 Thank you. Can you guys hear me in the back? Do I need a microphone? Are you typically... You good? Yeah, tell me if you're not, because I can get a microphone. Okay. I like this... No, they answered my question. You just didn't see them answer my question. They answered with their hands, right? Yes, okay. Let me... A couple of questions I want to ask you. How many of you have been here all day? Wow. Congratulations. That's a hefty day. How many of you consider yourself libertarian? Okay. How many of you consider yourself objectivist? Okay, cool. Thank you. We just saw a fabulous lecture, so I'm always thrilled to come after a lecture. They give so much information and so much really hardcore, in this case economics, because I can leverage off of that and it makes life much better. But he did miss one point. He didn't mention the movie from which he took Who Cares. You remember, there was Danny DeVito on the screen, and this is a great movie, so it would be a sin if you didn't go out and watch it. It's not a terrible movie. It's a good movie. The speeches at the end are classics. It's called Other People's Money. Other People's Money with Danny DeVito, Gregory Peck. I recommend everybody watch it. It's a fabulous movie. Okay. Entrepreneurship. What is entrepreneurship? We've talked all day about entrepreneurship, but what is it? Because there's a little bit of a confusion. There's a notion that often is portrayed that entrepreneurship means starting a new business. But is it? Because can you be an entrepreneur within a big company? And if you can, then what is it that makes you an entrepreneur? What indeed is entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial activity? What does it mean to be entrepreneurial? What is the discovery? To be an entrepreneur means to discover and to take advantage of what? Well, not necessarily, because you might be within a company, and there are lots of ways in which you can improve your own future, and we wouldn't call it entrepreneurial. Entrepreneurial is a particular form of economic activity in which you discover and take advantage of what? Of opportunities to do what? To make money. Very good. Entrepreneurial activity is discovery of opportunities and acting on it to make a profit. If you lose money, you're not an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurial activity is about making money. It's about making a profit. It's about producing a good or service that what? How do you make a profit in life? Where do profits come from? From selling. From success. But what do you have to do in order to make a profit? Well, it's not so much that you have to fulfill somebody else's needs, because often the other person doesn't know they have the need. As you know, I like to use my iPhones. I didn't know I needed one of these. Indeed, I would have denied I needed one of these if you'd asked me ten years ago. You have the need to communicate with others. This is a lot more... Yeah, come on, guys. Somebody has to convince me I have the need. When cell phones first came out, I said, I don't need a cell phone. That's ridiculous. I have a phone at home. I have a phone at work. In between, I spend maybe half an hour. What do I need more than a phone at work and a phone at home? That's good enough. And I refused to buy a cell phone. And indeed, a lot of people did. But then my wife was traveling and she would go up and she would spend a lot of time driving. And I said, well, buy just one, just for emergencies. And of course, within three months later, we both had cell phones and we were talking all the time. I discovered a need that somebody else knew I had way before I did. The entrepreneur, like Steve Jobs, knows what I will need in the future way before I know it. Way before I care about it. Production creates the need. It's not there beforehand. Yeah, we have a need for communication. But we don't have a need for communication with a supercomputer that fits in our pocket. That's something I never realized I needed. The entrepreneur convinced me I needed it and made my life a lot better. But let's go back to how you make money. How do you make money? Like, producing something that what? That people desire, that people want. And that they will need to pay you more than it costs you to produce. And when they give you that money, when I give up $300 to buy an iPhone, how much is the iPhone worth to me? Good, more, right? Not $300, but more than $300. And how much is it worth to Apple? Less, they made a profit. So who lost? It's win-win, right? So the way entrepreneurs make profit, the way what entrepreneurship is about is creating win-win relationships with people who are willing to pay you more than what it costs you to produce the good of the service. That's what entrepreneurial activity is all about. And what makes it entrepreneurial versus any other business activity is when what you discover is something new. Whether it's within an existing business or whether it's as your own company, if it's new and you make money at it because you're providing a service and good that people want and are willing to pay you more than it's what you've done as an entrepreneur. Now, this sounds great, right? These are win-win relationships. I'm creating something that you want. You will need to pay me. Everybody should be for this. Everybody should love this. This is wonderful. We saw the graphs. By the way, that slide is there. Like me on Facebook and like me on Twitter. I'm trying to get a 10,000. So please help. We saw the graphs before. Usually I have to paint them, you know, in the air, but you saw the incredible. That's entrepreneurship and action. Economic growth is a consequence of businessmen and entrepreneurs making money in win-win relationships with win-win transactions. This should be something that is celebrated. This should be something that we love. And yet we live in a culture that is torn, right? On the one hand, we kind of respect entrepreneurs. We look up to them a little bit. On the other hand, we