 I'm Rand Center for Individual Rights, a columnist at Forbes.com. His articles have been featured in major publications such as the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Investors Business Daily. Dr. Brooke is often interviewed on radio and is a frequent guest on a variety of national TV programs. Dr. Brooke, a former finance professor, is an internationally sought-after speaker on such topics as the causes of the financial crisis, the morality of capitalism, U.S. foreign policy, and Iran's philosophy of objectivism. He's co-author of Neoconservatism, an obituary for an idea and a contributor to winning the unwinnable war, America's self-crippled response to Islamic totalitarianism. He's here tonight to talk about his current book, which he co-authored with the Iran Institute fellow Don Watkins, titled Free Market Revolution How Iran's Ideas Can End a Big Government. Let's give him a big welcome. Thank you so much. Thank you all for coming tonight. The story about the Department of Agriculture is perfect because one of the things we point out early in the book is that there's a mystery out there. And the mystery is this. The data that we have over the last 200 years is inconsistent with the theory that dominates economics and political theory today in the world. And that doesn't bother anybody, right? Except a few scientists here and there who recognize it and actually go digging and figuring it out. But it doesn't bother anybody, right? So Keynesianism doesn't work, never has work, never will work, right? It's been tried over and over and over again, doesn't work, and yet doesn't bother anybody. They keep trying. Stimulus, right? Stimulus, right? How many times has that been tried? During the Great Depression, it's been tried many times since then in this country. It's been tried over and over again for the last 20 years in Japan, right? Every year they have a new stimulus package. It doesn't work for them. George Bush tried it in 2002. He tried it in 2008, but it was too small. So Obama tried it again in 2009, added $600 billion to what Bush had done or, you know, made it $900 billion, nice round figure. Still didn't work, so what's the argument? It's too small again. So we try these things over and over again. They don't work, so we try them again. You know, Einstein had a name for this. You know what Einstein called, trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? Insanity. We live in an insane culture, in an insane world. But for 200 years we've been running an experiment. 200 years. On what social, political, economic system produces the goods, produces a higher standard of living, produces wealth, raises the poor, and the evidence is overwhelming, right? It's overwhelming. Capitalism works. Statism in whatever form you try it. We've got lots of different forms, fascism, socialism, mixism, anything, right? Keynesianism, all this stuff is all the same status. They don't work, right? And we've run this experiment across cultures. We've run it in Asia. We've run it in Europe. We're running it in the United States today. The results are always the same. We've run it across time. We started in the 19th century, late 18th century, 19th century, 20th century. The results are always the same. Capitalism produces higher standard of living, more growth, more wealth, better life for poor people. On every parameter you measure, capitalism from a material perspective works. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. I mean, if people cared about their material well-being, if that was all people cared about, then they would vote freedom every time, but obviously they don't care. And this is not hidden, right? This knowledge about freedom is not hidden. You can see it right in your face, right? Just a little bit of research into history. We'll tell you that we grew much faster in the 19th century than we are today. Real incomes doubled twice during the 19th century. What are real incomes today? Barely moving. They're a little up if you count benefits and everything else, but barely over the last 30 years real incomes are barely moving, right? Double twice in a century. We're not even anywhere close to that. And what did we have in the 19th century? You know, as close as we've come to free markets as compared to today. My favorite example of this is a little place called Hong Kong. Anybody been to Hong Kong? Yeah, a few of you have. Before you die, you've got to make it out to Hong Kong at least once. It's an amazing, amazing place, right? It's a rock in the middle of nowhere. 100 years ago there was a fishing village there. That's it. Today it's the most stunning metropolitan you've ever seen. Skyscrapers everywhere on both sides of this bay, you know, luxury hotels, 7 million people, 7 million busy people, productive people. And how did they get? How did the 7 people show up on this rock? They went on rafts, they risked their lives, they came from all over Asia. Why? What was on this rock that they didn't have anywhere else? Protection of property rights. They didn't even have to vote. People think voting is the most important thing in the world. They didn't have to vote because they were ruled by the British for that period of time, but they had a great governor who actually understood economics and said, all I'm going to do is protect property rights and leave you guys alone. No safety net, no free healthcare, no social security, no Medicaid, no Medicaid, none of this stuff. And they risked their lives to get there. And they are thriving. Per capita GDP, to the extent you believe these numbers, but per capita GDP in Hong Kong is equal to per capita GDP in the United States. And all they have, all they have is freedom, economic freedom. No natural resources, nothing else. Even now when the Chinese are there, they're still respecting property rights enough to keep this machine going. And if you're poor there, you better be working because there's no welfare. And they work. And they're still, if you open up the borders, they would still flood into this place. And it's crowded. That's why they have skyscrapers because they build up because there's no landing. So anybody who wants to see, anybody who's willing to open their eyes, anybody who's willing to look at the data, right, it's right there in front of our faces. This is not rocket science. You know, once you get into Austin economics and the role of the Fed and Goldstein, that's maybe rocket science. But the general notion, the general notion that freedom works and statism doesn't, that freedom produces a higher standard of living and statism produces a lower standard of living, that is plain simple in your face anybody should be able to get. And yet nobody does. You said 50%? 90%? Where's this 50% who agree with us? I mean, certainly not the Republican Party, right? So let's be honest, it's 90% if we're generous. Maybe we have 10% of Americans on our side. I know it's depressing. But it's a reality. It's reality guys, right? I mean, even the Tea Parties who I love, and I think are great because at least they stood up and said enough enough, right? Even they, you know, have signs saying things like, keep your hands off of my medicare, right? Even they, when it comes, they want a smaller government, except for the stuff that they think is important, which is most of the redistribution. The knowledge, and it's not, again, economic knowledge, it's some economic knowledge, but people don't get it. People are willing, in a sense, to close their minds, close their eyes, evade the data, not just ignore it, but evade it. They know it's there, they know Hong Kong exists, and they're going to look over there because they don't want to see it. People don't learn from experience. People don't learn from history. You know, people tell me, oh, when the collapse happens, that's when we'll rise up. No, in every example in history where a collapse happens, you get a dictator, and it's the end. Collapses are not good. People don't learn from collapses. It just reinforces all the bad stuff that they brought with them to the collapse. People don't learn, and the question is, why? People aren't that stupid. They're not. It's not an issue of intelligence. People learn about other stuff. You can have rocket scientists, you can have engineers, you can have really, really, really smart people. I mean, look at liberals. Most liberals are really smart. They just choose to evade a whole part of their life, which has to do with economics. And that's, again, two of Republicans as well, who, you know, they want smaller gub. What did Romney say in the debate? His best performance to date, right? But he still said, oh, yeah, we're for regulations. You've got to regulate. We just are going to do it better. You've got to redistribute wealth. We'll just do it more efficiently. But if you regulate, if you redistribute wealth, that statism, that doesn't work. Just from a working perspective, just from an economic perspective, it's central planning. We know what central planning does. It's destructive. So what's going on here? What is it about our culture that makes it possible for people to evade such a big chunk of history, of knowledge, of economics, of the data? Now, I'd argue, what happens is people shape their understanding of history, of experience, of data. They shape it based on more fundamental ideas. So they come to the data and economics seeing what they want to see. What they want to see is shaped by their morality, by their philosophy. And there's something about capitalism. There's something about freedom that we as a culture find offensive. We