 Hello and welcome to a extremely special episode of the Scottish Liberty podcast with me Tom Laird and my good friend We have an extremely distinguished guest to go with this extremely special episode and today we have for you Yaron Brooke Chairman of the board of the Anne Rand Institute author of Free Market Revolution and Equal is Unfair which I like the sound of and most importantly host of the Yaron Brooke show and All-round hardy soul for stepping out in this weather to meet is Shalom welcome to Scotland and welcome to the podcast Great and it's it's a real pleasure. So I guess we'll start at the beginning Maybe you should tell us a little bit about Objectivism and what distinguishes it from other branches of the big church of Liberty orientated philosophies well, I mean it's it's hard to I don't know that there's such thing as a big church of Liberty Orient philosophies, there's a there's a big tent of many people who call themselves Pro-Liberty some of whom I think are generally pro-Liberty and some of whom I think are not I think what one of the things that makes objective is unique is that it is a philosophy I think almost all the other schools within this libertarian big tent. Yeah, all have philosophies that are non It's not necessarily consistent, right? So so you could be a content libertarian. You can also be a content socialist you can be a Utilitarian libertarian, but also utilitarian socialist you can be lots of things philosophically grounded Supposedly libertarian, but you can also be the opposite and have that philosophy Objectivism is the only philosophy. I think from the ground up which is Built to write some build around the idea of Liberty, but from which Liberty arises out of the philosophy rather than the other way But I think generally libertarians have this emotional or even cognitive appeal to the economics Oh or to the idea of Liberty and then they find a philosophy that somehow Meshes with it, but it doesn't really but but so be it whereas objective is an as a philosophy the only Outcome of its epistemology of metaphysics epistemology and ethics is a politics of Liberty is a politics of Calvary So it's unique in that sense And I think libertarians do themselves a big disservice in not studying a thoroughly and not ultimately Adopting it as the as the philosophy of Liberty. I think ultimately the only philosophy of Liberty What was your what was your first introduction to it with and can you remember that? Of course Life-changing event. I was I was 16. I Was a socialist committed socialist. I was a collectivist. I was a tribalist. I was a Jewish nationalist I was pretty much everything I ran it was against at the time was an altruist. You mentioned altruism earlier I was explicitly an altruist. I mean thought in those terms And everybody was I grew up in Israel and in Israel You know every election up until the year 16 had been won by the Labor Party it was a thoroughly socialist country and it was it was a relatively as a consequence poor country and Everybody was a socialist everybody around me and and on the few visits. I went to I on the one visit I'd be to America didn't really like it seems superficial materialistic and I didn't like it and then I was arguing with a friend about something and he spouts these pro-capitalist ideas And I said basically what you getting this nonsense from and he handed me a copy about the shrug Okay, and I spent the next few months reading out the shrugged and fighting it and arguing with it and debating it and yelling at I ran and throwing the book on the on the wall and because it was changing my life It was it was shaking every foundation I had okay, and by the time I finished that book I guess by the end of the summer of 1977 I was hooked and I was convinced she was right. I'd been wrong my entire life. Everybody wrong me was wrong Yeah, and since then I've basically spent my life studying her ideas and then I've answered your question about what is objectivism So we can get back to that but I basically spent the you know 40 years since studying the ideas and and You know reading more of her books and trying to figure out exactly what it all meant and how it connected to life When you say you know when people object to altruism, you know the first reaction of most people is What could you possibly have against altruism surely? That's a good thing. How do you how do you define now altruism? How did Anne Rand define altruism? Well, she defined altruism the way Philosophers have defined altruism that is in common parlance people pretend that altruism means something else Yeah, they all know it doesn't okay because deep down we all know we're kidding ourselves when we think altruism It's just opening doors and being nice to people and so on Altruism means living for the sake of other people Altruism is the ideology that says other people are more important to you than you are to you that your moral focus your ethical Focus needs to be the well-being of other people It means that if you if I help somebody in the street and I feel and I do it out of a sense that oh This will make me feel good. It's not moral It has to be an act of selflessness To be more so altruism is built in a foundation that the other is always more important Altruism means other is them the is them of others right so your whole moral focus is on the other person It's not about being nice and polite and friendly and helping people When you want to help them or when when there's a value to be gained by helping them It's about sacrificing yourself. It's about putting yourself on the cross for other people's sins Okay, that is the essence of altruism, right? And I think Christianity has been its strongest advocate from the beginning because it's the idea of dying the most horrible death possible Now for sins you committed, you know, that would be kind of okay No for sins other people committed you you're pure you're completely innocent now that it's not an act of heroism that's an act of More cowardice because the purpose of morality is to help you live It's to guide your life Not to help you die for the sake of yeah, what at least in that instance it was voluntarily as opposed to enforced upon you by some sort of Collective idea of what you should or how you should be it doesn't matter. See this is my this is my argument with libertarians If we're talking about morality Then politics is a definition politics is what what we force people to do don't force people to But morality is about what we should do in our lives. Okay to me That's much more important than politics because whatever we believe our politics the fact is and I know I'm I know I'll just shock you We're not gonna have that much impact on the world out there not in our lifetime So what's really important is how you live your life with yourself on a day-to-day basis that's what morality is about morality is about living and So if you have a false morality a bad morality It screws up your ability to live this one life that you have and that to me is far more evil than anything Government can do so to me a voluntary embraced morality that That that denounces your ability or reject your ability and or prevent you from achieving your own happiness You know potential as a human being is far more evil than anything a government can do because I'm doing it to myself And I'm choosing to do it to myself, which is the essence of evil So evil is not associated with force. You can voluntarily choose to do evil to yourself You can voluntarily choose to do evil to others without ever using any force Again one of the difference between the libertarians and the rejectivism