want to tear them down, particularly when they become two in quotes successful, right? Why? What is it about entrepreneurship, successful entrepreneurs, successful businessmen? What is it about this graph, this exponential growth graph that makes us resent it? Indeed, in the West, in the United States, but in many countries in Western Europe, we experienced that. We know what caused that massive increase, and yet we've instituted policies that any thinking human being knows are going to reduce our ability to replicate that in the future. We constantly suppress our ability to grow. We constantly penalize entrepreneurs. Oh, we want to tax the rich. What does tax the rich mean? If we actually play it out, what does it mean? It means tax, entrepreneurial activity. It means taxing, making money. It means taxing, providing goods and services that benefit all of us, that make all of our lives so much better. That's what we're taxing when we tax the rich. And yet everybody's for it, including, by the way, the rich. The rich in America always vote for higher taxes. Why is it? What is it? It's so offensive about entrepreneurship. It's so offensive about capitalism. It's offensive about making money. It's offensive about being in business that we want to control it, tax it, limit it, restrain it, and ultimately destroy it. There's something there, right? Because everything else we just saw in the presentation before mine, this stuff leads to good things. We all benefit. The pie gets bigger, and even the poor, while they have a small slice, and maybe that slice is even smaller, than it used to be relative to everybody else, is much bigger relative to what it used to be everybody. Everybody is better off under capitalism. I mean, unless you're a white-beating drunk and you don't want to work a day in your life, then theoretically, you know, the welfare state provides you more than capitalism provides you. But, you know, who cares about white-beating drunks? I don't. So what is it? There's something about capitalism we find offensive. There's something about freedom and money and entrepreneurship we find offensive. Because what is entrepreneurship that it's core about? It's about making money, right? We said that. But making money for whom? Everybody benefits, but as an entrepreneur, what are you about? What are you seeking? Yeah, self-interest manifests how? In money, you're trying to make money. Most entrepreneurs are there to make money. But you're also out to make what? To enjoy yourself. It's a passion. It's exciting. It's fun. It's fun to be in business. It's fun to create stuff. It's fun to engage in a challenge that is the creation of a new business model and new service or new product. Steve Jobs loved making these. It wasn't just about the money, although money was a big factor. It was also about the passion, his passion. Steve Jobs makes the iPhone for Steve Jobs. And what do we know about self-interest? From when we were this big. What do we mean taught about self-interest? Good, bad, medium? I don't know about you poles. But us Jews were taught that it's really bad. My mother taught me, think of others first. Think of yourself. Last. Don't be selfish. Don't be self-interested. Be self-less. We have an entire mall code that we've been living with for 2,000 years that has taught us that the essence of virtue, the essence of morality, the essence of goodness is sacrifice. Not trade, win-win, but sacrifice. Win-lose. Right? You give and you don't expect anything in return. There's sacrifice for you. We've been taught that the essence of morality is to give, is to share without expecting return. It's to be, again, self-less. And that being selfish in any way, benefiting somehow from your activities is tainted. Maybe it's not evil, but it's tainted. It's not quite right. I used an example of Bill Gates who made $70 billion for himself at Microsoft. $70 billion. How did he do it? By providing goods to all of us, including everybody out there, including pretty much everybody on the planet, who bought his stuff in win-win transactions, voluntary win-win transactions. In other words, he made everybody's life better off and he took a small fraction. $70 billion worth, but when you create trillions of dollars worth of value, $70 billion isn't that much. Bill Gates changed the world. He's a real entrepreneur in the sense that he affected everything in the world around him. The world is not the same place post-Microsoft as it was pre-Microsoft. And we are better off for it. And indeed, there's almost not a person on the planet who's not better off for it. And yet morally, from an ethical perspective, what do we think about Bill Gates? When he was at Microsoft, making $70 billion for himself. Eh. A great businessman. But morally, are we building statues? Roads named after him? No. So what if he helped everybody on the planet? He made $70 billion. He was self-interested. He did it for himself. Therefore, he's outside of the moral discussion. There's nothing moral about what he did based on the morality that we all believe in or have believed it. When does Bill Gates become a good guy? When he started to help poor people. Yeah, well, he's always helped poor people. This is the fallacy, right? He's always helped poor people just in the past. He helped poor people by making money. That's how you help poor people, by the way. The best way to help poor people is by making money. One billion people. This astounds me that this statistic is not celebrated. One billion people have come out of poverty over the last 30 years in the world. One billion people. We should be dancing in the streets. But you know why we're not dancing in the streets? Because the reason a billion people have come out of poverty is because of capitalism and nobody wants you to know that. Nobody wants you to celebrate because they don't want to celebrate capitalism. The implication would be obvious. It's in China, it's in India, it's in Indonesia, in Malaysia, in South Korea, in Taiwan, in