find that upsetting. We find it bad. What is it? Because every time a financial crisis happens, every time an economic crisis happens, before the data is even in, who gets blamed for it? Greedy capitalists, free markets, robber barons, and almost always the bankers. The bankers are always the villains. They are the evil ones. Now, for 2,000 years, we've blamed every single financial crisis in history on bankers. They are the moneylenders. They're the bad guys. Something about freedom, about capitalism, about banking, is visceral. It's so deep in sight that we don't even want data. We're not even willing to wait until the economists figure out what actually happened. We know. We know deep down. It has to be free markets. It has to be capitalism. It has to be Wall Street that is at fault. And almost every time, if you do wait for the data, sometimes it takes economists a long time to figure out the data, it's quite understood that that's not what happened. The best example is the Great Depression. At the time, it was Wall Street that caused it, right? It was freedom that caused it. It was too little regulation that caused it. It's unfamiliar. Even the Keynesian, almost nobody thinks it. Everybody knows the Federal Reserve caused it and government policy caused it. Any decent, half decent, tiny little bit decent economists know it. And yet we still teach it, by the way, in schools, we still teach that the Great Depression was caused by the greedy financiers and Wall Street because it somehow, that's an appealing answer. So what is it? It causes us to have these visceral reactions in spite of the facts, in spite of the evidence, in spite of everything. We need to look at what capitalism is and what it's about. So what are markets about? What are people going to markets to do? To trade, trade for what purpose? What do they want to trade for? Make a profit. A profit for whom? For themselves. So Steve Jobs makes one of these. Why does he build it? What's that? That's why you buy it. I don't think Steve Jobs cares about you taking pictures of yourself and putting them up on Facebook. He's doing it to make a profit. That's not the only reason. Why else has he been doing it? Because he loves beautiful products. He's got a lot of himself in these things. He has a passion for this. He had a passion. He loves it. So Steve Jobs makes these four Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs is about Steve. And if he cared about me, he could have sold these at half price. And still made a profit, by the way, because the profit margins were 60, 70% on the original iPhones. I think they're lower now that he's got competition. Now, the first iPhone came out in 2008 and the economy was spiraling out of control and going down and things were bad. That's why you guys go at them all bought one because I wanted to stimulate the economy. Right? Because that's why you guys go at them all, right? That's why you guys buy stuff. So why do you guys buy stuff? To take pictures and put them up on Facebook, right? You buy stuff because you want to. Because it's good for you. Or you think it's good for you, right? Because your intention is to make your life better. You know, you go at them all to look better, to buy stuff to make you more productive if you have fun with or whatever it is, it's about you. So what's the marketplace about? It's about people coming together to pursue their self-interest. And this isn't new. This isn't a revelation, right? Because Adam Smith got this in 1776. It's in the Walt of Nations, right? The baker bakes the bread, not because he cares about any of you. He doesn't. He bakes the bread because he cares about himself, his family, his kids. He wants to feed them. He's good at baking bread. He actually might enjoy baking bread and he's making money for himself. The guy who delivers the bread to the grocery store doesn't care about you, doesn't care about the baker, doesn't care about the grocery store. He cares about himself. He's trying to make a living for himself. The grocery store doesn't care about anybody. They care about them. The marketplace is about self-interest. It's about people pursuing their values. Their values. Their self-interested values. That's what it's about. Now, Adam Smith felt uncomfortable about this. As do 99% of people in the world. Because this is the real secret behind what's going on out there. People don't like to think about self-interest that way. Why? What have we taught about self-interest from when we're this big? It's not good. I mean, my mother taught me, I grew up in a good Jewish family, right? I asked. Think about this first. Be self-less. What is the... When we think about something noble, about something heroic, about something ethical, virtuous, good, saintly, do we think of somebody pursuing his own self-interest? What do we think of? Sacrifice. And what is sacrifice? I give something, and what do I get in return? Death. You have to bring in another life in order to justify, right? But in this life, what am I getting in return? Death often, right? But nothing. Or something negative, or something less. We elevate sacrifice. We elevate self-lessness. That is what's virtuous. That's what goodness is. So Adam Smith, when he says the marketplace is all about self-interest, ooh, that doesn't feel right. So how does Adam Smith justify capitalism? He has to go through a whole argument about the fact that capitalism, if all these people pursue their self-interest, which you know is not so good, but if you add it all up, if you add the effects of all that up, something called the invisible hand makes it so that society is better off. And since society is better off, and since society is the standard, not the individual, society is the standard then the self-interest that behaves as an individual is justified because it's for the common good. Nobody buys that. Nobody buys that. Nobody buys that you can behave in a way that's ignoble. That's not consistent with morality. That's not consistent with nobility and the good. And yet if you add them all up, nobility comes about. Nobody believes that. We don't trust self-interest. We believe it's somehow wrong. It's flawed. It's going to lead people to do what? What does self-interest lead people to do? Let me finish, because I promise I'll answer that. I don't think any of those people are self-interested. They're all self-destructive. They just don't know it. But they're certainly not self-interested. Self-interest, as you'll see, I believe is an achievement. It's not something that's just your emotes. It's not what you feel like doing. Self-interest is achieving stuff. It's creating stuff. It's not living off of others. That's self-destructive. The biggest victims of food stamps are the people who receive them. They're institutionalized into into servitude. They'll never have self-respect. They'll never have self-esteem. They'll never be happy. There's nothing worse than that. But nobody ever tells them that. Nobody ever tells them what human happiness requires, because nobody cares about human happiness. It's not about human happiness. Morality is about sacrifice. That's not happiness. Happiness over here, sacrifice over here. Your happiness, that requires self-interest. Properly. Proper self-interest. But what do we associate with self-interest? Food stamps. In a sense, self-interest is exploiting other people. Right? Living off of other people. That's self-interest. First thing that came into your mind is food stamps. They're being self-interested. What else comes into your mind when I say self-interest? Bernie Madoff, right? Lying, cheating, stealing. You know, backstabbing SOBs. That's self-interest. That's what we've been taught. Who has an interest to teach us that? People who hate capitalism. Because they know. We don't know this, because we deny it. Because we bought into their morality. They know that markets are all about self-interest. So they've set out for the last for hundreds of years, they've set out to convince us that self-interest is evil. Because that's how they can control us. Self-interest is about lying, cheating, and stealing. Bernie Madoff, self-interest is taking care of self. How did Bernie Madoff do? Taking care of himself. Pretty well? Let's assume he wasn't caught. Pretty well? Is it all about money? Is life about money? Bernie Madoff happy before he got caught? Just ask him. He'll say he's happy and now in jail than he was before he was caught. You don't achieve happiness, success, self-interest from lying, cheating, and stealing. I mean, they would like us to believe that. They would like us to believe the self-interest that people do that. But that's because they want you to bind to the sacrifice, self-lessness, morality. Because what does that require of you? What is the commandment, if you will, of sacrifice, selflessness, of a morality that says place other being before you? Well, you got to take care of them. You got to take care of them. They are more important than you are. Your whole moral code is about serving them. It's about providing for them. You are your brother's keeper. Well, keep them. And if he's in need and he's not being kept, whose fault is it? It's yours. And I'm the government official that's here to help you be better. Look, you're not giving enough, right? Your 10% tithing is not taking care of those people. So I'm going to add another 10%. And when it turns out that's not helping them enough, I'm going to add another 10%, another 10%, another 10%. People don't vote their economic interest. They don't. I'm in California. Believe me, people do not vote