 And remember this is called beat the speaker. Yeah, so you're supposed to ask tough questions And that's the standard the standards that agreement with me and the standard is this agreement Thank you At a university I've never been able to square Objectivism with the actual situation on the ground here I ran on the one way in on the one hand entirely Pro-capitalism on the other hand I don't know if I would call her pro-democratic because she was certainly wasn't for model, but she was completely anti-communist So what would you know year after year after year heritage and other organizations say yeah number one in the world I'm Kong's number one in the world with economic freedom But it's an economic freedom the super structure upon which is built a Political system where you have an oligarchy that has sold out its interests to a communist party Which is holding a gun at the city sure and the situation is going to probably get worse before it gets better So you're an optimist What do you think? I Mean, how do you square this? How do you square these two things which seem? Seem to be not in harmony So you can't because they're not in harmony and that's why you're getting conflict So so let's think back about the history a little bit about the history of Hong Kong and some of you might know this better than I do But my understanding of the history of Hong Kong is That Hong Kong was set up by the British as a place that respected the rule of law The rule of law was there primarily to protect property rights and you were left free Basically, you you were left free otherwise. You didn't vote But you had freedom of speech and you have freedom of contract and you had property rights and you were left alone But there was never as as as Robert alluded to those never convention a constitutional convention to choose these things There's no constitution that defines them. It was basically imposed by the British and Tradition has kept it going and in more recent times as you said a deal has been cut With the Communist Party and I think it's a consequence of that deal freedoms are declining in in Hong Kong both economic freedoms and I think free speech and rule of law Chinese government is starting to have an impact on the legal system and so on now why? Oh, how do we and and the demonstrations now are not so much about letters erect contract freedoms of contract Letters erect free speech. They're more about we want to vote. We want to we run democracy So what you've got here is in my view bad ideas on all fronts. So you're choosing between false alternatives The alternatives should be what we want is a constitutional republic It wouldn't be a republic but a constitutional government in Hong Kong what we want is yeah We want to elect our representatives, but we also want those representatives to have almost no power Which is Iron Man's view of government right government is there basically to protect us protect our rights, so Protect our freedoms protect our freedom of action. That's it. So please the military judiciary But that's it because we should all be free to choose our own values and pursue our own lives and That's that party that side again I don't know the details is not a big is not represented in any big way in Hong Kong because most people think that Democracy is the ideal, but democracy is in many ways a false God. It's a false ideal Quad democracy quad majority rule Because it says that the individual now is not sovereign the individual is not owns himself he's upon of The majority the role of government is to protect the minority and the smallest minority in the world is home We individuals So the whole role of government is to protect individuals individuals rights to give their life as they see fit individuals freedom So what you need in Hong Kong just like you need this and this is true of all countries in the world, unfortunately The the current system is not right even though you're number one in the rankings The whole world is moving away from freedom. You're just moving maybe a little slower than everybody else Maybe I don't even know right there again their experts here. You know more about Hong Kong than I did the alternative is not between You know returning to you know to the way it was before because the way it was before was imposed It wasn't chosen and it was not understood and and I think I think a source of that lack of understanding or evidence of that Understanding is the fact that the rebellion is happening from the wrong direction But the alternative can't be democracy now Let's talk a little bit of democracy because me saying democracy is a false God is a pretty controversial statement almost as Controversial in the world we live in is saying the self-interest is good, right? What's the problem with democracy? The problem with democracy is that it places the group the majority above the individual So let's talk about a few examples the example. I always use is the example of Athenian democracy in Athens 2000 something years ago Socrates the great philosopher, but you know who Socrates is Socrates the great philosopher is going about town and he's engaging with individuals in discussion, right? He's challenging their beliefs Questioning what they hold if you read Plato's dialogues, you know this right? He's asking them tough questions. He's challenging In other words, he's corrupting young people That's how we would view it today and that's how the Athenians viewed it So the Athenians said he's corrupting young people. He's corrupting youth and that's bad for society It's not good for the common good. So they got together and they said what are we gonna do about Socrates? Well, they voted What did they do about Socrates? Yeah, they killed him because it's the only way to silence Socrates if you want to stop if you want to have him stop Corrupting the youth you kill him now they gave Socrates a chalice of poison and Plato says I've got a tunnel we can escape and Socrates said no I believe in democracy drink the poison but he died because of his speech because of his ideas Not because of he murdered somebody but because he spoke that's democracy Democracy there's no free speech in democracy if the majority decides to silence