 Thank you. I guess I guess your word doesn't count for much. I've got more nose than you. So inequality we hear every day almost every time you open the newspaper we hear how this is a Major problem and a major issue about time. It almost every problem in the world today from You know conflict in the Middle East to Climate change has been at some point or another blamed on the issues surrounding inequality suddenly many of our economic issues have been blamed on The gap and it's a gap between where the income or wealth Between those who are defined as the top 1% those who have a lot and those who have only a few and Economic problems the list is long from slow economic growth in the West We've seen a significant decline in growth economic growth rates in West of Europe and the UK and the United States Over the last certainly since the the great recession since the financial crisis But even before that growth rates have been trending downwards towards 1 to 2 percent Rather than the static growth rates of 3-4 percent which the West benefited from during the during the 20th century People complain that inequality is somehow holding back the poor so that we have reduction in mobility between poverty and the middle class between the middle class and and Welfare classes were seeing less mobility again across all Western societies and when I say Western I would include those Relatively free market places like Japan South Korea a place like that and low economic growth over the last few years It's typical of those economies as well So mobility has come down So it's harder for poor people we are told to rise up to becoming a class then it used to be 30 50 100 years ago and the cause we are told is inequality This idea of blaming pretty much all of our problems on this gap on the gap between wealthy and those who are not wealthy Really, you know got a lot of momentum from a toxic piquetti You probably heard of toxic piquetti probably one of the most famous economists out there in the world Book capital in 21st century which came out a few years ago and became a in spite of the fact that it's a very very thick book Became an instant bestseller on pretty much all the lists. I don't think anybody Oh, I don't think very many people as you read the book But a lot of people bought it. It's one of those books you have to have on your bookshelf You know, it's what Pierre sophisticated and while red So so, you know Thomas Piquetti really gave this motivation since then The whole issue of inequality has become a major debating point But is there anything there is there an issue of inequality now there is a gap and Arguably depending on how you measure it and there's a lot of debates and the debate doesn't make the press because it's not an interesting It's not interesting for the press to reveal this kind of stuff But there's a lot of debate in the economics literature about whether this gap Is actually grown anywhere near as much as people like Thomas Piquetti claim it is wrong There's a lot of literature in the fight in the world of economics today showing that indeed Piquetti Exaggerates the scalp that is data's flaw that the way they measure it is wrong and so on and but I'm not gonna argue About that because I don't think it's really that important to whether The debate the gap is grown or shrunk or where it's happened because I'm gonna argue that inequality Doesn't matter It has no relevance to anything in life. It's not the cause of slow economic growth It's not the cause of low mobility. It's not the cause of poverty. It's not the cause of social unrest It's not the cause of any problems that we have and we should be completely indifferent to the issue of inequality even if Piquetti's right and It is expanded. I Think he's wrong just on the economics just on the data side of it But I'm gonna ignore that and we're not gonna do econometrics here anyway, right? But this is not a not a good forum for statistics and to do data analysis So we're gonna we'd accept the common view that inequality has grown in spite of the fact that I think That is not true So what's the issue with inequality? Why is inequality a problem remember inequality is the Gap in the amount of income we have or the amount of wealth we have depending on which inequality you choose to have Between those who have a lot and those who have a little In what sense is this gap? problematic From an economic perspective and then we can talk about from a philosophical moral perspective It's really weird to have somebody sitting in front of me with his back to me Okay, but it's just In what sense is this gap problematic economically well economically There really is no argument that this gap is problematic I don't know if a single economic argument presented in the literature that says it again Is the problem the only? Simulants of an argument is often presented It presented supposedly as a Keynesian argument, but I don't think Keynes would appreciate this And that is the idea that from a purely economic perspective the problem with Having a lot of accumulation of wealth at the top is what do rich people do with their money? What a real question what do rich people do with their money? They invest No, they don't invest it No, it's not the answer I wanted it was to bit of an answer I wanted I wanted I want somebody to say they hold it You know, I don't know if you're a generation those who scoot with duckest, you know screw you the cartoon And in the cartoon He's just really really rich duck, right and he loves to go to his to this fault that he has He's holding all his money and he goes and he swims with the gold coins because you know, that's nobody does that Nobody stuffs their money in the mattress What do they do with their money? They invest it or they save it They put in the bank or what does the bank do with the money that I can't make any money if it just sits in the fault What do they have to do with the money to make money? invest So the ultimate is the problem with a Lot of people having a lot of world is they invest some money and we know Supposedly supposedly this is common knowledge that what really drives the economy is what what drives economic growth? What drives economic growth? investments You've got a handle of this. This is good Consumption drives economic growth It's spending the drive economic growth and the problem with rich people is they don't spend enough And they don't as a percentage of the income. It's called the propensity this to consume They're rich propensity to consume this small poor people consume everything that they get because they have to just survive The middle class consumes much of what they get and then they save a little bit rich people save most of their money and Consume very little So the idea is consumption drives the economy So we need to get the money into the hands of people who consume because that's what will drive economic growth But that's out of sheer nonsense Consumption doesn't drive the economy It can't drive the economy It's production that drives the economy creating stuff building stuff making stuff that drives economic growth over the long run Yes, a short run you can stimulate economy with consumption and you cannot go go go off a little bit But then it declines unless you've got sustained investment and production going on think about it this way You go when you spend money on clothes or food or whatever, right? Consumption, how did you get the money to spend? What did you have to do to get the money to spend it? Create something yet a producer so before you can consume you have to produce and Then where did the stuff that you consume come from? It's somebody had a producer So you need for every act of consumption. There's at least two acts of production The production of the