 It's great to welcome Yaron Brooke to the program today. Yaron is the chairman of the Einrand Institute and host of the Yaron Brooke show. This is the first in a series of discussions that we're producing in partnership with the Einrand Institute. We're going to be talking eventually about capitalism, about welfare programs, about a maybe universal basic income and more today. We are going to start by talking about Einrand herself and her ideas. Yaron, so great to have you on. Oh, happy to be here. Thanks for having me on, David. So in my audience, I don't think it will come as a shock to my audience to hear that my sort of worldview overall is not particularly in line with objectivism and Einrand's ideas as I understand them. But it's possible, of course, that I that I misunderstand them to some degree. So just to like get started from your perspective, how do you if someone says I've never heard of Einrand? I don't know what objectivism is. What's the entry point to starting a conversation about that? Well, first, I would note she was a very successful author. She a Russian, a Russian immigrant, somebody who came to this country very young with nothing. She started out literally with nothing, came to Hollywood to try to get a job and worked in the back lot as an extra, started as an extra, worked in the wardrobe department, learned English in order to be able to write, write scripts for Hollywood and ultimately write novels and became, you know, one of the most successful American authors ever. I mean, whether you agree with her or not, Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged have sold millions and millions of copies and given given that the thickness of the book, it's a pretty amazing story. They sell probably more today than they did when she was alive. So she was a very, very successful author and, you know, she developed a philosophy to a large extent in order to serve her literature. The philosophy was there in order to help her define and describe what she called the ideal man, ideal man or woman, the ideal human being. And her philosophy is she called it a philosophy for living, on earth for living life here, now on this planet. And it was really trying to project or did project a heroic view of man. So she had a very heroic view of what we as individuals are capable of. So that would be an introduction. And then, you know, I'd love to be able to go kind of into an overview of what her philosophy really stands for. Yeah. And I think, you know, having, having read, it's been a while, but I read The Fountainhead, I read a lot and a lot of literature. It was not my cup of tea politics aside, but we are not here to adjudicate literary critique here. But I think that your point about the philosophy serves the writing is an interesting one because I think you would probably agree much of the popularization of the fiction writing today is from groups that are actually really more into the the political philosophy of iron rand than the fiction. And and in that sense, it's maybe a good entry point into what the philosophy is. Yes, I think most people, most people are using the literature in order to get somewhere, but that was not her goal. Her goal was not particularly when she was young was not I want to change the world or I want to present a particular philosophy that will therefore write literature right from a very young age wanted to write literature. And then she came to a point where she wanted to project a particular type of human being, how would you know, how to walk in in The Fountainhead. And she said, well, what is the what is the views out there in the world of what this kind of human being looks like? What is an ideal man based on the philosophies that are acceptable in society? And she looked out there and she studied and she she read a lot of philosophy and she said, none of these are me. None of these are what I want to present. None of them are what I sense is is the ideal man. I therefore I need to do some thinking, some studying and to develop a philosophical view of what that looks like. So so she develops the philosophy again in service of the literature. So if we start with the metaphysics, Iron Man really views the world as reality is what it is. It's not what me or you feel like it should be. It's not why what some other consciousness, God or some other mystical element thinks it should be. It is what it is to quote Aristotle. A is a it's unmutable. And then how do we know reality? Well, here again, we know reality through our reason, through our senses. Our senses are valid. Our senses actually give us information about reality as it is. And it is a reason that gives us information about reality. So emotions are not tools of cognition and neither is revelation. There is no such thing as mystical revelation. Truth needs to be ascertained through reason and reason alone. And here I think maybe, you know, your audience might, you know, at this point, at least up to this point, think, OK, to the extent that they're secular, they might think that this is something that they they agree with. And I think this is a good foundation on which we can build maybe whatever their whatever agreement they might be. But then the question is who reasons, right? And the fact is that only individuals can reason just like we don't have a collective stomach and we can't eat for each other. We don't have a collective brain. There's no such thing as a collective consciousness. There's no floating consciousness above us all that reasons that discovers the truth. Only individuals can use their reason to discover the truth for themselves. And in morality, it's only our individual life that is the starting point for any kind of for any