you then the majority gets away now Modern democracies in the West today have a certain level of respect for free speech They decided that for now we're gonna leave people alone and they could speak and we won't use democratic powers against them unless for example You went Sweden and You say things that offend people and you get to go to jail for six months. There's no free speech in Sweden There's no free speech in most of Europe. They have hate speech laws So if you offend people you don't get their speech so other examples of democracy My neighbors get together and my name is the side as a group That they would rather have my house be a tennis court that they can all use Then me living in that house and they vote on it and all the neighbors think it's a good idea So democracy would say cool. You're on you're out of the house. We're gonna turn it into a tennis court Now you laugh but this this is this is reality. This is happening in America today not for tennis granted But a Walmart or a big department store right wants to move into a neighborhood and the neighborhoods in the way Their house is there where they would like to pave over and create them all They go to the city council and they vote. Oh, we don't need this neighborhood All you people we're gonna pay you a little bit of money to get out of your homes and well And it's there's a key. There was a Supreme Court decision called Kilo, which basically said yeah That's okay. A majority can decide to take your home away from you if it's deemed in the public good Eminent domain is one for is is the form in which it used but I'm talking about its democracy I mean domain just a fancy word for democracy That kind of democracy is not good. It's authoritarianism by different guys People should elect their representatives absolutely, but their representatives should be very very limited This is what the Bill of Rights does right in the American Constitution the Bill of Rights says you can vote on everything except free speech Free speech is absolute except You know a freedom of religion freedom of religion is absolute you can vote on these things except people ever write their own guns Now what exactly that means and everything we can debate, but it's in the Constitution So you can vote but it doesn't count That's what the Supreme Court is there. That's what Hong Kong needs. It needs a Constitution with a clear bill of rights That says this is what freedom means This is what you're protected from and yes, go ahead and choose your representatives, but they can't take your house away They can't limit your speech. They can't do all these other things and Now how are you gonna ever get there? Because the Constitution is fading in America never mind here in Hong Kong You're not gonna get there unless we the people believe in it and And that's that's the sad reality or at least the intellectual elite believe in it and convince we the people So what we have today is People who hold I think false ideas and we're struggling and fighting over this and and the fact that Hong Kong is the freest country in the world is not gonna prevent it from becoming less free and Is not gonna in and of itself create a Constitution that has to come from the intellectuals Convincing the people that this is the right thing to do and and and you get that and unfortunately I'm not that optimistic about Ability to do that in the short run. It takes a lot of work And sometimes it might take a disaster for people to wake up and realize what's actually happened I don't know but but that's the kind of work that needs to be done not to convince some of the democracy Not just to go after the communists, but to actually present an alternative an alternative There's better and I think the alternative Hong Kong just like for any country in the world. We're all the same in this sense We all need Limited government a government limited by a Constitution My question is I think they want to use a mic And then we're gonna go to the Go behind you Really like what you talk about last night about welfare, I think these kids should hear that okay Yeah, I mean most I would say most or many people think that One of the core roles of the government is to provide welfare So I was hoping to know how do you feel about that? Signing welfare Is a inherently in my program for two reasons And I'll state the obvious one first and then I'll get to the lessons Because it takes stuff from people who don't want to give it by force by corrosion. I'm against courage I'm against force you want to help other people Go ahead do it with your own money Don't force me to help the people you want to help and again democracy, right? You get enough people to vote to force me to help other people. That's wrong. That's force. That's corrosion I like to I like to give this example My neighbor My neighbor gets sick and he needs some ray treatment to cost a lot of money And he has he basically and I take out of money. He has two options He has two options and only two options He can come to me and he can ask me to help And I might help him and I might not it depends Depends on what other uses I have for the money It depends whether he's a nice guy or not whether I like him or not The other alternative the only other alternative is trying to pull out a gun And to force me to give him the money Everybody in the world recognizes that's stealing. That's wrong. We don't allow that we put people in jail for that. Oh But you say there is a third alternative He goes to the neighbors and he gets them all to vote to take my money and we call it taxes And now not only isn't he a thief. He's a hero But he still took my money by force without my consent It's exactly what he did is my money not his not yours not the neighbors not the neighborhoods fine And it was taken by force and if you don't believe taxes of force try not paying them And you land up with a policeman at your door being dragged to jail. That's force. That's corrosion So that's reason number one. I'm against corrosion and if I'm against any form of redistribution of wealth But there's another reason which I think in some ways is more tragic Sadder When you give people welfare We hand people a check Unconditionally for a long