product that you're consuming and The fact that you in order to get the money had to produce something Production is what drives any kind of consumption by the way is very easy, right? I don't know anybody who if I give him a nice amount of money and stick him in the middle of the mall won't consume Consumption is easy. We're all very good at it The hard part of life is the product. It's the creation. It's the building that takes real effort real thinking Consumption happens if you want to stimulate an economy you stimulated by through production not through consumption One of the reasons economic growth is so low in Western economies is we bought into this consumption Mythology that we keep thinking we'll consume ourselves to prosperity and we hit a brick wall every single time we try it Japan has been trying this for 30 years For 30 years it's been trying to consume itself into And it just doesn't work So there is no economic theory no economic that links any quality this gap and The idea of economic success In spite of the fact that it's repeated over and over again in newspapers and articles that there is a relationship Nobody's ever articulate the actual theory to show that relationship. It doesn't exist It either primary concern regarding inequality is not an economic It's a moral ethical It's an issue of fairness we are told We're told it's just unfair that some people have a lot and others have a little and often You know people use this analogy of There's a pie Call it wealth in the United Kingdom Some people have a lot of the pie and some people just have a little bit of the pie and that's not fair Because what do we assume like when somebody walks into a room with a big pizza and we're all sitting around We're gonna eat the pizza. What do we assume kind of implicitly in that act? The how are we gonna divide this pizza? Equally we just that's just an assumption we need because You know as kids we probably measured whether our siblings got exactly the same amount of pizza as we did or the exact same amount of Coca-Cola whatever happened to be that we did because we thought that was where fairness meant is equality and indeed Generally, we've come there's this modern idea that fairness equals equal Whether that's true or not so this idea that there's a pie and The pie arrives and we should be dividing it equally and wait a minute But when I look at this pie of wealth a pie of income, it's not divided equally. So something's wrong Something's not fair. Some people are getting more than others Now, where's this? Not right. What's the difference between a pie and an economy. Pie is But it's fixed in size. The pie is fixed So if I get a big piece, what does that mean for you? Right zero some Anytime I get more you get less So there's this notion that the economy is fixed in size and anything one person gets the wealth of one person It comes at the expense of somebody else So based on this reasoning if somebody's wealthy in a sense they have caused somebody else to be poor Because they've taken a bigger piece of pie and all they've left is a smaller piece Now is that true? Is an economy a fixed pie? What now? What's true of an economy? Really? It's going. It's not fixed It's constantly going and it has the potentially constantly to grow And Transactions economic transactions are not zero some so I like using my iPhone You know I paid a thousand dollars for this. Why am I? Why did it be a thousand dollars how much is it worth to me if I paid a thousand dollars to this More than a thousand Right more than a thousand otherwise I wouldn't have bought it now. It turns out this is what to me at least a lot more than a thousand Okay, I don't know how you use your phones But and none of you remember time when these didn't exist. I know that I remember when these didn't exist and the difference in My life between this and know this is unbelievable I Travel around the world a lot. I can now video conference with my kids We do it at night sorry From anywhere in the world at a cost off Once does it cost me? No zero once I paid the thousand it's gone right zero every one of those calls Modular cost is zero. I can listen every piece of music ever composed and I'm always no cost up zero. I Can navigate using GPS and maps all Anyway any city that I've never been to I can get to where I need to be and I'm always no cost of zero This is an amazing tool. It's worth tens of thousands of hundreds of thousands of dollars to me and to recreate this 20 years ago you couldn't have recreated it even if you'd spent millions and millions of dollars You couldn't recreate what this has now in my pocket So I bought this for ten four thousand dollars. It worked to me much more than that So my life is better off by orders of magnitude more than the thousand dollars I spent from this and Did Apple lose anything when they gave us three four thousand dollars? No, I mean that pretty juicy profit margins and these things so Apple won and I won We're both better off $1,000 transacted between us Apple got what Richard by a thousand dollars. I got poorer by a thousand dollars According to economists because all they can measure of dollars, but did I get poor in life in experience? In my ability to access what makes life worthwhile my kids music No, I got richer So I'm better off Apple's better off and yet from an accounting perspective, which is what Piketty's very good at I Got poorer and Apple got richer the pie grew when I bought an iPhone By the very fact of buying an iPhone the pie grew Because Apple got a profit and I got spiritual pleasure. You laugh. That's what it looks about Give you one of the example How many of you read Harry Potter? Everybody Well, I mean Harry Potter is awful We've all read it Every single one of those books I had a buy At least two copies of every single one of those books because each one of my sons wanted to read it and I wanted I listened to it on tapes. I wanted to get the tapes and Then we had to go see every single one of the 95 different movies made right and I spent I don't know $3,000 on Harry Potter over the lifetime a lot of money I'm significantly poorer Because of the Harry Potter and at the same time this multiplies the evil of this book at the same time JK Wallins had the audacity to become a billionaire off of me and Off of all of you or your parents at least who all got poorer at the same time. She got rich and we all got poorer That's inequality for you. It's exactly what inequality is JK Wallins got rich Off of your consumption of her books, which made you poor Now that doesn't sound great because it's not right It's true that she got richer and it's true that from an accounting perspective. We got poor But where did what happened here? Why did we buy the Harry Potter books? Because they were fun Because they made life better Because they were you know, it was really cool to be able to read the same book My kids were reading and talk about it afterwards and have the same kind of experience and $3,000 was nothing to have that experience and the fact that JK Wallins is a billionaire is Wonderful that she became a billionaire making our lives better She grew the pie She didn't shrink it She made it bigger And I would argue You can challenge me in the Q&A That every billionaire out there Who's done it honestly? Who's done it honest with has made the pie bigger by being a billionaire. You cannot become a billionaire Again, assuming you did it honestly Unless you make the world a significantly better place to live You cannot become a billionaire without making the world a significantly better place to live For millions if not hundreds of millions of people indeed that's what it takes to become a billionaire To become a billionaire if you create a product that people are willing