is we don't start with this bizarre You know axiom of the non-aggression principle, which libertarians, you know, just invent out of nowhere To me, there's a reason why aggression is bad, but right, but that's because each individual Morally should be pursuing their own happiness and force intervenes with their ability to do that Right it intervenes with their ability to use your mind in pursuit of the values necessary for you to be successful If you to be the best human being you can be but that's the focus the focus is on how to live your life Politics is important But it's one level above in a sense of the hierarchy. It's it's one development beyond Rurali, so I condemn altruism to me the damage for example the moral damage a Christian church has done Faw exceeds anything the state has done Yeah, and it's what I love about Anne Rand's Philosophy she calls a philosophy for living on planet earth and I've gained so many insights I remember one of her insights was this idea that if you do something bad But only I know that shows such disrespect to your yourself esteem It's the worst thing that you know that you've done something bad because you should value yourself enough to care that you compromise your own integrity So we talked about the fact that and I'm random like people philosophizing me stream Just to begin with the to begin with the initial You know, what are we how what kind of universe do we live in beginning with metaphysics? Out of that and I don't know what what order do you put the branches? So metaphysics you believe that reality is what it is Okay, existence exists as she says or we put in the Aristotle terms a is a which is the law of identity Which is another way of looking at existence exist things are and they are what they are and not what you wish they are And that was some other Consciousness external to us creates or wishes there. They are what they are reality is what it is and We have the tool. This is epistemology to know that reality to know What's fact and what's what's what is real and what is not and that is our reason? So we have we have the capacity to reason which is the capacity to know Reality as it is right not as we invent it So again one school of thought says no reality is what you make it up to be or your sense Is never actually observe real reality because it's filtered through your minds and you're making in a sense You've created that your senses are creating a separation between your reality Which is just bizarre because the whole point evolutionary staff senses is to give you info about the world Oh, yeah, and it's not so so and reality is not what you your wishes are It's not what your emotions dictate There's only one tool of cognition of knowledge for human beings and that is reason and then What who reasons right so just like there's no collective stomach just like you can't eat for me You can't think for me only I can reason I the unit for human beings is the individual because only the individual has a reasoning mind And it's only through his reasoning mind Okay, then an individual can survive. Yeah, I mean we don't know how to hunt We don't know how to farm instinctually nobody has those instincts. You have to figure it out That's why I took hundred thousand years for human beings to figure out how to farm and hunting was not easy We don't have claws. We don't have fangs. We need to use our mind to do everything So the unit is the individual and then the question is What should the individual do what what is right and what is wrong for the individual? Yeah, first an individual has to make a fundamental choice between two alternatives life or death to be or not to be right Once you make the choice to be then the question is how and The question is if I'm going to live what do I need to do in order to live and that's morality morality is yeah What should I do in order to live and and for her the number one thing is think use your mind Live for yourself live, which means live for yourself, right? Using your mind guiding your actions in pursuit of your happiness. That's morality And altruism which is which is another alternative answer to what should you live for? It says don't think about yourself think about other people That's what you should focus on and then there's a third alternative which is usually presented, right? If you don't think about other people then you should exploit other people should lie cheats deal You should you you should use other people for your own so-called benefit But she says you're not really benefiting when you're exploiting other people because what you're doing is undermining your self-esteem You're undermining your own values You're undermining your own confidence and your own ability to survive in the world So for example, if you're a thief you're basically acknowledging to yourself That you cannot produce in this world you cannot go out into nature and create the stuff You need to live on yeah, you have to steal it from somebody else that Undermines and undercuts every value that you care about and therefore thieves lying cheating stealing so on I'm miserable human beings. They're not happy. So so so that's kind of the the ethics, right? I've got a question What F what brings you the most happiness is doing things for other people bringing happiness to others? So it really depends if you could if you could show that that is rationally that that is truly the case that it's not motivated by some sense of guilt as a Consequence of the fact that we all brought up with altruistic parents and an altruistic society But it truly is you get Satisfaction from for being you know, and it could be for example that Did you choose to be a teacher because you love to convey knowledge to the people and part of what you're getting is that? Reflection back of the knowledge or you could be there's nothing an objective is and says you can't be a social worker Right who helps poor people get back on the feet But not a social worker like Mother Teresa who keeps people poor just prevents them from dying But imagine if you took social work seriously, and you literally took poor people and helped them get on their feet and become productive human beings and Become more human beings and be successful with their life then Absolutely, I mean There's no contradiction between being a doctor and being an object of course even though doctors help people I mean every profession Every way in which we create value involves other people right what does business do we make a lot of money now? We make a lot of money by doing what? Providing you know services and goods that other people want that improve the lives of other people now That might not be our initial motivation, but that's the only way to be successful So I think a lot of entrepreneurs are motivated by creating things that will serve others absolutely But they don't think I don't think anybody really thinks about that. I mean They don't think in terms of serving others not really not at the end of the day What do they think of they think of the challenge of what they're trying to create they think of the fun of it? Steve Jobs now wake up every morning and say how can I make the life of your Ron better? He didn't give one Iota Bobby he woke up every morning taking how can I can I make beautiful? Efficient productive amazing stuff that people will enjoy Yeah But his focus was on the stuff that he was making in every successful entrepreneur at the end of the day His focus is on the productive process on the beauty the fun the enjoyment the excitement the challenge a Building and making stuff and yes, it helps other people and that's