period of time You're institutionalized in Institutionalizing them into unhappiness Institutionalizing them into poverty Institutionalizing them into lack of self-esteem I mean you guys can laugh and I know it sounds ridiculous because nobody says this stuff, but the fact is That you gain self-esteem from working you gain pride from knowing you can take care of yourself And when you are not dependent on other people to achieve everything that you achieve in life You never gain the self-esteem and without self-esteem. You cannot be happy and by giving people checks Unconditionally you're telling them you're worthless. You can't even get a job here. I need to help you. You're so pathetic That is a horrible message. You're sending kids. You're sending families. You're sending people who could work for a living a Good friend of mine tells the story John Allison tells the story of his grandfather. His grandfather was a bricklayer Made very little money But he went to walk every day and he worked hard and he made enough money to feed his kids and to put a roof over their head And at the end of every day, he felt proud that he had put bread on the table And he was a happy man and at the end of the day his grandson became a CEO of one of the most successful companies in American history And that made him proud because it's some extent he made that possible if you take that same man And you give him more money But now the money is not as a consequence of an action that he did not a consequence of the work that he did But just because he's alive just because he needs it you have destroyed that man You have destroyed his pride. You've destroyed his self-esteem and it's no accident The social mobility Decreases when you include welfare it doesn't increase but people don't rise out of poverty more when you give them welfare They rise out of poverty less Because you're giving them fewer opportunities indeed. You're destroying opportunities for them. So to me the tragedy of welfare the tragedy of things like the minimum wage are The kids and the families that are receiving it The kids and the families that are priced out of the labor markets that will never have a job We'll never have a sense of pride will never have the self-esteem will never be happy human beings What a waste of a life, which is sad. It's sad. I care about poor people. I Do about poor people who want to want to make a better life for themselves and Therefore I want them left free so that they can do it so they can have the opportunities Yeah I know I can tell by your face if you have a There you go, I don't know where to start But I'll start with something that really puzzled me that you said about Bill Gates. Yeah, which was that Creative people people that make money and are not glorified in our society are rather put down for their efforts And I was wondering what you think of the counterparts of Bill Gates. Mr. Steve Jobs who? Is glorified as an innovator as a creative man who has created lots of wonderful products Has gained a lot of money through doing so and now has two movies Don't exactly glorify you So let's talk a little bit about Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs. This seems like he's kind of an exception to what I just mentioned Steve Jobs was cool You know, he wore the right shirts. He had that charisma He had that ambiance he was cool and he created products that every one of us immediately Got right. We got it. We got the value to us So we admired him to a large extent But you know what and I noticed this because I loved Steve Jobs, right? I never never met him But one of the Somebody at some point will explain it to me But when he died I was really sad I mean sadder than almost anybody else who's died that I know because he impacted my life in really profound ways So I noticed this about two weeks after he died the article started to show up Steve Jobs was only interested about Steve Jobs Steve Jobs never did any philanthropy Apple didn't have a foundation Steve Jobs an egomaniac who yelled at his employees and and it was a perfectionist. How dare he be a perfectionist You didn't get it. Maybe here in Hong Kong. We got we got this right now again He was cool. So so people kind of even the movies to me movies people at Apple are saying that the movies are primarily focused on the negative sides And there's a there's another point here. Look Generally the culture admires entrepreneurs admire Steve Jobs a little gates up to a point And always in non-moral non-ethical terms Yeah, I want to be that Right. I want to be an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley Do I think it's moral and good? Yeah, that's a different category, right? That's another two aces I'm saying why we separate in a character that nobody thinks of Steve Jobs You're not gonna have Steve Jobs statues and Steve Jobs bullet bugs and we're not gonna teach in business ethics classes How wonderful Steve Jobs is part of part of the whole campaign around Foxconn and workers is part of Undercutting Steve Jobs's legacy because we don't want him up there on the pedestal Mother Teresa is in the pedestal and you cannot have on the same pedestal Steve Jobs and Mother Teresa Because Steve Jobs was motivated by himself by his own Passion by his own interest by his own perfectionism Mother Teresa was motivated by helping other people That was a sole motivation Pleasing God if you read her diary, that's all she wants to do is to please somebody else. It's not about who Those people don't belong in the same pedestal and we don't in society I would take Mother Teresa off the pedestal and leave Steve Jobs Steve Jobs is the hero Steve Jobs lived a life that I can admire and respect Steve Jobs made the most of the one life that he had here Mother Teresa Read Christopher Hitchens book on Mother Teresa Strongly recommend you want the second question? Sure You can't get all three best questions, you don't hear one No, no, but she doesn't agree with me. So I'm gonna give her another question, but I will get to you. I promise Okay, which one of them I think uh, I'll ask you about um freedom of choice being A justification for an ethic and morally corrupt society I'm I'm generally confused in this