 to Yaron Brooks. Thank you. And it's good to be back in Osiris. So it's nice to see kind of the conference growing. Thank you, Rhea, for inviting me. So how many of you are pro-freedom? I'm looking for who's not raising their hand. All right, all right. So everybody, basically, everybody here is pro-freedom. But note that it's interesting. If we had a group here of communists, I mean, imagine a whole full of communists. I think you can do that in Argentina. And I asked them if they were pro-freedom. What would they say? Yes, they'd all say yes. Absolutely. I mean, indeed, if you take any group, any way, any ideology, and you ask them are they pro-freedom, they will say yes, of course, freedom. That's great. We all love freedom. It's really important that we define what we mean. It's really important that we know what we're talking about. And freedom is one of those concepts which is particularly important because it often seems like we're all talking about the same thing, and maybe we're not. Because we have different definitions of the term itself. So I want to tell you about how objectivism views freedom and what objectivism is definitional. I mean, man's definition of what freedom means. And then maybe we can contrast it a little bit with some other views of what freedom is. For when freedom is not the end, freedom is a means. The focus of one man's philosophy, the focus of the capitalism, is not politics. It's not a political outcome. The focus of one's philosophy is in your life. It's each one of ours lives. And how we make the most of that life. When man is most revolutionary, it's that he says that the purpose of your life is you, your success as a human being, your flourishing as a human being, and ultimately, your happiness. She is a model egoist, advocating for rational self-interest. A philosophy of individual human flow. That is revolutionary. Most of us have grown up in a very different philosophical framework, a very different perspective on how we live our lives. If I say to you in the culture that you're selfish, you're self-interested, is that a compliment? No. We grow up in a world in which we're expected to sacrifice, we're expected to live for others, we're expected to be self-less. Think of yourself. Laugh, my mother told me. And I'm sure your mother told you. Think of others first. There was a point. And think about what this means if your whole conception of morality, i.e., that which you got in life, the principle by which you should live your life, is oriented towards other people, towards self-denial, towards self-sacrifice, which is the college for self-view of it. And since we're talking about libertarians and conservatives and objectives, which conservatives embrace because it's a heart of religion and it's a tradition to have yourself sacrificed as being virtuous. And which libertarians do what with? What's the position of libertarians on morality? There's a lot of silence. I get that. Because, yeah, there is no position. The non-aggressive principle is a political principle, not a moral principle, to each his own sacrifice. You don't want to sacrifice, don't sacrifice. But there is no moral philosophy in libertarians. Libertarianism is a political philosophy. It's about politics. It starts with the concept of non-aggression, of course. In other words, it starts with freedom. It doesn't start with morality. Objectivism, I mean, starts with morality because the only purpose for freedom, the only purpose to be free is to have the freedom to do what? To have a good life, to live a good life. We'll return to that. So for objectivism, morality intersects with where the action is. Rurality is what's important. Rurality is what's interesting. And politics is the derivative of a particular, specific moral code. And in objectivism, we have a particular view of what is required in order to live a good life. In order to live a good life, one must do something in particular. We are a particular type of biological entity. We have a particular nature. There's something that is common to all of us. Everybody in the room is different as all of you are, is different as human beings are. There's something common to all of us, in terms of what is necessary for us to live a good life. I mean, look around, look around this room. And there are quite a few of you here. One thing is common to all of you. As an animal, you guys are pretty perfect. Just looking at this group, you're weaker. You're slow. You have no claws, no fangs. You try going out there and running down an animal and trying to eat. You're not going to be doing very well. You are a savior to the tiger. I'm betting you're a savior to the tiger. If all you are is muscle. And material. Why is the savior to the tiger in the museum in the whole city here, comfortably, wealthy? And Berea just gave us a whole story of how wonderful life is. How did we get there? How was that created? What is it that makes it possible for you to stand in front of savior to the tiger and win and survive and thrive and for him to be dead? Your mind, ability to think, ability to reason, ability to be rational. We are the rational animal. We are a species that survives by its mind, survives by reason, thrives by reason. Everything we have, every value that we have, every value that is important to us is a product of human reason. It's a product of human thinking. It's how humans being survive. And reason is something very specific. It's the means by which we integrate the evidence of our senses into more and more abstract ideas. And this reasoning capability is what makes us human and what makes it possible for us to be successful. But that, again, all of that chain of reasoning is a philosophical statement about the nature of man. Note that, for example, for a conservative, man is not familiar with the rational animal. Question is, he has a place. Reason has a place, but so does faith and culture. Man is originally sinful, and he really gains success through his connection with another being or through