satisfying, but that's not what drives them But anyway, there's no There's no contradiction between the idea of helping other people and attaining your own happiness and certainly in certain professions The essence of the profession is to help other people and there's nothing wrong with that if you do it rationally For and everything needs to be measured by you know by whether it's rational or not because so much Some people tell me well, of course, I hope the book is makes me feel better, but I always ask them Why does it make you feel better? Yeah feelings are not primaries feelings are not tools of cognition Doesn't make you feel better because you because you've grown up with Christian guilt And now it appears that guilt guilt you should never have so go and see a therapist Get rid of the guilt and then see if you feel better if you feel good when you hope the book so what's is evil then merely what is irrational or what is Destructive behavior destructive thinking is that is that the essence of evil? I'm answered the essence of evil is evasion It's it's it's ignoring truth and facts and and your and your rational faculties. Yes, the irrational is Not the mistaken mistaken everybody can make mistakes that you don't place moral judgment on a mistake But the irrational which is evasive which rejects fact or ignores facts or chooses Not to focus on on facts and reality. That is the essence of evil and every other evil Every other evil is a consequence of that act of evasion. So it's it would the Slightly flippant would the only difference between objectivism. Let's say and Satanism be that's that you it's based on reason They're not mysticism, but I mean now I know a lot of guys who would say I'm a Satanist But I don't believe in this actual Satan any more than I believe in an actual God Satanism strikes me as as being nihilistic great It was the point of me as Satanist other than to smash the status quo It's not a positive ideology or positive philosophy as far as I know right now And it and why would you use the word Satan if not to just slap people in the face? So it's not a philosophy. It's not an ideology that actually promotes a certain behavior It just says we reject Christianity right fine, but it's not good enough. You have to reject it for positive I'd say the difference between random and somebody like Nietzsche real philosopher is that Nietzsche says You know at the end of the day, what's good is is what is will what is in a sense What the emotion dictates and where I made rejects Nietzsche is by saying no what is good is what is rational What is good is what what is the product of the cognitive mind? I think what I noticed is the difference between the Satanist philosophy is it just took the first bit and And Live your life for yourself, but it missed the important bit Which was neither sacrificing yourself to others nor others to yourself and Satanism drops the nor others to yourself part. It's probably true and so does Nietzsche in a sense and and but also Live your life for yourself. What does that mean? Right this huge amount of content in what it means to live your life for yourself What kind of a being are we what kind of what is our nature? And unless you delve into that question, then you're stuck being an emotionless either hedonist or a nihilist You know exploiting other people are just living for the moment and in any way you're not living for yourself because indeed Hedonism is destructive. So is nihilism. So is any There's a you know, we're sitting biological being right with food We kind of have an understanding the certain foods are bad for us and certain foods are good for us now We still don't have the science that tells exactly which is which right? We're still struggling with it It's complicated, but we know that some things are poison or something is a good What I would argue is that's true of of of every aspect of human nature, right? So as a cognitive spiritual being if you will is as a being with a consciousness Some actions some ways of using our mind are good and some are bad and evil just like poison So but you have to in order to figure out what is good for you now. Just go by your emotion You have to actually examine human nature think about human nature figure out and come up with an ethics Come out with values and virtues to guide Behavior that leads to ultimately to human happiness and that's what I read is done So talking about a philosophy that's contrary to Rans you mentioned can't before can't consider it ran consider can't philosophy evil But not a lot of people understand why and that might be something that interests the and Rand enthusiast listening Sure. I mean, I think that the two primary ways She thinks his philosophy is wrong and then I'll get to why why she thought it was evil Why why he she thought he was evil not just the ideas One is that Conrad Jax the idea of the pursuit of happiness He rejects the idea that the purpose of morality is the pursuit of happiness on the contrary He is very suspicious of happiness because happiness is probably a sign of self-interest and he rejects self-interest as As immorality completely your purpose again morally is to be selfless or to be guided by certain Categorical imperatives that somehow are in your mind and in that sense. He's a bit of a mystic They're somehow encoded in your mind and you know what they are I often wonder what, you know, rapists and murderers white. They didn't get the car roll in But you know, but you're supposed to find them and you're supposed to execute out there So but but they're all focused again on other people. They're all focused on Serving others. Yeah, not and again if you think of yourself in that context, then it doesn't count as morality So it has to be selfless. So he rejects The great one of the great achievements of the Enlightenment, which is the pursuit of happiness But more fundamentally what he rejects is the idea that reason Reason actually gives us information about reality as it is And he says the fact that we have senses and the fact that we have a mind actually creates creates a barrier between up between What we have as well We think reality is what real reality real reality is unknowable Because you have to use senses to discover it and since the sense is distorted, then it's actually unknowable to the human mind Now that sets us back, you know, a hundred and fifty years philosophically because again The achievement of the Enlightenment, the achievement of the scientific revolution is to say no our sensors give us valid information about the world No, our reason makes it possible for us to understand the world. Yeah to understand the physical world This is how we can build these inventions. This is how we can do the equations that actually work in explaining the movement of objects You know, this is how we can do biology and chemistry and all these things that are just coming out in the in the 18th and 19th century and Kant says well, not really that that's all we've convinced ourselves in a sense that that's what's real reality out there But but it's not it's just inside our head and that ultimately leads to you know Disasters philosophical consequences from Hegel to Schopenhauer to to to Marx to To Nietzsche and ultimately to to post-modernism today Every aspect of that is ultimately can be can be shown has its core in Kant's philosophy and the reason she thought he was evil Is she believed he knew what he was doing? And that is she believed and in the critique of pure reason in the introduction He says something like I'm writing this book in order to say faith from reason, right? Okay, that and so she