 Please allow me to introduce myself. I'm a man of wealth and taste. I've been around for a long, long time. How did I get here with my invisible hands? That's the question I could ask the most. The answer is economics. The economy is made of us. So economists need to deal with the basic fact of life. There are a finite amount of resources and an infinite amount of people's desires. We use the elegant hypothesis of Homo economicus to model an individual's behavior to help us better understand and organize society. Homo economicus is a rational economic man. Naturally, what motivates the economic man is his self-interest. His preferences are stable and consistent, meaning he knows what he likes and doesn't like. Whenever he has to choose between two things, he always chooses the thing with the highest value, or the thing that makes him better off. When the economic man thinks like this, then, and only then can we call him rational. So if we all act rationally and follow our self-interest, then the market can organize people in the best possible way we know. More importantly, when we use economic man as our starting point, we can create a world run by markets that can work for basically everyone. Sure, there may be some unequal exchanges, but for the most part, everyone is better off in the end. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government programs. Sir Stephen Hawking didn't construct his theory of black holes under some orders from a bureaucrat. Bill Gates didn't revolutionize the computer industry in that way. The record of modern history is absolutely clear that there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities unleashed by a free enterprise system. Now you're going to tell me that most people don't act rationally. Yes, it's true that real people can't act like we economists assume perfectly. Real people can't see into the future, don't live forever, possess perfect information or calculate the exact value they get from each choice they make, but it gives us economists the absolute best scientific tool to understand individual behavior. Because if we can analyze what motivates an individual's behavior, we can analyze the world as the sum of all our individual choices, then create the laws and rules that aim to establish the ultimate freedom where each of us are free to work, produce, consume, and invest in any way we please. Using rational economic man as a foundation is how economists can best serve civilization. Is there room for sympathy with this idea? Well, ask yourself, have you ever been greedy? Or is it always the other guy? It's always the other guy. Greed has a negative feeling, but in principle, the economic man is greedy, and it's good. Greed is good. What drives the economic man is his self-interest. He satisfies his pleasure. We have created this beautiful and accurate way to understand and run this system which we all benefit from. The more we make, and the more we take, the bigger the pie gets. And who doesn't like pie? The point is, if you do what is best for you, you are helping everyone else too. How is that selfish? Am I right or am I right? Pleased to meet you. Have you guessed my name?