kind of meaning. So it's our individual life that we must attain. So her morality is based on the idea that our focus in morality should be on our own survival and that our moral purpose in life is our own individual happiness. So it's not a morality of we should sacrifice. It's not a morality. It's a morality that rejects the idea that your life is in service to the group, service to other people or service to a God, your life, the purpose of your life is in service of your own survival. And the purpose of it all is your own happiness. But it also rejects the idea that we should ask other people to sacrifice for us. That is, it rejects the idea of exploiting other people, of using other people in order to achieve our happiness. Our happiness is our responsibility and we must earn it. So let's let's I mean, that's a lot there. So let's start digging into where if we go a little further, we might start to get to some points of disagreement. So the idea of, you know, of a reality independent of consciousness, so to speak, yes, that is not unique to objectivism. So while it will likely sound relatively inoffensive to many in my audience and even something that they generally would would agree with, it's important, I think, to understand that it is not unique to objectivism. And when we talk about something like a reason as an example, the idea of reason, I think, is very appealing to to the vast majority of my audience. The issue, I think, for some in my audience and for me is that when you look at the epistemology of objectivism, you start getting into things like to pick an example. Existence is identity, which for me at least starts to border a little bit on the Deepak Chopra type of stuff, you know, cosmic consciousness and all of these things that they sort of sound like they make sense. But at the same time, does this really mean anything objectively? So I ran actually never says existence as identity. You're conflating two different things that she says. OK, she says existence exists. It just exists independent of consciousness. And then she says things are what they are. A is A. You A cannot be B. It cannot be its contradiction. Things are just all what they are. So, yes, there's a sense in which this is not original. Very much a sense where this is Aristotle and she she she thinks of basically three fundamental coaxiomatic ideas at the core of metaphysics. And that is the existence exists, the law of identity. There was the tilian law of identity of A is A and the law of causality. Things act based on their own nature. I don't think that's very controversial to a secular, you know, secular philosophers, certainly to philosophers who believe in reality, which is not everybody. They're a bunch of philosophers out there who don't think reality is a is a stable thing and they don't they even if they believe it's independent consciousness, they don't believe it's it they believe in contradictions. Hegel would be an example that things are, you know, they are contradictions in reality in and of itself. So so while I think she he or she is very much with the tilian, I do think the way she puts it all together is uniquely hers. But I don't think this is where you get into controversy. I do think there's some issues in epistemology which could and are more controversial and where there is more probably more conflict between her and other philosophers and where I think she's more original. Now, we're not going to get very deep into this because among other things, it's not my area of expertise. But, you know, for example, Immanuel Kant has a very different view of human reason. Human reason, to a large extent, for Kant is detached from what we'll call real reality, right? It's it human reason, in a sense, creates its own reality because it is a it is there's a filter between the real world out there that we never know that we never will know and what our conception of the world is and that reason is more played inside your own mind. And at the end of the day, he leads us towards a philosophy of the primacy of consciousness, where consciousness is primary, not reality. His view of reason detaches us from actual reality, from actual facts, from from from truth in my view. And I think that's why Rand Viewed Kant is is is the most damaging of all philosophers out there in terms of in terms of the the Enlightenment's movement towards a proper understanding of reason. Immanuel Kant comes and throws a wrench into it and blows us into a completely different direction. I think, for sure, one of the most controversial general areas is the way in which this worldview would dictate politics be done today, which is, in a sense, very relevant to many in the audience who say, well, hold on, if I adopt a Randian worldview, what does that mean about how government should function, et cetera? But before we get to that, the one thing that we get long before we get to that. Yes, the one thing I did want to mention is there is there a sort of existentialismist idea that goes through some of this and specifically what I mean by that is the idea from existentialism that what is important that it is an achievement merely to live one's life and to sort of be that that is in and of itself something to consider an achievement. Am I wrong to feel that there is some something about that through Ayn Rand's philosophy? It is, but she is very different than the existentialists in this sense. Absolutely, yes. So there is a and, you know, before we get to politics, I think her probably where there's real controversy, I think with the audience and probably with you is in her ethics. And I think that's where we should spend some time. But this is related. So for the existentialists, there's