believed that he knew what he was doing that he was purposefully Undermining and undercutting the great achievements of the Enlightenment He was undercutting reason and he was undercutting individual happiness and to do that and to be conscious of that to basically Drive humanity towards a philosophy that ultimately belongs in the Middle Ages and the Dark Ages a philosophy that ultimately has to rely on faith in one way or the other and An altruism on unsacrifice to others which ultimately its collectivism You know she thought that was the at the ultimate evil And if you if there's a book by Leonard Peacock that I highly recommend Called the ominous parallels we actually draws out the consequence of Kantian philosophy through their ages and Shows its link both to communism and fascism and how these are basically the unavoidable Consequences of Kantian philosophy and and if that's the case if that's true Then I can't think of ideologies that have killed more people than communism and fascism and I'm interested to to explore I guess from one soldier another when you were in the military, I'm guessing you weren't a Objectivist how would you are so how did that play out? I mean in an environment which you're basically it's trained into you You know that you are part of a of one machine You're a cog in that machine and every cog has to do its part How did that play out that it give you in some ways did it give you an advantage in that environment or was it hard to reconcile? So absolutely. I think it gave me an advantage. I never took it seriously, right? So I never took that that nonsense seriously. I spoke back to my commanding officers. I told them what I thought I told them when I thought they were doing nonsense I think that sometimes was appreciated. Sometimes it got me trouble here The Israeli army might be a little bit more different in the sense that it at least to some extent respects that But I never I never took this idea that I belong to some machine Remember I was also drafted so I didn't volunteer to go right okay So I was drafted and so I had no choice, but I decided when I was drafted that would do a good job that I would try to do my best But that I would not not follow it as blindly that I would not let them just Collectivize me in that sense and I stood out as a consequence I think ultimately ultimately, you know, they wanted me to be an officer and I turned them down I didn't want to be an officer they wanted me to stay in the military and I didn't want to because I stood out as somebody who You know pushed the envelope a little bit and challenged things and really also did stuff move things along and Actually and actually got stuff done so I Think I think to the extent that a military allows you to do that to be an individual to that extent It's gonna be a better military than one that forces you to conform Okay, and forces you to be part of a team and you're not supposed to think for yourself And you're just supposed to follow orders. That's a dumb. That's a dumb army and not an army that is gonna lead to success. Okay You have something. Yeah, sure So maybe you can speak as change subject a bit and stay in the realms of philosophy Can you tell us a little bit about the object of this position on free will? Sure, I mean objective position is that free will is is a Is a foundational idea? It's an it's an action matter concept. You you kind of you directly observe it There's no proof of it. You can't prove existence. You can't prove free will free will is there It is it is it is also, you know One of the features of a axiom is that in order to try to disprove it You have to use its existence same with free will Yeah, you know, it is it is the foundation of what reason is and what thinking is and what what what reasoning means It means engaging a certain faculty. We have this faculty of reason Every one of us knows we can turn it off When you wake up in the morning, you're kind of fuzzy, you know, it's tempting not to think not to focus and And and that's a that's a certain state that some people stay in They never turn it on but that turning on is an act of will. That's the foundational idea Or that's the the essence of what free will means. It means turning on the the Observational faculty the integration integrating faculty the faculty that actually thinks that does cognition that integrates the acts And and that is something we all can observe in ourselves We can all we can always observe turning it off sometimes You know, you know, I don't want to think now and literally shutting it down or engaging with or engaging it, right? And and that's that's the SSI free will is not about did I lift my finger now and did they you know Did I rule the finger? Yeah? I mean in the sense I'm willing the finger device But that's not the essential feature free will the essential feature free will is that turning on and off The the the the you're what you uniquely a human consciousness that is Animals can't do that animals are in focus because their survival depends on it And they don't have the ability to turn it on and off human beings We're the only real animal that can commit suicide on a you know, we can turn it off We can we can decide we're not interested we decide we don't want to think we can take our tools of survival One tool of survival is our reason and we can shut it down a cheetah doesn't shut down speed It doesn't say today. I'm gonna run slowly To catch the prey it can't do that. It's an automatic play when not on automatic There's something that makes us uniquely human which is that ability to switch it on off So what is it about the Marxists? They don't seem to grasp that or do they just at the end? Is it some sort of cognitive distance where they go? There's no such thing as free will you are basically your environment well, it's not just a Marxist It's everybody today, right? It's it's the it's I mean there's almost nobody in psychology and philosophy who believes in free will anymore Not not in a real free will not in you know So they come up with you know We will have an illusion of free will or pretend to have free will but psychology the study of Free will in a sense and how it applies to human consciousness and and human cognition and then emotions and behavior and all of that If you reject free will you've rejected the whole field There is no field of psychology if you reject free will in my view What are you trying to change if people can't change? Will themselves to change then what are you changing? So You know any what anybody from Sam house who do I'm sure everybody knows is Against free will to to many modern-day philosophers to people who present themselves as scientists because all they can think of is Adam's bang against each other You know kind of Hume's billiards balls That's all they can think of causality is just billiards bouncing around all of I mean There's a massive number of people who reject Who reject free will and of course these arguments about free will go back to the Greeks? they go back to the beginnings of philosophy and You know Marx is just one among many you know and he took much of this from Hegel You know history is in a sense determined. It's this class of forces and It's it's it's mostly nonsense And it's it's interesting that you know people write long treaties about How you know you should behave in this way not even though they don't believe yeah, yeah You're gonna choose to behave that way. I guess they believe that they would Will automatically move you in that direction, but then that's a very cynic of you And why did they write him because why did they care if you don't a free