their economic interest. We've got on the ballot a tax measure that's going to raise taxes and everybody earning $250,000 or more. We already have one of the highest tax rates in the country. Second only to New York, I think. It's going to go increased by 2% from 10%, I think, to 12% for the highest backer. Guess what most rich people in California are going to vote? For it. Why? Because they feel guilty. No. I mean, it's still going to raise their taxes. As many deductions as you can take, particularly with alternative minimum tax, it's not going to affect you at the state level. I mean, if my income tax is raised by 2%, I'm going to take as much deductions as I can. I'm still going to pay 2% more. I'm going to pay more than I pay now. You guys, because you belong to an economics club, you think people vote economics? They don't. They don't care about economics. They don't care about how much money they make. They want to feel good. They want to feel like they're good people. They want to do justice. They want to be fair. They want to be moral. They want to be ethical. And they've made a lot of money, and they're feeling pretty good about themselves, and they're rich, but they feel guilty about it. So what's 2%? Big deal. To feel a little better about yourself, to appease the guilt, it never goes away the guilt once you get it. You're stuck with it, because it's never enough, right? Remember, marginal tax rates in the 50s were 90%. You can always increase marginal tax rates. But it's all about the guilt. And the guilt, why? Why do they feel guilty? Because they're supposed to be selfless, and what have they been in their entire career if they've made money? Greedy, they've been self-interested. You can't make money without being self-interested. You can't make money without focusing on the profit motive. But trying to make a profit. That's what they do. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, all these guys, right? But they're supposed to be selfless. That's how you get into, you know, into the good side of our moral culture. You're supposed to sacrifice. So if I'm doing one thing, but I think I should be doing something else, what's the emotion that evokes? Guilt. We live in a society filled with guilt. Those are all guilty. Most conservatives are guilty. Because they don't live up to them all ideal. How many of them are Mother Teresa's? None of them. I mean, it's the beauty of this moral system that it creates guilt among everybody. And again, guilt is a way we control you. Because if you feel guilty, I have the magic bullet. Just give me some money and I'll pat you on the head and say, you should feel less guilty. You should feel less guilty. It's exactly what government does. It's exactly what government does. So we've got to, I mean, think about Bill Gates. He's a guy who, you know, created, created billions and billions and billions dollars worth of wealth. He created it by how? By trading. So when he sold Microsoft product and we bought it for 100 bucks, who lost? I was better off because I bought a product that was worth more to me than what I paid. Bill Gates was better off because he made a profit out of every product. Everybody in, who lost? Culture, why? Everybody in the world, every human being on this planet, in my view, benefited enormously because of Microsoft. You can't measure how much they benefit. How did we think about Bill Gates from an ethical moral perspective? Good guy? Noble, valiant, you know, this is, this is, you know, my model of ethical behavior. Now, we hated the guy. I mean, we might have admired him business-wise, but from an ethical moral perspective, we hated him. Now, when did he become an okay guy? A good guy. When he starts giving it away. When he left Microsoft, he's no longer greedy, he's no longer profiting. He's working to give his money away. Right? That's when he becomes a good guy. And I can guarantee Bill Gates sainthood. I haven't talked to the Pope yet. But I think I can, I think I can guarantee that. How would Bill Gates gain sainthood? What would he have to do? Because there's a flaw, I mean, we like him today, but he, you know, he still lives in a big house, and he seems like he's enjoying the stuff about giving away. He still has a big smile He's being too self-interested in his philanthropy. What would he have to do to become a saint? Exactly, he'd have to give it all away, move into a tent, and if he could show some blood, if he could show some blood, he would be guaranteed to be a cultural, none of us would want to be him, because we're all hypocrites, but he would want, we are, we're a culture of hypocrites, but he would become an icon. He would. Generations of people would look up, wow, look what this rich guy did. I mean, I don't want to do it, but wow. I mean, it's sick. It really is sick. We live in a culture where making money, creating wealth, trading with people, trading as a win-win relationship. In win-win transactions, that from a more perspective we've used, eh, giving it away, suffering while giving it away. That's good. Sacrifice, right, is lose-win. The whole idea of a sacrifice is lose. If there's no lose, there's no sacrifice. Win-win, not so good. Lose-win, that's good. I mean, we've got a completely upside down, reverse, nutty, ethical system going on, and it's taught everywhere. Every mall thinker out there believes in this stuff. It doesn't matter if it's a religion, or if it's secular, they all hold this. Right, I mean, they have exceptions, but 90 percent, right, the first thing comes in our mind is, so let's think about this. So if we believe that you are your brother's keeper, and that you have to help your brother, that leads directly to the entitlement state. Health, healthcare, how did we get Medicare and Medicaid? Well, there were some old people and some poor people who really needed better healthcare. They weren't quite dying in the streets, but they just didn't have good healthcare, and everybody else got great healthcare in America, in the private system, right? And we said, those people are really needy. We're not taking care of them. So the government came and said, we'll help you take care of them. We'll just increase your taxes a little bit, or print money or whatever, in the 60s it was print money, and we'll be able to take care of them. We didn't take care of them. And we said, sure, let's... It's only a small group, right? But then that group, there's another group over here that doesn't quite get those benefits, but doesn't quite rich enough to buy insurance. What about them? Well, okay, let's add them. And then the children. The children, they're not getting good healthcare, right? And these are children that are not quite poor enough to be on Medicare, but on Medicaid, their families can't afford health insurance. There's a program called CHIP. CHIP. It just targets those children, by the way, that CHIP has been expanded to their parents now, and all kinds of people now belong to CHIP. And by the way, who passed CHIP? No. A hero, somebody you admire. Reagan. 1986. 1986, Ronald Reagan signed CHIP. Because, if you're your brother's keeper, these are children. They're suffering. How can you ignore them? You would be immoral if you ignored them. That's the mall code we live under. You cannot let them. And, you know, there's charity, and it's not taking care of them. It's not enough. Once you accept this morality entitlement state as a done deal, you cannot fight it. And that's why Republicans can't fight it, because they've granted them all high ground and now they're playing on the same playing field. And once you accept a left's playing field, now you say, look, we can run the entitlement state better. Let me just, I can do it more efficiently than you can. That's the only argument. If you look at Republicans and Democrats, I mean, the fundamental is, we can do it efficiently, you know, you can. That's it. That's the choice we have. Now, what happens, this is now the flip side, right? What happens if you believe that it leads in the marketplace, if you lead people to be self-interested, it leads to lying, cheating, and stealing. Then what do you need to do? You know, to control those evil businessmen. Regulate. So if you believe that businessmen in the marketplace are going to be inherently as part of what it means to be self-interested, they're going to lie, cheat, and steal, then you're going to have to regulate them. And that's what we do. My favorite example of this is by a Republican president, George Bush, Republican House, Republican Senate, cost the US economy somewhere between $1.52 trillion in real wealth. It's caught how many crooks? Zero. Prevented the financial crisis? Didn't prevent the financial crisis. Why was this bill passed? By the way, it passed the Senate. Anybody know how many conservatives voted against it? It was 98 to zero. Nobody voted against it. Why was it passed? Because in 2001, Enron, WorldCom, Taiko, we had all these CEOs who were clearly corrupt, who were bad guys, and they were caught. And the immediate thought that everybody had was see, businessmen are corrupt, they lie, cheat, and steal. They're all corrupt. So we need to pass a law, and this is what Sabain's Oxy is, that puts a government official on the shoulder of every country in America, and monitors everything that they do. And every employee under them. Sabain's Oxy is a way to monitor every single little transaction that you engage with within a business. Because you're a crook until proven otherwise. And you're a crook because you work for a business, and you're a crook because you're motivated