this the achievement is just to survive. And it doesn't matter so much how you survive. And indeed, happiness is really fleeting and almost an impossibility for them. For Rand, survival is an achievement, but it's not just any survival. It's not survival at the material level. It's survival. What she considers survival, quite human being survival as a full functioning human being as a as a fully manifest human being. So it's survival to your fullest potential. That's what to who is the moral ideal. It's to thrive in every dimension of our lives. It's to make the most of the life that we have. And again, in opposition, if you will, to the existentialists who are very driven by emotional considerations and and by, you know, or even to differentiate her from Nietzsche, where there is this power of will, which again is emotion, Rand believes that the way to achieve success in living as a human being is to commit oneself to reason, to commit oneself to rationality, to commit myself to facts, to be, you know, exclusively honest about everything and committed to the facts of reality and everything one does and to focus one's lives on living the best life one can for oneself, but guided by reason, not by emotion, not by something called the will, but by guided by one's own reason and one's own one's understanding of what is true and of the facts of reality. Yeah, I mean, I think where we will, we start to run into a problem. And I've had these discussions before with people who subscribe to any ideology. It doesn't matter what it is. Is that when you lay out the principles in the abstract, the way you and I are doing right now, it seems much more tidy and neat than when you actually have to solve problems in the real world. And when the principles that one would espouse for themselves come into conflict with someone else attempting to live those same principles. And it seems like that is where the real hard work is. And if we want to use this to lead into the ethics, that's fine, or we can stay here. But the principles are a great starting point. But I feel like there are only 20 percent of the conversation and the 80 percent, I believe, is done in figuring out how this applies in the real world. Oh, no, no doubt. I mean, everybody has to first understand the principles and accept them or not accept them, but first you have to understand them. And then one has to apply them and an application is not easy. It's it's not trivial. I think, you know, it's it's about living and it's about living consistent with those principles. And what does it mean, therefore, to live one's life for oneself guided by reason? Well, for a reason, it means certain virtues. It means committing oneself to certain virtues. It's committing oneself to one's mind, committing oneself to rational, rationally thinking through, not acting on emotions. And a lot of that is not it's not only in conflict with other people. I mean, we have plenty of situations in life where our mind tells us to do one thing and our emotions are guiding us in a different direction. And we need guidance in order to decide should I follow my emotion or should I follow my reason? And it's not obvious. Say, you know, the Deepak choppers of the world will often tell you, follow your emotion, you know, follow your so-called intuition. And Rand says, no, in any decision, you must use your mind. You must think it through. You must follow the facts and and and reason. So it's not just with other people, but suddenly when it comes to other people, there's a question of justice, which then is an application of this morality. How do you how should you treat other people? And Rand would argue you should treat them injustice. And what does that mean? You should treat them based on how they deserve to be treated. And in different contexts in one life, desert means different things. So already there are certain moral codes that would say you should treat people the same. That, you know, the justice requires equality and Rand rejects that Rand views justice as an issue of desert. And we could go over every one of her virtues. She has seven, which he articulates, every one of those virtues. And each one of those applies reason and rationality to a certain aspect of one's life with the goal being living the best life that you can with a goal being your own individual happiness. Yeah, I mean, I guess to put in the most straightforward way, the way in which this creates an obvious conflict is that person A, living their best life may require or at least it may be most readily achieved via actions that prevent person B from living their best life as just equally and definitively defined by Randy and philosophy. And how does how do we account for that? So Rand has a whole essay on this. And, you know, she has an essay, which asks the question, answers the question, is there a conflict between rational men, a rational, malignant, constant conflict or their values in constant conflict? And her view is no, that there is no conflict there. And you would have to come up with with particular, you know, particular scenarios in order to kind of untangle all that. But she could argue that my seeking my values does not conflict with your seeking your own values in the big scheme of things. Now, in the moment, it might appear for that to be that. So, for example, only one of us can get the job, right? There's a job where both were both were both applying for it. We're both rational, both being honest, we're both qualified. But only one of us is going to get the job. And she would argue that a rational person would not want a job. If somebody else was more qualified for him, for whatever reason, then he was. He would not want the job if he was getting