volunteer army is an army of people who are motivated it's an army of people who know why they're fighting who know what they're fighting for if I'm going to be in the trenches with somebody I want to be in the trenches with people who volunteer to be in the trenches with me rather than people who are forced to do it and by the way one of the many reasons Ukraine is doing relatively speaking as well as it's doing versus Russia and Ukraine has conscription by the way as well right but one of the reasons it's doing better than anybody expected is because Ukraine is relatively free certainly relative to and Ukrainians know why they're fighting the Russians have no idea why is a Russian soldier fighting what are they fighting for for Putin's vision of empire how exciting is that for most people not very but you know what the Ukrainian is fighting for the Ukrainian is fighting for something very selfish his home his family his life now that is worth fighting for that really gets you energized that gets you excited and I would rather be with troops that are fighting for something they really believe in and there's nothing you're going to believe in more than your home, your family your life and that makes the best army and sometimes small armies beat big armies you know Israel is a great example of that they fought many wars always against armies much bigger than it and one of the reasons is for the Israelis war is you can see it right now war is personal you're fighting for your family your home and you know what is the guy from Egypt fighting for in Israel nothing he doesn't know some leaders decision to go conquer another land so I will take that volunteer army any day the founding of the United States the war of independence was a war fought by a very small group of people against the biggest military superpower of the time the British Empire who won that one right and the reason was one party knew exactly what they were fighting for and the other party had no clue they were in a foreign land far far away some of them were German mercenaries they didn't know what they were fighting for so I'll take that passion and that knowledge and the idea that I'm fighting for my life the idea of fighting for your values any day over a conscripted unfree army like the Russians have and look the Russians have no motivation they can see themselves and their colleagues dying for nothing nothing no value to be attained they can win what do they get nothing not freedom, not a better life nothing Putin gets something but they get nothing and it's why totalitarian regimes very rarely do well in war they always think they will they'll always win the Nazis will win they'll take over Europe they don't five years and they're dead it doesn't take long if the free world actually there's nothing good there yeah oh god what do I regret in my life you know, funnily not a lot you know, I never knew I would land up here even 30 years ago I've had many careers I've kind of gone from one career to another always I thought improving and getting closer to what I really love doing but I didn't get to do what I really love doing until I was 40 years old but every step in the way I had fun I enjoyed now I wish let me give you an example of something I kind of regret but it's hard to regret because the path of my life has been pretty good so I find it hard to regret when I thought about going to college so when I was actually 21 because I served in the military first in Israel you conscripted for three years so when I say conscription I know what I talk about because I was conscripted because I was in the military so I only got to make a choice about college about what to study at university when I was 21 and even though I had committed myself to be egoistic and even though I'd read Iron Rand and read all the books and everything I was still young and still very influenced by the culture in the world around me and by my parents and the world I grew up in going to study something like economics or going to study something like history I love history was unthinkable it was just not a part of the set that was acceptable you did medicine top and then you did science or engineering maybe law but that was a stretch but basically science engineering medicine that was the universe that I was given and I accepted I wish my choices were broader I wish back then I thought about going to study history or going to study economics or something like that that I landed up in history self-taught but even in economics self-taught because even when I ultimately got a Ph.D. and get into economics I got into finance because that's practical and that's more on the engineering side if you will I was very influenced by as we all are I think of what you're trying to break away from by kind of the option set created by other people for you you got to shatter that and the younger you shatter that the better you've got to determine what your opportunity set is not other people's but no not a lot of regrets you know we all have I could have done this with my kids that with my kids the things like that but nothing big in that sense I'd be married over 40 years 40 years now same woman it's important these days to say that so I've lived a good life and I'm doing something that I love doing and I think everybody can and it's what I hope to convey to you is that you can live a good life you can make it I don't know just to ask a question there we go why I don't think there's a sense in which you would be in contrarian but that's because if you really understand who ideas they are so I don't think wisdom captures it it might be wisdom but wisdom wouldn't capture the same thing because she wanted something to differentiate from selflessness she wanted something to differentiate from the ideology morality of altruism not altruism as being kind and nice to people in opening doors and stuff like that but the altruism altruism is a term I don't know if you have it in Georgian but altruism is a term coined by a French philosopher Augustine Comte and he said to be altruistic means you never think of your own interest in anything it means completing out of sacrifice for the other and she rejects that and she's looking for a term to contrast with that with altruism and with selflessness well what do you do you could do self-interest but it's the same problem it's not like anybody loves self-interest you could do egoism in Georgia no egoism that's not a good term so you need some term to capture the opposite of selflessness and altruism well take the definition of selfishness from the dictionary taking care of self while exploiting other people drop the while exploiting other people and there you have it so look to her essay she said I put this on a title in a sense how did she phrase it because because I know the reasons you'll object to it and that's what I want to challenge and the reasons are this pervasive morality of selflessness and altruism so you need a moral concept to oppose it and selfishness is as good as any and there's no better word if I say I'm not going to use selfishness I'm going to use gibli ju gibli ju is everything that I said selfishness was everybody's going to object to gibli ju very soon gibli ju is going to be a really really negative word because the reality is the ideology of altruism and selflessness requires that we taint whatever word we use for selfishness as a negative thing because at the end of the day you know the only excuse see this is the trick they play on you I need both hands but I'll use this this is the trick they play on you conventional morality tells you you have two options in life you can be selfless and altruistic think about this first all your life or you can be a lying, cheating, stealing SOB a really horrible person that they label as selfish this is virtue and Einwand says wait a minute there's a third alternative and the third alternative is to be a rational person who thinks about their own war being first and always and as the primary and that doesn't mean lying, cheating, stealing and being in SOB is the opposite of that because all of that is actually bad for you but they want that dichotomy they want to keep it that way because otherwise how do they fight this wisdom as you called it very hard to fight wisdom so what do you do to wisdom if you're not going to fight it you make fun of it you distort it, you pervert it you storm at it you make it seem like a horrible thing and that's what they do to the concept of selfishness and the concept is not new Aristotle Aristotle's morality is about what is it about the common good the public interest no Aristotle's whole moral theory is about how to live the best life for you how to achieve your happiness how to achieve your fulfillment and it's Aristotle that altruism of selflessness has rejected for 2,000 years and what Einwand is doing is resurrecting in a sense of the Aristotelian idea of you as the purpose of morality morality as the methodology by which you achieve your personal happiness and you do that by thinking about what leads to happiness my happiness and by the way the principles are universal the concretes might be different for each one of us but the principle reason, productiveness, pride that's universal every human being on planet earth it's not an issue of place culture it's what makes us human