to pay for more than what it costs you to produce Why are they willing to pay you for the part? Because they believe it or make their life better By more than what they willing to pay you And how many people need to be able to do this for you to become a billionaire a Millions and millions and millions of them indeed hundreds of millions of people That's how you become a billionaire by making their lives Better that's by making the world a better place to live So the pie is constantly going and the pie is constantly growing Not in ways that it's easy for economists to measure because they cannot measure my utility of Reading how he bought it There's no number you can attach to that say okay. He gave up A few thousand dollars, but he got X. What's the X the X is But there's even a bigger problem with this pie analogy Beyond the fact that it's cool and that is There is no pie there is no such thing as the wealth of the UK there is no such thing as the income of the UK You can't aggregate stuff like that I mean you might make a pie and you might make it pie and you might make a pie and I make a pie and Then what you want to do the people who use the pie analogy is squish them all together and pretend like there's an actual pie But there is no national problem. You get a bake your pie and keep your hands off of mine I'll bake my pie eat my pie Trade with you. Maybe maybe we can trade pies But you don't get to take my pie and then decide who gets pieces of it Indeed we all bake our own pies and some people from a purely economic perspective Bake small pies and some people bake massive bites billionaires big huge fives By making the world a better place to live by influencing the lives of millions of people around them, they make huge parts But they're their pies. They're not my pies They're not the British government's pies. They're not Tom Fiketti's pies All the time. Fiketti has done very very well. He's baked himself a massive pie I love it when people give speeches on the evils of inequality and they charge like a hundred thousand dollars to do it That's perfect. Paul Krugman actually charges two hundred fifty thousand dollars to describe how evil inequality is I mean the fact that we have different amounts of wealth is because we create different amounts of wealth We create different sizes of pies. We provide different quantities of values to other people We don't force other people to buy our stuff We don't force other people to trade with us people trade with us because they believe it's in their self interest to trade with us And they for their better off we are better off Land up with a bigger pie than otherwise So the whole pie analogy is wrong because it collectivizes the pie It denies the fact that as individuals who create our own pies our own wealth our own income If you have an idea that changes the world you're gonna make a lot of money If you never have an idea that changes the whole world, you're probably not gonna make a lot of money some of us some of us choose To be teachers There's probably a few people want to get a PhD and become a professor at a university. You know what you never be rich You'll just never be rich And that's a choice you made and my guess is that if you're going to get a PhD You're probably really smart and you could work at the city and make a lot of money, but you're choosing not to make a lot of money That's okay Because life is not about money As Harry Potter illustrates right we rather read the book and keep the money in our pocket Life's about a lot of things and each one of us makes choices about our own hierarchy of values about the things that are most important to us And we don't as a rule place money at the top So so this will never make a lot of money so Inequality is a consequence at least to some extent of the choices we make and This idea this obsession with how much money we make and how much wealth we have is missing the whole point It's about life. It's about living which you need some money for But you know, I don't envy billionaires good for them But I chose not to try to make as much money as I could I'd rather do this this What I do right now is more fun for me than having gazillions of dollars in the sun Right and each one of us will make our choices I told my kids who are about older than you actually this point. I'm getting old. I told them follow your passion And they did so they're poor One writes comedy and wants a musician, you know, that's what you get for following your back But that's what's nice about That's what's nice about in this obsession That people who talk about inequality constantly have with money is misplaced misguided so I Don't think there's any problem with inequality indeed If I took the group of people here, right? Just just give a good sample of Well, some of you a sample of at least part of humanity anyway And I put you in a desert island With you know, and you start off completely equal Put you in a desert island with nothing Guess what? I come back five years later, and you can all be equal in terms of money in terms of wealth in terms of income No You'll all be unequal Indeed We're all metaphysically unequal or different. Some of you on this desert island will work really really hard and and create stuff Some of you won't like it's a really nice desert island and there's a lot of sun and you can take in the sights and you can go Swimming and you don't want to work that hard. There's enough fish and enough food that you don't have to accumulate much stuff So you won't Some of you will have a genius idea to make life on that island much much better And you'll sell it to the rest and you'll make A gazillion dollars Some of you won't some people become teachers on the island. Whatever the point is That if you take a group of people and leave them free Free of what what does freedom mean? When we say freedom, what do we mean? I think as much as we want. I Don't think that's freedom, right? That would be like that would be like saying You know, I want to fly and I'm not free because I can't fly That's a meaningless concept. What do we need or what are most political thinkers historically of men when they talk about freedom? Not intervention. Yeah, no no coercion or force. So if you know a lot of steel from each other, but otherwise You're left alone The outcome will be the one different because we're different We have different values different choices different skills different abilities. We're just different Which is beautiful by the way because like we Unbelievably bored if we were all the same even if everybody was like me, you'll be terrible One of the great Benefits of life is the fact that we are different and have different interests and skills and abilities and times so freedom freedom leads Inevitably to equal to inequality Freedom necessitates inequality because we are different And indeed the only way to bring about equality is to reduce the amount of freedom we have It's the use coercion and force of violence to take from someone give to others It's to impose our will in terms of what it or we think whoever the we is fill in the blank majority the government There are people in power think is the appropriate level So we take from some and give to others That's by the way reducing investment and therefore reducing long-term economic growth put aside the economics, right? You cannot get equality if you value free Equality any kind of equality of outcome is a consequence of a reduction in the amount of freedom the introduction of coercion into human affairs The introduction of violence into human affairs There's only one sense In which equality means anything political in a document I know all you guys hate if I happen to love the US declaration of independence They write the funny father