world? I just don't get it. Why would I care what why would anything matter? Why would I be doing an interview right now? Instead of talking to the curtains, you know You're sorry You reminded me of an anecdote mentioning Sam Harris I was not long ago away with my brother for my dad's 80th birthday And I was listening to a podcast from Sam Harris that I could have almost threw down the headphones And I turned to my brother and said it's so annoying because Sam Harris is an advocate of meditation, right? And one of the things he says it is if you Pay attention Significantly then you'll be able to observe that everything just arises spontaneously in your head and you don't have any free will I was like, who are you asking to of course? Who are you asking to? If you observe if you observe carefully then you discover there's no you all just want right? Who's who I can you observe you not being you it the whole thing is good Right, you know it's it's it's an easy guy who advocates for reason and logic and yet these arguments are illogical In a simple way. This is not even complicated. You actually use the the Randy in term to describe it Which is the stolen concept because how can you say to someone relax and just observe your mind? And you'll see things arise. Who are you telling who are you telling? Yes, it requires free will for someone to be able to take upon themselves that action Exactly and and we can all observe free will again by introspecting and just like the only proof that that is that there's a chair Then you know I have to describe what a chair is, but there's a chair that is Pointing at the chair. That's all the proof. I need look it's a chair It has these characteristics and everybody can see the chair the only proof regarding free will that is necessary is point At your own consciousness. I can't point at yours. I can only point at mine Yeah, but each one of us can point it at all the the the observational evidence Is all you need to be able to say? Yeah, I do it I I can control my own behavior can control my own mind. I can turn my mind on and off Yeah, which is why we punish criminals because they say you've got you you have a you have a choice There's no meaning to morality. There's no meaning to anything else I mean you could argue that there's a meaning to law in the sense that we punish them in order to save us Sure So come to a kind of utilitarian argument, but there's no we need to morality if you don't have free will So I want to ask you about Part of the objectivist philosophy that I'm a little bit confused about because as I see as I believe it Rand believed that value is Objective now my background is more in economics and obviously like most liberty-oriented people I'm kind of a Misesian or Austrian and they say that Value is subjective. In fact, that's the only way that we can arrive at prices Because we evaluate products and services subjectively and which allows us to have a marketplace and Obviously that there was a revolution in economics when three people came to that insight the same time So can you explain to us how value could be objective in a marketplace even? Sure So I think at the core there's no real contradiction between the Missin view of economic value and Rand's view of value I think just one is in the realm of economics and it uses the term subjective even though it doesn't mean it So I think it's a misuse by Austrian economists are the term subjective Now to explain the full context for that is is is a lot but there is an essay that you can find out there by by an economist by the name of Rob taught That actually compares and that it's a long essay complex essay that compares the Missin view of Economic subjective value and and Rand's view of objective value and and he comes to conclusion I agree with him that fundamentally the they're very similar if not the same that is there's a lot of overlap And he has to here's the part of the problem part of the problem is when we say objective so What people people here and I think what Mises here is intrinsic Right, so historically there'd be two ideas of value Subjective and intrinsic Subjective means Whatever I feel like yeah, it comes from me, right? But it's feeling based. It's whatever whatever I feel like and the other one is intrinsic It's in the object. It doesn't matter what I think what I feel. Yeah, it's in the object Yes intrinsic theory of value so you've got a subjective theory you got an intrinsic theory I'm gonna reject both of those and she's don't what is an objective objective is the Identification by human consciousness of what is in this thing? That adds to my life Right, so in a sense, it's the intersection between my mind my ideas my thoughts my values and This right and and this automobile or this so whatever it happens to me this economic thing I'm willing to pay this amount for bread why because bread contributes to my life and XYZ because all this Facts that I have about how much I work and how much it in and nutritional value for bread or actually I'm on low carbs I don't need bread so you couldn't pay me to eat the bread You know so but all of those facts go into how much I value that bread, right, but it's me value It's not a value out there Okay, and there's a sense in which that's what the Austrians means the Austrians are not particularly Manga and Manga is quite explicit about this Manga is much more of a Petillion in that sense and closer to ran, but I think even me says it's not that Whatever people feel like right? It's the things that are actually given a sense people utility Individuals utility. Now. What does that mean enhance their lives? How are they gonna determine whether to enhance their life? Well using their mind using their The hierarchy of values and using using the rational faculty So they're judging the thing out there based on its characteristics based on how it contributes to their Life to their to their other values how it integrates into what they want and what well That's that's what I mean means by an objective value and in the end Prices in the marketplace. How are they determined that it's own each one of us value the thing differently Not because it's subjective Subjective means whatever I feel like no because objectively in reality It's has a different value to you in a different value to you in a different value to me because It interacts with our lives in different ways, right? I might value you know I might love a BMW for variety of reasons you might prefer a Volvo because you have kids and you like the safety of a Volvo And I'm I'm going through a midlife crisis and I want a fast car to go on windy roads, right? And objectively, you know, I've thought about this. I love driving fast Whatever I want to BMW you want a safe car you want a Volvo both of those objective valuations even though they're different It's objective for you, but all objective Objective is always for somebody Subjective is an out there independent of human consciousness objective means the Identification of a human consciousness of the fact of reality and it's evaluation And that is pretty deep stuff. It is deep stuff, but it's really really crucial because the fact is That that the subject of intrinsic idea of values is very very Destructive it's because if values are intrinsic and the philosopher King knows what the value what the intrinsic values are Then he sets the price and he's the central planet He tells you what you should be pursuing and we know that how dangerous that is and that's much of classical economics did that now But but subjective is also dangerous because subjective means whatever I feel like and sometimes I