places that have adopted elements, little bits of capitalism, and boom, there's a billion people who are not poor anymore in the world. That's cool. And you know who helped them? Become unpoor? Those evil entrepreneurs like Bill Gates. Apple going to China and starting up factories. Nike creating sweatshops all over Southeast Asia helped kids become, come out of poverty. But that thought is horrific, right? God forbid that news should get out and people would realize that capitalism actually is good for the poor. So Bill Gates helped the poor when he was in Microsoft, but he helped himself while doing it. He becomes a good guy when he leaves Microsoft. God forbid you make any money and he starts his foundation. And now he's just giving his money. Giving we like, making we dislike. Growing the pie that we don't like, redistributing the pie that we like. We do. Morally that's good. So Bill Gates now, giving his money away, and now he's a cool guy. Now he's not a saint yet. Now you guys are Catholics so you know what sainthood is, right? He's not a saint yet, why? What's that? Well, but even if he died tomorrow he'd still not be a saint because he lives in a big house and he's still got a lot of money. And you know what? He even seems like he's enjoying giving the money away. And we know that sainthood and joy do not go together. It's the painting of a happy saint. No. Our morality, our morality demands that if you're going to be a good person, a moral person, a virtuous person you better suffer because that's what sacrifice is about. Sacrifice ultimately demands suffering. So how do we turn Bill Gates into a saint? He'd have to give all his money away. He'd have to move into a tent. And really, we'd want him to bleed a little bit. Show us some pain. Now, that's a sick culture. That is a sick culture. That says that building and creating and making something that was never there before. That is air, morally. Giving it away after you've created it, that's good. That's a culture that says being happy and being successful and really applying yourself and making something of your life, taking care of the people you love, that is air, morally. Suffering, that's good. Mother Teresa is our standard of morality. Nobody wants to be Mother Teresa, but that's the standard. So what do we do to entrepreneurs? We say you selfish bastards and they know it, right? Inside, they know that they should have been Mother Teresa, because nobody wants to be, they became self-interested. What do you feel when you want to be, when you should be one thing, but you really do something completely different? What do you feel inside? Guilt. Businessmen, at least in the United States, I don't know about Poland, I suspect here they feel even more guilty. Feel real guilt. Feel real guilt. Somebody like Bill Gates is not giving his money away because he believes it will do the world so much good, more good than Microsoft. Because he feels guilty about making it. He's giving his money away to buy himself into heaven, whether he believes in heaven or not. He's trying to buy himself your love. But why don't we love him originally, when he built and created and made all this stuff? Because we have a morality that tells us that's bad. So, in my view, if we love entrepreneurship, if we love capitalism, business, freedom, liberty, then we have to question more than just economic theory. That's relatively easy. You saw the hockey stick. I mean, what do they got to argue against it? Nothing. And yet they do argue against it. Not on economic grounds, in my view. They have no economic theory behind them. They have to argue more than politics. Politics is the last straw to fall. The real battle, the real battle we have to fight is a moral battle. As long as people perceive that Bill Gates is of the world as eh or negative, we will lose. As long as entrepreneurs are made to feel guilty for their success, guilty for their achievement, guilty for making the world a better place for themselves, we will lose. Economic facts don't matter to people. You can explain all day long why the minimum wage causes unemployment among the poorest of the poor and people still vote for it. They ignore the economic fact. They do what they feel is good. And if we have to sacrifice a few young people so that other poor people can be a little better off, which is exactly what the minimum wage does, it redistributes wealth from the very, very poor to the slightly less poor, so be it. Sacrifice is cool. Sacrifice is okay. And if we, we can't believe the hockey stick, because the hockey stick would suggest that self-interest, i.e. when people are left free to pursue their own self-interest, there's a good thing. And we can't, we can't even accept that self-interest is a good thing. Then we reject the hockey stick or we find other explanations or we invent stuff that's about a science fiction. Well, all you have to do is read Paul Krugman and Stiglitz and all these idiots. And I mean, they used to be economists that they forgot or they ignore. And the reason they can get away with it is because that's what we want to believe. We want to believe capitalism is no good. There's no other explanation. Again, we've had the best economists in the world. We've made the best economic arguments that have ever been made. We've had a Hayekz and Mises and Friedman who popularized a lot of the stuff. They made the arguments. Nobody's convinced. At least not in the West, right? You guys have had a slightly different trajectory so maybe there's hope over here. But my view is we have to fight them all battle. We have to reject the morality that says that sacrifice is good. Because there's an obvious question to ask. Why should I sacrifice? Why be selfless? Why is somebody else's life more important than mine to me? As far as I know, I only have one life on this planet. Actually, I actually do know that I only have one life on this planet. It's not just as far as I know. One life. Why not make the most of it? Why not live for me? Why do