by the profit motive. That's the logic. Now, how many of you watch Bill O'Reilly? Yeah, that's the right response. In 2002, in the spring of 2002, and Bill O'Reilly in the spring of 2002 wanted to, he was on a campaign. And his campaign was to fire every CEO in America. Because they were all crooks. How does he know? Because we caught four. And they were all selfish. They were all greedy. They were all motivated by profits. They all must be crooks. And I had to go and Bill O'Reilly show and defend business. He was not so angry with me. I've never seen Bill O'Reilly so angry. He turned red. He was pounding on the table. I mean, he was going nuts. Over what? Over the idea that every CEO in America is a crook. But that's the belief. That's what it does to you. So if you believe that self-interest leads to line-cheating stealing, then you're going to want to regulate. And there's no anti-regulation. There is no anti-regulation. It's obviously weak. Because there must be crooks out there. So we need more. The financial crisis was caused by what? Greedy financiers. So what do we need to do? Regulate them. So we pass Dodd-Frank. Which is this massive regulation of the financial industry which is going to cause what? Next financial crisis. I can guarantee it. If you study the next financial crisis, you'll be able to link it back to Dodd-Frank to serve in a bunch of other nonsense that they're doing right now. And what will we learn? We'll learn that Dodd-Frank wasn't strong enough and we need something even stronger. Because if you follow the path of regulation, that's always the case. And why? It's because the greedy profit-seeking businessmen are out together. As long as we believe that you'll never have free markets. But that's what 90% of the population believe. They will never articulate it. If anything happens, that's the emotion. That's what comes up. 98 to 0 Salbanes Oxytown. Not a single senator had the balls to stand up and say, this is BS. And it's not like people weren't writing about how awful this bill was. People were. There was a lot of people writing about it. Didn't that? Nobody had the guts to stand up in front of their constituencies and say, no! Most CEOs are actually pretty good. They create all the products that you use. All the stuff that you have around here was built by corporations, by businesses that are motivated by profit. And yet you buy their stuff because it's worth it to you. Right? Nobody had the guts to say that. So in my view, if we want freedom, if we want people to get economics, if we want people to be willing to face the data and get it, we have to change the way we believe. We have to challenge the very foundational ethical beliefs in this culture. And Rand, I think, is the only thinker to actually do that. To stand up and say, what you believe is wrong 90% of the people. Not just about economics, not just about politics, but in a much more fundamental sense about ethics, about the morality, the very moral nature, what morality is. The morality is not about selflessness. It's not about sacrifice. It's not about giving up stuff. It's not about living for others. She says, no, morality is about living for yourself. But really understanding what that means. And here she's an Aristotelian. She follows Aristotle's thinking. Morality is about human flourishing. What does it take to make your life the best life that it can be? What does it take for you to flourish as a human being? Taking fruit stems does not lead to human flourishing. Quite the contrary. It leads to human suffering, even for the person receiving it. The biggest mistake of this 47% that Romney mentioned is that those are the people that Republicans should be going after. They're worse off because of the entitlement they receive. And many of them know this. Many of them are working class Americans who would love to have a job. And it's these ridiculous policies that are preventing them from having a job. People know, you know, particularly people who've worked in life and then are unemployed. They know the sense of pride you get from working. The sense of satisfaction, the self-esteem you get from your work. And they know how debilitating it is to go on the dole. That's who we should be appealing to. Not giving up on. I mean, that's absurd. So Rand talks about a real suffering. The interest that is focused on making your life the best life that it can be. And that the most important thing, if you believe that, if you want to make your life a good life, is to exercise the one thing that produces all the values we have as human beings. What is it that makes possible everything that we have, our clothes, the camera, the building we have around us, the lighting, everything? Because if you look at your neighbor, pretty pathetic, right? Weak, slow, no fangs, no claws. Just try biting into our bison after you've run it down, right? We couldn't survive in nature. We could not survive in nature. It's not for one thing. And one thing only. And that is not our thumbs. That's the leftist nonsense, right? Thumbs make us human, right? It's our mind. The ability to reason, ability to rationally figure stuff out. Imagine the first person who discovered agriculture, who discovered that if you put a seed in the ground and you water it, something sprouts up. That's an incredible scientist. That's Einstein of his day. And then you have the entrepreneur who says, ah, I can actually do a whole field of this stuff and sell the product. Wow, that's the Steve Jobs of his day. That's bigger than an iPhone. All the quiet is this. So if you want to be self-interested, what do you need to engage? What's living about? It's about using your mind. So Rand talks about rational self-interest. And self-interest is not in the moment. Not about, oh, there's drug, you know, there's cocaine. If I snort it, I get a high. I'm pursuing my self-interest. Am I? Is that going to make me better for the next 40 years, my whole life? I like to say being self-interested make it even harsher. Being selfish is hard work. It requires thinking. It requires figuring out what's good for me. Not obvious. Should I go after the job that gives me a lot of money? Should I go after the job that gives me more satisfaction? That's hard. People tend to make those choices emotionally. But no, you need to sit down and think what career should I pursue? What kind of friend should I pursue? What woman should I pursue? All of these are difficult issues. They're not simple. And when people pursue their emotions, what happens? They often fail. Because emotions are not tools of cognition. It's all about what's up here. So being self-interested is hard work. It's figuring stuff out. But that's what ethics is, according to Rand. Rand says, ethics is about figuring out what's really good for you. Figuring out what will make your life the best life that you can have. And that's a challenge. Now imagine if people were willing to accept that. Accept that their life does not belong. It's not about sacrifice. It's not about being selfless. It's not about serving others, but about serving themselves. About pursuing their own self-interest. Pursuing it long term. It's about trading. Why is trading good? Do you benefit? The other side benefits. Win-wins. It's about taking care of yourself. Taking care of yourself means working. Being productive. Making money. Creating wealth. Those are virtues. Bill Gates is a hero. A hero, a moral hero. For building Microsoft. For making himself a gazillionaire. Taking care of his family and his friends and so on. That's what makes him heroic. That's what makes him a moral person. The fact that he gives it away, who cares? I mean it's nice of him. It's not bad. But is that virtuous? Now he's already sitting on 40 billion dollars. What's he going to do with it? But making 40 billion dollars. Go try it. That's what makes him special. That's what makes him a good guy. That's what makes him heroic. That's what makes him heroic. He changed the world. In his own image. Wow. That's amazing. Philanthropy? Easy. When we stopped. I went to this award dinner for lunch. For business leaders. And there were about five, six different awards. And they went out and introduced them. And when they introduced them, they read a long bio. And in the bio, the first two sentences were about their business career. And then the next eight minutes were about their philanthropy and charity and community service. That's nuts. What matters is what you do at work. What matters is what you create. Whether it's wealth if you're in business or whether it's the minds of the kids that you influence. Your productive work is what matters in life. Not the charity that you do. The charity you do is fine. There's nothing wrong with it. It's even good. But it's not the essence of your life. It's not how you take care of your own life. It's not how you build stuff. It's not what you create. It's just other stuff that's what you create. But it's self-interested too. We don't want to talk about it a lot. We want to show how selfless we are. So Ayn Rand challenges all that. She challenges us to change our morality. To abandon this old morality. This morality that I think is destroying us. It's the morality at the foundation of every status regime in human history. We're always told that your life doesn't belong to you. That you need to serve the community. It's always done from Hitler to Stalin to, you know, the Crusades. It's always the common good. It's always for the human race. It's always for somebody else. If you have to sacrifice your life, it's fine because it's for a good cause. What