 Can I take this off? Thank you all, thank you all for coming this morning. I wasn't sure how many people come to hear a speaker for breakfast, I don't often give breakfast talks. I'm a night person, so my energy level was up during the day, so we'll see how this works. I'm gonna have to figure out how to link what I do to high school football, I mean, I like that, so I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna make an assumption this morning, because I have this much longer talk, so I'm gonna skip part of it, and the assumption I'm gonna make is that everybody in this room this morning believes in free markets, that everybody in this room understands that free markets work, that free markets create a higher standard of living, that they generate more wealth, that they raise the poor, the poor are better off on a free market than any other system, in other words, that we all kind of agree on a basic level that markets create the goods, that they produce the stuff, that they create a higher standard of living, and that this country is the testament of that fact, and that history is proof of the success, the overwhelming success of capitalism and marketplace, and the marketplace, let me make one other point. When I say free market, right, I actually mean free, and free of what? Yeah, free of corrosion, free of government controls, free of government regulation, free of government controls, so I'm a bit radical in this, as you'll see, but I believe unequivocally that human history, history of the last 250 years has shown, capitalism, free markets, they actually work, they actually produce the goods, and this creates an interesting question, because if they really do work, if they really do produce the goods, if people are really better off under them, if our standard of living rises when we're free, then how come we're losing? Because we're losing, we're losing big time, and I don't care who wins any particular election because it doesn't really matter, I mean it matters, but not in the historical context, because we'd be losing not one election, not two elections, not five elections, we'd be losing for 100 years. For 100 years, this country's moving away from free markets. For 100 years, this country's been moving away from the founding principles of this country. For 100 years, it's almost exactly 100 years, you know, this year's the 100th anniversary of the two major events, the establishment of the Federal Reserve, you know, which monopolizes our money and creates bubbles and everything else, and the establishment of the income tax. So it's, you know, Woodrow Wilson is a good target, right? It's been 100 years, and I think we need to ask ourselves why, because it doesn't matter who's in the White House and who's in Congress, one thing you know, government will grow. You know, we all, you all probably love Ronald Reagan, right? And he did a lot of good things, but government spending under Ronald Reagan in the eight years he was there, doubled. Now that was good, because in the previous eight years, it had tripled, so hey, doubling is an achievement. But government grew, and of course, the Reagan Revolution wasn't really a revolution, because it didn't last. It was a Reagan blimp, right? A little period in which some respect for markets, some deregulation, lower taxes, but what did George Bush do immediately when he got out of the office? Remember, read my lips, right? Raise taxes, regulations went up. Doesn't last very long. So what is it about markets? What is it about free markets? What is it about capitalism that causes us to move away from it? And we are clearly, I mean this administration, more than any. We have been looking at Bush, right? I mean, I won't spend time here talking about too much about George Bush, but talk about government spending. So I think it's time any everybody, everybody who believes in markets, everybody who believes in capitalism, it's time we thought about the fundamental question. Why are we losing? And I'd argue, again, it's not about economics. Economics is an outside. We won that debate. Do you remember when Keynesianism was dead? Keynesianism was dead as a theory in economics. Nobody respectable believed it. Even Samuelson, who was the big Keynesian, every book, every edition of his book was less Keynesian as it came out. And yes, here we are. We live in a Keynesian world right now. Everybody believes in Keynesianism. How did it come back? It was completely discredited academically. It's the only theory that justifies growing government. It's not because somebody, they discovered the truth. All they discovered was, oh, we want more government, we want more control. So it's not about economics. We won that debate. Our people have won Nobel Prizes. We've had great economists. And again, history is on our side. The world today is on our side. As we sink in the economic freedom index, the countries that rise in the economic freedom index are doing better than we are. The freer you are, the better you do from a purely material perspective. So there's something about capitalism. There's something about capitalism that we, as a culture, resent. That we, as a culture, object to. That we, as a culture, reject, turn our backs on. And I think unless we understand what it is, we cannot reverse this trend. We can keep teaching it economics and keep teaching