America right all men are created equal Now granted they didn't completely mean it right because they had slaves and women did count and so on but What was the theoretical implication of what they what was meant by that statement that they mean? They were all gonna be equal in outcome. They didn't mean we're all gonna have the same stuff What did they mean when they say all men are created equal? Well, what does that even mean what does he call you opportunity mean? We'll get to that let's finish up Because what are opportunities like any two people gonna have the same opportunities ever in life It's an opportunity just another outcome We're all gonna have different parents our parents therefore are gonna provide us with different opportunities We're gonna go to different schools. Therefore. They're gonna have different opportunities Opportunity is just another outcome. I know it's the nice thing conservatives say because they want to be for equality So they use opportunity instead about coming. They think they're You know somehow defeating the left, but no, it's the same thing. It's a complete sell out The only quality that has any meaning politically is equality of rights or Quality of liberty or quality of freedom It's the idea that every human being is free to live their life Using their own mind in pursuit of their own values the way they see fit And as long as they don't interfere in other people's pursuit physically interfere in other people's pursuit of Their lives they should be left alone Equality of rights means there were all politically from the perspective of the law from the perspective of the Protection that the government provides us all equal before the law equal in our liberties equal in our freedom That's what it means and the problem is that any attempt to reduce inequality Violates our rights Because it involves using culture to take from us Now give you a historical example of what I think equality This idea of obsession with inequality and a push towards equality actually leads It's just a true story group of intellectuals When a school in Paris was some of the you know most famous philosophers of the time Who talked egalitarianism inequality inequality was everything equality was important And this is what you had achieved in life And they they were they were young and idealistic and ambitious and they They committed that if they ever got into political power if they ever got the range of power They would be about this utopia. They would manifest this equality in the lives of their people and lo and behold they achieve political power in their country and Now they had an opportunity to be about quality they looked around and Things were pretty unequal. I mean some people in their cities Some people lived in the countryside And this is generally unequal people the cities have many more opportunities There's this huge economies of living in a city people in a countryside tend to be poor They tend to be much more close to the subsistence farming and this was a problem So what do you do when you have two populations that are so unequal and your goal is to bring about equality So what do you do? Well the taxes it takes a long time and Who do you give the money to and what are the people exactly gonna do? They're still in the countryside. They're only so many opportunities. They haven't even to invest in the country No, I mean these guys they wanted to do this quickly. This was not something was going to take generations They wanted results like this So what you do is you empty the cities? You literally walk everybody out of the cities into the countryside So you eliminate the gap now everybody's in the countryside everybody has to either forage or farm in order to survive Literally marched forced marched out of the cities The problem that is That even in a country say people are not equal Some people are better educated some people could read some people cannot Some people smart some people are not What do you do? I mean they're really in equalities here Some people are good at foraging food and some people are not good at fire food Some people good at growing food. Some people are not good at growing food. So what do you do? kill a wretch Well, it's not funny Because that's a solution It's not the rich because at this point they aren't rich, but it's kill anybody who has more ability than everybody else So if your glasses it was a sign you could probably read and you were maybe wealthier and more intellectual They shot you if you could read you went to school. They shot you If you showed any sign of ability there was more than the average whatever the hell that was they shot you They basically killed between 30 to 40 percent of their entire population In a very short period of time now, this is a true story. This is the killing fields of Cambodia This is the coming who's all very intellectual well-educated studying in Paris Came home to Cambodia and wanted to manifest the ideology of equality And this happens every time Equality is taken serious equality of outcome is taken soon Because there's no other way to do it, you know, why stop at money? What about skills abilities talents? We don't we want equality good looks? I don't know but any parameter. How do you establish equality among people? Well, you have to constrain You have to limit or you just kill the people who stick out In Australia there's a term the tall puppies chop them down So in my view The idea of equality of outcome is a vicious evil ideology That leads to nothing but death and destruction inequality is What comes when you leave people free? Now we can talk about how do you solve the problems of real problems? You know we go the real problems of poverty the real problems of mobility But none of those problems gets solved by setting up an ideal of Equality none of those problems gets sold By turning any quality into a problem it is not Any quality is a feature of freedom not a bug not a problem But a feature and if they're real problems and they are real problems are not here to deny any of the problems that exist out there Then you got to solve those problems without pretending without creating a false narrative and a false enemy Without penalizing Those who actually create value those who are actually part of the solution not the problem So any quality is irrelevant economically and Morally it just is it just is And if you value freedom Then you have to be pro inequality not anti-involve Thank you Ready to talk for now. I've been the floor to questions. I hope you have plenty to ask Where should we start? Hi So one of the things I thought was interesting I was talking about your Do the economy not being driven by the subject of production An idea that's come back into especially the narrative is the idea of universal basic income which they justify a lot on the terms that It won't necessarily cause a drain of the economy because people that don't need it use it for consumption and audience the economy Do you see that then as viable doing as possibility of driving the economy through such such a project could it work So no way, you know, I don't think it can work I don't think it's an economic problem. It might be a social solution But you're giving up economic growth in order to do it now. It might not be a lot of growth So I'm not against UBI in that sense from an economic perspective we can talk about moral perspective it because the only way UBI can be presented legitimately and even Andrew Yang when the first day of campaign in America is making this quite popular is If it replaces other redistributionist policies So for in Yang's plan if you choose to accept universal basic income I think his is a thousand dollars a month or something like that. Then you have to forego all of the welfare Right