 Hey everyone, I'm here with Yaron Brooke a noted objectivist philosopher You may have seen the recording of a lecture of his I did and recorded on my alternate channel and Yeah, thanks for joining me for an interview. Thanks. Thanks for doing native you and thanks for recording that lecture Got a good cut a lot of views. Yeah, my pleasure. It was very interesting. I any anything title the evils of Corbyn socialism I'm interested Good, would you like to tell me kind of how you came into objectivism what sure sure I I was living in Israel. I grew up in Israel and like all Israelis. I think in the in the 60s and 70s I grew up with socialism and it was in our blood. It was it was Every song every class lesson plan. It was all about in a sense collectivism the tribalism the kind of Jewish tribalism and Socialism those were very much tied together so I was a committed collectivist and a collective committed socialist when I was growing up and I had a discussion with a friend of mine one day a friend who I'd known for many years and he started spouting these capitalist ideas And I basically said to him were you getting this nonsense from you know And he handed me a copy a one-out old copy about the shrugged and he said you gotta read this book So I did and I read it it turned out. I read it very slowly because I wasn't buying it, right? This this was all wrong Okay, and I would throw it against the wall and I would argue with I meant because it challenged everything I believed everything was turned upside down and By the time I finished the book I was convinced and and I've never turned back So when I finished that book, I was I was an individualist. I was a capitalist You know, I obviously thought I knew more than I did as most people read out the shrugged and many of your viewers probably know This you become very arrogant and obnoxious as many objective is the young objectives tend to be but You know, I continued studying ideas reading pretty much everything she votes and then reading all this subsidiary literature and capitalism on economics History you got to learn a lot of history So I've been a I take committed object of a since I finished out a shrug But probably wasn't a knowledgeable object of us until very many many years later right, okay, and So what was it about at the shrug that you found so challenging? I mean like can you go to detail about show it? To you well, yeah, I mean, I think that the fundamental issue is an issue of morality And I think that's true the set to me That's a centerpiece of objectivism and and really The core that what challenges you I mean, what what is it the core of collectivism the court collectivism is that is a moral idea That your moral purpose in life is to serve other people Sacrifice is noble as good as wonderful for other people self-sacrifice to be self less is the ideal and I believe that I mean I was just waiting for the grenade to fall down so I could jump on it to Sacrifice my life for the sake of the cause right? Yeah, you know of the tribe and I really had bought into that and here comes I ran and asked a very simple question Which I kind of asked myself at some point and rejected so the question was why? Why is somebody else's happiness more important than yours? Why is somebody else's life more valuable than yours? Why? Should you? Sacrifice in a sense think less of yourself for the sake of others who are something more important than you Why should you jump in the grenade? Why is your life less important than the people you're saving? and I asked that question and in my answer was well, it's the only option I mean otherwise I'd be selfish and selfishness means Be a nasty person. I want to be a nasty person. So obviously I have to sacrifice for others And what ran presents is this alternative of no, you can be selfish You can be self-interested, but in a proper sense and for her proper would mean rational sense in a sense of rationally thinking about what really is good for you long term for the whole of your life not doing whatever you feel like doing because emotions are not tools of cognition emotions are not not really ways in which We know about the world to know what's good for us indeed most the time we get in trouble Yeah, so really for the first time in my life. I was confronted with this idea That there was a rational way to live for yourself, which didn't mean being obnoxious didn't mean Sacrificing other people to you. It didn't mean exploitation It meant really focusing on what's good for me. How do I live the best life that I can live? You know for the rest of my life I was always an atheist. So it was always about you got one shot at this. You've got one life So how do I rationally think about my life in a way that will maximize my flourishing my happiness at the end of the day? in this life in this world and to me that was a revolution and hard because Again in Israel when you grow up you're trained. I mean literally trained I think by the system to think in very other ways and in Jewish culture and really all all the Culture we have around us as a culture of self, you know be selfless now. Nobody means it, right? Yeah, your mother when she says be selfless doesn't actually mean it because she wants you to succeed and she wants you to do What makes you happy and all this stuff, but morally they are conditioned as parents to say, you know You've got to be selfless. You've got it. You think about this first think of yourself last all of this stuff So to me that was the most challenging and I'd say then integrating that idea of self-interest Into the idea of individualism my life is mine. I don't know it to the state I don't know it to the tribe. I don't know it to the collective group of people That probably took me the most time to integrate out of my system So I would get teary-eyed when I'd see the Israeli flag go up It probably took me years after I read I was shocked to stop that right to not get teary-eyed because it Different for me now and it so now I get teary-eyed about when I when I hear people it stories of individual success Of individual achievement to me that is the is the central focus Not group achievement not to try not not that I think groups and groups are bad It's living for the group, which I think is the problem. That's that's very interesting that you make that distinction Actually, because that's a distinction that very few people make yes, and I find it very interesting as well that some objectivism advocates classical liberalism as an economic system and From what you've described it fits perfectly with Adam Smith Baker, you know He serves you out of his own self-interest and there's nothing immoral about that There's well, it's not clear that that's what Adam Smith really believes, right? Oh, if you read if you read if you read theory of moral sentiments Adam Smith is very conventional when it comes to morality. So at the end of the day True morality for Adam Smith is about sacrifice. It's about selflessness. So what he does is he does this and I think I actually think Adam Smith in some ways is responsible for undermining the economic system He presents in the wealth of nations because he presents the system that works capitalism freedom for the most part He compromises here and there but for the most part, but he presents a moral system that's antagonistic to capitalism And he knows it. So what he says in the wealth of nations is yeah, what the bank is doing is not noble It's okay, but it's not noble and what all these participants in the marketplace is doing is not noble It's not moral. It's not good because good is never self-interest but When you aggregate it all up it turns out that it's good for society and That's the standard the standard is still what's good for society and since it's good for society Then we're willing to forgive them their vices. Well, I didn't I didn't mean to I wasn't speaking to Adam Smith's personal Preference to morality what I meant is um, it's it seems to be a moral system that underpins what he was presenting Yes, but he realized it or not. Well, yes, but he actually talks about it, which makes it interesting again I think by saying when you add up a lot of vices you get a virtue people go Socialists go well wait a minute. That doesn't make any sense. I behave immorally and somehow the invisible hand makes it go away And good things happen. Yeah, so so I think this is why it's been so difficult to defend capitalism And I think I ran this is the first thinker really is the first thinker to make some say no Adam Smith You're wrong. The baker is virtuous for trying to take care of his own life and take care of his family They make his virtuous and trying to focus on on the profit that he makes and trying to make maybe it would be even more Virtuous if he's focused on making the best bread possible that the baker by being productive by engaging his mind in a Productive activity by taking care of himself and the people he loves by living a good life That is the essence of virtue and that is the essence of nobility So it's not an accumulation of vices that creates this good It's an accumulation of virtue that creates this good. Yeah, and now she's grounding capitalism on a moral foundation She's saying so she's saying if you want to have capitalism it's not enough to have the economic knowledge and Indeed if you keep the moral knowledge in the moral system that we have we're never gonna have capitalism because you're undercutting yourself What do you need the real revolution in a sense the real upheaval in terms of the way people think about the world is in morality What we need is to replace the altruistic system of morality and again altruism Does not mean just being nice to people. No altruism means what Augustine come to coin the term meant it It means living for the sake of others Yeah, we need to replace that with the idea of living for one's own sake But not in the conventional way not the way the dictionary defines selfishness as taking care of self by exploiting other people