economics, but that's not what it is about. It's not about economics. Because again, the fact, history, theory, everything is supportive markets, and yet we move against it. The problem is much more fundamental. The problem is that we live in a culture that resents capitalism, and it resents it because capitalism is about what? What is capitalism about? What are markets about? What are people going to the marketplace to engage in? Well, if you're on the producer side, if you're making stuff like Apple, what's Apple in the business of? Profit, they're in the business of making money. You guys know it, but it's a little embarrassing to say it out loud. It is in the culture we live in. The profit margins in this are huge. Steve Jobs did not wake up every morning thinking how to make my life a better life. He woke up every morning thinking how he could make a cool device that he could make a lot of money on. He did, and he does. And when I went to buy my first iPhone, 2008, economy spiraling out of control, I went to buy it because I wanted to stimulate the economy. Ha ha. That's why you guys go to the mall, you go shopping because you care about your fellow man and you wanna make sure that jobs out there in the economy and you go buy stuff for the sake of the, right? You buy stuff in the mall because you care about whom? You. You. Capitalism is a system in which people go out, you see this in the marketplace, any kind of marketplace, primitive and sophisticated. A marketplace is a place that people go to pursue their own self-interest. On the producer side, it's the fun of making a product, it's the beauty of making a product, it's the money that's involved in making a product. On the consumption side, it's making my life better, cooler, more productive, whatever it happens to be, but it's about me and for the producer, it's about him. And this is not a new observation. This is not an observation I made or I ran made, this is Adam Smith, wealth of nations, 1776. He says when the baker makes the bread, he's not thinking about you, he doesn't care about you, he's making the bread because that's how he makes a living for himself. That's how he takes care of himself, that's how he feeds his family. And when the grocery owner sells you the bread, he's not doing it for you, he's doing it for himself. Capitalism is built on the principle of self-interest. It's about self-interest and I know that makes us uncomfortable. Shouldn't, but it does as a culture. I'll give you a simple example. When Bill Gates makes $60 billion for himself by doing what? What is that, how does he make $60 billion by selling us a product that we want, willing to pay let's say a hundred bucks for because it's worth how much to us if we pay a hundred bucks for it. Now it's worth more, otherwise we wouldn't pay a hundred and it turns out it's worth much more in terms of the networking effects, in terms of the benefits of our lives. We generate a lot more than $100 of utility for the $100 we pay for Bill Gates's product. So he makes $60 billion. What is the culture's view of Bill Gates as he's making $60 billion by making all of our lives better? That he's a thief, that's the worst case. That he's just a greedy businessman. So from a moral, ethical perspective, how do we view him as a culture? At best, neutrally, because he's making a lot of money, that's some virtuous, and at worst he's a crook and let's sick the Justice Department on him so they can break him apart, right? When does Bill Gates become a good guy? When he starts giving it away. So notice, making money, creating wealth, building something, impacting everybody in the world. I mean, there's not a human being on the planet who has not been impacted positively by Microsoft. That morally neutral at best, negative at worst. Giving the money he made over there away, impacting a much smaller group of people, having very little impact on the world as a whole, that is the essence of virtue. Now he's a good guy, wow. How would he become a saint? If he gave it all the way, moved there to a tent and could show some peace. Because what for us is virtue, right? Being self-interested, that's our virtue. When we were this big, we were taught that's advice. Virtue is what? Being selfless, sacrificing, giving, sharing, that's virtue. But those are not the virtues of capitalism. It's not what drives people to go to work every day. It's not what wealth is created from. Wealth is created from, as Adam Smith said, from people self-interested. And yet that's advice. Our ethical code that we live with every day is inconsistent with the economic system that we advocate for. And you can see that. There are a lot of successful businessmen in this room, I'm sure. I attended a Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony in Charleston, South Carolina a couple of years ago for business leaders. And they handed out these awards and they read long bios, because this was a celebratory event. And they read these bios and this is Lifetime Achievement for Businessmen, right? 