all of the government goodies now how exactly that'll work is hard for me to say But I'll leave it to Yang who's not going to be president. So we'll never we'll never know But so I think to the extent that it replaces Then it's not going to have that big of a physical impact right because you're just moving money from one part into another part Now you be a will probably be higher because everybody gets you be a even if you're not a welfare You know everybody accesses it, but it's not an economic solution. It's a way You know, well, how does Yang presented how the most you be a presented? They start with another economic policy and the other economic policy is the robots are going to take all our jobs Right and so they start with the idea that technology is going to decrease the number of jobs that are available So some people are going to be Just unemployed or unemployable and therefore we have to help them sustain themselves So we have to give you bi. It's the only way to keep people from starving And it's more efficient than than welfare. So I think that's a fallacy to begin with I don't think technology destroys jobs I think, you know, you guys have had Luddites in this country since the early 19th century or late 18th century And they never that never wait Technology increases the number of jobs doesn't decrease the number of jobs every new technology has increased the amount of work to be done Not least them out of work and that's because that human needs Human desires are infinite. There's no limit to how much we want how much we need and how much we desire I need my iphone. I didn't need it 20 years ago, but now I need my iphone How needs keep increasing? So I think it's based on this fallacy of our lack of jobs and then It's it's based on the idea that consumption rights economy, which I think is also a fallacy But in terms of being more efficient than the welfare state. Yeah, I mean it is right if you truly did away with welfare And you replace it with UBI Then it's more efficient. I still think it's wrong, but it's more efficient Questions I just wanted to push back on what you said about there being no economic theory that Connects the gap in wealth with economic success. I mean Marxian economic theory does that just as well And it actually influences things like neoclassical labor theory. So that's my real question is How does one come to acquire by the property? What does it mean to possess private property? Okay So first let me just say about Marxist economics labor theory of value come on guys It's a hundred fifty years old it's been disproven over and over and over and over again So yes, they are theories that describe all kinds of mythology, but is a legitimate theory that describes the connection No, Marx was wrong on everything And he's been shown wrong and everything and when he's tried even a little bit It leads to other disaster and catastrophes So I don't consider Marx in that sense in today's world a legitimate economic theory because I don't think it is And labor theory of value by the way is just being disproven over and over and over again And in the 21st century the idea that labor is what produces stuff is absurd What what what is what what is the cause and means of production? It's the human mind It's thinking it's innovation. It's entrepreneurship. That's what drives an economy. It's not physical manual late How is private property acquired well depends how you want to set your starting point right and I don't think it makes any I don't think it makes any sense to set some starting point as Times zero because there's no time zero we live in the world in which we live Private property the primary way in which private property is acquired is by its creation I had I moved to the United States in 1987 My private property included two suitcases of clothes one box of books which I couldn't give up right and And I had ten thousand dollars of cash. That was my starting point since then You know today if I had a move you'd have to fill You know probably two rooms this size with all my stuff that I would have to move Across the thing I went from two suitcases two rooms full of stuff like this. How did that happen? How did I acquire all the stuff by creating value? By creating it all of this stuff is something I produced I Didn't work that created value somebody who paid me money and I use that money to acquire that stuff So that by gained a private property by creating private property by creating a service or value that other people That's how private property is accumulated. It's not You know very few of us inherit Stuff that that's you know, maybe in an older country like the UK more of you Gonna get inherited wealth, but most of us We have to create it ourselves and private now. How come I mean the Landed buildings because private property primarily is how it is in a monetary form and most of us Accumulate monetary wealth through work through production through creation about it Such creating private property is created out of nothing in a sense out of your mind Minutes Objective isn't that you didn't really address in this case. I wanted to ask you questions, but I'm not supposed to see Sure, so sure. So number one given that We have you know, I'm not presenting things like The essence of coming in these to worship a man The ideal woman is a man worship or women's essence to submit themselves to men I was just wondering whether for one as a coffee married modern man You would be willing to disagree with the legal ideas of your institute's name say with regard gender roles and also whether you would Want to admit the more general critique about I ran the juxtaposism which places men so far for women that women basically become socially relevant Can I just ask you before that if you read anything by a red? Yes I actually have you and out the shrug. I have read the ones that you're in the shrug. Have you read? Yes? I have good and Just a quick note with regard to what you all talk about when it comes to So that's a big question. Yeah, take two Yes, so this goes down to the idea of Discrimination based upon sexuality, so I think I have post homosexual pivots in the Wonderful, I think the agent I think which I also read and she also comes to be a few Assume that like here and she also says that there should be no everybody's state to Outlaw Private discrimination so when I have private business in this room in front of the visuals I could be with her I'm not okay. Good. Good. Okay Femininity masculinity and they either women are so being to men if you vet out the shrug It's just such an explicit lie because you read the book This is 1957 the heroine of the book is Dagny Taggart. She runs a railroad He has thousands of men reporting to her. They basically are all doing what she tells them to do She is the strongest woman character that I know in all of literature. I don't know a stronger one No, you've asked the question I don't know a stronger woman in all of literature that Dagny Taggart is in at the shrug The idea no, I don't want to quote the idea that she is subservient to a man is ridiculous Not yes, I ran at a particular view of femininity and masculinity which applies specifically to Sex not how you live your life on a day-to-day basis and who you are caught to and who subservient to whom but in sex she viewed a woman as Worshiping of a hero a male hero and a man being dominant in sex now first. This is not philosophy This is psychology. It's not part of objectivism. It is a psychological idea not a philosophical idea And I know many objectivism disagree with that idea But it has nothing to do with a political rights and how you would treat women on a day-to-day basis I knew I was a woman ultimately right And and she certainly was not subservient to any