learning from some kind of tradition. But conservatives fundamentally rejects reason as man's basic means of survival, which is a key principle in objectivism and a key principle in our morality, in our epistemology theory of knowledge. Libertarianism is a position on reason. I love the silence, because that's exactly the appropriate response. Because to be in some position, again, libertarianism is not philosophy. It doesn't have ideas at the foundation. It starts with non-initiation. Of course, it starts with politics. And I think that's the challenge, because what's really interesting, what's really important is how to live as individuals. Life is pretty good as Maria told us. But how do we make the most of it? How do we live the best life? We can live with one strategist. One life, how do we make the most of this one life? That's what's important. So why freedom? Or what is some of the different? Why freedom? For the Japanese. Is that there's no party? Yes. So all the scheme of power. Why freedom? If my mind is what I need in order to understand the world, if the mind is what I need in order to pursue values, in order to identify the appropriate values I should pursue, we have a lot of choices in this wonderful world that we have. How do I make that choice? How do I decide? I have to think it through. I have to decide what is best for my long-term well-being, what is most consistent with my rational nature. So if I have a mind, I want to be able to use that mind to pursue my values. I want to be able to use my mind in order to pursue my life in order to achieve as my happiness, as my flourishing, as I can for me. I wonder what political system would allow me to do that. Political system, when people told me what to do. No, I'm going to use my judgment. I love people's judgment. A political system that constrained and limited me, that regulated me, that supervised everything that I do. No, I want to live by my terms. Only I can choose my values. No one can choose values for me. No one can get inside of my head. Fundamentally, the reason that central planning doesn't work is not because they're not small enough. It's not because of any economic reason. The fundamental reason central planning doesn't work is because only I can choose my values. And therefore, only I can act in any party and decide what I want, what I don't want, how I want to live it. It's not a failure reason that central planning doesn't succeed. It's because of reasons that central planning doesn't succeed. Because each one of us as an individual has a reason. This is my critique of hire. Each one of us has a reason as an individual. And you can't advocate those reasons. You can't superimpose something on top of our individual reason. Only you can make a choice in your own life. You might make mistakes. You might make errors, but they're your own mistakes. And if you're smart, if you're rational, you will learn from it and do better next time. So reason is an attribute of individuals, not of groups. So freedom is a value to me. We'll talk about what freedom is in a minute. Because it allows me, in my definition of freedom, to use my mind in pursuit of my values free of what? What is the enemy of the mind? Force is the enemy of the mind. The reason you have a non-aggression principle is not because it sounds good. The reason a non-aggression principle is good, you'll guess the question. It's because force is what cripples the mind. Force is what subjugates my mind to an authority that doesn't allow me then to make my choice based on my values. If I stick a gun to your head, reason is irrelevant. You do what I tell you. If a regulator tells you, I don't know, life extension research, we're never going to approve it. Nobody's going to do life extension research. Thinking is not going to go into that area. Force cripples the mind. Force destroys reason. Force destroys rationality. It makes rationality relevant in a part. Go where that's an animal. We survive by reason. We survive by rationality. Oh, so force is against life and nature as a human being. It's against my very view of ethics, my very view of personality, my very view of philosophy. Force is antagonistic to my life. Yeah, it's against it because I doubt my life. I'm not against it because I don't like force. It seems bad. Generally, yeah, it's not really. No, I get why force is bad. Fundamentally, it restricts my ability to use my mind to suit my value. So what is freedom? For an object of us, it's the ability to use your mind to suit up your values, free of coercion, force, freedom of authority that imposes as well on you. It's the ability to pursue happiness. It's the ability to live life to the fullest. And fullest means no force because force is restricting living. It's a power that destroys choice and happiness and value. But now that everybody has that conception, I think everybody see the movie Braytard. Remember Braytard and I'll give it to you. Remember Braytard and I'll give it to you. Movie Braytard. Yeah, what's it? Colosson valiente. I get that, OK? So remember, there's a scene. I see most of you have seen Braytard. There's a scene in Braytard where the two armies are raid and they're about to fight this big battle. And the Scots, the movie is about Scotland. And the Scots all yell, freedom. And they're really unmotivated, right? Freedom. We're going to fight for freedom. What do they mean by freedom? They mean I want to be able to live my life based on my mind, the pursuit of my values, free of coercion or force. Is that what they mean by freedom? Yeah, what they really mean by freedom is we want to be ruled by a Scottish king, not an English king. We want force to be imposed on us, but we want to make sure it's one of our own imposing force on us. We want to make sure that he has the same bloodline as we have. They're not about freedom in a sense that I just described. This is what collectivist so-called freedom is. I want somebody from my tribe to decide my decisions for me, not from that other tribe that