made this country special? The revolution that was the American Revolution was not about taxes. It was about a new conception of human life. It was about the idea that your life did not belong to the group. Or to the king. Or to the tribe. Or to the pope. Or to anybody else. But you. The American Revolution is about the idea that the individual's life belongs to him. That's what the Declaration of Independence means. It's not just about the independence of a state. It's not like there was starting a state for the sake of we don't like the British, we want to be Americans. That's not what the American Revolution was about. It's what differentiates it from every revolution in human history. This is about saying my life belongs to me. The Declaration of Independence is a declaration of independence of the individual from the state, the tribe, the king, the whatever. Because a key sentence there is that each one of you has an inalienable right. An inalienable right means that nobody can take it away from you. Not a majority, not a king, not anybody. Even 99% of the people can vote, you still have the right. And the right to what? To help your fellow man to maximize social utility to bring peace to the world now. You have a right, an inalienable right to your own life. To live it however you see fit. You have a right to get in your way. To stop it. To use force against you. Because the only way to violate your rights is to use force against you. It's to use coercion in some form or another. It's the only way rights can be violated. Rights means freedom. Freedom from what? When we talk about freedom, what do we talk about? Freedom from force, from coercion. And why is that so important? What does life depend on? We said a moment ago, what did life depend on? The mind. What is the answer mind? What is the thing that holds the mind back? If I put a gun to your back and tell you from now on, 2 plus 2 equals 5. Can you do engineering? Can you build a bridge? Can you invent new medicines? Force destroys the mind. Destroys reason, destroys rationality and therefore destroys the ability of human beings to take care of their own lives. It destroys the ability of human beings to flourish. So individual rights is about getting rid of coercion to allow people to go out there and try stuff and fail and learn from it. So you have a right to your own life. You have a right to your own liberty. Again, free of coercion, go out, live life, think whatever thoughts you want. The beauty of a free society is you can be wrong. You can be a socialist. You can be a free society, true capitalist society. You want to be a socialist. Who's going to stop you? Find some friends. Go open a commune somewhere. As long as you're not causing people to participate, you can be a commie. That's the beauty of freedom. Now, you're going to suffer. You're going to, you know, I've been on a kibbutz. It's awful, right? It's just an awful way of life. You want to try it? Go for it. That's the beauty of freedom. One of the beauties of freedom, right? The beauty of freedom is the good guys get to actually do what they want. The bad guys, they want either way. So you have a right to life. You have a right to liberty. Your liberty, your life. And in the most self-interested political statement in human history, each individual has a right to pursue his own happiness. That's what we need to recapture. We need people that they really have that right. And that it's founded on a mall system of self-interest. Not just a throwaway line that they discuss in the debates or that Centro even denies. Right? You have a right to pursue your own happiness. That's the revolution. The economics, the capitalism, people who want to pursue their own happiness, do they want mother government on their shoulder Don't drink that soda. Not good for you. Don't do this. Don't do that. Can't open that business. Oh, you need a license if you want a shampoo here in California. They don't want that. They want to be left alone. That's what people with self-esteem, people who are pursuing their own well-being, want to be left alone. Capitalism is easy if you can just convince some of that. So, the book is a challenge. It's a challenge not just to fight the economic battle, which we have to fight. There's a lot of ignorance in economics out there. Not just to fight the political battle, but to fight a much more difficult battle, but a much more fundamental one, and if we win this battle, we win it all. And that is to fight the moral battle. Thank you all. We'll take questions. If anybody has a question, we have a microphone here, so it's wired in. Just come up and stand at the mic. And while we're waiting for people to get over there, shine us here. Trace, do we have anybody on the internet that has a question? Actually, we do. Mr. Brooks, how does the objectiveist political philosophy scale to trans or supernatural corporations because of the jurisdiction, liability, and restitution? What? Interesting. I don't know if I understand. How does the objectiveist political philosophy deal with multinational corporations who have offices all over the world that might suffer liabilities in other places, and how does it all kind of work together? And what I'd say is all that objectiveist political philosophy, if it, let's say, we could just influence America, right? These corporations would be headquartered in America. They would abide by American property rights, right? In other countries, by definition, they would have to abide by the laws in other countries. Those other countries would be responsible for dealing with whatever they did in those other countries. The United States would not be policing its corporations in those other countries. I really don't think it's an issue. All this stuff about multinational corporations and the evil they do in the world is, in my view, to put it nicely, BS. Corporations do so much good that the little bad that they do here and there is negligible. And I know that people will probably disagree with me, but... So, I don't think it's an issue. Let's get there, and we'll solve it when we get there. Okay, let's just remember the rules of the Pikes, Biggs and I were just talking about questions. There are three questions, not comments or statements or speeches. So let's ask an answerable question. Charlie, I'll give you a minute at the end because you have something important to discuss when you move to the end. Let's make sure you're asking an appointed question and then we'll move on to the next question. Considering that we are in a largely two-party system with third parties having little chance to fight against these big machines, do you find it as a smart strategy to vote for a Romney and change from within rather than trying a third-party effort that has little success, money, and numbers to succeed? Yeah, so let me first say that I work for 501c3 non-profit, so I cannot endorse candidates. I cannot make those kind of comments, but let me see if I can say something without... I think the fact is that you have two candidates. Everybody else is irrelevant. If you want to vote for the best candidate, then vote for yourself. Write it in. You're better than Gary Johnson or whoever it is, and that's a thrown away vote anyway, so you might as well throw it on somebody who you actually care about. You. Or write me in. I'm better than Gary Johnson. Much better than Gary Johnson. Then write me in. What's that? Yeah, but I have as much chance of winning as Gary Johnson, which is exactly zero. So it's basically, in my view, the two guys running, you got to choose. And one guy, I won't name names, is on a path to destroy this country very quickly. Very quickly. And the other guy is on a path to destroy this country slowly. I mean, it is. So I'll take slowly. Because slowly allows us to educate. Slowly allows us to build up an alternative. Slowly allows us to change. Slowly allows us to grow old and die, and then the world will do what it does. Right? It's about life. It's about living. It's about enjoying life. So I don't want to bring about the destruction quickly because I know what happens after the fall. You know, here's the story. When Rome was at its peak, it had well over a million people population, well over a million people. A hundred years after Rome was sat. You know how many people lived in Rome? City. Ten thousand. Went from over a million to ten thousand in a hundred years. And you know how long it took another city in Europe to get to a million? Let's see. Four hundred to nineteen hundred. Fifteen hundred years. London in the nineteenth century. It's not pretty when the fall happened. It ain't pretty. Economic collapse of the United States is going to be very ugly. So I would vote slow. Any day. And you know, fight for the principles, fight for the purity, talk about the purity, educate to the purity. But don't vote for fast because that's what I vote for anybody but these two votes for the magnet. You know where in the Bible my brother's keeper is referenced? No. It's in the New Testament which is not my sponsor. I'm better with the Old Testament. It's in your body. It's in the Old Testament? Yes. Genesis. Well, Cain killed Abel and God was asking Cain where his brother Abel was. He said, am I my brother's keeper? Well the answer is no, I'm not. You shouldn't kill him either, right? That doesn't mean you're your brother's keeper. The point is, the point is the moral point. The point is, are you responsible for the life and well-being of others? And you are for your kids, for the people you've chosen to take on that obligation. But you have not