conception that um choosing between maybe five bad options And the ability to do so is something that is uh Ethically good, so for example your example was the it was the chinese I don't know what exactly what Foxconn and he could he could go back to the farm or he could get a Worst job and he chooses Foxconn because it's the best available, but he's still only making three bucks a day or whatever Exactly that example And so I was wondering why it should be How it could be ethically justifiable in any way um that there are only five bad options How how can it be ethically justifiable to have a system in which people have Only five options which are all horrible Um, well, is that a good system? Well, first of all Why are they horrible they're horrible by your standards not necessarily by their standards first But second we have to understand the starting point Right again, we in the west sitting on our sofas watching 150 channels of television And living the good life that middle-class would provide us in hong kong and in america Our options we see the world, you know, we're rich and we think everybody's always been rich We know we we we inherently think that we see other people over there that are poor But we think why aren't they rich they should be rich just like us, but how do you get rich? The fundamental question is how do you get to where we are today? How do you get there? What is the what is the starting point for all human beings? Well, where were we 250 years ago? What options did we have before we had this system this capitalist system? Where where how many people were poor as a percentage of the population? I mean not poor as a fox gone poor subsistence farming level Poor in a sense of you grow the stuff that you eat and you work from sunrise to sunset You sleep and you start over poor so that all your kids are working all day How what percentage of the population 250 300 years ago was poor like that? 90 to 95% The standard of human life is poverty. That's the starting point Wealth has to be created Wealth has to be made By somebody By somebody making the choice to leave that farm take a huge risk and go and do something else And a peasant in china in central china has to make a choice a brave choice in my view To leave the subsistence farming and to go and choose to work in a factory And learn a skill in that factory and that's not a bad choice. That's a great choice To learn a skill in that factory in advance and become better and the only reason he has that choice The only reason that choice is available Is because of steve jobs is because of bill gates Is because of wall street evil bankers. Oh my god But without capital None of those choices exist And capital doesn't exist unless somebody creates it and we're back to the steve jobs us and we're back to wall street They are the engine that makes it possible for people to rise out of poverty You want to focus on the five choices that he has? I'm saying five choices We've come a long way in human history to get to five choices. We used to have only one which was death And the only way to get to five choices and to take five choices and make them 500 choices. I face hundreds of choices How do I get there? With freedom With allowing entrepreneurs to create stuff to build stuff allowing bankers to fund stuff Allowing for capitalism to work because without it we're back to the one choice, which is i'm a farmer I said there was no other option Those are the only two options that exist. It's no accident If you look no whiteboard, I'll do it in the air Are there things Anyway, that's right. I could do it in the air. It's pretty simple right here's a graph right see the graph This is time This is wealth or income per capita Wealth or income per capita 10,000 years ago. We're starting at 10,000. What do you think the graph looks like? like this like this No way right grease goes up then it crashes then go home goes up and then crashes But basically with static and then goes like that I mean I have to go on tiptoes to reach the top right and what happens there. What happens at the inflection point. What's the inflection point? What's that? No freedom What happens in the inflection point is freedom. What happens in the inflection point is the industrial revolution What happens in the inflection point is the creation of the united states of america that That allows people to be free look at history The inflection point is that point in which in europe and in and in the united states people are suddenly free to be entrepreneurs And boom we create and then in asia it stays flat And there's another inflection point and what's that inflection point? It's when taiwan and south korea and other countries the asia tigers discover capitalism and they embrace it And suddenly they become rich and then this it stays flat a little bit longer for china And then it goes like this because it discovers just a little bit of freedom And boom people become rich Freedom is the only way in which we increase the choices from one to five to five hundred Wouldn't you say those choices are created through technological advances rather than permit different lifestyles rather than it being through Where this you know it amazes me where this technology comes from it just springs out of the human mind And it's just there where does technological advances come from why the technological advances start in around 1760 1770 And didn't happen before that and didn't happen 2000 years before that. Why did they happen then? Why have they accelerated through time and why are most technological advances in the world happening in the in the united states And not in communist china communist usso What's that Because you don't need to grow your own food But why don't you need to grow your own food because you have the only place The only context for technological advancement is economic freedom It's just just take a chart of the countries that have technological progress where entrepreneurs are created stuff and rank them based on freedom And the correlation is almost perfect so each union didn't innovate the united states did The uk during the 19th century had massive innovation Other countries didn't where there was no freedom didn't Africa