I don't like the English. That's not freedom. That's subjugation. They're not yelling freedom. They're yelling my tribe over your tribe, which is so often the case in the world in which we live today. People say they're fighting for freedom, but they're not fighting for freedom. They're fighting for their tribe. Freedom fundamentally is individualistic. It is not about the tribe. It is not about which king rules. It's about getting rid of kings. It's about getting rid of rulers. So again, in our culture today, this idea of freedom as a collectivistic attitude is very prevalent. Instead of the individualistic idea, a freedom is fundamentally about me, about you, about every one of you being able to use your minds in pursuit of your values free of coercion. Now, in order to do that, in order to have freedom, one must recognize in a social context that every single one of us has the weight to that freedom. That it's not, is that how much time is left? It's not a group thing. Again, it's an individual thing. How much each one of us, how can we guarantee that each one of us has that freedom to use their minds in pursuit of values, free of coercion? How do we guarantee that? Well, we've come up with an idea, a concept, that captures this notion of individualistic freedom. And that idea is individual rights. Individual rights means that you have the freedom to act in pursuit of your values. Again, freedom means no coercion, no force. That's what the concept of individual rights means. It's being provoked. It's being distorted by others and by other philosophies. But fundamentally, it means the freedom to act, free of coercion, act for what? By using your mind in pursuit of your values, by being rational. Now, objectivism holds, therefore, that you need some way to guarantee these rights. These rights are not arbitrary. These rights are not subjective. These rights are not dependent on how you feel. Their objective in reality, freedoms, their lack of coercion, is objective in reality. And we need an institution in order to protect those rights. And that institution is government. So if objectivism counter to libertarianism, objectivism holds that government is a necessary good. Libertarianism holds that it's a necessary evil sometimes or that it's not necessary. Now, we're going to do a debate tomorrow about whether it's necessary or not. But objectivism holds it's a necessary good because it's the only way to guarantee an objective defense of individual rights, the right to life, liberty, property, superpowers. That is the freedoms to act, again, free of coercion, free of force, as individuals in the world helping. Contributism has a more, again, collectivistic view of these issues. And therefore, rights fluctuate. You don't have an absolute right to your own liberty, to your own freedom. It depends on the social good. It depends on whether it's good for society or bad with society. Who decides that? What's good for society? Bad with society? Who decides that? I don't know, maybe a majority or maybe a leader. But somebody else, not you. And the rights are not absolute. So the only system that guarantees freedom, only system that guarantees freedom, is a system in which you have a government that protects an objective definition and objective view of what rights are and acts to protect those rights, acts to defend those rights. That is the only way you get freedom. Freedom is not achieved in the wilderness without government. Freedom is not guaranteed in any kind of social context without a government that's only responsibility, only duty, only thing it does is protect individuals. And that is Einmann's view on basically the nature of government. So I want to leave some time for Q&A. So if we're going to advocate for freedom, the right kind of freedom, the first thing is to really understand why you want to be free. I know why I want to be free. I want to be free because I want to be able to maximize my potential as a human being. I want to live the best gone life I can live. I want to achieve the maximum happiness and success and prosperity and flourishing that I can achieve. That's why I want to be free. And the people I like, not everybody, but the people I like, I want them to be able to maximize their ability as human beings. And even the people I don't know, I want them to maximize. Why do I want them to maximize their ability as human beings? Because I'll end up treating with them. And if they maximize, if they produce, if they create, then I get the benefit from all of their creation and all their introduction. Human beings are wonderful. I want them all to be successful. I want them all to be happy if they can. I'm the beneficiary of that. So I want to be free. I fight for freedom because I'm an egoist. I fight for freedom because I'm self-interested. Because I care about my life. I hope you join me in that fight. Thank you. Thank you, Yaron. Excellent talk. We all remember that after each talk, two microphones will be available here and we'll have the other room for questions. Thank you, Anay Session. We are going to ask two or three questions, so as to abide by this very tight agenda. But then, of course, you can approach Yaron during coffee break and ask him any question you would like. Right? Just tell me in advance if you're asking the question in Spanish or English. Please, be short and to the point. You made a very clear presentation of freedom and you gave us a wonderful description. Now, how do you understand that liberalism, nominalism, and empiricism are philosophical ideas that have taken us to communism and socialism? How has this happened? So how did we get to socialism and communism given the secular philosophies that existed over the last 200 years? I think the fundamental cause, I mean, the two basically fundamental causes go to the heart of my presentation. The first is none of those philosophies, none of those philosophies, rejected the age old and ultimately Christian philosophy morality of altruism. Altruism is the morality of