I have to live for you? Why is your life more important to me than my life? I mean, that's nuts. That's ridiculous. So what we need, this is why I encourage you all to read at the shrug, the fountain, the virtue of selfishness. What she adds to this discussion is a different moral code. A moral code that says no. Your life is not secondary. Your life is primary. Your moral responsibility is not to others. Your moral responsibility is to yourself, to your own life, to make your life the best life that it can be to pursue your own happiness and achievement. That entrepreneurs are not heroes because they help the world. They're entrepreneurs because they make the most of their own life. Because they take risks and they get rewards. They challenge themselves. They apply themselves. They work hard and they reap the benefits, not just financially, but spiritually as well. That's what makes them good guys. By the way, they make the world a better place. But a moral code that is focused on self-interest is the only moral code consistent with liberty and freedom. Because what are we talking about when we talk about liberty and freedom? We're talking about liberty and freedom for the individual to pursue their own life. But is that right? Is that moral? Is that just? Not according to a morality of sacrifice. No, your responsibility is to others, not to yourself. Pursuing your own self-interest. Who cares? It's okay to control if we believe that that control is going to be good for society, or good for the public, or good for the poor, or good for some class of people who are miserable right now. They're the standard, not you, not your life, not your values. So we need a morality that focuses on self. We need a morality that says to live means to live well. It means to live the best life one can live for oneself. And then what moral philosophers should do is study human nature, study history, study psychology and determine these kind of values and virtues which is what morality is about, values and virtues are good for human beings and these values and virtues are bad for human beings. These lead to happiness success flourishing and these lead to death and destruction and misery and unhappiness. We know what leads to destruction and unhappiness what would be great if we discovered what leads to success and happiness. That's what we should be focused on. That's what we should be thinking about. And then we need to be advocating for that kind of morality. A morality of success and flourishing. And we don't have time to get too deeply into this morality but I want to emphasize one idea for my in-rand in terms of what that morality implies. What does it really mean to live for yourself? What does that require to live for oneself, to make one's own life the best that it can be? What is the one thing, the one value that one must pursue if one takes one's own life seriously? If you want to have a really, really good life. What is the one value that is required for human survival and certainly required for human flourishing? Our minds everything we have all the values that we have material and spiritual ultimately come from the use of our reason from the use of our mind. They come from observing reality, figuring it out and applying it. That's what entrepreneurs do. That's the essence of entrepreneurship. The essence of entrepreneurship is thinking figuring stuff out, finding opportunities having a new idea testing it, we talked about testing testing it in the marketplace but not testing it as a fantasy not testing it and then whooshing it away not testing it and then faking the results but actually dealing with the actual result which is actual reality which is what reason demands of us It means taking science which is reason and applying it to reality which might be on engineering or entrepreneurship and coming up with new stuff, new ideas but this is not just in business this is life generally Good stuff happens when you figure it out when you think about it when you use your mind, when you use your reason when you apply yourself living on your emotions alone and I know this is hard for libertarians to hear Inside joking leads to destruction leads to bad stuff there's a lot of stuff that's appealing in the moment but not appealing long term there's a lot of stuff that I feel good right now but it's not good for you in the long term to be truly self-interested means to truly invest in thinking and figuring out what's good for you not just today, not just tomorrow but over your lifespan it's hard I like to say being self-interested is really, really hard work requires a lot of thinking a lot of figuring out just like being an entrepreneur is really, really hard work and in the middle you might discover you've made a mistake and you have to readjust that's true in life, that's true in business that's certainly true as an entrepreneur you hire people that you thought were good they turned out not to be good you have to be realistic you have to fire them now in America that's hard in some countries like Sweden it's almost impossible I don't know what it's like in Poland hopefully you can still fire and hire people freely but that requires figuring out having the courage to apply your thinking and reality so if you had to boil down Ayn Rand's ethics to one idea it's think, think, think figure out what's in your rational, long-term self-interest what's going to make you the happiest the most flourishing, the most successful you can be as a human being in your life and what's the enemy of thinking what's the enemy of thinking what is the condition under which thinking is useless well emotion you can overcome emotion you can override through your thinking but what condition do you live under where you can't override it force somebody points a gun at you and says from now on 2 plus 2 equals 5 and if you act differently I'm shooting you it's hard you can't program a computer you can't build a bridge you can't do basic math compulsion, coercion force is the fundamental