to this day doesn't innovate very much. Why? Because they're not free. There's nothing inherent about africa. They should prevent them from having innovation. They don't innovate because they're not free Do that do the study. I mean I this is data just look at the empirics This is reality and but we've been taught That technological innovation comes out of nowhere That it just springs out of the human mind That entrepreneurs are there as a metaphysical thing that they don't require any particular needs And we're taught that there's no difference between freedom and unfree countries, but there is huge difference But how can you say that there was no technological advances in the soviet union when there Were a lot of I mean One they didn't go to the moon. They've never gone to the moon. They had spotnik that went into space That was they won technological success at the same time as they sent a man into space 40 depending on who you talk to 40 to 100 million people died Were dying of starvation. They couldn't grow enough food. They weren't innovating if you've seen a soviet car An automobile They've seen one. You know why you haven't seen one. They're very comfortable. No, they're not very comfortable. Come on. Give me a break They are pathetic. They are horrible as soon as the war came down Everybody trashed their old east german cars and and god west german cars I mean look guys if you can't see the difference and i'm serious here If you can't see the difference between east billion and west billion Then then get eyes get glasses Because because somebody is blinding you the difference is stark freedom Freedom is where the action is freedom is where the innovation is freedom is cool Lack of freedom is bad. There's no innovation under lack of freedom The little innovation that the soviets did primarily was stolen from the west They got the nuclear stuff on the west even the technology to send man to the to space was stolen from the west You can't innovate when there's a gun pointing to your head And that's what lack of freedom is this young gentleman here is very eager Thank you Thank you. Thank you. So, uh, i'm a local secondary school student like in hong kong. So i have two questions about Uh, uh, this similar like which is related to the problems we are facing hong kong nowadays So the first thing is that uh in hong kong. So we are definitely city wish which have which has a of freedom to business to talk to publish however, so um, so nowadays for hong kong people so they They work hard They work hard for their self interest like like so as you say, so i'm doing a theory then then that means they should live a Happily life so they can have buying houses buying cars like they're feeding their child of not eating like maybe Taking care of their children But however like so unfortunately like they work very hard but in the research telling that like for a normal Hong Kong people hong kong person so they need to work for 17 Years without yes without eating any food buying any clothes to buy home So do you think this like so they really work hard for their self interest, but it turns out that It doesn't pay that yes, it doesn't please so some of them felt powerless Or like helpless so can i comment on the cost of housing you know hong kong? Let me comment. What's that? Yeah, i know but aside mortgage is it's expensive hong kong is very expensive for a working person. It's very expensive I live in california san francisco is very expensive And london i was recently london everybody's complaining the same thing people are working hard and they can't afford a home televieve You know hi i'm originally from israel televieve incredibly expensive people are right demonstrating the street. They can't afford a home why Obviously capitalism has failed right Okay, well, let's dig a little bit why is housing expensive in san francisco by the way in ohio it's not expensive um Why is it expensive in san francisco london televieve hong kong? primarily primarily because government restricts the ability to build government restricts building in all those places and thus Constrains supply of housing In cities where there's a high demand So people want to live in san francisco people want to live in hong kong you want to build more And yet we are living in an era where governments are restricting the amount of building that is allowed And this is through zoning and through government control in free places Where you can build freely where you can not supply and demand Prices of housing shouldn't go up generally housing is what kind of good is housing an investment anybody think housing is an investment Now housing is a consumption good It's like buying a car. It should be right in a normal free market environment housing you consume right you appreciate It should go down in value. It should go up in value The only reason it goes up in value is because homeowners like us like let's say I own a home in my neighborhood I have a I have a You know I have a corrupt government Who I can influence to limit other people's ability to build houses in the neighborhood so that my house value goes up Because I'm restricting the supply of them and the same thing is happening in hong kong And whether it's because central planners in san francisco the reason is Because they want lots of green spaces god forbid which you build where there was a tree once Um, so they restrict it for environmentalist reasons other places They restrict it because of cronyism because existing homeowners They don't want them to build because they want their home prices to go up I don't know what the reason is in hong kong But I do know that there are real restrictions on the ability to build housing in hong kong and that's why home prices are going up so So this means that like even hong kong people are working very hard, but they cannot still get what they want then Then that means that then in the real world the fear doesn't really has that no what it means is in the real world We should be advocating for eliminating restrictions on building housing So that the housing prices will come back down so we can afford it In the real world if we care About prosperity of individuals if we want individuals to be