man In a day-to-day life on a profession anyway I mean she if she was a feminist in her in a true sense of the word in a sense of women can do anything Before there was such thing as feminism Because again Dagny Taggart not only is she running a real and she initiates sex She is a dominant character within that book and to view that book and somehow women are subservient given How strong of a character is it's just you know questionable this not the honesty there So that's with regard to it's a sex with a lot of homosexuality. Yes. I ran was born in 1905 She had what I think are wrong views on homosexuality Which were very common among her generation. She never by the way said it was immoral She never said you should discriminate against homosexuals. She had friends close friends who were homosexuals She just found it repugnant personally, which I disagree with I don't find a republic personally again. I have so But you ask something else. Oh, yeah that discrimination. Yes. She did believe and I believe That political you as an individual have a right to discriminate You have a political right to discriminate you have political right to say I don't want to deal with those people because they're green because they're blue because I don't like their eyes because I don't like They're whatever right you have a right to discriminate and if you own I Discriminate in terms of who comes to my house. I only invite people to my house that I like People they don't like I don't invite. I'm very discriminated Her argument is when you have a store when you have a private premise Then you should be allowed to decide who comes in and who not and so many wants to put up a sign say And I'll use myself as an example. No Jews allowed Then they have a right to say no Jews allowed now if somebody put up a sign like that I think every decent human being would boycott that store. Nobody would want to go into that store I certainly would boycott anybody who discriminated in that sense But they have a right that's what private property means and one of the great tragedies of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is that included Not just that the government couldn't discriminate which is government should never discriminate for the law But it included that private you couldn't discriminate a private property, which I think is a mistake Ultimately, I think create more racism than it solves if you've seen that already in America with the rights of racism I think to a large extent that is a consequence of not allowing people to express themselves not allowing people to Discriminate and boycotting them and treating them like the mall idiots that they are right well the mall evil that they are No, I don't think it's a problem. She's not so critical enough. I don't think our style is very self-critical And yet people take him so I don't think he might want to be so critical How are these great, you know strong and yet people take him very seriously, so I don't think that's it I think it's very modern to think the self criticism is a good thing No, when you have an idea you have an idea you're not supposed to criticize other people criticize it You know, you know, you know confront it. I think the reason the primary reason Rand is not yet, and I think this will change over time taking seriously in philosophy department is They're basically I think two reasons one is great is a radical the revolution They're very very different than the what proceeds I think philosophy department to be dominated by some school of thought that the primarily comes from Germany and the German line of thinking and She is very very different from that and she approaches every single issue for metaphysics of small gene ethics To all the way to aesthetics very differently and put in there as well that politically she is a capitalist She believes in real free markets in very very limited government That is so politically anathema to most philosophers that they don't even look at the ideas because politics is so important In their mind, although it shouldn't be, you know, you should judge a philosophy based on the philosophy not based on the political I think that's one reason the second reason is that red actually writes in English In other words, she writes in a way that's understandable and that's viewed as simplistic and unphilosophical and non analytical and non complex She writes in a different language than most philosophers write. They write You know, I think they they they they you know love complexity They love making it difficult to understand and they follow cons in that sense if you're trying to read a sentence by cons You know how awful the hard it is to comprehend what it is. He's talking about and I think that everybody models themselves up to She actually writes a sentence as the normal individuals can actually understand and they find that I think offensive So I think those two things there is a great book called the companion time and studies written for philosophers from the perspective of trying to translate I read into You know, so how they should approach I met if there's serious about studying hope are written by philosophers who take her seriously and so I think I think over time it's going to change but it takes a long time and Unfortunately in our culture generally in our world Politics has been elevated to the most important thing in life and everybody is judged based on where they fall in the political spectrum And so she's dismissed as she falls they think on a particular place in the political spectrum Politics is gonna have to become less important for people to start really, you know paying attention to important ideas But let's start with quick Bojoise during this rule of scarce 100 years has created more massive more possible productive forces than the whole preceding Generations together. My question is concerned with the nature of human condition man by his nature I submit as a spiritual being this is because as mountain higher there are using being in time Man's existence is an issue for him in a way that it isn't for other beings The fact that existence presents itself as a mystery to us is why philosophies and religions and systems of metaphysics exist to try to explain that mystery I Want to emphasize that spirituality is not the same as religion won't be spiritual without being religious and in my opinion Religion is genuine spirituality Metaphysically, I've also argued capitalism and communism are two sides of the same coin since each presuppose an underlying Materials in so doing they've overlooked man's underlying spiritual me Materials and can be understood as the pieces that nothing but matter exists But that's not how I knew in the context of this debate by materialism I mean that now has nothing but physical needs and that happiness Satisfaction of those reasons by your own admission today object to this one like all forms of materialism reinforces the sense of ego you create the ego cleaning material goods However, as a result of very permanent material kids can never grant the lasting happiness to man Only in so doing does one come to realize that material goods are empty Materialism begs the question to what end to what end does one pursue material goods Instrumentalizing all beings treating none as animals in themselves But only as means light marks no doubt We can feel a sense of war and wonder of material achievements of capitalism But what do you say to those who see behind the material achievements and underlying sense of emptiness is not the Proprietity of so many today throw themselves into say social media technology But you cited the example of the iPhone a testament to this underlying sense of emptiness And my question is two-fold one Do you recognize the spiritual