chosen to take on the obligation of the strangers. You don't owe them anything. You can choose to give them. Charity's not a bad thing. When they deserve it. I don't believe in charity to the undeserved. But that's your choice. The only people you have an obligation towards are the people you signed a contract or the people which is marriage and real contracts and kids. Kids are an implicit contract. That's it. That's where your obligation ends. You're responsible for you. Prime Minister. And that's the key moral point. That's true of everybody. And to the extent that you take that responsibility seriously, you can achieve happiness and success in life. To the extent that you don't, you won't. And the funny thing is, in spite of the fact that my mother told me to be selfless, think of other people last, all of that stuff, she didn't really mean it. Because no mother really means it. She wanted me to succeed. She wanted me to think of myself. She wanted me to make money. She wanted all that. But she couldn't say it because we don't have the language for it. Because our moral code is so articulated in the words of selflessness that that's all we can teach our kids. When Johnny's playing in the playground, right? And John wants to come and play with his tractor. What do we tell him? You gotta share. Well, does he? Or can he trade? And why should he do anything if he's really enjoying playing with the tractor himself? If a stranger comes up to you and asks for the cockies, do you share? You think Johnny doesn't know that you're a hypocrite? Of course he knows you're a hypocrite. And the reason you're a hypocrite is, the reason we're all hypocrites is we project on all idealism on our kids. We become cynical. We know socialism doesn't work. But if only, you know the people who say communism is a good idea, it's just not, it doesn't work in practice? No, it's an evil idea. Through and through and through it's an evil idea. And surprise, surprise, evil ideas are evil in practice. Sharing everything else self-constant is not good. Now, trading, that's what we should be teaching our kids. Okay, no statements from me politically. Maybe later. I heard you talk about how we need to focus on changing people's ethics and their minds. It's pretty hard to do it now. Do you think it'd be easier when the economy finally collapses or there's still hope to push forward and try to convince people who are basically in denial and persuade them to change their ethic? Look, I mean, the way I see it, this is really, there's no way you're going to do it after it collapses. After it collapses, freedom of speech is questionable. After the economy collapses, your means of communication are questionable. It's over when it collapses. I mean, I hope I'm wrong, but I really do. I hope I'm exaggerating. But history suggests I'm not. There's no example of a civilization collapsing and just, whoop, oh, we didn't think of that. Freedom, that's good. It just doesn't happen. Now is the time. And the sooner the better, because Americans are losing. You see, the only reason I think we have hope is that the Americans in their gut believe in the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They don't conceptually believe it, but in their gut they believe it, right? Emotionally, they still, Iron Man called it an American sense of life. But that's declining. It's going away. And in 50 years, it'll be gone. It's now or never. It's the next 20 years. We've got to be all out there. We've got to be all in. And the message has got to be consistently pro-individualism, pro-day, the vigorous right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The economics, in my view, can wait. I mean, you've got to integrate it with the economics. But the key is that your life belongs to you. You've got to live your life the best that you can live. You don't. You're not owned by the state. You're not owned by your neighbors. You don't have to sacrifice. Live. If we can't do it in the next 20 years, then, you know, and it's hard. It's very hard. If we win, you know, if you really pushed me, what, 10%? Do we avoid another dark age? And I think it's a dark age. I don't think it's, you know, because if the U.S. collapses, people think, oh, no, you probably all know Peter Schiff. You know, Peter Schiff is convinced, oh, no, China's, nobody is going to be successful if America goes. Because what you need in order to be successful is ideas. And the only country in the world that's ever had any good ideas is this country. And the only reason China today is in any good shape, it's because they look up to us. And if we go, everybody goes. Everybody goes. And it's going to be disastrous. So now's the time to fight. Fight. Fight. There's no, you know, and if you have kids, you know, maybe the collapse will happen after we're dead. But if you have kids, you can. Right? You got a kid. I read an article in the Wall Street Journal last couple of days. And it said something that really struck me in the free society of Castro's Cuba. Somebody said that they're running out of rights that people can barter for security. I thought maybe you'd want to comment about that. I didn't get that. The people in Cuba are running out of rights, quote, rights that they call rights. Rights granted by the state, which are not real rights. But they were running out of those that they can barter for security. So that's basically how it is in a bottle. The problem is you don't get security. You don't get security. It's a myth. I mean, are you really secure in Cuba? I mean, the state can come in and take you to jail whenever they want. There's no security once you give up rights. There's no security once you give up rights. And there's only one type of right. I mean, this is the simple principle. You cannot have a right to other people's stuff. So you can't have a right to healthcare because healthcare is somebody else has to produce healthcare. Healthcare is not just there, right? So you can't have a right to somebody else's stuff. You can't have a right to food. You can't have a right to a job. You can't have a right. The only, what rights mean, people forgot, what rights mean and right to invent it. You know, it's a concept that John Law came up with. Doesn't exist before that. And what does he mean? He means you have a right to live. You have a right to be free of coercion. That's it. That's it. There's only one right. There's only one right. I know we say the right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, but there's only one. And that's the right to life. Everything else is a derivative. You know, to have life, you have to have liberty. In order to have life, you have to have property. In order to have life, what does that mean? It means pursuing happiness. But life is the only right. And all you need in order to pursue your life is that nobody uses force against you. That's it. That's what individual rights mean. That's what it means in the Declaration of Independence. And that's what that means is a government that doesn't use force against you. That's what a limited government, a limited government, is a government that protects you from force, not inflicts force on you. And the founders knew that the biggest violator of rights was what human history was, government. That's why they created such a complex system of checks and balances to try to, you know, prevent government from ever violating our rights. Unfortunately, they failed. But they failed because we failed. Okay. Basically, I would like an explanation or your opinion on crony capitalism. I believe a huge problem in this country right now is the majority of people, both Republican and Democrat supporters, believe that we operate on a true market, free market system. So they're either pro or against it when they don't understand we aren't operating under a free market or capitalistic system. So I just... So first of all, I don't like the term crony capitalism. There's only one form of capitalism. True. It's capitalism, freedom. Call it crony socialism. Why should we get the bad rap? Let the socialists get it. Or call it cronyism. Or cronyism. But crony socialism, I think, is better because the essential feature of cronyism is statism. Right? How does cronyism start? It's started by the government coming to a business, the first businesses where they did this on a big scale with the railroads and saying, we're going to control you. If you want less control, slip me something on the side. And the best example is this is Microsoft. Do you know how much Microsoft spend on lobbying before the Justice Department went after them? Zero. Exactly zero. They even had new offices. They didn't have any offices in D.C. The closest office was in Maryland somewhere. And you know who went after them for this? Armin Hatch, a good Republican from Utah, had hearings where he lambasted Microsoft for not lobbying and not having an office in the Beltran. Now the Justice Department went after them by the way for offering a product for free. So much for monopolies, gauging for free. Now how much did they lobby? Tens of millions of dollars a year. They have a big office in D.C. They have lobbyists all over the place and they lobby like crazy because they know what happens when you don't lobby. Right now, who's getting harassed by politicians for not lobbying enough? Apple. Apple. Politico just ran a big story about how Apple doesn't lobby enough. They're not spending enough money. How dare they not spread the good news around? So we have to understand where cronyism starts. It starts with government. And then what happens is that the