90% of the bio was about community service and charity, and 10% was about their business achievement. Where do you think you really have an impact in the world? When you're charity and community service, and I have nothing against charity and community service. I've won a non-for-profit. But really, let's think about this. Where did vocates have more impact on the world? It make building Microsoft and its charitable activities. Building Microsoft. Most of you have had more impact on the world through your business than you do through your charity and your philanthropy. Yet, that's what gets talked about. The charity and philanthropy is what gets talked about. That's what gets emphasized. That's what makes you noble and good? Well, I'm not convinced of that. What makes you noble and good is building something, creating something, creating wealth, creating jobs, creating a business, creating a product, making stuff. That's what this country's about. Charity, community service, they're fine. But then the 10%, the 90% is the building, is the creating. You know, this country has an amazing history. We started in 1776 as a third-rate British college. I mean, we weren't that important because the British, if they'd taken the war seriously, they might have won. But they had the French and the Spanish to worry about. So here we were, you know, just a colony of the mighty British Empire. In 1776, within 140 years, 140 years, we were the mightiest economic power on the planet. We had to enter World War I just to get it settled. Now, whether we should have or not is a different question, but we were stronger than any other country. The British Empire was in decline and we were at the top. How did that happen? What happened during those 140 years? We built something. We created. It was, business happened during those 140 years. The Carnegie's, the Melons, the Rockefellers, the J.P. Morgan's happened during those 140 years. A lot of wealth creation happened during those 140 years. It did not happen because we were free because we provided them with the protection of property rights and we created a free society in which they could thrive. But it's business that built this country. It's business that created this country. And what do we do today? We call them robber barons. And we're not comfortable defending them, but they are the real heroes of 19th century America that built this country and created what it is. And yet we denounced them and we demeaned them in our public schools and our universities. We're uncomfortable with them. If we think about Carnegie, what do we think of? The libraries. We think of libraries. We don't think of steel. But Carnegie changed the world. He changed the world we live in, not because of the libraries. I mean, the libraries again are nice, they're great, wonderful, but what counts is the steel. He built an industry in this country. He made us the most significant industrial country in the world. That's what we should be remembering him for, but we feel embarrassed about it because he didn't do it for the common good, which is what the libraries are supposed to be there for. He did it for Carnegie. He made a lot of money on it. It's my belief that as long as we hold self-interest as this kind of discomfort was a negative from an ethical moral perspective, we will fail. As long as we hold that our moral obligation and moral nobility, that morality is all about being selfless, the morality is all about the other. Morality's not about ourselves, we will lose. That is a morality consistent with socialism. Selflessness is a consistent with socialism. It's not consistent with capitalism. And you can see it in every political debate out there. Somebody over there is suffering and has a need. Well, it's your moral obligation to help them. That's what we've been raised on. So all the government is doing is stepping in and helping you become a better person. And most of us will vote for it. So there's a group over there they need, they need some healthcare. They didn't have it, so we're gonna give them a little bit of, you know, we'll create Medicaid to help them or Medicaid. And then of course there's a second group over there that now that we've taken care of those guys, we haven't taken care of the other group and we need to help them a little bit and we'd pull at your heartstrings and good. It's your moral responsibility to help them. And they need stuff and you're not helping them. You're being too selfish, you're being too self-interested. So all I'm doing as a politician is helping you, again, be a little bit more moral, a little bit better person to assist that other group. And you start with a small program that just helps a small little group and soon enough 50% of all healthcare is being provided by the government. And we haven't stopped there because with Obamacare it's much more than 50%. Because there's always another group that needs and another group that needs. And as long as it's your moral obligation to provide for their needs, that's it, you're done, that's socialism. The entitlement state, the whole entitlement state is founded on this principle that it's your moral obligation to help others and you're not doing a good enough job at it. You're keeping too much of your wealth for yourself so we, the Neverland government, are gonna help you achieve that goal and of course we all vote for it. You know, how many of the richest counties in the United States voted for Obama? Of the 10 richest, how many voted for Obama? Eight. And the reason I voted and why, right? They all voted for tax increase on themselves. That's exactly what they did. Because they knew the first thing he