enemy of human thought just ask Galileo Galileo got off easy right because he only went at a house arrest others in his same situation burnt at the stake or crucified because they thought something that wasn't allowed to be thought and that kills that thought and it disincentivizes anybody else from thinking that thought so if you want to destroy progress if you want to destroy reason then you embrace compulsion you embrace coercion you embrace force and that's why the non-aggression principle is true that's the moral basis for the non-aggression principle it is the fact that aggression is anti-reason therefore aggression is anti-human life aggression is anti-progress aggression is anti-happiness so we want a government we want a political system we want a culture that rejects coercion that rejects force and that's the political system the economic system of capitalism a system of freedom a system of entrepreneurs entrepreneurs that can come up with any idea they can invent anything and you know what the test is we are the marketplaces not some bureaucrat not somebody with a gun but the marketplace for good services and ideas that's the testing ground are people willing to pay more than what it costs or not that's the testing ground that's what freedom allows freedom to act but most importantly freedom to think so what we need if we're going to bring about a better world what we need if we're going to bring about a world in which entrepreneurs can be free to produce and create what they will what we need if we want to bring about a world of constant economic growth and success is a new morality a morality that's pro-thinking a morality that's pro-the individual that's pro-self-interest that's pro-entrepreneurs and freedom and that's a morality of self-interest so for the sake of human happiness and for the sake of what was it three generations we were going to get poorer let's work for a real moral revolution not just for political economic revolution thank you all okay so I purposefully left plenty of time for Q&A so do we want to circulate a mic or this question first okay I know what he's going to ask how I should answer my friends so what do you think of the terms what do we think as a free adult society thing how we should react as a society but also how policy makers should react to these ethnic threats we're having and I think student solubility is a great form to discuss different standpoints and shape your opinion so we actually as young libertarians would highly appreciate if you could tell us what you think how a whole community society should react to terrorism both in foreign policy but also domestic security policy okay so let me start by saying this does not represent a libertarian perspective because most libertarians hate what I'm about to say and hate me as a consequence so I think we have to separate the situation in Europe into two separate issues for a moment and then we'll unite them and the two issues have to do one issues of national security and defense foreign policy and migration which I think are two separate issues they're united right now but they're only united right now because we don't have a foreign policy and nobody's willing to talk about foreign policy nobody's willing to talk about terrorism we pretend that we're fighting wars we pretend that we've got some agenda here it's all pretend it's all mirrors and smoking mirrors my view is that there's a war going on that the West refuses to acknowledge and yeah there's a terrorist attack here and a small scale and it's not that many people die in the big picture right but it's only going to intensify because we do nothing about it and it's only going to grow and it's only going to become bigger and one day they might have bigger weapons and maybe they'll get better at using whatever little limited weapons they have but this is a war that's been going on I mean I dated from November 4th 1979 the day the Iranians took the US Embassy and it's just been accelerating slowly on and off kind of over the periods and it's basically a war between a certain sect of the Islamic world I call them Islamic totalitarians jihadis, fundamentalists whatever you want to call them they hate the West they hate us, they hate us for good reason we stand in contradiction to everything they believe there's a war the only job of government in my view is to protect us from exactly this kind of thing that's it, it's the only thing that's supposed to do so do your job find the bastards and kill them and I'm not talking about a few terrorists here and there are just tools of powers far greater than the few terrorists terrorism doesn't exist without state support it doesn't exist without weapons it doesn't exist without training it doesn't exist without money we know who gives them the money we know who gives them the weapons we know who gives them all of this stuff and yet we pretend we don't we live in this fantasy oh, ISIS say you know who is ISIS just a few months ago and suddenly it's the biggest enemy in the world who funded ISIS who created ISIS all it's the same elements who made 9-11 possible it's the same people who made all these attacks possible it's basically two countries in the world who fund all the terrorism in the world and we pretend it doesn't exist so this continues Saudi Arabia which funds all Sunni terrorism in one way or another the government doesn't do it it doesn't have any foundations and it's all hobbies it's not the Saud family and it's complicated but who cares? it comes out of Saudi Arabia and it's Iran who funds all the Shi'i terrorism in the world and you might not feel Shi'i terrorism in the world but if you're in Argentina and you happen to be in the Jewish community sent a few years ago it was blown up and 200 people died worse than Paris and that was Shi'i terrorism in action Iraq into Afghanistan and bombing Syria there are only two countries that matter in the entire Middle East and those are the two so I would defeat them and thus destroy the entire