successful We should be fighting for more freedom not less freedom We should be fighting for less government restrictions the less government regulations less government controls That will lower the cost of living lower the cost of living technological innovation Lowest costs doesn't increase costs So if we encourage innovation if we encourage freedom the cost of living will go up standard of living will go up Sorry cost of living goes down standard of living goes up So maybe some more like so actually government have done some policy to restrict their price of the Like like the house house of buildings to go up But but but but what but what we're in like but what in hong kong is that Those who make the price going up is those investors like we buy a house and then we sell it In a higher price. So this is sort of the problem which so those are sellers sellers don't move prices Prices are set by the supply and demand if you restrict supply Prices will artificially go up. This is basic economics 101 And if you want prices to come down increase supply and in the case of hong kong just like tell have even london and everywhere else The way to change supply Is to allow for more freedom in the building of housing That's the solution and the fact that some people cannot achieve things today Is not the fault of markets. It's because markets the rule of supply and demand is metaphysical You cannot you cannot violate it If you violate it, there are always consequences and we know exactly what the consequences are Right, you you know, there's there's rent control now talking hong kong, right? You want to have rent control? well, there is There is so much literature on what happens with rent control. This is not a dispute it There's not a single economist in the world I mean you probably find one but there's not a single credible economist in the world who thinks rent control is a good policy That doesn't stop anybody because we want solutions from the government We want government to tell us how to how to do because what what is what is it? The source of that our distrust deep distrust of markets. Why do we distrust markets? Why do we distrust the law of supply and demand? Because it's motivated by self-interest and we hate self-interest We think self-interest leads to bad bad things So we'll do anything to restrain entrepreneurs We'll do anything to restrain markets. We'll violate the metaphysical laws of supply and demand Just so we can feel good about not letting those self-interested entrepreneurs do their own thing So you want to fight against all this fight against The ethic of sacrifice and for an ethic of self-interest Okay, we'll go there and then there I have two questions if I may the first is one that I've struggled with for a long time I read objective is literature like the virtuous selfishness or opa Everything's great boom boom boom up to I get to the chapter on politics And the the chapters on politics that tend to be the smallest chapters quite thin and the argument for For limited government seems to come down to the argument of With without limited government for example in a narco capitalist type of politics Then you're going to have ruling mobs of gangs and all our warfare against each other And I find that a disappointing argument because in all other areas of the literature These the arguments are based on principle. We're not on pragmatism. Or perhaps you could help Provide a different argument for me Okay, so I'm going to try I think the fundamental the fundamental issue here Um is not I do think the warring gangs is the outcome and and every anarchist example I've ever seen leads to warring gangs. I've never seen that solved existential But there's a reason why that happens So there's a fundamental principle that leads to the warring gangs and the fundamental principle I think And I and I'm not going to fully articulate it here and I probably not fully qualify to articulate it here Is that objectivism holds the objectivity of values And therefore that they are there's an objectively true legal code That is not a question of negotiation And and figuring out and while we respect common law at the end of the day We believe that it has that law should be legislated It has to be objective and there's such a thing as a as a philosophy of law That philosophers has to think about what laws make sense and how you define property rights and that that is That is objective and true and needs to be imposed and when you have competing legal systems over the same territory if they're in different territories i'm fine, but over the same territory There's no objective standard. You lose objectivity. And what happens when you lose an objective standard What is the only way for us to result spews? If we don't have if we don't accept an objective standard for this The only way is by use of force and that's why deteriorating the gangs So at the end of the day, it's it's it's a it and I don't want to because a lot of people here This is an internal right, but but that is the source of it. That's one the second source is force and reason Are enemies By extension force and markets are enemies the market is a place in which we engage our reason to solve problems of production The market depends on the extraction of force in order to to work Now what you want to do or the now called capitalists want to do Is bring force into the marketplace? Create a marketplace in force Right competing armies competing police forces completely judiciary's But markets don't work unless you extract force from them now you're internalizing You're making something that's exogenous that should be exogenous Indogenous and a big supply So I'd say those are the two more fundamental principle the argument that lead Ultimately the clash to gang warfare Thank you. That's giving me something to think about my second question. I hope is simpler The application of objectivism obviously requires The use of reason and thinking What would you say to those people who seem to think that they don't have the natural capability to do that? They prefer to emote rather than to think because they find emoting easier or perhaps they feel Not comfortable in their own cognitive abilities to be able to