was gonna do was advocate for taxing the rich. It wasn't a secret and he had eight counties out of 10 but it's not, you can say, oh, it's cronyism. They expect my Silicon Valley cronyism now. They're not getting any money from the federal government yet they voted for it. In California, we just voted for a huge tax increase, 30% tax increase on the wealthy. How do you think the wealthy voted? For taxing themselves. People do not vote their pocketbook. This is what the Republican Party doesn't understand. People don't vote economics. People vote what they think is right, what they think is just, what they think is fair. That's what Obama gets and Democrats get and Republicans don't. They have them all high ground they're left as. We never challenged them on them all high ground and they went and we vote for them. And it's all this talk. In California it was like, if you don't vote to increase your taxes, we're gonna have to raise tuition on these poor kids and they need an education. I said, you're gonna have to pony up. Okay, we know it's our more responsibility, we'll do it. And today we have the largest, we're facing the largest redistribution of wealth in human history. It's called Medicaid, which nobody challenges. Every dollar that you put in, some of you might be on Medico already, every dollar you put in has been spent, 0.1, right? You're gonna consume $4 of every dollar you put in, which means our kids and grandkids are gonna have to pay four times the taxes that you did in order to pay for your health care. That's morality for you, right? I mean, how does that work? But you need the health care and it's okay for them to sacrifice for you. That's the logic, right? So as long as we hold that logic, it doesn't work. Now there's another aspect of this kind of mild code that I wanna quickly bring up and that's the regulatory state. We have two aspects of statism. Entitements and regulations. I would argue regulations function also based on this mild code. What is that perception of self-interest? When I say businessmen all about self-interest, what immediately pops to mind? What have we been taught since we were this little about self-interest? Self-interest leads to what kind of behavior? It leads to people doing what? Greed, which means lying, cheating and stealing, right? Right, so people with self-interest that are lying, cheating, SOBs. And that's what businessmen know. That's the perception out there. They're lying, cheating, SOBs. Now, most of us know that you don't succeed in business by being a lying, cheating, SOB. You don't make money that way. But the culture believes that deep down because self-interest equals lying, cheating, SOB. Businessmen are self-interested. Therefore, simple logic, simple deductive logic. Therefore, all businessmen are SOBs. And what do you do if you think people are gonna lie, cheat, steal from you? You regulate them. You control them. Every elevator you walk into in the elevator, here I'm sure there's a little diploma on the wall that says that a government bureaucrat is inspected the elevator and won't fall. Because we know, the left of their own devices, elevator manufacturers will build elevators and they kill people. So we need a government agency to tell us that the elevator's safe because the market couldn't take care of that, right? That's nonsense. But we don't trust. We don't trust the market. We fear the market because it's all about self-interest. So we regulate. This became very clear to me. Remember Enron, WorldCom, those guys? Right? They caught like five guys committing real fraud at five big companies in the US. And ultimately the guys went to jail. But what was the outcry in America when that happened? They were all crooks. And we need to catch them all. And the way to do that was a bill, right? What passed as a consequence of Enron? Saubanes, Oxley. Public custody's economy of $1.5 trillion has caught zero crooks, didn't prevent the financial crisis, just a big burden on American business. Past the Senate, remember how any conservatives voted against this bill? 98 to zero, it passed the Senate. It's disaster of ability. Talk to people in sizable businesses. It's destroyed the IPO market in the United States. It's just awful. And it basically places a little bureaucrat on every CEO's shoulder monitoring every decision being made within the company because we can't trust them. I was on Bill O'Reilly in 2002. Bill O'Reilly, just after Enron and so on, Bill O'Reilly wanted every CEO in America fired. And I, you know, I think the clip is up on YouTube somewhere, but I did defend CEOs and said, you know, in this country, you're still innocent until proven guilty. He got so angry, I've never seen Bill O'Reilly so angry. He turned red, he was pounding the table. They all have to go, they were all crooks. It comes from the same place. I don't trust them because they're all after money. They're all greedy somebody said. But in the worst sense of the word, we don't trust them. So my view, this is Rand's real contribution. I am Rand's real contribution to debate about capitalism. It's the question, the maw code that we all take for granted. It's the question, the idea, the nobility virtue come from serving others. That serving others is the essence of morality. She rejects that. And she presents an alternative, a morality of self-interest. A