terrorist network and make it so that it was let's put it mildly unprofitable to attack the West but before that politicians our political leadership needs to declare war it needs to tell us what victory looks like and during that period when you have a war it's legitimate to do things like restrict immigration for the period when there's a war which you know is going to go away when the war ends or even God forbid listen into some phone calls here and there but the problem is today what we have is no war no victory, no enemy like a bunch of terrorists after World War II after Pearl Harbor declaring war on kamikaze pilots because you're afraid to name Japan as the enemy so what we have today is an endless war, no end to it so it can listen to everything we say hello NSA they can do whatever the hell they want they can restrict immigration and there's no end to it because there's no victory there's no definition of what a victory looks like so liberties are gone the state grows it becomes more powerful, more restrictive more oppressive, all in the name of defending us while they're not defending us at all so as liberals or libertarians or objectivists I believe in open borders, I believe in free immigration but I also believe in defeating the enemy so if we had a proper found policy we would declare war, we would limit immigration for the period of that war we would crush the enemy and then allow immigration again so that would be that would be my short answer to that because you can go on and on and I'm sure people have questions and some of you want to kill me but so be it yeah in fact you are a convincing commiser and there is one question which you both to ask that's for your talk how many socialists are on the floor how many, that the state is for how many desertionists are and you all to be invited for the audience full of socialists not with people that are here and so can I answer that quickly so can I answer that quickly so I've been in Europe for two weeks now I've given this as my fourteenth talk other than three all the other talks well maybe other than five all the other talks were in front of socialists so I agree with you but there is another point and that is yes all of you are anti-statist but my argument was not that the state is bad that not as capitalism is good my argument that if we want to win we need to embrace a certain moral code which I will guarantee most of you have not accepted because I asked how many were objective beginning and very few of you raised your hands so my goal is not just to say liberty is good capitalism is good my argument is to say the morality of self-interest indeed is the only way we're going to defend capitalism and if you try to do it any other way you will fail so I think there is a skeptical audience with that regard even in this room I will answer my question what are the last words I would like to say what are the procedures what are the ways to complete great part of Poland in the US and in other part of the world just to convince our ideas and to impose really our society with strong and powerful powers is a big question so my view is the only way to convince the people and it's going to take a long time this is not I know you're young so you think bam everything is going to happen like that we're going to take a long campaign that we all of us hopefully are engaged in this is going to take a long time because the changes are fundamental they're not just superficial it's not just about getting them to vote a particular way or another way because that goes up and down and that changes and politicians once they get into power are very different than what they are before they get into power this is about changing people's fundamental beliefs and that takes a long time in these books there are arguments about morality about the purpose of individuals life and unless you can make those arguments and then convince them that the way in which the only way in which they can pursue their own happiness that's a good thing to pursue your own happiness and B the only way to pursue that happiness is through liberty and freedom that's it that's what you have to continuously do and again it's going to take a long time and it has to be focused on young people it has to be almost nobody changes their mind about anything important in life I'm serious this is like we're like the it's all about young people forget the professors in Poland everywhere forget the professors in high school and in college the beautiful thing about human beings is that at about age 14 we get this rush of hormones and this rush of hormones makes us doubt everything it makes us doubt authority, it makes us doubt our professors it makes us doubt our parents that's your entry point that's where you say oh you're doubting here's some new ideas when you're 14 to when you're 25 it's cool to be radical well the left's not radical the left's boring the left's the same you know everybody's a leftist we're the radicals we're the cool ones yeah thank you very much I've got a question regarding the link between the morality of the selfishness and the objective is the approval for the less accurate policy which still seems a little bit obscure to me honestly I think that the letter does not follow to be formal let us assume that I'm a lawless officer and totally unhandled market as I've described it is going to be introduced by the libertarian or objectivist politicians just try to make the question faster because we've got lots of questions in limited time this is for certain that I'm going to be worse yes why should I not because the state is a poor person with my own self-interest because it's just not true that you'll be worse off you're going to be much better off so you're stuck in a job interesting where you're getting paid to do nothing let me finish which is not fulfilling which does not give you self-esteem but more than that the general standard of living in the society you live in is lower because under capitalism the general