Yeah, why have that? You know after the comma why not just say taking care of self if that's if people actually held that moral belief capitalism is obvious because People want to live the best life that they can live and live of a flourishing life want to be free Yeah, and all capitalism really is is freedom taken seriously It's freedom in every realm of our lives not just in the you know, it's interesting that the left ones Some freedom in our social side, but they want to control everything economically. They're economic totalitarian Yes, I like people people like are often baffled when I say the left is inherently totalitarian Yes, even if they're advocating for social freedoms, you know, you can't do anything without money. Yeah, I'm sorry It's just the way the world works. I mean just print it So many of these mythologies, but but yeah, I used to be frustrated by left and right. She used to say look the left Is is quite willing to be to be to give us freedom in the bedroom but it's totalitarian in the boardroom and the right it wants to give us freedom in the boardroom in its totalitarian in the bedroom and What she wants and what objectivism holds is liberty is freedom in the whole range of human life So as long as you're not using force against another person, it's not as long as you're not violating somebody else's rights The state has no business in your life And I think that there's I mean that there are obviously counter arguments that people will make but they would be based on the altruistic set of ethics rather than the self-interested set of ethics Or on some kind of utilitarian Argument and Rand rejects all those arguments as moral arguments. It says no that what's essential is The individual his life and his values and and took for the individual to pursue his values He must be free to use his reason and the only thing that constrains reason that can they can You know constraints ability to live by our own thinking is force And therefore what you need to eradicate from human life on every level is compulsion coercion authority force and Once you do that and that's the all the government is to become the monopoly of the use of force But only use that force in retaliation once you do that. We are free to make arrangements any way we see fit Based on thinking sometimes will be wrong sometimes won't make mistakes sometimes and then it's up to us to learn from those And to overcome for that. This is this is why we need a state that can enforce laws and have you know Police unfortunately, you know, it's a sad fact of life that human beings aren't perfect They all they're always going to be necessary if human beings want to live together They did exactly government is a necessary good Not I mean, I know and all my anarchist friends hate me or not so friends. Sometimes hate the idea of government But government is necessary. Yeah, otherwise we really do fall into a state of constant violence constant fighting Every disagreement lands up in me pulling out a gun and you pulling out a gun or our police or our respective private police Forces pulling our guns and so you need the rule of law Yeah, you need some standard But that's the only job of government is is to set that and then leave us alone and then we Voluntarily can come up with all kind. I always say I always say even to my socialist I wouldn't call them friends to socialists. I say you want to be a communist Then you should be for a capitalist government because under capitalism you could be a socialist You can go and start a commune and you can have a group of friends together And you can give to each according to his needs from each according to his ability and you can live miserable pathetic lives Anywhere you want and nobody willing to fear as long as you're not cursing anybody to join you the little commune But you can establish communes. You can establish a communal whatever you want as long as you're not cozy cozy That's the beauty of capitalism you can experiment you can try things and if they don't work you suffer the consequences But but but you also get to learn from it You know, it's very interesting so I've recently been Deeply diving into an arco communism, which really should just be called communism because that was ideally the end statement stage under stage But it's very interesting how they there's this underlying belief that it's it's simply more productive To have collective ownership and it's it's like well, okay You can keep asserting it but the facts don't represent it and Marx recognizes this in the communist man Oh, yeah, he calls he calls the expansion of the bourgeoisie He remarks something like who knew such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labor. It's like it's not social labor It's private labor. Yeah, you liar And and you see Marxism a materialist So so all he sees is labor labor in a sense of physical physical activity What he shouldn't really be saying is who knew that that's such You know this lumbered in the in the minds of men because real production comes out of the human mind It doesn't come from muscle and that's something Marxists have no appreciation for and and while we are somewhat You know, you could argue that we are somewhat Equal in our ability to pull levers and to do physical labor We are clearly not equal when it comes to to mental activity Steve Jobs is far smarter than I am particularly when it comes to Devising, you know new gadgets and so the inequality that happens is a complete result of the fact that just ability to imagine our ability to to create ability to think through problems is vastly different and and that's just a Stay in existential state. Now what Marx wants us is in a sense. He wants to change human nature and and and of course That's why they have to be genocidal because they they have to assume that there's certain people who can change and They've experienced capitalism and they're post-capitalist and now they're into this, you know They've changed and they've evolved into this Marxist utopia and then there's some people who either haven't experienced capitalism yet Or just as angles were put it, right? They just genetically are incapable of being good socialists and and because it's an internationalist idea It's not a state idea. You have to wipe them out You have to get rid of them because they're in combat on on this wonderful socialist utopia and it's why communism is Genocidal well before Nazis and became genocidal and the socialists were already exterminate trying to exterminate certain races And that's not the only genocidal aspect to it. Like you're saying just before you set up I mean, they they want to genocide a class of people. Yes, they and this is you don't choose your class Yes, otherwise everyone would choose to become a class. Yes, like race classes something you're born into you had no control Oh, and there's no reason why you should just be genocided on that basis It but and it drives me crazy when people say all that at least the communists didn't want to wipe anyone out Yes, they do then how did how did about 200? Well, I don't know the exact number But some way between a hundred to 200 million people get murdered just by accident Yeah, you know, it's clearly Stalin wanted to wipe out the Ukrainians So he orchestrated a famine in Ukraine and let them starve clearly mouths it to him Well, I wanted to eradicate 16 million people Chinese died of starvation Partially because the economic system inherently leads to starvation because they don't produce It's the most it's the least productive system in human history As as as the Chinese farms communal farms work would be a proof of you know, I don't know You know the story how Chinese farming became privatized It's a great story. So this is in the late 70s. My old had died already Yeah, and this little village in the center of China far away from anything. They were Stalin and they won't And and and they were they were they were being attacked by the Central Committee because they weren't beating their quotas Right and they said look we were desperate. We got to try something. So they did a town council in secret They didn't invite the communist commissar and they said, why don't we do this? This is your piece of land and this piece of land will be my sweet supply and anything you do there You get the surplus you can keep and it would just try this experiment and it's not really out You know, they weren't actually creating private property They're creating a pseudo private property because they the states the loan did all yeah, and the next year They were far exceeding exceeding the quotas and what happened was that that they people in the Central Committee noticed this and they said You know, what's going on there? They never used to be like this So they sent people to investigate and they were discovered and They were people there were people in the Communist Party who wanted to you know, wipe them out basically to teach a lesson and Luckily the dung Chopin at the time was was the permini basically said no He said he was a complete pride with us now. He was an evil guy He was responsible of gentlemen square and he was responsible for a lot of deaths under in the in the pre-culture of evolution But but by this point He had wised up enough to what works and what doesn't and he said look communiform He obviously doesn't work this works, and I don't know why this works because he didn't understand theory I don't why this but this works Get another three villages and let's try it over there and they did and they've worked there, too And he said okay Let's let's basically move to private farming and the land is stolen by the state But let's let's do the pseudo private property thing where you're probably from and that's how it happened So in China you got an example where pragmatists like John Young Chopin who was a communist He believed in communism, but he was a pragmatist saw that he did that the Marxist theory is Unproductive it is destructive and and you see that in Israel with the