morality that says no, self-interest properly understood, morally understood, it's not about lying, cheating, stealing, and being an SOP. It's about building and creating. It's about taking care of yourself. It's about making your life the best life that it can be. It's about living life to the fullest. It's about being the best human being you can be. It's about using your mind, because that is the tool we use in order to survive as human beings. The values we have around are your products of our reasoning mind, of our rational mind. So she challenges the morality that exists in the culture. And she says unless we're willing to do that, we will lose this battle. This is what Aval Shrugged, which many of you, I think, have read. This is what Aval Shrugged is really about. It's not about economics. It's not about politics. It's about morality. It's about ethics. It's about what is truly noble and good. The heroes and activists are noble and good because they create, because they build, because they make stuff, because they take care of their own lives. And of course, when they feel like they're being exploited and suck dry, they leave. They truck, right? They go on strike. But we need to challenge the moral code that pervades the culture. And in a fundamental sense, and I know there are lots of questions. I mean, this is pretty, if you have questions about what that means, I'd be happy to answer them. But in a deep respect, this is a return to what this country is really about and what this country was really founded upon. You know, I think the most important political document in human history is the Declaration of Independence. I think it's more important than the Constitution because I think it sets the context for the Constitution. And the Declaration of Independence does not, it assumes a certain revolution in man's thinking. There's something unique about this country that is not true of any other country in human history. This country is founded on a moral ethical principle. It's founded on a brand new idea. I mean, this revolution wasn't about teetaxes. It wasn't about any particular action of the British. It was about a principle. And the principle is the answer to the question of, who does your life belong to? Because before the founding of this country, the answer was simple. Your life belonged to whom? The king in the case of England. The tribe in the case of a tribe. You know, whatever the dictator of the time was, it belonged to somebody else. Every society going back to the beginning of time, your life as an individual was meaningless. You were always a cog in some collective machine. The founders of this country said, no, my life is mine. Your life is yours. We are ends in ourselves as individuals. The founding documents of this country don't articulate your commitment to society. They don't articulate you as your brother's keeper. They do the opposite. They articulate your responsibility to yourself. You have an inalienable right. Inalienable means nobody can take it away. To what? To do what? To maximize social utility? To help your feather man? Did you charity? No. You have an inalienable right to your life. And we've lost the concept of right. The left has stolen that concept from us. They distorted it and they converted it. But right means a freedom of action. It means you are free to pursue your life. You are free to live your life as you see fit. Your neighbor doesn't have any business telling you how to live your life. What soda drinks to drink, for example. It's your life, yours. Not societies, not the neighbors, not the governments, not the kings, yours. That's a profound statement. And it's really the first time in human history they said it in a political document. It was stated in a political document. So you have a right to your own life. Inalienable, nobody can take it away. We can all vote for you to live your life differently. And it doesn't matter because it's inalienable. And you have a right to liberty. Your liberty. Which means have the thoughts that you wanna think and execute and act on those thoughts. And as long as you're not hooting other people, as long as you're not violating other people's rights, you should be left alone. That's what it means. And in the most self-interested political statement in human history, self-interested political statement in human history, each one of us has an inalienable way to pursue our own happiness. Now that's, again, profound. And it's not what the left means. It's now we have to give them healthcare and food and jobs and men and weight. Now it means we need to leave them alone. It needs exact opposite of what the left says. What rights mean is that you have a right to be left alone. You have a right to follow your dreams. You have a right to pursue your own freedom. But those are all individualistic concepts. This is all about you pursuing your life. This is all about self-interest. In a deep sense, this is all about what it takes to establish a free capitalist society, which we had when we took those ideas seriously. So if we wanna win, if we wanna bring back free markets and capitalism and the success that is America, then now these are the principles we have to resurrect. We have to reignite the spirit of a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And if we do that, we win. Thank you all. Thank you.