some special favor, or if he was being viewed as, yeah, you're less qualified, but we'll take you. That is, it's not a value to that person to get a job under those circumstances. And therefore it is consistent with his own values, sometimes not to get a job. So it might be hard. It might in the moment be unpleasant. But in the scope of one's life, it is not a contradiction. I don't know. I mean, this, this starts to get edging into there's an interesting clip. It's not a perfect analogy, but there's a very interesting discussion that took place between Jordan Peterson and a guy named Matt Dilla Hunty. And in a discussion about morality, absent religious doctrine, Jordan Peterson asserted that even those who believe that they are atheists, if they are moral, deep down, they actually are religious. They may just not even know it. And when you say that even if in the short term it appears as though this is a violation of the values because they wanted the job, even if they were less qualified, that in the long run, it is more consistent with one's values, not to get the job. Even if it means your family starves, even if it means all sorts. I mean, you know, it starts, you know, borderline borderline conditions are always tricky and kind of likeboard scenarios. I don't believe a part of morality. Most of us apply for jobs are not in the situation where your family starves. It's one job out of many. But I think I think it's absolutely real. I think that, you know, lots of people get jobs, which way they are not qualified for and they feel terrible once they discover that they're not qualified for. And the long term negative consequences on their lives are not good. And they'd be better off if they didn't get the job in the long run. There are a lot of you can you can imagine and I think it's self evident that there are a lot of situations where we want something, but actually not getting that something at that moment in time is actually better for us. Now, we might not realize it at the time. We're all going to be disappointed. We're all going to be sad sometimes. Life is not one long, you know, you know, cheery, happy, unquestioning, you know, pleasure, pleasurable thing. There are ups and downs and challenges. But the point is that if one lives consistently according to these ideas, one does achieve a state of happiness. One does achieve success. And when one reviews one's life, when you look at these situations, I think if you approach it rationally, you don't feel like oh, there's this. I hate this other guy because he got the job and I didn't. I, you know, if if I think that the decisions make rationally, then he got the job and I didn't. I don't know. I think that I think that it's a bit dismissive of the reality that, you know, in the scenario where the two people vying for the job are middle class people who if they don't get this job, they'll find some other job. I think it is very sort of establishment centric in the sense that there are hundreds of millions or even billions of people on this planet for whom it really might be the opportunity that exists to feed their family and to avoid absolutely horrible conditions. And the idea of saying, listen, in the long run, just adhering to the values is going to be better for everybody. For a lot of people, it's not getting the job, even if you're unqualified, is actually going to be better objectively. Yes and no. But look, I'm assuming here that people are rational. I'm assuming people here are living and thinking long term. And yes, there are situations in life where you you grab what you can get. Certainly as the countries in the world right now, where people are starving, where I don't expect them to have this kind of attitude and and they are living a lifeboat scenario. They are living survival, you know, get the job or die. And then you grab the job. I mean, I'm not going to judge somebody like that in that kind of scenario. I'm just saying that and I don't consider this middle class because I consider I consider this true in in any free economy that this is true of of anybody in whatever their social economic status is that in a free economy, if you know, you're never on the verge of starvation, an advanced free economy, you're never on the verge of starvation, options exist. And and maybe this now spills into economics and spills into politics. But you've got to take over if you want to have a healthy, successful life. If you're going to be happy long term, you're going to have to take that long term perspective. And again, that long term perspective might be painful in the short run, but it'll pay off the pay off multiple times in the long run. And this is not just look, I'm trying to think of a of a of a scenario. But, you know, even without a specific one, I mean, I think this is an example of why some people hear this and they say, wow, that sounds extraordinarily dismissive of a lot of people's situations. It sounds like and this is I don't know if you would agree that Randy in philosophy feeds into applied to modern politics, a sort of libertarian ideology. I don't like libertarian, but free market ideology certainly certainly firstly feeds into free markets. And look, let's let's take let's take a political issue for for the hell of it. Yeah. And let's take something like affirmative action, right? So a certain percentage of people get a jobs not because they qualified, but because of the color of their skin, which I find offensive. And I will hold on a second. I think that that we need we can't go further until we don't necessarily agree about what that if you have hold on a second, though, but you've identified people can be equally qualified. You could have equally qualified people