feel like doing really stupid things And sometimes my emotions lead me in really bad ways and sometimes really bad stuff can happen. So Can I can I make an example and you can tell me if it's right or wrong? Okay, there's a cinnamon bun and there's an apple and say I'm diabetic right Subjectively I might just feel like eating the cinnamon bun But the fact that the apple is more valuable to me than the cinnamon bun means that the apples values objectively higher I hope that helps people listening because I thought that's a really good example and food usually works like this because people do Create hierarchies with food. Yeah, and what I ran is encouraging us to do is do that same exercise With everything everything to create a hierarchy of values decide What are my most important values and what are the least important values and go after and dedicate yourself to the most important ones and the least ones you'll get to and so on but but create a life where you know what you want and Really go for the stuff that you want and are willing to pay to pay in money or in time or in work or in effort or whatever More for the things that are more important and less for the things that are less important, but know what's important Yes, so the cinnamon bun might be might be or or the cocaine might be very appealing right now to give me a high I know wow it'd be amazing, but long-term. It's bad for me So objectively it's bad for me Even though subjectively in the moment it can't be now I don't think Mises would disagree with that Right, so I don't think Mises would say no go with the cinnamon button. Okay. He would I think he would say Objectively the the apple now he would say some people don't go through this calculation Fortunately, unfortunately, some people are not diabetic or some people are not thinking about it So in the marketplace the cinnamon bun might be more valued than the apple in terms of price in terms of price because There's more demand for the cinnamon bun because people have not gone through that exercise But I would I'd still be willing to be in a position not of a central planner, but of a moral philosopher and say Stop a minute and think about it Do you really want to spend all that money in a cinnamon bun when you could have an apple? Right, so it's it's not an excuse the fact that I'm saying that apples more valuable for your health in that context Does not give me an excuse to dictate to you what you should eat But it does give us a perspective on things. So she and she says look in a marketplace things get determined based on the price based on the values of Often based on the values of a majority a majority of consumers and those values might be not be the same as the values of the most knowledgeable people in the world. So she gives the example of a What is she what is she the example? I think she gives us a shop girl who values a little thing of lipstick And she couldn't care less about airplanes. I mean, she's she's going on a date and that's what's important to her She's willing to put right but objectively if you if you took the big perspective He said well airplanes are more important than lipstick, but to this woman The lipstick is more important than an airplane objectively, right? So again, it's deep and it's complicated because you have to have different perspectives on it But the perspective of the airplane is more important than the lipstick doesn't give you the right then To deny the gold lipstick because for her or the 600 pound Gucci bag that she should you know, whatever it is So what do you think were the other unique contributions of Anne ran to philosophy? Obviously she was influenced by Aristotle, but she a lot but she built a lot on her own and Said some things that no one else had argued before. I mean, I think she is the most unique philosophical thinker You know since I was so I think it's a bolder search a very bolder. So and I'm not granted I'm not a philosopher. I'm not an expert in philosophy So take it with whatever grain of salt you want But everything I've studied philosophy in philosophy. She is unique. She's innovative She she completely and this is why they hate her I think in the philosophy departments because she completely turns the field upside down and and and she does it in English right not in this dense philosophical and BS kind of language that they use so You know, I think in epistemology. She is a massive innovative Epistemology if you read a small book, this is just an introduction introduction to objectives to epistemology Or she has a whole theory of concepts It's completely original It's completely new from everything I can tell it's true when I watched my kids form their first concepts like chair like Food or strawberry or whatever you could see them go through the process. She's describing So I think my guess is if you took child psychologist and they read her epistemology They would say yes that matches their experience about children from concepts because it matches up I mean, she's describing the uniquely human process of creating of coming up with concepts So she has this concept formation which is probably Probably the most important thing to understand how we form concepts is a building block for everything else, right? This idea of objective and what objective means Right is unique new hugely important In epistemology and what it means to be objective about things. It's not it's not being Outside of oneself or what Adam Smith called it a external observer looking at no, it's you knowing your values It's not being behind a a veil of ignorance roles as veil of ignorance kind of the dumbest thing I've ever heard of Philosophically, you know going going outside yourself with no identity and no nature. No, this is given your nature given your identity What is a value to you? What is objective? What you know? So it's it's it's it's identifying the fact that reason is our means of knowing the world So a theory of concept who defensive reason based on their theory of concept to idea of objectivity All in epistemology of innovations and in a moral theory is a complete revolution It's it's it's in a sense similar to Aristotle, but it's much deeper than Aristotle Now remember she has two thousand years of history to learn from So this is not a slam on Aristotle's Aristotle didn't have the benefit of Aristotle Well, he didn't have the benefit of Aristotle or the two thousand learning the history of two thousand years or of the industry Evolutionary one at the point saying man makes is she could have never come up with their ethics Without having lived and experienced the industrial revolution That is a knowledge of what the human mind is capable of the knowledge of what business and Production are capable of shaped her view of ethics So a whole system of ethics bridging the is art gap that Hume said could never be bridged Right the idea that you can derive an art from an is that she bridges and then develops an entire ethical system That again is is is beautifully integrated and solidly Lives on solid foundation is a completely new innovation and then when you go to capitalism I mean she's a massive innovator I you know Libertarians one of the sad things about libertarianism is they've stolen or taken so much more in Rand without giving a credit Mario Akbar was the worst when he came to this Okay A lot of the stuff he takes including their aggression principle is right out of I ran without any of the credit and without explaining her Philosophical foundation for why aggression is evil and why aggression is bad So she actually develops an entire mall system and then builds on it from it