think and to and to rationalize I'd say they're losing out I'd say that they're they're they're causing themselves damage Emotions are great. I love emotions. As you can tell I'm pretty passionate guy Emotions are the way we experience life. They're fun. They're you know, they're important, right? And sometimes they're important in terms of giving us signals that something is wrong when we have negative emotions But emotions are the way we experience life and really important But emotions are not tools of cognition Emotions tell us Something about conclusions in the past that we've come to about reality. They were now automatically reflecting back Everybody's capable of reason at whatever level they're capable of that's what makes us human We are as Aristotle said the rational animal Everybody can exercise at whatever level they can and whatever to the extent that they do They will make their own lives better and to the extent that they don't they'll get into trouble because emotions Wind worshiping gets you into trouble. It really does. Just try it sometime and you'll see I can only really think about these things Obscractly so apologies and fans But it seems that whenever you're making a decision there are three classes of games So one in which you do something that's to your advantage one in which you do something that's not And one in which you randomize By definition also the first two types of games are just subsets of the other first game So surely there are at first two subsets of the third. I mean there was there was a quick logical transition Oh, okay, then I'm missing. I'm missing. Why why why are the two just random? Well, no, um, like you can do something and if you have a choice You can even do something that's to your advantage. Yes do something that's your detriment So you have a better choice or you can randomize between the two Okay, okay, so Isn't it always to our advantage to do something which is on the outside altruistic? And if that's the case, isn't it also to our advantage since we wouldn't rationally choose that option to have somebody make us do that I don't understand why it's to your advantage to do something altruistic That sounds like a contradiction a logical contradiction like the prisoner's dilemma for one. Well, but the prisoner dilemma is a nice Uh is a nice game to play in class But it doesn't exist in real life Partially because in real life Our relationships repeat. They're not one-off relationships And second, you're not you're not in little boxes in real life. You're actually engaged in real life Prisoners dilemmas are the kind of things that professors like to teach in class and have no application in real life Okay, thanks no application and and and and and it's it's sad It's like when they teach you an economics class of perfect competition anybody take an economics class Study perfect competition Take all your notes on that and shred them because it's it's useless knowledge Because it's a platonic form. It exists in some world Uh where non-humans live. There's no such thing as perfect competition Why study something that doesn't exist what's really interesting in economics is the fact that competition is not perfect And the fact that we compete with unequal information creating different goods that are not perfect substitutes. That's what's interesting That's what's exciting. That's what economics is about Perfect competition is lazy economics. Sorry if there any professors you would teach this, but it is And I tell this the economics professors They get upset at me A lot a lot of what you study in the classroom is useless, but in real life Doing something that hurts you is not doing something that helps you altruism by definition is doing something that hurts you Well, how can that be an advantage? What's to your advantage is to think and this is hard I say to people being self interested is hard work Because it requires you to think long term about what's really good for you Not what feels good in the moment, but what's really good for you over the long term That means not just thinking about one prison dilemma, which is easy But thinking about what happens when you have to repeat what happens when you have relationships over the long term What happens you have to engage with multiple people and multiple issues And figuring out not what will get you instant gratification But what is good for you? What will make you a better human being? What will make you Flush and happy and successful over the long term Altruism by definition says do what's bad for you in the long term Sacrifice is bad for you You're only I sure The philosophy one sorry One thing that I think may be part of what's behind this kind of question frequently is especially on people who study social theories social science there's commonly an equation between Altruistic behavior and especially in social science and also in biology interestingly There's a common equation between altruistic behavior And any behavior that's other regarding or that helps others So for instance an example of altruistic behavior that social scientists often would use would be Rather than spending money on yourself Spending money to buy a gift for your wife But if you understand the way that that you're on is talking about altruism That's not what we're talking about that is in fact Assuming that one loves one's wife or one's girlfriend and if you don't then you have a different problem But if you actually love your wife or your girlfriend Then giving that person a gift is not a case of altruism It's selfish. Why? because You want that person to be happy and so the social science concept of altruism Is a kind of package deal between what what ethics calls altruism and Something else which actually You're on or I would regard as a as a case of self-interest. Yeah If you define altruism like that you've removed the scope from all too often because if I gave all of my money away I'm still the utility master. I'm still So so so so no again Rational self-interest is not What makes you feel good in the moment or or but it really makes really is good for you And this is again, I think morality is a science You have to think about what is the human being what are the