standard of society would be much higher whatever you enjoy by being I don't know your welfare worker whatever you enjoy being a welfare worker in a socialist environment social worker under capitalism enjoy a much higher standard of living because everybody else becomes more productive you remember that the previous speaker talked about the fact that other people's ownership of stuff makes your life better it does your life is much better when other people are producing your standard of living goes up oh that's the guy who asked five questions one this time I'm worried but let me flip it because this is an important point I want to make let's say you're a recipient of welfare so not a welfare worker you're not actually working for a living you're getting a check and you're not working you would say you're worse under capitalism and I say no you are living a pathetic miserable life there is no such thing as being happy and receiving welfare there is no such thing as being happy receiving welfare it goes anti-human nature to be happy to have self esteem to have self esteem you have to take care of yourself when you're dependent on other people you cannot have self esteem when you know you're basically surviving by stealing you do not have self esteem crooks do not have self esteem Bernie Madoff was not happy was a miserable pathetic human being welfare recipients who just live off the dole of government are not successful human beings they are not living a happy successful life if you're poor and you're a bricklayer and you're making a little bit of money but you know that you're feeding yourself and you know you're feeding your family and you know you're putting a roof above the head of your family you have pride you have self esteem you can be happy even though you're dirt poor when you get a check from the government this is why welfare is so evil it institutionalizes a whole group of people into not just poverty but unhappiness misery lack of self esteem so if you the connection between self interest is not a superficial self interest we're talking about self interest as a human being the full potential, the full capacity as a human being not just the check we're not materialists we're just money what we are is a spiritual being that requires a lot more than getting handed a check you need a work on it that's why I said self interest hard work 99% of the people out there in the world are not self interested we haven't taught them how to be self interested they just breeze through life without ever engaging this and that's not self interest and to be self interested incentivized you need freedom one you told us thinking the reason is that we need to obtain to make our lives better but two means two ways of getting better getting richer there are political means and economic means and with the thinking it's that someone who someone who thinks he would use my force to get his well and it connects with the first one I know you said several things why do they say that I think they say that cause today our capitalism is the shitty kind of the and there is full of those who use government's use I get it we don't have a lot of time so first of all let me address the second one it's just not true it's just not true most of the people who are wealthy and the previous speaker said the same thing most of the people who are wealthy in America today are made millionaires they are self made and that they created they're not cronies the number of cronies is limited yes if you're a banker you're a crony but why are you a crony I'll tell you the Microsoft story and I'll take the next question so the Microsoft story Microsoft used to spend you know how much Microsoft used to spend on lobbying in Washington DC zero so in the early 1990's Microsoft spent on DC and they were bought in front of the Senate and this Republican Senate stood up and said you guys have to start spending money on DC you have to start lobbying we're going to screw you if you don't and you better build a nice building in Washington DC and the Microsoft guys said look you leave us alone we'll leave you alone we don't want cronyism we just want to do our thing guess what happened the next year the Justice Department came after Microsoft for giving us a product for free Internet Explorer it was clear attribution guess how much money Microsoft spends today in Washington DC tens of millions of dollars they have a beautiful building in the center of Washington so cronyism is a feature of government and by the way there's no such thing as crony capitalism all cronyism is statism all cronyism is statism there's crony socialism there's crony fascism there's crony statism capitalism is free of cronyism but again most rich people today in America at least made their money the good way today is an element of cronyism you have to otherwise you're dead you have to play the game a little bit but that's not why now the previous question people think it's in their self-interest to use force on others but I strongly recommend that you read the virtue of selfishness which is now available in Polish so you have no excuse not to read it and she explains in great detail there why it is never in your self-interest to use force on another person why stealing is not doesn't make you a happy successful better person that indeed it makes you miserable and lousy and all you have to do is anybody ever met anybody ever met a happy politician I have not I have not they are miserable pathetic creatures who are continuously continuously stressed and anxious because their power this is not living a successful life as a human being living as a politician they are power over people Stalin was miserable was hateful all of these guys are politicians are big successful dictators they are not succeeding poor human beings so they are not self-interested they are power-lusting is not in your self-interest power-lusting is a it's not altruistic but it's neither there's a third category I call it self-destructive behavior people