kibbutz in the kibbutz which is a voluntary Communal it's like the most benign form of capitalism. You can imagine it was incredibly unproductive subsidized by The Israeli government throughout all its history before that it was subsidized by rich European Jews It never stood in its own feet It was never sustainable since the government has reduced the subsidies the kibbutz is completely falling apart. It's become privatized It's basically a village now. So Communism is anti-human nature and what I like about objectivism is that objectivism is about human nature and Subjectivism takes in a sense it asks the question. What is a human being? What is the essential characteristic of a human being and here? She basically follows Aristotle in saying the essential characteristic of human beings is of a reasoning thinking being So Aristotle called man that the rational be the rational animal. So a rational animal, okay so what does that imply and Ultimately what that implies freedom because for the human mind to work effectively it needs to be free And so she would say I'm for capitalism Because our four rational egoism and our four rational egoism because our four reason at the end of the day the core of My philosophy is man as a reasoning reasoning being that all concept all knowledge comes from reason from from our senses from our capacity to think to integrate to observe and if you start on that foundation I think that if you honestly build it up then then Capitalism is is kind of obvious at the end of the day I think I think the the problem most people have an argument capitalism is they they argue from like a the consequences And it's easy to do that because I mean obviously But that that's not really addressing the core failings of the communist argument because like I was reading the conquest of bread by Kropotkin and it's a joke. Yeah, but it's but I was recommended this so many times by Communists that I was like, well, there must be something to this. It's an absolute joke. He he seems to think that Man cup like the just the fact that they'll be working for the people is Incentive to make someone sit in a factory for five six hours a day, and it's not because factory work isn't fun No, they bring a phone. It's not fun. Absolutely, but even when work is fun Why would you do it for the sake of other people? It's just that whole idea of that kind of motivation is Is not human nature. It's not right, but you see I believe communism is successful and was successful Because it is a direct outgrowth in Christianity It's a direct outgrowth of the sacrificial vision of Christianity think about think about the essential thing in Christianity is Jesus on a cross Dying for since he didn't commit dying for your sense and my sense He and he is the what Jordan Peterson calls the superhero. He is the superhero So superheroes died for other people's sins. So we mere heroic people are willing to give everything for other people No, why why should I live for somebody else? Right again? It goes back to that fundamental question But Christianity teaches us that sacrifice and selflessness of the ideal that dying in a sense for other people is the ideal and Communism just says yeah, there's no God But everything else Christianity taught you is correct and this is why it worked so well in Russia Because Russia has always been a very mystical and very Christian very Culture a Christian Orthodox culture, but still Christian So all the communists did was replace God with the Poletarian and came to the Russian people and said Everything you do is fine in a sense you I mean remember Russia was named a communist a capitalist, right? And so everything all this agrarian you're working for that for what we want you to work for now instead of a God We want you to work for the Poletarian and they replaced it and they created a mystical system same mysticism Where the reason it's okay to be learning a Stalin is because somebody has to know what the Poletarian need But somebody has to dictate plus we're not perfect here when I've completely we don't have the collective consciousness yet But it's a stage on the process to establish a real communism Yes, and yeah, but it's a dictatorship of the Poletarian yet. It's not a dictatorship of the Poletarian It's a dictatorship of Lenin or Stalin But you need Lenin so because the fact is that somebody has to commune with the Poletarian to know what's good for them And this is Hitler right Hitler had to you have to have a Hitler to commune with the spirit of the Aryan people Who knows what the Aryan wants except unless you have a Hitler and really this goes back to Plato to link this up philosophically To the idea of a philosopher king the whole idea of Plato's philosophy is that real knowledge the truth is Unknowable to most to all of us right the common person is living in a cave. He sees shadows Yeah, this is his cave cave and that the philosopher king actually sees the Sun sees the truth The world of forms. So when we see your chairs and carpets and everything That's not real reality the real reality is in a different dimension And then you need somebody who can not reason his way to that other dimension, but through some form of revelation Yeah, get that knowledge and then can then communicate to all of us And that's why in the Republic you're ruled by philosopher kings because they're the only ones who have real knowledge now All Hitler Lenin Stalin are are in a sense fillings for the philosophy and I think about Christianity as well What's a pope a pope communes with the world of forms God? Yeah, and he tells us. What's the truth? So as long as Plato Rules and I think played a very much was the world we live in We we tend towards authoritarian models. We tend towards collectivism We undercut the argument for reason the beauty of Aristotle Nemesis ultimately historically is that Aristotle says no each one of us has a capacity to reason each one of us has a capacity to Know reality as it is. Yeah, and therefore each one of us can be our own master We can guide our own life. We don't need philosophy kings to tell us how to live We can we can know reality and therefore we know what's good for us We know what kind of government we want we can therefore elect the government So it's the rebirth of us the tillianism in particularly in the enlightenment Which is which gives us kind of the the the capitalist the free sort of self-confidence Yes, that's the that's the thing that I think it's really been lacking recently I mean, I find it really bizarre as well because with with the advent of the internet My god, if you think you can make something happen, then you have every tool you will ever need Literally at the end of your fingertips. Absolutely, but think about the heirs of Plato the heirs of Plato in my mind today Are the post of the post con the post content's ultimately the postmodernist and the order the postmodernist teaching our kids at every university Pretty much in all reality doesn't exist. Your mind is impotence and futile So why even try the only the only comfort you can get is by joining your little racial or ethnic group Whatever so whatever the group happens to be but you somehow when we're in a group We have knowledge how are we gonna get that knowledge? Well, we're not so we're gonna just have to go to our philosopher king the professor or whatever And he's gonna give it to us and it's not in this world because again this world doesn't exist They said what we're seeing is a recycling over and over again throughout history of Plato's ideas and different geysers and They are destructive to exactly individual confidence because if you lose confidence in your mind if you're told that reason is impotent You're dead you're finished right and and that's that's the key that is the rediscovery of reason the rediscovery of Aristotle the And until we have Aristotle in a sense anchored in our humanities Mm-hmm, and until we reject the postmodernism and everything really since Kant and I know you've you've you've kind of Red ominous parallel Conso yeah, I've read a lot. Yeah, and in a whole chain from Kant to Hegel to Schopenhauer to Marx that ultimately to Nietzsche to Heidegger and to the to the foquas and all the ridiculous postmodernists It's all one chain. Yeah, and it's all one chain in It's just variations of On on Plato's spin and what Kant does is he modernizes Plato and he makes him seem more sophisticated But it's still the same stuff and until we reject that We're stuck. I tell the curse of central planning really is the it's the bane of human success in my opinion But I really think that hey I had a point when he was like look this is it's just it's a system so complex There's no point trying to manage it centrally. Yes, you know like have some faith in humans People's ability to judge themselves, but it's it's more than that. It's there's something. There's something You know in a sense that hike is missing here because the fundamental here is that only only I can know In the details what's good for you? Yeah, only I can know because you know only I can reach What are truly values for me only? I know what my Passion is all what my interests are what would you know only I can think for me Nobody else can do my thinking for me Every central planner basically is saying I know better what's good for you than you do and that's just impossible That can't that is not possible It's not an issue of the central planner not being smart enough or not having enough data because we are not in my view We're not deterministic beings. So so you can't you can't run an algorithm on my mind You can't just it's not just numbers. It you know, we have free will we have choices We make choices and no central planner can mimic that and and those choices as Hyak describes get priced into the price system We provide signals to the market and as a consequence of that you get the beauty And I really believe it's beautiful of a marketplace where people are buying and selling Based on their values in win-win