dimension to what it means to be human and two does not object to this and given It's materialist metaphysics undermined man's spiritual need So I don't know what talk you would just Because I kept emphasizing that it's not about the material right, so What I say I love doing this There's nothing material about this and last I looked the unions are paying me anything I I Love doing this and this is the spiritual value to me education communication Contact with other human beings seeing a light go off in somebody's eye when they say something that makes sense to them That is an incredible spiritual experience. So of course we have Dominantly spiritual beings that need material sustenance and our spirituality and our materiality and our separate things You can't in my view view the world as there's material over here and spirit over here I think they're interconnected. I get immense spiritual value from material stuff Hey, my iPhone for example, right and I can listen for example to music on my iPhone music The experience of listening to music and enjoying music is clearly a spiritual experience and also completely disagree with the idea that capitalism is materialistic quite the opposite capitalism is The only system in human history tell us space for true spirituality because it doesn't tell you what you must Achieve what you must do all capitalism says is we're gonna leave you free Go do what you think is good for you what you believe is Going to achieve your values and those values don't have to be material and I again I said I could have gone to Wall Street made a lot of money And I chose to be a teacher. It's like chose a less material value and I chose they have a spiritual experience And I think capitalism is virtually again go together. There's no accident That the 19th century that the most capitalist century in a sense was also the one in which we produce some of the greatest Artworks particularly music that we've ever produced because they go hand-in-hand freedom encourages material Creation but it also encourages spiritual creation, which then we can consume So, you know, if you know a little bit about the history of music patron is the first composer, right first composer to actually make money Off of selling his work, right? If you were Mozart, what did you who did you depend on like you always had a patron and he had a Grovel before the patron to let you write the music and to earn a living But they do it could sell tickets to concerts and because there was a bourgeois Right because it was a middle-class. They were not buying pianos and they need one and sheet music and Beethoven could make money off Of the sheet music that he was so suddenly he was a capitalist But he was primarily providing spiritual values to people and he was he was providing spiritual values to himself So I don't see a conflict. I see Marxism explicitly is materialistic capitalism is not Capitalism is just a system that leaves people free to pursue their values Whatever those values happen to be and you're right in the sense that people who are overly consumed by materialism by Just making more money for the sake of making more money. You can make more money for other sakes But it's for just are usually unhappy and usually are looking for something more But I don't believe most billionaires for example take somebody like Jeff Bezos. I don't or Steve Jobs I don't think that's what consumed them. I don't think they're consumed by making more money I don't think money represents more than just a mark of how they're doing From a business perspective, but they life is a spiritual life You know Steve Jobs got spiritual pleasure from building this and making this and designing it beautifully and doing all that So I think it's a false dichotomy that Marxism unfortunately has embedded in our mind Right this It's all about the material. It's all about labor. It's all about stuff and it's not it's about and I give the example of Trick you all this right? And what did I say? What's the enjoyment of reading Harry Potter book? That's a spiritual value that I paid a lot of money to get and it's a bit It's like seeds the money that I got I got much more value out of reading with my kids and experiencing the books themselves That makes sense we can follow up Everyone was the same so It seems to be that there's a clear unfair advantage The means that well it's not necessarily a testament to a success nor is poverty a testament to failure somehow and sort of a second point of that The idea that life is not about money Seems like quite an elite idea coming from the spectator that someone who has money And therefore was a freedom to buy you spiritual pleasure over money How do you respond to this and how do you justify the connection between Sure, so first, you know, I haven't always had money So it's I mean that's you earn the money you you have to gain it It doesn't just come at you and look I'm not denying and I didn't intend to deny the fact that we have different opportunities We do you can't compare the opportunity somebody has who goes to You know who gets sent to eat and and then it's almost guaranteed to be prime minister at some point and And and somebody whose parents could barely survive and are struggling to somehow make a living and send them to Whatever school they can because they don't have any choices That difference exists and and it does it just and it exists no matter what you do part of my argument If you're always gonna have any quality to some parents are loving parents and some parents are not very good There's really bad parents out there nasty people who raise kids in horrible ways and yet those two kids They can have different opportunities because of the way they were raised My point is that those kind of inequalities They exist Trying to remedy them by penalizing those who have more is a really really bad solution to problems like that So what we need to do is find ways within the context of freedom to Eliminate those really bad constraints that hold people back So let me give you you know Let me give you a few examples of that But let me first say this about poverty because I think it's really important poverty is our natural state before capitalism and I know this is Not I mean the Marxist know this because you call Marx actually admitted this but other than that most people don't know And before capitalism what were 99% of people? Poor everybody was poor so for example today the UN defines extreme poverty as I think $2 a day or less How many people lived the $2 a day or less in 1750? Extreme poverty I mean imagine today and we're talking about equal dollars. So I'm not playing an inflation game, right? I mean you couldn't live in two dollars a day or less today But in 1750 how many people in England the $2 a day or less? Yeah, basically 90 something percent Everybody was poor and that's true throughout human history So if you got like a hundred thousand years throughout that entire period with a few exceptions Maybe in Greece and Rome where people got a little bit wealthier for a little period of time Everybody's lived the two bucks a day or less forever And then we had this amazing thing happen freedom capitalism industrial evolution Potion of that and suddenly we became relatively rich I mean even and I don't want to dismiss poverty, but even the poorest person today in the UK is dramatically richer The new richest person 200 years ago Then the richest person 200 years because they're running water. They have electricity. They have telephone service They have things that were unimaginable to the richest human being on planet earth 200 years So if you if you if you have If you just leave people alone in a sense with with no, you know, no protections no No rule of law What you get is everybody's poor What you get is the conditions and unfortunately still parts of the world today By the way, how many people today on planet earth live at $2 a day or less It used to be 90 something percent. How many today? 