not on it from it A defense of what of the concept individual rights, so she takes Locke's idea of individual rights and now Rest is on a proper moral foundation And then defines what kind of government that leads to and says that it has to lead to a government that you cannot have for example Anarchy that it must lead to government because you have to have a monopoly over the use of retaliatory force that is not cannot be It's the logic in morally or in reality can cannot be something you compete over So she develops a whole view of capitalism which for her time is completely unique completely new And I think shapes the entire kind of free market movement from that point onwards And of course she's reading Mises so it's not that she invented everything But certainly when it comes to politics and her understanding of economics She we've got her copy of human action with with margin alien notes She read she read the road to serfdom with margin alien notes not not very friendly ones So she read a lot so she she benefited from other thinkers in the free market kind of movement at the time She was friendly with Mises and haslet But she develops the philosophical foundation to sit on and you know, I've said this in other events I think one of the greatest maybe into certainly intellectually the greatest tragedy of the 20th century is That the the great thinkers in in the Liberty movement the great free market economists the great free market thinkers didn't take her As soon as she took them they didn't take philosophy seriously They you know, so so Mises comes up the prexology to explain everything but prexology can't explain everything It's not philosophy. It's it's a pseudo philosophy if Mises I think it ran a serious in philosophy seriously as ran took Mises and economics We would be 50 to 100 years further ahead in our fight for liberty and In a capitalist in a capitalist free world and the fact that they rejected her and they rejected her ideas They rejected a philosophy didn't take it seriously. You didn't gauge with it. Hmm, right? They just said ah Right, we like that was short, but we don't you know the ideas We don't want it that I think is retarded the Liberty movement for generations Okay, one of the things I really love about seeing video is with Rand is she'll be asked a question Critique of capitalism or something like that and I'll have in my head what I would come back with and she always has a Stroke an extraordinary answer. I never would have thought of she really does come from things from a different angle from everyone else Completely if almost always a philosophical angle a model angle rather just an economic and yeah She has that ability of saying right. Let's start at the beginning first. We need to do this sequentially There what you're saying presupposes this this this right? Let's show why that's wrong and you must lead to this ultimate conclusion and Some people listen know that I'm an economics writer and that's kind of what I try and do sure Really go back to the beginning and lay out in a sequence of logic that people can understand and of everyone I've read I think she's one of the the greatest at doing that So when we had Dr. David Kelly from the Atlas Society one time you asked the question Alan Greenspan, what went wrong? I Mean who knows that's it's a good question of psychologists not for the philosopher Economist like me. It's it's more for psychologists My suspicion and from talking to people who knew Alan Greenspan a long time ago Is that he never completely got it? That when I ran was alive. She was such a genius. So Emily's red super smart and he's super he's super empiricist He he can you know, he can collect data and he can he's not a theorist. He's an empiricist and He identified a genius. He identified I ran as a genius. He identified I ran as somebody you could look up to Right and then he would come to her with stuff and she would always correct him She would always I don't know you have to think about it this way because she was the she could see both the data and the Theory where he could see only the data and as long as she was alive She kept slapping him into place in a sense. She kept fixing him She kept correcting his errors And if you even the essays that he wrote for her journal were heavily edited by her because they needed that editing because he Couldn't wait philosophically really even when he when he wrote economics So once she died I think that went away and once she died that kind of said guiding light that could integrate him could You know fix the the challenges that he faced because he wasn't that good of a thinker That went away and he deteriorated very fast I mean if you think about by 1984 he headed a Ronald Reagan's commission to fix social security and his recommendation was not even to privatize it Which is a compromise enough right the only solution is to do away with it But he didn't even suggest that what he suggested is raise taxes raise social security taxes and reduce payments So just conventional standard status thinking and of course he was setting himself up for the Fed job Which he got and they were soon as you got the Fed job. He became a Keynesian I mean he became and again, I think he was if you think about it He never he was never an Austrian theoretical think about economics. He was a data guy was a consultant He never got a PhD in economics He was consultant who liked to look at massive amounts of data and come up with conclusions. Well So you start manipulating money based on the data based on what they did this Economist that the Fed was of tell you the data says and it's it becomes it becomes a disaster And you could argue that for a long time there. He was probably following some pseudo I don't know Gold standard or maybe he was following a tailor model or something Yeah, but then at some point he even gave up that up and he was so full of himself and his ability to project the economy To use data that he started just winging it and we got the 2008 financial crisis as a consequence indeed Have you got more? I don't have more if you want to wind it up. Maybe some Something from audience member Ryan with the mean policeman. He's been in our show before. He's an ardent objectivist He says he wants to know a little bit about what you recommend in terms of art movie and TV shows But also what makes good art goods in your opinion and what do you think it's social importance? Well, first everybody should should watch my youtube channel the one book show because I talk a lot about Movies and I just did a critique of the Joker and and the TV show The Witcher and which a joke I really hated Witcher was so so and And I'm trying to think of a movie I really liked a recent movie that I've liked what was your main objection to the Joker or what? Wow, I mean the Joker is is quite a philosophical movie. It's it's a deep movie It's not a shallow movie and and I think I think the last show identified the theme of the the theme of the Joker the theme of the movie is that went that when When those that you depend on Right and depend is is really important you really depend on them and it views human beings are very dependent When those that you depend on Betray you or don't live up to your expectation that violence is the only outcome So when the government doesn't supply you with the pills When your mother Doesn't protect you from abuse then it's okay to go shoot whoever in the street and whoever upsets you Yeah, and when but then if you look at society what's going on in the background? When the government is not picking up the trash when the government is not providing you with