transactions with nobody's losing That's something that I've been trying to explain to the communists because like the I really think that the the lack of incentive is in the Abstraction of the goal where they say well, this is for the people this for the proletariat This is for the nation. This is I mean, it's so airy. Yes, you know It's like but if you say look if you do a Amazon factory Then I'm gonna give you this pile of cash and then you can do with that cash what you want That's a that's a very clear incentive. Yes I mean, I you know, I left university when I was 22. I worked in factories. I hated it But I did it because I needed the money Yes, I knew what I was gonna get at the end of it if someone said to me right We need you to work in this factory for hours for the people. I don't like I don't like the hell of the people Well, it's not fun work. I don't enjoy it. I'm not gonna. And again, why should I work for the people? Yeah, exactly Why should why are the people more important than me? And this is the fundamental question in morality that we have to ask Why is the group more important than the individual isn't a group just a bunch of individuals Yeah, and therefore shouldn't the individual be focused on his own well-being put aside the empirical evidence that when people do Work for themselves that they do much better, but morally just from a purely abstract view You have one shot at this life. Yeah, why am I gonna live it for you? I don't care that much about you, right? I mean, I even if I even if I really like you and I can live my life for you It's almost like a form of moral enslavement. Yes, it's it's literally like why should I you know What claim to my moral servitude do you have exactly that? I mean, it's a beautiful way of saying it most Slavery, I like this a lot because I I think if I was going to describe myself as anything It probably beers a moralist because I good I spent all my time in my 20s reading Greeks basically and I love I love yeah And then and I've been thinking about the concept of like moral sovereignty So I was thinking because I mean if you don't believe in God, then where does morality come from? And ultimately it has to come from the individual who's preaching morality Have to be the one who if it's not their own ideas. They still have to decide. This is the best Someone has to make that decision. Yes, but it I don't think it's a decision. I saw it. I think morality comes from From reality. So this is a this is the sequence, right? Sure You know morality is a code of values. Yeah to guide one's life Yes, you know right or wrong. Yes, what about it's things that we act to gain a key. Yeah, so you know what Why do we want to gain some things and not other things? What's what's the what's the fundamental choice that we have in life that dictates that we want some things and not other things? And I think the fun because all in a sense you can say all living things have values Sure, they don't choose them, but they have values But what is the thing that dictates those values and the thing that dictates those values is ultimately the fundamental choice that we all Have to live or not to survive or not if you're not living it doesn't you know You don't get to choose but any living being from a plant to an animal to a human being Has to take action. Yeah in order to secure its survival. Yes So a plant has to seek out light. It has to seek dig its roots down into the ground to seek out water Mm-hmm, and that's true of human beings Some acts that we take will lead to life and some acts that we take are gonna lead to death So that some morality for me is about what are the choices? What are the values that lead to life life the individual life has to be the standard once you eliminate God So there is no external standard. The standard is my life So the question is what are the actions that I will take? What are the virtues that I should subscribe to that will lead to success in life? That's it and and and for me if you ask, okay Well empirically, let's look around the world and say what are the kind of actions that lead to life and what are Converctions to lead to death. What's that? What's the most fundamental act that we do that is leads to our success? And I would say it's being rational. It's thinking every human value Comes from thinking everything from our food somebody had invented somebody have figured out We're not yeah, we're not genetically programmed to know how to do agriculture Or even to hunt yeah, all of that requires us building tools strategies Because we're too weak as I didn't have to train young boys in the tribe No, I mean we're weak pathetic animals if we're just physical as marks would to live right? Yeah, we we'd have all died a long time. We change the environment to fit our needs and we use our reason to do that so morality then becomes a Really focused on being rational really focused on what are their rational? Activities what are the rational things that I can do in pursuit of my life? And it's part of my life ran so ran to find three kind of cardinal values You know reason Purpose every human being again empirically you can you need something to strive towards you need a goal So a purpose and self-esteem you need to have that in a sense the confidence that you're worthy of living in this world That you're worthy of existing and and flourishing in in the world as you know You your life as you as an individual matter because you are human. Yes, we agree humans matter Yes, and you're alive. Yeah, and and and then the question is okay What virtues in a sense actions do you take in order to achieve these values and she comes up with seven? You know, you could argue they're eight nine or they're five or whatever But the point is it's in a sense Aristotle's project, right? Yeah Aristotle's project was what are the virtues of lethal good life and ran basically says here the virtues I believe lead to a good life lead to you know reason purpose and self-esteem and you know and first among them is rationality and So it's it's it's not that she says, you know Morales, whatever you think it is She's not a subjectivist in essence. She believes these objective set of Values and virtues that we all pursue how we pursue them is gonna be different sure somebody's gonna be doctor Somebody's gonna be a YouTube celebrity. You know, we're all gonna achieve our let's say the virtual productivity differently But we all need to be productive and indeed if we're not put up Well unhappy we lack self-esteem because we don't have the confidence that we're able to to really You know such manipulate reality in order to live And and so if people to me once you get the framework it all starts making sense and it's all very rational and From what it leads from one point to another. It's very logical. I find it Okay, so it's going to something said earlier though. I that it's just sticking in my head, which I found very interesting Go going back to I was with you know the bit the Baker Bakes bread have his own self-interest Someone else buys the bread because they're self-interested. They need it They use money because that's the the unit of proof of value to society as much. No, no It's it's simply the medium of exchange. So when we tried barter, it's just too inconvenient Money was created to laugh at convenience It's what I mean is the underlying principle includes barters on you you have something that you worked to produce and all we do is barter Yeah, money is a way to facilitate barter effectively, but it's not it's not something that has less value than what you're exchanging It's the it's the value of the exchange as you both perceive it Yes, but the only value money has is from that your ability to exchange. Absolutely. Yeah Yes, if I had a million loads of bread sure my loads of bread would have no value, you know So it's it's you know, so underlying it but what I'm saying is I you know I'm showing that I'm not just taking from you and that's what you'd like to say. It's an equal exchange It's an exchange both agree. Well, the beauty is it's not equal. Well, I'm not saying you're both winning No, no, you're both winning so the Baker makes a profit Yeah, and the person who bought the bread gets something more important than the money He had he gets bread. He wouldn't have given up to two dollars. Yeah, maybe okay equals the wrong way So they're both better off, which is the beauty. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's but it's serving both of their interests And it's doing it fairly in a way that they've both agreed to and cooperated with and I'd never I've never heard anyone describe that as a moral thing But and I'm thinking about it. Maybe it's time spent a lot of time, you know, ruminating like I don't see How you could say it was anything other than a moral good For two people to agree to do something and then both do it both be satisfied walk away with, you know, both happier Unless there's some kind of deception or unless there's some real irrationality irrationality or some sickness involved You know, I'm not sure that every time we exchange. Let's say I'm buying my gram of cocaine And I'm going to get high on the cocaine I would argue that that me getting high in cocaine is immoral not because of society But because it's hurting me because long term so the exchange is kind of but Putting aside that if if both parties are rational, absolutely That is what that's the essence of morality. The essence of morality is bettering oneself And and the way in which we do that in a social setting one of the ways in which we do in the social system Is by trading with one another trade is a way in which we better ourselves now to trade you have to first produce Yeah, but but once you produce The beauty of a division of labor society as adam smith describes it is our ability to then trade to keep improving our world and So so yes, it's it's an inherently trade as an inherently moral activity That's interesting. It's an inherently moral activity because