20 20 anybody else So billion people we've got eight. So what is that that's over 10% somewhere over 10% And by the way, 30 years ago, how many people lived in $2 a day or less just Anybody want to guess? 50 30 30, okay, so here the numbers 30 years ago 30% you're right of the population of the earth lived on $2 a day or less today 8% We have cut the rate of extreme poverty Dramatically all over the world and you can you can check these these are UN numbers not an organization I use these sites, but anyway, you end numbers, right? Why? How did we do that far in a? charity What did that happen a lot of it's China, but how did China happen? I mean that just Bakes the question, right? industrialization how does the industrialization happen resources. I mean now resources Resource Hong Kong has no reason How does it happen freedom capitalism is another word, right? Freedom you let people alone, which is what the Chinese did in a certain provinces and all the world was created in those provinces the rest I'm pretty poor Poverty goes away whenever you advance capitalism Whenever you advance the idea of equality before the law you protect property rights and otherwise you leave people alone Then wealth is created and poverty is eradicated and we're seeing that before eyes today And this is the biggest story in all of human history Nobody cares that like two billion people have come out of poverty over the last 30 years and nobody seems to care about that But that's a fact So if you care about the poor which I do Then the solution is not to hand them a check The solution is to create a world in which there are jobs in which is well-being created in which there are Opportunities in which there's a great educational system accessible to as many people as possible Which we don't have today And how do you do that? How do you get economic growth? How do you get great education? through capitalism through freedom I Think the biggest problem with education today is that the government runs it now. I know you guys you know you guys love public education and public education in American means government education But the government, you know always ask audiences, what do you think this would look like if the government built it? So we don't trust the government to make an iPhone but education that they could do Education is like a million times more important than this So important that I wouldn't want a government bureaucrat anyway near it. I Want the same innovation? Whoops, I just called somebody I Want the same innovation I want the same competition. I want the same brain power Applied to education is applied to this thing as applied to the next angry birds 27 right there's the next half on this thing instead of building apps for this go build a school Go come up with a new curriculum go innovate in the field of education, but you don't get that unless you privatize it So if you want better schools for poor kids the worst schools the worst schools in the United States I'll talk about the United States because I know something about that the worst schools are the schools serving poor kids And that's government schools and it's not about money because they pull money into it It's about the fact that they're bureaucratized and standardized and rigid and run by unions And they don't have innovation. They don't have competition. They don't produce stuff So you want that? Create competition Get the juices going the competitive juices of entrepreneurs going in the field of education So the solution to poverty is more freedom not less freedom The solution to poverty is more opportunities not less opportunities not restricting opportunities and the way you get more opportunities Is more freedom which means more You know less government intervention in the economy and in education and in health care and and everything else You want to expand the scope of so i'm not for equality of opportunity. I don't believe in such a thing I don't think that's possible. You know what i'm for i'm for maximizing opportunities Because when you maximize opportunities anybody who wants to succeed in life has the opportunity to do so And the way you maximize opportunities is through free markets. It's through freedom. It's through capitalism It's through leaving people alone to produce a queen We have time for one more question. He's been patient What do you think it's the biggest issue facing the west today? Is it my old age technology conflict with China? What are your minds the fundamental issue of the west? None of the above I mean the biggest issue facing not just the west but I think the world because I think the Differentiation now between the west and the rest of the world has been you know is is going away I think the biggest issue Is the rise of what I call tribalism collectivism And the biggest conflict we face today in the west and in the rest of the world Is the the conflict which is historical and we've had it for 2000 years or whatever between individualism and collectivity Between the right of the individual delivers like a DC spit or The the the use of force it or to force him to conform to some standard set by the tribe by the lead of the tribe You see that in the united states as you're becoming more and more and more tribal You're seeing that I think in in you know, I don't know enough about the uk But I suspect that's happening in the uk and you're certainly seeing it all over europe You're seeing it on the left and you're seeing it on the right. So it's not a left-right issue generally I think both left and right are awful. I I don't consider myself anywhere in that spectrum I don't want to touch either people on the left. You know, I I view the political spectrum the proper police spectrum Going from individualism, which means freedom, which means liberty Which means a limited government that leaves you alone to pursue your values, but it's not just political individualism means a moral right To live your life for the sake of your own happiness to make your life the best life that it can be Versus collectivism tribalism, which says your life morally doesn't belong to you Your life morally belongs to the state or to the tribe or to the group And therefore you can be sacrificed for the sake of the tribe or the state or the group Right. So your life is not And ended itself for you. It's it's a means to somebody else's end and that's the spectrum the spectrum is between Are you just a cog in some group's machine? Or you're a unique being Whose moral duty moral responsibility it is to live and make the most of your own life and to achieve What I think is the ultimate spiritual value, which is your own happiness Because at the end of the day, I think life is about happiness and life is about living The best life you can for yourself And interacting with other people because other people incredible value spiritual high material To the achievement of your own happiness, but it's your happiness which should be central. So That I think is the biggest challenge. I think I think individualism would came Into its own if you will in the enlightenment In in this part of the world and and was was defended philosophically to some extent by the enlightenment figures And manifested itself I think in the creation of the united states, which is a land of individuals Is dramatically in decline in in in the west and therefore in the also in the rest of the world Tribalism is under rise and tribalism leads to violence and war And oppression and and I think that's where we're heading unless we reverse trends Thank you