requirements for his survival and his thriving And act based on those If you can come up with a way in which you can justify giving all your money away And thrive as a human being and I could probably come up with some scenario with that case Then I'm not against it, right? So I don't sacrifice my kids, right? Every parent sacrifices for his children. I don't Does that mean I let them cry all night? No, of course not. I love my kids So when I pick them up and calm them that's not a sacrifice. That's me Pursuing a value that's really important to me my children when I um Pay for them to go to school. That's not a sacrifice That's me pursuing the love of somebody that I value immensely. It's a trade. I get from them the love Right, I get their happiness as a as a trade for my money So you selfishness doesn't equal lots of money Money is not the measure of what is self-interested or not Right, your well-being is the measure of what is self-interested or not And what I'm saying is rather than Virtue being categorized as what I do for other people Virtue should be categorized as what I do for myself And then every person's individual responsibility is to figure out what's good for me And some people, you know, I've got a phd in finance Theoretically I could have gone to go work at Wall Street and make millions of dollars I'd rather teach I'd rather do this right now than have millions of dollars in the bank account And that's a reality Right money is not the standard and I'd rather do this because I enjoy this. This is fun for me This is this is much more valuable than anything money could buy for me So the measure of self-interest is not monetary The measure of self-interest is your values and your higher care values Defined through reason and if your kids are very high on that higher care values You're willing to do a lot of things for your kids. I wouldn't consider any of those sacrifices Now if you don't love your kids or if you don't care about your kids or if your kids are really bad human beings And yet you lavish them with goodies and money and all kinds of stuff And you don't get any pleasure out of it. Then you're being sacrificial and people do that people People are not automatically self-interest We're not automatically selfish. We do stupid things all the time stupid things because we don't think about them Which then lead to bad consequences and if we thought about them We wouldn't have those bad consequences and we do things in order to reduce emotional stress Oh my my mother's mad at bugging me about getting married. Yes, I'll get married I don't really want to get married, but I just want to get my mother off my shoulders That's not in your self-interest the pain of marrying somebody You don't like is going to be much greater than whatever your mother's doing to you Plus you can cut off your relationship with your mother You're not obliged to have your mother nudge you for the rest of your life. You can tell her stop calling. So The standard is you the standard is your long-term happiness I'm not telling you how to exercise that standard other than the certain principles that are universal like think Right You have to choose those values and those values might include money. They might not include money They certainly will include love I mean love take love love, which we're taught is selfless the best love is selfless love, right I mean that's that that's nuts Imagine going to your wife to be The night before you're getting married and telling her honey I'm not doing this. I have no self-interest in marrying you You don't contribute one iota to my life I'm doing it so purely selfless reasons She'd slap you I would go to my wife and say honey. I'm marrying you because you make me feel great You reinforce my values. You make my life better I am doing this for purely selfish reasons because it's better for me to marry you. That's love. That's beautiful Who has the mic? Thank you so much for your talk. Um, I am a u4 new student at the University of Hong Kong at Mordecai and one of your major arguments is that force is the enemy of Freedom, but I don't think so. I think force is a friend of freedom because How do you define freedom? You define and protect freedom by force as you said text is force It is justified and forced by taxation law. So law is a kind of force. However, it's this kind of force Which empowered the constitution which protects our freedom. So this kind of force Help us to pursue our own interests help the minorities to pursue their own interests. So I think force is not um The enemy of uh freedom. I didn't hear an argument there. I just heard what you think. Um, so The only minority I recognize is the individual Now I'm okay with force when it's used in protection So if you're coming at me with a gun I want the policeman to use force against you to stop you from hurting me But that's the only kind of force that's legitimate You using a gun against me restricts my freedom by definition, right? If you come to me with a gun and say you have to do this and this is give me your money We all know that that's restricting of my freedom, right? I can't use my money the way I want to use it I can't do what I want. I'm doing what you want. So I'm less free So force Is a restriction on freedom Unless it's used in self-defense The only legitimate form of force is is used in self-defense and that's what law is good law Good law is law that protects individual rights. What are individual rights individual rights of freedom of action freedoms of action It's a recognition that you are free to act in your own way Laws protect your ability to act That's self-defense. That's good That kind of force If we want to call it force, I call it self-defense is the only kind of force that's legit but To cause somebody to do something against their will when they're not a threat to anybody else Is is wrong and by definition of restriction on freedom Freedom by definition is freedom from what? From coercion That's that's what the word freedom means. It means acting with no coercion When you're free, you're acting with no coercion. You're acting without other people imposing their will on you. That's what freedom Linguistically means that's the concept