self-sacrifice. Altruism is the morality that others are what are important. And no philosopher, really, until I met, no philosopher, including the novelist, including all the philosophers, have rejected the morality that is out there. Now, if my life, if the purpose of my life is to sacrifice to you, if the purpose of my life is not my happiness, but your happiness, and of course you can't accept that happiness. You have to sacrifice the next person and pass it on, then what system is better than socialism? Socialism is all about sacrifice. It's all about giving up. It's all about not living for yourself, but living for others. So socialism is a direct political manifestation of altruism. It takes this idea that an individual doesn't count. What matters is the group. You, as an individual, want sacrifice to the group. And it implements it. And it always fails because that morality is anti-life. It doesn't fail for political reasons. It fails for ethical reasons. It's anti-life to sacrifice for others, to live for others. Why should I live for other people? That's the question you should all ask. Why? There is no answer. Other than a power above us, dictated it, or some philosopher said it, but it's all authority-based. It's not logically based. The second thing that every single one of those philosophers do is even though they claim to be somehow, some way advocates of reason, they ultimately reject reason as practical, reason as the thing that allows human beings to survive. They reject reason. They even reject science as teaching us about certainty and about what's really going on in the world. If you reject reason, if you reject the mind, then it means that as individuals, we can't really survive. There are basically two views on how individuals can survive. Either you can survive by using your mind and pursuing your own values, or you have to do what somebody else who maybe has a contact with the world of forms in Plato's words or God or something else, and then he tells you what to do. And by undermining reason, by disconnecting reason from our life, disconnecting reason from reality, the German Romantics, Kant and everybody else basically say reason is kind of a mind game. It's up here, but it's not relevant absolutely successful in living in life. And that leaves it open for somebody to come and say, yeah, you guys are miserable, you don't know how to live. Your reason is incapable of connecting to real world. I can connect to the real world, I have special powers. Just do what I tell you and everything will be okay. And every single, everything you're socialist, every single fascist says exactly the same thing. You're parliamentarian, why do we need a dictator for the parliamentarian? Why do the communists need a dictator? Because somebody has to decide what's good for the parliamentarian, parliamentarian can't decide. So you need, why do we need a dictator for the Aryan race if we're Nazis? Because who decides what the Aryan race needs? What's good for them? Well, we need a dictator to canoe the spirit of the Aryan race. It's only individualists who believe you have the capability to think for yourself and pursue your own life and values. Only we can really advocate for freedom because only we understand that individuals do well when they're left alone. Because their reason is capable of knowing reality. So the philosophers stuck with the old ethics of altruism and they reject reason as a man's means of survival, reason as competent as connecting us with reality as it is. I'll try to pose my question in English. Wonderful. So bear it with me. Okay. Throughout your presentation, you sort of establish how sort of like reason is not like an end but rather a mean to it. So if you lack that mean, you wouldn't eventually have the ability to eventually reach your goals. Therefore my question for you is from an objective standpoint of view, why should we sort of care and allow to exist? Someone else's freedom and life if they lack reason for I don't know any unforeseen medical reasons or any sort of medical conditions that would be impaired the reason like dementia, Alzheimer's, any sort of those things. Thanks. Yeah. I mean, when somebody has lost this capacity to think for themselves, then what is left is the memory of what they were, the memory of what they can be, the fact that biologically they're still a human being and that is what is respected, the fact that they are still a human being. Yes, they can't reason. So what happens when somebody stops being able to reason because of some mental disease or they become dependent on other people? And then the question is are they family members who are willing to take care of them because of the memory and the love that they have for this person? And I think the answer is usually yes, right? And some of us might be willing to contribute to help somebody like that live their last years in life but the reality is that's when you lose your capacity to think, you lose your capacity to live as an individual. You're now completely dependent on others. So the objective's position is you can't just kill them because they're human beings still and who are you to define when is the border? But then the question is do you have an obligation to take care of them? And you have an obligation to the extent that you're married to them to the extent that maybe your parents, if you love them, right? Not everybody loves their parents, so I get that. But if you love your parents, you take care of them, you don't, you don't. So they are completely dependent on the goodwill of other people. Okay, great. That's one question. Could we entertain one full question? It's not up to me because there are other people here. Maybe go to the back of the line. I follow up on this. Yes, we're gonna do two more questions now. We're gonna do two more questions that we have to remember. And later they can find it in the irony of the intellectuals, can approach you around your own coffee break, but please bear with us. Thank you. What