who steal are committing self-destruction people who mooch are self-destructive politicians for the most part are self-destructive life requires certain things to be successful to be truly happy to flourish as a human being and those things are objectively true you have to figure out what they are it's not obvious it starts with thinking it's very rare that people sit down and think so I'm talking about the corporate world politics that people sit down and think in the corporate world I want to be happy successful I want to live the best life that I can live so I'm going to steal money from my shareholders nobody ever does that what they do is they don't think they see a pile of money and they take it not because they're thinking I want to be a successful person no they just take it because they're motivated by their emotions they're motivated by whim think about Bernie Madoff he created this big pyramid scheme all pyramid schemes fail they all collapse at the end he was bound to be caught at some point so the only reason he did it is because he never thought about it he said there's a pile of money I'm going to steal it there's another pile of money I'm going to steal it then one day he's stolen all this money and he gets arrested and he goes to jail and by the way Bernie Madoff says he's happier in jail because he's caught and I believe him because stealing and lying and cheating is a miserable form of existence people don't believe it it's not a question of believing it it's a question of whether you believe it it's not a question of whether the crook believes it the crook is miserable already yep yep I'm sure you are you see I have a lot of persuading to do that's not what I'm trying to make it probably comes down to persuasion you said that we should make the moral in case of capitalism but don't you think that people are mostly guided by attention and a great stand when it comes to morals that it's even harder to create them on a moral level around an economic level yes I agree completely it's harder to convince people on a moral level than it is to convince them on the economic level much harder but it's the only convincing that counts because then they interpret their economic understanding based on what their morality is this is why you can teach them that minimum wages don't work and they still vote for minimum wages you can show them the destruction of socialism and they still want to be socialists I'll give you an example right now it's happening in the world Venezuela used to be the richest country in Latin America on a per capita basis richest people in Latin America used to live in Venezuela they elected a socialist today they're the poorest country in Latin America they barely have food there's no toilet paper, there's no soap people have to go out of Venezuela to bring in toilet paper and soap that's how pathetic life is right now in Venezuela Chile what's that then Chile and Colombia Venezuela, Colombia is actually doing quite well it's Venezuela Chile on the other hand Chile used to be the poorest country in Latin America but instituted capitalist policies because of the Chicago boys and today is the richest country in Latin America on a per capita basis who do you think the rest of Latin America wants to be Venezuela or Chile they want to be Venezuela now you can't explain that based on economics there's no economic explanation in the world that would justify wanting to be Venezuela the only explanation for that is moral, that they believe the Venezuela model is fairer is more just, is more equitable if we don't challenge that we lose we haven't been challenging that we are losing it's all about morality once you convince people that they should pursue their own rational self-interest their long-term rational self-interest freedom is easy because it's the only system under which the pursuit of your own rational self-interest is possible but it's hard to do very hard to do in a Catholic country, super hard to do but that's the choice we have it's all we have and this is why I said this is going to take decades and decades and decades this is a hard, hard battle it's much harder here when you're young because you want results quickly I'm old now, I used to be young so I know it's like that's the reality so I'm not saying it's easy I agree with you completely, it's much harder but that's the battle that we have to engage in otherwise we lose and we are losing and by the way Chile which is the richest country just elected a socialist twice and the socialist is undoing all the things that might other countries want it to be it's unbelievable if you think people care about economics or there's this myth in America that people vote their pocket book which means people vote how much money which candidate will provide them with more money and yet if that were true we'd live in laissez-faire heaven because laissez-faire heaven makes us financially much better even those people on welfare would be financially better off under laissez-faire capitalism that's what the graphs show rich people Obama when he ran for president in 2012 promised to raise taxes on the rich and he did raise taxes on the rich a lot guess how the rich voted the myth is rich all republicans it's not true 8 out of the 10 richest counties in America voted for Obama in California we have a referendum where everybody gets to vote to raise taxes on the rich from 10% to 13% we're talking about silicon valley rich 10% to 13% and Hollywood rich guess how the rich voted silicon valley overwhelmingly for raising taxes Hollywood overwhelmingly for raising taxes on themselves but that's how we get all these policies because it's moral because why are they raising taxes because they feel guilty and the governor goes around saying if we don't raise taxes on you those people over there are going to suffer we're going to have to cut education we're going to cut welfare we're going to do all these things so of course to appease my guilt I'm going to do it that's it thank you guys