it's about bettering yourself interested and you see adam smith views it as It's not so moral But in the end it makes everybody better off. So it's okay. Yeah, I think he views it as a moral Yes, doesn't he? Well, it's not good or bad. It's just and the motivation is suspect Anytime self interest steps in it's the very least it's such. Yeah. Now. That's something else because what I mean like what What I was getting at is basically you can see why capitalism is so productive if you just look at the interest Yes, it's you know, someone else's interest alignment someone else's interest. They mesh together. They both benefit They it's it's you know, and suddenly and they both got the desire to do that again Yes, you know with other people it's like and the communists just can't understand my capitalism so productive It's obvious two people are getting their interest served without any loser in the equation Of course, that's going to be productive and and and if I walk harder or if I work smarter I'm going to make more money. Yeah, isn't that a motivation to work harder and to work smarter So to me it's mind-boggling and you know and to so much that I believe this when I was young It's mind-boggling that you can hold this idea that no what really drives people is the Is is is other people's what no nobody nobody actually in real life Is motivated by the well-being of the people I mean maybe in extreme situations like when the grenade is thrown in maybe in extreme situations That's true. But in most data the activities Luckily for the human race. We are mostly self interested. We are engaged in pursuing what's good for us Yeah, that's another thing I want to get to because like okay, so one thing I hate seeing is Say a white first world feminist who's a female get up and say I'm fighting for women And it's like you are a woman You're fighting for your own self-interest. You can claim to be fighting for someone else's self-interest But at the end of the day, it is definitely your own self-interest as well So don't lie to me and tell me you're fighting for someone you can't even name Just just to make you say I want this then we're having an honest conversation And I can say well, I don't want you to have that and I can tell you why because you want to take something from me You don't have right to have or whatever it is, you know But then we're having an honest conversation But until we can get and this is this is I'm going to write a thing about bourgeois morality because I've started to really despise bourgeois morality. I'm not sure what bourgeois morality is. It's kind of a It's it's a it's a complex social construct. Yes that bears very little relation to reality or to morality Yeah, morality or reality. It's it's very true Like you know when a terrorist attack happens say in France and then you get people in England putting french flags on their profile pictures You you can go through the profile and you can see they don't know a single french person No, not one person in France has seen this. So why did they do this? Well, what offends me more is when people after for example Charlie Hebdo put up. Yes, we Charlie Hebdo, right and and but they wouldn't Put up the cartoon. Yeah, so my view is I'm all for being Charlie Hebdo But then show the cartoons. Oh, yeah, right have big posters of the cartoons Way flags of the cartoons put it up on your facebook profile Put it up on your on your website Then you have the right to call yourselves. Yes, we yeah Charlie Hebdo But if you're saying that and then you're saying but you know, they maybe went over a little bit too far And we don't want to fake muslims and we don't want to do this Then you're you're not worthy of being called just we so that really drives me nuts If you say I am X Live up to the X. Well, that's that's exactly what I'm saying about border morality morality because what it is It's a it's a fiction. It's a it's a pretension that they you know Because like when no french person sees your french flag, why did you put it up? Yes, you put it up so your friends can see oh you care I guess this is what they what people call virtue signaling. That's exactly what it is Rousseau actually like Marx has kind of like stolen the concept of the bourgeoisie from Rousseau It's a real shame because Rousseau really defined it in like social terms And I've been looking into this really deeply recently because it's there's something I've found a thread and I know that if I keep pulling it I'm one day going to be really offending the middle class, which is fine. I like offending real class Well, again, I mean my my view and my view is you got to be careful Accepting Marxist terms or Rousseau's terms. Oh, there is no such things in the middle class There's me and you and individuals and so I often say I don't care about the poor I don't care about the middle class. I don't care about the rich what I care about is productive individuals Whether they have opportunities in life to advance the fullest potential That's what I and you know what if you're if you're if you're a wife beating drunk poor person I don't care about you. But if you're a white beating drunk rich person, I don't care about you either It's not where you are in the socioeconomic whatever. It's it's Who are you as an individual? Are you a good person or bad person? And this also relates to this Anti-collectivism. I mean, why are we lumping people in to these tribes in these groups? When they're completely different people what I care about is virtue what I care about is goodness is good people And and what they believe in and and what kind of lives they live Now that's a really. Oh, that's a great point to bring up actually because one one thing that people I am completely Aristotelian in this. I think virtue is done by action Yes, so I don't even care what you really believe if what would you say what? Yeah, what you say? Yeah, exactly Yeah, what you say because if you're not living up to and this this is why I hate the bourgeois morality because like with the example of the french flags Okay, nothing's changed. Yeah, you've helped not one person in france. You've not prevented another terrorist attack You've not you've not even you know, you've not even made you know shown sympathy somewhat It's it's all fiction. It's all pretense through your action You have done nothing and you have no claim to be a better person than anyone else Because really what you're doing is kind of trying to grab on to someone else's morality You know, you're trying to you're trying to steal some of that glory. Yeah, I mean you and this is right I mean, I mean often called this kind of the second hand of principle. It's the idea that that you're getting Your values you're getting you get from other people So it's cool to post the french flag So you put it up not because you believe in anything not because it really represents your views in any Substantial way, but because that's the thing to do and it's completely second-handed You're getting it from your friends your society from what you think other people value and it's all about projecting to other people And and and again rand is all about what is really good for me Yeah, really good for me. It's sometimes that'll be the same as what's other people Sometimes it'll be completely different and it's about being independent and being independent is not being countered to other people because You know, so like the the hippies who who uh, you know, who with you know You wear torn jeans because everybody else wears ordinary jeans and everybody now wears those jeans But that's just being a collectivist just in reverse. You're doing the opposite. No What do I really want to wear? What do I think I look good in or what do I think is so being truly independent is really thinking through What is good for me independent of what society thinks independent? What do my friends think independent of what they'll think of me? Yeah Yeah, this is great actually because this this and I keep bringing back to the border morality I really think this is It's it's like a blob that sits on top of society Right and rousseau would have called you a savage, you know, because he's saying because what you're describing there is living within yourself Well, yes, but you see his definition of living within yourself and my definition of living within yourself is completely definitely Well, he would say his definition of living within yourself is basically Pure emotion It's it's it's it's an emotion. You know, you're running around nature naked and having you know and And participating in in sexual activity because you have an urge to do so, right? It's it's really In a sense of man before in some ways It's man before he became self-conscious It's man qua animal and that's what rousseau views as the ideal and I think that's incredibly instructive I think was one of the bad guys in history. So to me It's it's it's again reason. It's it's figuring out It's using my own mind and my own rationality to figure out what a value so And at the end of the day one of the reasons I you know Since I love the middle class and the bourgeois if you will is because these are people who've actually done that what they don't acknowledge It they don't understand it But to be middle class means you've taken your life seriously to some extent You've worked hard. You've made you've made a certain standard of living You've you've achieved something in your life If not not the level of versity jobs in that but but something in your life You've you've you've applied yourself And to me it's tragic then that they then get they they get again squished by this blob A second hand of this collectivism and and and just self negation what they're doing is really destroying What it is that made them good in the first place. So Totally agree. I mean this is this is what I mean my Like I wasn't I wasn't um, I wasn't trying to I don't yeah, I know because I agree. We're so certainly has his problems But he had some great observations and like