he said, I have no idea what he said. Sorry, we're gonna do two more questions, one over here, one over there, and then they can ask you questions during the session. Hi, great job. I had an answer. I've got the feeling that some people quit. Some people decide freely not to be free. They choose to give the power to the king. Yes. What do we do with them in a society? Yes, I think that the reality is that most people, most overwhelming majority of people today have given up on their own minds, have given up on their own choices and are willing to subservient themselves to an authority to somebody else to tell them what to do and how to live. What do you do about them? There's nothing much we can do. We can educate them, we can try to break through, we can try to explain to them that they're never gonna be happy, they're never gonna be successful, that it's not in their self-interest to give up on their own mind, but for many of them it's too late. And this is why I think any strategy for real freedom has to be focused on young people. It has to be focused on people before they've given up. When I was, I don't know, I read Iron Man when I was 16, and I spent the first few years after reading Iron Man trying to convince my parents and everybody else I knew that these ideas, but it wasn't gonna work, right? It was a waste of my time and their time and a lot of energy and a lot of, the reality is that if we wanna convince people, you gotta convince them when they're young, when they're open to new ideas, when there's still that excitement about I'm looking forward to a life based on my values and we wanna give them the tools on how to live that life. So, you know, this is why the reality is and with all the optimism in Argentina and I'm excited for you guys. This is a long-term battle. This doesn't get fixed by politics and it doesn't get fixed quickly and it doesn't get fixed immediately. True freedom, you can move more in that direction and that's great, right? And we wanna move more in that direction. But long-term to actually achieve the kind of freedom you really want, that is a long-term educational battle and has to start with your people. Thank you, última. Mr. Mayor. All right. I, well, first of all, congrats for, you are a wonderful advocate for freedom. I share with you all your ideas. What I do not understand is how can we match the idea of freedom with the idea of government because every government implies the use of force. It has the monopoly of the use of force and they can use force. Of course, I am an anarchist. I do not believe in government. I do not believe in a state. So, I see that there is a mismatch between freedom and government and I know that we have a lot of discrepancies and differences. How can we match freedom and government? Because government, for me, needs the use of government and the government is depriving me of my own freedom. That's the thing. Thank you, Yaron. Wonderful. So, as I said, there'll be a debate about this tomorrow. So, we will talk about this more tomorrow. But I see it that way now. Anarchy is force. Anarchy is full of force. You don't like what I do? Why not use force against me? My police force is stronger than your police force. Anarchy is the legitimization of force. It basically said force, like every other human action, like every other human interaction, is tradable. We can negotiate. We can trade. We can form force, police force entities. Force is a unique human phenomenon. It cannot be allowed to enter the marketplace. When force enters the marketplace, there's no marketplace. Force has to be monopolized and eradicated. So, you don't like the word government. I don't care. Use a different word. But you need an entity that restricts and eliminates force from society. Now, in order to do that, it has, it can use force only under one condition. What is that condition? In self-defense, in retaliation. It can never initiate force. Anarchy is again saying, yeah, force is okay. Who has more of it? I want to sign up with the people who have more of it who are willing to use more of it. Now, you need force to be eradicated from society and there's only one way to do that and that is to create an institution that that is its job. It's only job. The only job of the government is to eradicate force in society. Now, the fact that there are governments that, all governments that we have today certainly, that violate that, that betray us, that don't do their job in eradicating force and use force themselves, that is a betrayal. That is their bad governments. We need a good government. I'll also say this, that for most of human history, we've lived under anarchy. Most of human history is being anarchic. No real governments. And what do we have? Warring tribes. People fighting constantly. Bloodshed all through. And things calm down a little bit when we had governments. Now, the governments, particularly an American government, like, you know, in its origins, are pretty good. They're not perfect. They've got some flaws and holes, but pretty good. They've got 250 years of pretty good lives. So instead of trashing the institution, let's go back and fix the institution that started out, at least American government, pretty well. And now needs tinkering to get it back and maybe even better than it was originally. So we can get to a point where the government does one thing and one thing only, protect our rights, which means to eradicate force as a social institution. And that's what we should fight for. Anarchy is a distraction, but it's also, again, I believe it's an elevation of force to be a much more significant, much more important aspect of human life than it actually really is or should be. Thank you. Thank you, Yaron, for the class, for having me. Well, we're going to break it down a little bit. We have up to a quarter. It's a little over 10 minutes. Great, Captain T. We're going to go back with the CEO. 10.45 and then TALS to Bunny and Brand Institute. CEO will deal with what fuels the motor of the world.