corporations have to play the game. In order to play the game, they have to develop skills. What kind of skills? Political skills, not business skills. So who lands up rising to the top of a corporation in a heavily regulated business? Politicians, not business leaders. And who do you think is more corrupt? Politicians or business leaders? Politicians. Politicians by a long shot. So where do you think all the corruption happens in corporate America? In the most heavily regulated industries. You remember Enron? Worldcom. What industry were they all part of? Energy. Energy telecommunication. And it was going through, and this was in the 90s. And what were they going through in the 90s? Re-regulation. Never use deregulation, because in America we don't deregulate. We change the regulations to change who the winners and losers are going to be, but we don't actually get rid of regulations almost ever. So who rose to the top of these businesses? People who could manipulate politicians. And surprise, surprise, they were the corrupt ones. They were the crooks. If you look at Ken Lay at Worldcom, he was a friend of the Bushes. He was a friend of all the politicians in Washington. He was there to manipulate the regulations so that Enron would win and others would lose. So if Republicans believed in anything, they believed in very little, but if they believed in anything, then this should be the number one thing on their plaque. The thing that they should do, Romney should start the debate with, and he would get a lot of votes. They would win if they were willing to do it. They would win. First thing I will do when I get to the White House is present a budget that cuts all, capital A, capital L, capital L, all subsidies, goodies, favors to business. All of them, gone. That's half a trillion dollars, right there, off of tomorrow's budget. I'm not going to wait 10 years. I'm going to cut it immediately. Wow, Americans would go, wow, there's somebody who stands on principle. Corporations wouldn't like it. The crony ones wouldn't like it. The real capitalists would love it. Americans would love this, and it's good economics. We know that. We know the economy would boom, because now I would deregulate at the same time, get rid of the regulations at the same time, but just cutting those subsidies. I mean, you could even eliminate all the tax write-offs, all of them, and bring the corporate tax down to 50% and make it a flat rate, because it should be zero, because only people would pick corporate taxes as consumers, but that's a hard economic argument to make. Yeah, no, Gary Johnson's right. It doesn't mean he's voting for him. It just means he's right. Now, we have our fucking pressure on the system. Man, that means you try to make the system if the system destroys you, then there will be nothing to fix afterwards. If the system collapses, you'll have nothing to fix. So you'll have great ideas, and you'll feel good about yourself for voting for the perfect... By the way, I'm even better than Johnson. Much better than Johnson. Much better than Johnson. Much more consistently free market than Johnson. So write me in. You're better than Johnson. Write yourself. No, I'm not. It's the same vote. He's a very, very capable guy. I like Johnson. I'm not against Johnson at all. I just think you're wasting your time. Anyway, put aside the politics. I can't hear a word. Go ahead. So one area where excellence and self-interest, rational self-interest is celebrated in the world is in sport. Is there a way to harness that world support of sport to be able to translate into a political environment? I think there is. I think it's a great example to use with people who are not convinced. But notice that even in sport, it's coming down, right? Because notice that in a lot of children's leagues now, that they don't keep school. Right? The kids keep school. Because the kids want to win. But they don't keep school. Or I just... A friend of mine told me the other day that... Actually, somebody at one of the talks told me the other day that in this one league, their son was like six, seven. So he was banned from playing basketball because he had an unfair advantage. So even in sports, it's starting to decline. So it's the one area we still have where you need to use it as an example of what should be and what is possible. We need to keep going at it with examples of... And people like it. In sport, people still admire talent. They still admire. And they will need to pay for it, right? Nobody cares that... What's his name? Kobe Bryant or LeBron James makes a huge amount of money. Nobody cares. Everybody's quite happy with their $100 million contract. Because we still have that respect and that's why I still have hope for the American people. But that's what we have to hook into. It's that sense, that emotion, that idea, and then build on that. And nobody does, unfortunately. Because people are afraid to talk about something. You brought up the Kibbutz in Israel and I was just wanting your thoughts on the difference between a Kibbutz in a life raft situation like Israel's in and something like that here in America. I don't need a Kibbutz as anything to do with a life raft situation. A Kibbutz is just... It's a commune, in a sense. And it's a failure. The Kibbutz team was subsidized from really from the go, from the beginning, originally by wealthy Jews from overseas, later on by the Israeli government. Direct subsidies to the Kibbutz team to keep them going. Today, what has happened to the Kibbutz team that has survived is they privatized themselves. They turned themselves into basically kind of corporations. And they don't... You know, in the old days, I remember where a Kibbutz... You didn't have a kitchen in your home because everybody ate communally. You didn't raise your own kids. You had a baby. It was put in the communal home where you rotated who took care of them. You didn't have a job because your job rotated every month. You did a different job. True communism, true... Nobody had... Everybody had exactly the same apartment as everybody else. Same television, same sofa. Everything was the same because there were no... And it was a disaster. You know, the biggest disaster was people hated each other's guts. They did. Socially, spiritually, it was horrible because if I worked really, really hard, I had nothing to show for it. So I started resenting other people. And I believed that it was good that I didn't have anything to show with it. But deep down, I knew it was bad. And I started resenting people. And that resentment led me to do all kinds of sneaky things. And then they resented me. And it was a disaster. You went out of Kibbutz and people hated each other's guts. They... It was one of the worst social environments I've ever been to. And that's communism. There's no way around it. Now, Israel generally, in my view, is not a like boat scenario. Israel could beat the crap out of anybody. Right? They're the strong men. The only thing holding Israel back is the U.S. Right? If they were left alone, they could defend themselves quite readily. But they feel obliged to do what the American president tells them. And the American president typically is a whim. So Israelis become whims. But Israel doesn't need America. I mean, it needs to buy weapons. Even if it couldn't, it would develop them themselves. Israel has a thriving economy right now. It's got less than 4% unemployment. GDP is growing much faster than the U.S. Why? Because Israel, for the last 30 years, has been moving away from socialism as we've been moving towards it. And even if you're... As long as you're on that path towards freedom, you're better off. Now, they're a long way from being free. And they're a long way from being capitalist. But they're in that direction, and they have the best technology industry short of Silicon Valley in the world. More startups per capita than any country in the world. It's a booming place. They're not a lightboat scenario at all. I think they should go away with a draft. I think they could have a volunteer army. And they could still win every battle that they fought. I really appreciate what you shared economically. I think we're very much on the same page that way. My question is about philosophy. It doesn't seem... And correct me if I'm wrong. It doesn't seem like your philosophy leaves much room for sacrifice, if any. My question is, do you believe that sacrifice and your pursuit of happiness, they're both mutually exclusive, or do you believe that they can coexist? I believe they're mutually exclusive. I believe you should never go for a transaction where you know what you're going to lose. And when I talk about transaction, I mean all human relationships. Everything you do in life. Everything you do in life should be win-wins. I believe in sacrifice for my kids. I don't sacrifice my kids. I never will sacrifice my kids. My kids are a huge value to me. When I give them stuff, it's because I love them. And because what I give them is worth less to me than them. That's not a sacrifice. When I didn't go to the movies and spend time with the kids, it's because my kids are more important to me than the movies. I don't believe in sacrifice in anything. I think sacrifice is bad. It's anti-life. It's anti-human happiness. And therefore, should be eradicated from our vocabulary, from our moral vocabulary. When a basketball player is going down and he doesn't take the shot but passes it, he's not sacrificing his values at a win. And if the pass is going to generate a win, he's being self-interested by pass. Sack, anything that helps you to