I think the key is trying to get people to live within themselves To get say look, it doesn't matter what that person thinks of your shirt. It just doesn't matter Yes, you know, what do you think of your shirt? Yes living within yourself? I think and what do you think? Think is is the key and and and I think one of the problems we have as a society Is we've we've become and this is particularly true of kids on campuses today Oh, yeah, we've become enamored by emotions. So what I love emotions. I mean, I'm a passionate guy and and and and and You experience life through your emotions and ideally your emotions are integrated with your thinking so that they're consistent Uh, but sometimes they deviate and the question is what's important and what's important is cognition What's important is thinking because ultimately emotions are consequences of past thinking and sometimes of mistaken thinking So for example, right you fall in love with somebody Based on I think shared values and shared whatever Then you learn new facts about the person. What happens your emotions change Yeah, so your emotions change because you've integrated those thinking and say, oh, they're not the kind of person I thought they were Sometimes often actually what happens is your emotions actually lag your thinking So you have come to the conclusion. This person's not as good as I thought But it's hard to get away because you're still emotionally connected But the emotions ultimately will catch up with you. So Emotions are consequence of thinking good or bad because they're consequence of subconscious integrations And we get enamored by our emotions, but at young people today in schools Are trained to emote. They're trained to feel when you put six year olds down and you ask them what they think of transgender people They don't know what sex is. They don't know what gender is. They don't know what life is. They don't know anything about anything, right? Six year olds So all they can do is emote based on stuff that they've heard And you and you're validating that you're validating the idea that what's really valuable Now put aside transgender ask them what they think about politics or what they think about anything They just don't know the whole purpose of being six is to learn You know until you're about 13 14 15 you're not capable Your frontal cortex does not develop to know to actually think about anything. You don't have the knowledge of the world Anyway, you can't make an informed decision. So what we're doing to what we're doing today with these kids is we're letting them do whatever The hell they want Which means whatever their emotions dictate and we're saying their emotions are valid and and and whatever their emotion is And we're celebrating emotionalism So when these kids get to college and somebody says something offensive to them and they get offended Then I can understand them going. This is the end of my world You can't do this because that's what they've been trained to do instead of What education should be about is training the mind Training us to think training us to think You know Really think through problems. This is why every kid should learn math, you know kids say, well, what do I need calculus? I'll never use it in life You'll use it in the sense that calculus teaches you how to be a disciplined thinker The the the actual activity of calculus you'll never do in your life But it's training you to do something really really really important But we now Denigrate all that we we don't think any of that is important critical thinking Is what school is for? Well, it it should be Now we're socializing kids. Yeah, it's about socialization and emotional training And then colleges now become catering to that So now when they go to college, they don't learn to think either So we're getting young adults who've never been actually trained to think and we call, you know They've been called snowflakes because because it's an expression of their emotion. Yeah It's really interesting as well. Like, um, I I can never understand Like I I really enjoy stoicism. I really enjoyed reading. I mean like a lot of the time it went too far You know, you're there being tortured and you're meant to take responsibility for being tortured. It's you know It goes too fast. Yes, but I like the underlying principles like wherever possible You take responsibility for absolutely because then you will know, you know, you know, why that happened You know, what decisions you made and you are the one who has to deal with it and it makes you stronger It makes you tough. It makes you it makes you unable to be offended, you know And it seems to be inculcating weakness. I mean, absolutely I mean if somebody says something to me a communist says something to me like communism or whatever I mean, there are only two options. They're either right or they're wrong, right? If they're right, let's assume they're wrong Well, let's start with their right, right? Let's assume it wasn't a communist Let's assume it's somebody right and they come to me and they say you aren't you're wrong about this This is what it's really like. And if it turns out they're right, I should thank them. Yes, right? If they're wrong Why should I care? It's their problem that they're wrong. Not my problem that they're wrong So I don't get offended by people even, you know, people calling me names and everything else because they're wrong It's their problem. They're likes are screwed up because they're wrong I believe that if you're right, it enhances life. So it's not relevant to me Either way, right? So a whole attitude towards knowledge is If somebody says something that's that's critical of what I'm saying, but he's right Cool, I just learned something new. How cool is that? And if it's wrong, it's their problem Again, it's about as you said, it's about taking responsibility for yourself You're not responsible for other people's thinking. So if somebody else is wrong or somebody was responsible I'm not going to be offended by it and and and learning from your mistakes And and that makes you a better person. It makes you better thinker therefore better human being more capable of living Yeah, and and I mean it becomes a charitable act to go to someone and say look, I think there's a deficiency in your thinking Yes, I think I can correct you. I'm happy to take the time because I think this will help you Yes, that's a charitable act. You know, what do you actually gain from that? I mean, I suppose Well, I I'm a teacher so I gain a huge amount of work because I love doing it, right? What I personally what I gain is is the light coming on in somebody's eyes When they discover somebody something true that I've just said or that they make the integration So so teaching is is an incredibly selfish activity. I love it, right? Absolutely I mean because you get real joy and plus you're communicating knowledge to people and you're helping them become better people Which helps you because then they're making the world a better place So for you and your children and the people you love So absolutely teaching is I mean all professions done right or selfish activities Because otherwise why go into that, right? I mean I again go back to that like I think self-interest This is this is what drives me crazy about Collectivist ideologies in general because they are based on a moral ethic of altruism and I don't Like the idea that I'm being told that I mean like Everyone operates in their own self-interest all the time whether they realize it or not. I don't believe that really Yes, I don't believe okay. So so I think those people don't behave I think 99% of people don't behave in their self-interest because again, I have a more sophisticated view of what self-interest is Self-interest is that which is rationally in your self-interest that which is rationally good for you in the long run The cocaine snow that is not acting in his self-interest now. He might be acting in his emotional Need right now. That's fine. The passion might be satisfying the passion. I believe a lot of people are miserable in their jobs I believe a lot of I believe a lot of teachers a teaching out of a sense of duty not because they love teaching and you can see it in the classroom All that happiness we see in the world and unfortunately there's a lot of unhappiness even among these bourgeoisie and middle-class people It's because They haven't taken the time To think through what it means to be self-interested. So I tell audiences to be selfish It's hard work You literally have to think What should I do and how is how are the different options going to affect my life over the next 40 years? Not just today, but over the next 40 years and I have to resist temptations like the cocaine, let's say or like promiscuous sex or whatever that might be pleasant I mean, this is cool, but I'm going to destroy my life long term. So It's it's hard. It's complicated. It requires real effort. It requires engagement So while people are constantly In a superficial way pursuing what they think will give them pleasure in the moment or with some kind of satisfaction I should have said immediate selfish. Yes, but even there it's not always the case because again people go to work in jobs They hate people do drudgery when they don't like to get paid so you pay them well But also but they don't but what about the options do other options? I mean you discover a wonderful option Yeah, there are many many options in life But so few people engage in the effort to figure out How to change their lives if they're living a miserable life so many people just accept and go with the flow again They're driven by emotion rather than by engaging with all life Is to be actively lived which means you have to be an active thinker To really live life and to me the only people who are self interested Are the people who are actively engaged in living their lives and thinking and reading and Whatever level you can do it right you can be a you can be a Very low skilled worker But still