jobs when the government is not creating an environment that is Supposedly suitable, but it's all you're expecting somebody else to take care of you when that somebody else who's supposed to take care Of you is not taking care of you then it's okay to go rampaging through the streets burn stuff down and shoot people and when the rich Don't behave or when the rich are being a little you know Snotty towards you like the character of Batman's father and when the rich aloof and are not taking care of you again and not Supplying you with what you're supposed to kind of the empathy that they're supposed to provide you or the jobs that they're supposed to Provide you whatever they're supposed to do for you Yeah, then it's okay to murder them because there's no there's no moral condemnation of the motive of Thomas Wayne there's no moral condemnation in the movie of the burning of the streets and the mayhem that's going on There's no more condemnation of him shooting the the guy in the television station who by the way betrays him right because he makes fun of him So it's okay to shoot him so the only the only appropriate response to not being provided With now granted he's mentally ill because his mother did horrible things to him So so you could somehow justify him through his mental illness and if it was just his story it would be different But you've got society in power. Well, that's why it's it's the same thing the same thing driving him is driving society Right, just with society. It's the government and the rich and the people who's a microcosm So that's why he becomes that's why he becomes this symbol. That's why he becomes You know the hero and the movie is not condemning them. It's not condemning him. It's not condemning anybody It just says if you don't take care of people Violence is what you should expect this reminds me of like Jurgen Habermas from the the Frankfurt school saying Well, unless people have the basics of their survival needed There's you can't even expect us to reason or make an argument don't blame them Don't blame them for what they do and I wouldn't be surprised You know in a sense post-modernism is very influential and this is a quite a I think a thoughtful movie It's not just a random. It's a work of art now the director has a different theme But I always tell people it doesn't matter what the artist meant the movie to say It's what it is what the movie actually says artists artists often make stuff That's completely different than their attention because what is guiding a good work of art? What is guiding any work of art right is the subconscious of the artist? It's the what what I read called the metaphysical value judgments of the artist which are often not held explicitly But held implicitly. It's a psychology I see so much it's the internal values that a guy that's where you can learn maybe even as a therapist You can learn from from kind of the drawings children make because it reveals Something about their course something about what's happening inside of right that is yeah I always remember that show trap door. I don't know if you saw it was a claymation Cartoon that was on when we were kids where Beric has to guard the trap door Yeah, but he's shouted at by the master upstairs and there's a little skeleton that always says Don't do that. So you have the ed the ego and the super ego and the trap door represents the unconscious Yeah, amazing. So it's so so I do a lot of art stuff on the show You know not every show, but I try to include quite a bit of it. So The question is what makes great art You know what makes great art is is is a you know is having a strong powerful theme and then integrating Every aspect of the artwork to that thing It's a art is a recreation of reality based on an artist's metaphysical value judgments made based on is Fundamental beliefs about the world fundamental ideas about the world. They often holds unconsciously not even consciously and To the extent that every aspect Integrates into that thing to that extent. It's a good movie. So joke is a good movie. It's got an evil theme It's got evil ideas, but it's a great movie I mean if you think about Dostoevsky Dostoevsky's books are amazing literature. They are evil in their theme, right? The the the the anti reason their anti individualism their anti an individualistic morality The whole point is is in their pro-religion in there, but they are so beautifully integrated towards that evil thing That the great works of art So, you know, I don't judge movies based on a politics I don't judge movies based on it was a good or bad based on the theme I I do another judge so the two judgments you make about art One is a good and for that by the way, I think you have to be an expert I think 99.9% of people have no clue what good or what bad art is and shouldn't because it's not their expertise They don't you can study it. It's like painting. What makes a good painting? Well Paintings like it's conveying ideas through color and through shapes and wow You really have to think about how how is this artist using color shapes? What is the idea? I mean there's a lot of work to be done to figure out if a good painting is a good painting Or if it's a bad painting Experts, you know, that's why we need experts right to teach us how to do that So I think the one evaluation is a good or bad. It's very difficult to make it. Most people can't the other question Is did I enjoy it or not? Yeah, and then why did I enjoy it? And that's a different evaluation So I enjoy movies that I think are mediocre. I Hate movies that I think are really good like Joker. I didn't like Joker I didn't enjoy Joker. There was nothing about Joker to enjoy, but it was a guy to say I think to the extent that I'm Semi-expert, I think it was a good movie. Yeah, but I didn't enjoy So you can have these different valuations, right based on the theme based on the enjoyment value of a particular particular movie So I have opinions about a lot. I watch a lot of movies a lot of well I watch a little old movies, but I'll show a lot of TV shows have opinions about almost all of them And I I love sculpture. I love painting. I love classical music I like I like not love popular music. So, you know, I have a wide array I think a life without art is a poor life. It's a life not lived You should surround yourself with beauty again politics We're not gonna make any difference, but you can make a difference every single day in your life You can you can be a happier or less happy person every single day you you control your environment You control how beautiful you make your home. You control the kind of career you pursue you control What values you go after you control the kind of women you sleep with you control to some extent the women also control But you know, you control the things that are important to you in your life That is a that is where you should focus your life What happens in London or pure Scotland on Washington DC has an impact on you But relative to the decisions you make about your own life every single day It's my new so focus on that focus on how to make your life the best life that it can be And for more on the philosophy of how to live on planet Earth Make sure to tune in for the iron brick show more importantly read I met Read I read study I read and you should you should read a fiction and her nonfiction There's so much that a big shout out before we go to Morgan Carter from the young conservatives for sitting this whole thing up Thanks to you a great job and thank you very much. Dr. Brooke for coming up to us. It's been absolutely enlightening Thank you. Thank you. See you next time