advance life, to achieve happiness is not a sack. So yes, I think sacrifice is a bad thing. Can you sacrifice temporarily to win in the long run? That's not a sacrifice. That's an investment. Sure, we all invest, right? That's not a sacrifice. The point is this, if you're going to get more than you gave, that's not a sacrifice. That's a trade. And of course, when you spend time with an infant baby, believe me, you're getting nothing in return right then and there because all they're doing is yelling at you and being obnoxious, right? But you're investing. You're investing in something that will pay off, hopefully. And some investments go sour. Some investments don't pay off. It still wasn't a sacrifice. It was a bad investment. And kids can be bad investments too, unfortunately. They have free will. And they can do bad things. And it's sad when that happens. So when I invest $100 with the hope of making $1,000 in the future, is that a sacrifice? Would you call that a sacrifice? No, you call it an investment. Sure. Sacrifice is a bad... I know because sacrifice is so much of our vocabulary, particularly in religion, that it's impossible to let go of it. But it's properly understood, it's not consistent with human freedom, with the pursuit of happiness, and ultimately with capitalism. And good economics. Because good economics is about investment, not about sacrifice. Thanks. If nothing, contributions. I don't have a question, so I'm going to wrap this up. Trace, do we have any interesting questions from the internet? Not really, anyone. That's nothing new? Okay, you covered it. Government with more government. No. We will take one more at the mic. I am signing books. I'm selling most of the 20 books. The books are written. They're not academic. They're written for a tea party audience, for the intelligent layman. So I encourage you to buy a few copies and give them to your friends. Okay, we'll have one more formal question. Then what I'm going to do is announce Charlie's going to have some local politics or something he wants to talk about for just a minute. And I'll be signing books. You'll be signing books, and then I'll announce what we're going to do next month, which might be of interest to you all. Thank you. Thank you. Other than the...is it on? Other than the educating people on the morals and so forth, do you think the...what did she call it? The in Atlas Shrug where they bugged out to their own place. They go on strike. Yeah, yeah. And well, not as much that as the whole thing about creating their own society away from somewhere safe. Liberty districts. That is really the most viable solution, do you think? Well, I mean, the problem with that is that in Atlas Shrug, it's a novel, so she could create this machine that creates this and they can hide. So if you can find a place where you can hide and you can still live a good life, then absolutely go for it. I don't know if you've heard about these free cities in Honduras. I've heard there's something going on. So Honduras has changed their constitution so that they allow people to start their own free cities with their own constitutions and their own legal systems in Honduras and they're leaving them alone to do it. And the first city supposed to be breaking ground any day now funded by some billionaires. Now whether it ever happens or not, it's still very speculative. People are going to look for ways out. People are going to look to go some way and do this stuff. Whether it's viable or not, I don't know. You can't go and start your own free city in the Colorado mountains because the government has the tool to come and shut you down and they won't let you because they want you. They want to own you. On that as far as a lot of people, libertarians and others are advocating that a bunch of libertarians move and basically take over a small town somewhere like the Free State Project but concentrated enough to actually work. So you're still going to have to fight by all federal regulations and taxes, all state regulations and taxes. So maybe your life will be a little bit marginally better off, but then you have to live in New Hampshire. Who wants to do that? Well, yeah. No, you find a small town somewhere where people would want to live. Sure. I mean, there are lots of options in terms of what you can do. You have to make those choices in terms of your personal life, what makes sense for you, and that the solution is going to be a viable solution and that the benefit is going to justify the cost. But each one of us has, you know, it's not clear that we're going to have one solution for everybody that is viable for all of us. That's where panarchy comes in, and I don't want time to get into that, but everybody could look it up. He's not talking about anarchy. No, panarchy with a P. I don't know what panarchy is. All right. Well, let's thank you all very much and very deeply in heartfelt for coming. It's a wonderful talk. He will be back there signing books and selling books. In the meantime, Charlie's got a quick announcement about politics, then I have an announcement about next week's next month's meeting. Thank you, Mr. Brooks, Ann. Dr. Paul, parents, I appreciate the floor. For most of you, no, I was elected as an alternate to the Republican National Convention. Thank you. I'm my one fan. And I guess I can describe just the good, the bad, and the ugly. And if you guys didn't know the details and what happened at the National Convention, I didn't have a chance to vote because I was just an alternate. But pretty much what the Republican Party is now is a dictatorship with two rules changes, which is Rule 12 and Rule 15 and 16. Rule 12, which I'll just explain, that they can change rules one through 11 and 13 to 24 at any time. If you work your way as a grassroots supporter like myself and get elected to the RNC, the RNC can say, no, you're not a delegate anymore. So this is your Republican Party now. If you guys want to know a little bit more details, I'll try to stick around and answer as much as possible as I can. Next month, we're also not going to meet on our normal meeting time. It'll be our fourth or fifth in a row when we've had such great national speakers. We accommodate them instead of sticking to our schedule. So you'll have to go to our website to find out that in November, most likely but not guaranteed, on Thursday, November 8th, we're going to have Professor Gary Wolfram from Hillsdale College come in and talk to us. And he is extremely entertaining and very richly grounded Austrian free market economist. He's just a lot of fun. So I recommend you come bring your kids, bring your students, whatever, for that event. But I'm not sure when it's going to be. It'll be probably Thursday, November 8th. Go to our website, pikespeakeconomicsclub.com. Check the calendar. And if you can't remember the name of the website, just try it out. Google Pikespeak, Google Pike Economics. Misspell it. It doesn't matter. Google will find us. It'll send you to the website. It's a great technology. Or a big government eye. Well, then depending on your browser, of course. But anyway, thank you all for coming. One more thing, Trace wanted me to mention this because I haven't mentioned it in quite a while. I'm not sure how many of you are aware of what's happening, for example, in Europe right now, the unraveling of the economy, the riots in the street, just how bad it's getting, the tip of the iceberg out there, where they have this entitlement culture that is now so deeply ingrained that to take a cut from their guaranteed retirement at 50 with full retirement pay to have to work another two or three years, they're rioting over it, that's what happens to human beings. That happens to your crater in doubt, in my opinion, right to life, liberty and property once you give it to the state. It degrades you as a human being. And Einrand would argue that comes from your biology from your DNA, some of us would argue it comes from the theology from our creator. It's the same outcome in that sense. So that's where we're headed. Europe is imploding rapidly. The great dragon China, allegedly this great state led economic system has got entire cities that they've built with nobody paying rent in it. Talk about malinvestment. That's what's keeping the world economy alive for a while is the Chinese savings and eventually that's going to implode. America, the very last unemployment report, the drop to 7.8% was because the Bureau of Labor Statistics found almost 900,000 people in one month had a job of some type that didn't have it before. The last time we had that large a monthly increase in that particular data point from the household survey was under the Reagan boom of 1983 to 84 when GDP was growing at 5% to 7%. Here we have an economy on life support barely at 1.3% if you measure it at all. And they claim that there was almost a million jobs showed up out of nowhere the month before the election. So you can believe that or not. And then the other thing that's happened just in the last month is of course QE3. Woohoo! And that's not an ocean liner. So I'm not sure if you understand exactly what this means here. But the fact is, this isn't money at all is my point. QE3, QE3 gives the Federal Reserve the authority to go into private banks and by private mortgage-backed securities monetize them that private mortgage debt they're monetizing to become your money supply. That's not going to end well. It's not going to end well. I don't know how or when or where but I have two words for you all. Prepare ye. Hope to see you next month. Spread the word. Thank you for coming.