be engaged in what your activity is and figuring out the best way to do it and figuring out is can I do more Can I advance in life? That's what living life is and and to me it's sad They're almost nobody yourself interested because my goal in life is to get people to appreciate Their life this should be easy. I don't know why it's so hard I tell I think I think the biggest barrier The objectivism has with like the the mass of people is the terminology because I tell you using the term selfishness and self-interest That I I can't imagine that you're going to get people to because you've got a slightly different definition than most people use Which is fine, you know, there's nothing nothing wrong with you know, having a more precise definition or something like that But it it needs a it needs a better word the branding is See this in the sense and we said right but in the sense there's Why should the other side get away with right so think about so if you open up a dictionary definition of selfish It'll say something like taking care of self comma at the expense of others Yeah, or placing one's own well-being is that is the one's primary concern comma at the expense of others and I'm going Why right what is this added on to the sentence? What the hell who put that on there and it's all those altruistic philosophers It's the it's the quantians the marxists the plateness add that on in order to Make something that should be natural unthinkable, right? It should be natural. Yeah Placing your own well-being is your primary concern. Yeah, of course. Why not? That's the and it has to be period After that and if that was the working definition of selfishness then it then you asked the question Well, how do I place my own well-being as my primary concern? And then I would say by using your mind by using reason by really thinking through by applying yourself And then it's easy But once they add that and everybody's accepted it and it's ingrained in the culture Then I not only have to teach people how to how to live for themselves After teach them why they don't have to exploit other people or why they have to why Living for yourself doesn't entail exploiting other people indeed exploiting other people is bad for you It's not good for your psyche. It's really interesting as well like um like I you know like I take my youtube. Sorry. No, we also talk. Okay. Okay. I'm gonna have to monitor it. So sure I was thinking about this like Taking my youtube channel as an example. I put up a video and I I've got the self interest I want people to see yeah, yeah, because that that's important And I know I'm not going to get any direct money from anyone for it But I also know that there are people who will see that and appreciate what I've done And once what I'm doing and then we'll after the fact give me money. Yeah, and it's just like I mean like that, you know, I'm operating my own self-interest But what you know, they're operating in their own self-interest as well because they want more of the same You know, they want the next thing but it none of it was compiled. None of it is exploitative None of it was the expense of anyone else But it was all operating within everyone's self-interest and everyone benefited and everyone's happy with the relationship Well, and in some extent, you know, you might even have some free writers But but you know what so what? I get off the side all the time people you say, you know, I can I help you? I don't want to pay Yes, no, but there are also people who are watching your show and not contributing. Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah, fine Yeah, but but you're willing to have free writers Because there are enough people who are good people who are who are and they're doing it not because Not because they value you more than they value themselves. They do it because they value themselves They're giving money to your channel. They don't have to they can still watch your videos Even if they don't give the money, but good people rational people self-interested people want to pay for what they get They want value for value. They don't want to be free writers. They don't want to leech off the system So if they watch one of your videos and they've enjoyed the video They want to give something in return They want and they want to make sure that they're going to be videos in the in the future And I don't want to just rely on other people contributing. They want to be part of it. So We need to really reframe What self-interest means And and because I think it's too good of a term to give up. I'm not willing to say Yeah, I'm not willing to say because the altruists have destroyed this term You know, and they've also couched altruism as altruism means being polite and nice to people and opening doors Give me a break. It's it's it has nothing to do with what the term altruism actually means Yeah, I don't I don't consider altruistic at all. That's just polite. Yes Anybody yeah, but one thing I find really interesting is that it's Like collectivism is inherently disempowering, you know, you have to obey other people You have to obey a group. Well, you've you've got to give up something of yourself. That's inherently disempowering and I What what's really interesting is like the I guess we'll call it like the crowdfund economy You know, and that's a really empowering thing because people will step up if they think it's something worth stepping up for Yes, and it's it's it's you know, you can see people making things happen and that it brings people together It's like and nobody had to be coerced into it. No, nobody had to be pressured into it It's like a like the myth cyst was a great example, right? They the myth cyst Milwaukee I went to speak at this conference and because of the sjw's complaining that they don't like me Um, they had to hire a security which left them in a deficit And so they thought what we'll do is we'll put um the conference up on the internet for like three dollars a pop And hopefully people might but people are kind of well, I don't know whether I'm gonna get money for money And so they and so I suggest them look why don't I put up the debate? I was in on my channel and then leave a link to a go for me that you're doing and then if people like it They can they can help you they got they were funded within a day. You know, they didn't get they got 700 exactly And it's great and it just shows the the innate goodness within people as long as you trust them Yeah, I mean because what you're doing is just saying look, I'm trusting you to help us Here's what we have if you want to help here's the change And again, you're appealing to their self-interest. You're saying here's a value I provided and I'm asking for you to compensate me and return and that works It works beautiful. It's so much more productive. People do but you see people don't want to be self-empowered And that's why they appeal to collectivism collectivism the beauty of collectivism is that allows you not to take responsibility for your life And and and if you don't take responsibility for your life, then you're now shielded From the consequences of what happens in the world by this group and by the welfare system and by checks coming in or whatever And you don't have to actually be the person who's active and engaged And you might fail and it's in your fate and you actually have to think and as I said being self-interested is hard work And you you might be lazy So it's it's for being who is trained to be emotional emotional Crowds are safety. Yes. So collectivism is emotionalism Reason leads to individualism Emotionalism leads to collectivism if if if if Play-Doh has told you your mind is Incapable of knowing reality, then how do you know the truth or you look to other people? Why would I trust his opinion if mine's so faulty? Well, you don't but but hopefully you hope yeah That really it's comfort, right? You imagine living in it and it's hard to imagine because because I don't think either of us have ever experienced this Imagine living in a in a condition where you're afraid of the world You don't know what's true. What's not you you've been you've been encouraged not to believe your senses and not to believe your mind And you're kind of wandering in this world You're A group is a comfort group. You need a group. It's it's it's like You've been brought to the level of an animal. Yeah and animal need animals almost all animals. There are a few exceptions need packs They need the the the groups that can't function by themselves because they can't deal with the changing world out there So they need that group and human beings when they are driven to the level of an animal A non-human animal because we're animals too They become Packs and and this is why you get there and think about primitive man Before we developed the conceptual faculty lived in tribes and and and they felt comfortable in tribes Because they hadn't fully it's not that they weren't capable of the conceptual faculty But being conceptual Being a thinker is an achievement. Yeah, and it took it took human beings You know thousands of years to become thinkers And to some extent we're still in the process of becoming thinkers and I don't think human society is quite ready Fully to become thinkers and this is why it's so hard. This is why what we're trying to do is so hard because people People it's easier to be emotion and it's easy to be lazy Conceptually and therefore it's much easier to be a collectivist. I think it's really interesting how um collectivism is a diffusion of Responsibility as well. Yes, you know, and that's a very interesting thing. It's almost like um, it's safer. Yeah, it's safety I didn't do that. Yeah, I didn't build that. Yeah, I didn't create that and if it falls down It wasn't my fault. Yeah, there were ten of you there who's going to get the blame. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's it's very safe And again for a stone flake for anybody who is emotionally fragile or anybody who doesn't really trust them on They don't want failure. You see, I don't mind failure because I know I can learn from failure I know that every failure is an opportunity for me to grow in some way because I have confidence in my own Ability to think and to exist in the world Steve Jobs didn't mind. I mean, I was depressed when he failed But at the end of the day he learned from failure and got back on his field and he didn't mind it in that sense It didn't crush him. It didn't destroy him There's so many people out there because they don't going back to one of our man's values They don't have self-esteem. Yes Because they don't have self-esteem and the reason they don't have a self-esteem is because they haven't really practiced really being rational consistently Any failure crushes them so it's much easier to absorb responsibility to to give it to the group to Diffuse responsibility then they personally can't fail Yes, and then obama comes and tells that people who have succeeded you didn't build that And it makes us all feel really good because if they didn't build that Then I shouldn't be blamed for the fact that I haven't built anything in life And it just appeals to the lowest common denominator. Yeah, suddenly you're not a loser Yeah, that's right because it's all accident right and of course we have whole philosophies now Like john gall's who whole philosophies that basically tell you You know and unfortunately a lot of good people buy into this determinism in a sense, right? What you are is a consequence of your genes and your environment So it doesn't matter. So you get no more credit You get no more blame because you're just an automaton Determined by your parents and by your genes and and and just go for it It boggles my mind if people think this it saps out any any accomplishment from the individual I mean like yeah, you sat down, okay, you know, you're both these genes in this time in this place But you could have squandered or any blame or any any responsibility for anything you do It's just and of course my view is that yeah, there's a genetic influence. There's no question Yeah, there's an environmental influence. There's no question But the thing that really makes your life is the choices you make This is why reason is so important because you want to make good choices because you want to live a good life If we're deterministic, who cares about reason who cares about anything? Why should I why should I think? Why should I make an effort? Why should I because it's what's good, you know What's gonna happen is gonna happen kind of the fatalism that is so common out there But no your choices matter. They matter to your life So no matter what your genes on a matter what your environment at the end of the day You're gonna shape your own life. Yeah, and and that's a message again It's hard for people to hear because if they hear that they go If I didn't build it, it's my fault. It is. Yeah, absolutely. You've got no one else to blame Yeah, you know, but I'll know it's it's the it's my genes. Yeah, it's the capitalist keeping me down Or you know, it's my father locked me in the closet when it's three and I tell that I can't stand when people and this is what This is what I hate fundamentally about the communists and the old rite and the Nazis and that it's always someone else's fault It's always someone else's fault that you aren't I don't know. You're not you're not doing whatever it is. You think you're doing it's like no, it's not It's your fault. Absolutely. You're an actor. You're an agent. You're intelligent You are reason and you fail. Why do you feel take some responsibility? Yes I mean, there are circumstances granted in the world that might make it difficult Certainly if you're if you're trying to make a living and the government is regulating controlling everything certainly Some of the blame is theirs, but even in the controlled regulated world we live in There are immense opportunities. Yeah, we're immense opportunities. We're more free than not. I think yes I still think that's true. Yeah, although it's I wonder sometimes some days depends partially also depends what industry you in Covid might win. We never know. Yes, and Covid might make it a lot worse. So, you know and But but it's true. I mean, I always say, you know, the trump voters, you know, a lot of these frustrated middle-class People who are upset because they don't have job opportunities and they you know, and they want their steel job back And you know, get in your car And go find a job. There are plenty of jobs in America. I mean, I go through I travel a lot So I see whole states where they're cranes and there's development and there's jobs and in the in the short of New York I was just that and then you go to yeah, if you go to southern Ohio It's rough. Yeah So get in your car and drive to northwest Arkansas where they're building like crazy You know take response again take responsibility over your own life become an entrepreneur build something. Yes, you know If there are people that and not everybody's going to be an entrepreneur Sure, but the point is whatever it is take responsibility for your own life Don't expect people to hand it to you don't expect things to just show up at your doorstep And this is what America used to be America used to be the land of opportunity you came and you went and found your opportunity if you had to cross the entire country On a wagon. Yeah to get somewhere you did and today You've got automobiles and airplanes that are really cheap And we still and we're not willing to exert the effort to go to where the jobs and opportunities are Then I don't feel sorry for you and and and for most of steel workers The fact is that they lost their jobs to technology and they're never coming back. So so so get a grip Yeah, I'm a little more sympathetic than that But I I mean I can understand that if you're you know, you're a poor guy lives in the Russell You've you maybe you don't have much money. Maybe you can't really afford a car. I don't know, you know I but you've got to accept all poor Americans have cars Sure, they probably do But um, but you've got to accept that things have changed and they're not going to just change back Things have changed in that in fact the question is what are you going to do about it? And and this is the difference in mentality In things always change. Yeah Things since the both of the industrial revolution things have changed constantly Generally life has gotten better, but they have been periods where for particular people life has gotten worse coal mines closed gold mines closed and people when that happens have traditionally gotten up And moved to where the opportunities existed and what we're seeing today And there was there being a number of articles actually demonstrating numerically that this is the case What we're seeing today in America for the first time Is that people are staying put that they might be losing their jobs They might be no opportunities in their vicinity and they're staying put and this has to do with the self-responsibility Now granted even here the government plays a role because welfare programs medicare medicaid all these other programs are often locally determined and by moving you might lose your benefits So they're all kinds of ways in which they've incentivized the state put and I would still say, you know Come on people, you know, you've only got one life to live You know go out there find the way to live it the best that you can Don't just sit on your butt at the end of the world you're risky Anyway, if you're complaining that you're at the bottom of the barrel and you've got no opportunities you're poor Yes, well then you need to move. Yes. I mean, what do you you know? Well, I think I think I think the biggest tragedy for poor people has been the welfare state I think what the welfare state does to their self-esteem It basically says to them We as a society have acknowledged that you are incapable of taking care of yourself And therefore we're going to supply you with checks on a regular basis no matter what you do So don't worry be poor and and we're sending them the exact wrong message and in For example levels of poverty among blacks in america were dramatically declining until the warm poverty began And and I think we took away the incentive, but more importantly just the moment of incentive We took away the The kind of self-esteem the kind of idea that be productive having a job working taking care of myself is important We've said that's not important. I think government can take care of you. Don't worry about it Yeah, I do think that's a genuinely important thing as well people's self-esteem is something that's very rarely Like even considered But it's an important thing in life I think I think you can be happy unless you have self-esteem and I said this if you don't work for a living In other words, if you don't Produce to bring bread to the table to feed yourself and your family you will never have self-esteem self-esteem Does not come from getting ribbons. It's not come from people patting you in the back It comes from achieving something and taking care of yourself in this world saying to yourself in a sense Yeah, I can survive I I I'm not dependent on other people what the welfare state does is it wakes that up and says Yes, you are dependent on other people and we're gonna keep you dependent on other people And and if you buy into that which unfortunately is very easy to do particularly when you're young Then you're never gonna have self-esteem You're never gonna have a job having work is probably the most important thing people could have to develop self-esteem Yeah, I mean overcoming and succeeding despite the odds is is the the building blocks of something. Yes It's achievement. And the fact is that we we achievement is a prime is like activity to the primarily do at work Yeah Right, I guess we'll we'll wrap it up there. Sounds good. Actually, yeah, it's brilliant. Thanks fascinating conversations. Good. Great. I hope it's recorded