where deference is given to a group that has been historically oppressed, but that's hypothetically possible. Let's make an assumption. I'm not saying it's true always. OK, certainly is not true always. Sometimes the person with the different color of the skin is better. And sometimes they're the same. But let's say there are circumstances and I believe they are circumstances. And I think the empirical evidence suggests once in a while, somebody gets in for a job they're not fully qualified for. There were more people who are more qualified for and they get the job in spite of that. Yeah, I would argue the primary reason for that is nepotism, not affirmative action. But fair whatever the reason may be, but there certainly are cases where it's affirmative action and you can just look at the admission standards at Harvard to see that in action. But what does that say to them? Put aside the political issue, let's talk just about the person. What does that reflect about in terms of their own self esteem? And in terms of the pride that they have in getting that job? Well, first, they don't know why they got the job. And there's a there's a probability. It might be very low. You know, maybe I'll accept what you say. And it's very low, but there might be a probability that they didn't get the job because of their qualification. Maybe it's because of nepotism. Maybe it's affirmative action. Maybe it's a thousand different other things. But it affects their self esteem. OK, they don't know why they got the job. It reduces the ability to have pride in what they achieve in that job. When they fail in that job, if they fail or in the school, if they fail, that is crushing to them, right? So I think it has real world application. And I'm against nepotism. I'm against people getting what they don't deserve, what they don't deserve on their merits. And when people do get it, it has a psychological self esteem. Price to pay, and I would rather live in a world in which we minimize that. You're never going to minimize, you know, nepotism completely, but I would like to minimize it as much as possible. And I think the only way to minimize it is to, for both parties or parties, to adopt a rational approach to hiring, for example, or to any activity in life. And look, we don't live in a rational world. We don't live in which people are, for the most part, rational and put aside the politics, put aside the particular politics, even in personal ethics. People are not rational. People are not honest. People are deceiving themselves and lying to themselves all the time. And people are committing, following emotions and following lots of things that I think are wrong. So it doesn't surprise me that people are upset by lots of stuff that happens to them all around them. And the fact that I know that the hire that people are hiring might not be basing the hiring on the most rational, merit-based assessment that they might be nepotism, let's say, or other standards going into it would cause me to be frustrated if I don't get a job. Yeah, I mean, listen, we're not going to now adjudicate affirmative action in total because we've got so many other things to talk about. But I think this is sort of like when the focus around the climate becomes should the government force you to use a particular type of straw. I argue that's the wrong conversation. When a hundred companies do 70 percent of the pollution, me changing the type of straw I use, I think is a red herring in the same way. When you look at something like college admissions at the, at the really elite schools and you look at the number of people that are either legacy admissions related to someone who's made a big donation, and you compare it to cases in which what you've got equally qualified people where deference was given to someone from an underprivileged group. I focus on the bulk of the problem myself, but that's probably a conversation. I mean, again, my focus is completely different. Yes, I would love for Harvard to be a truly private institution that does not get a dime from the government. And as a consequence, makes its own admissions decisions. And if it wants to discriminate in any way, it has the right to discriminate. So what I want is for the government, what I ideally want with all these issues is for the government to get out of the way and private citizens to engage in it and maybe later we'll get to the pollution question and what counts as pollution and what doesn't and how you deal with real pollution issues. But, but, you know, I think that once we once we acknowledge that once we let private individuals do what they want to do, rather than have to abide by some government regulation, some government standard, that then you have to adjudicate by who should be discriminated against? Who is it Asians? Is it whites? And then we we get into a conversation that's all racist because we're judging people by the race one way or the other, whether it's whether it's the way we treat Asians or the way we treat whites or the way we treat blacks or anybody else. I think that's a losing proposition to begin with. We, you know, they and and this is this is a really bad place to be. And it's a bad place. The country isn't. But going back to personal morality, yeah, the key here is for people to take their life seriously. And look, there's nothing in this philosophy that is middle class or elitist in any way. I truly believe that these are the set of ideas. These are set of virtues that apply to anybody, anybody starting out in any position in life if they want to have a good life and a good life is not measured in money. You know, so it's not about money. It's not it's not just about money. Money is a factor, but it's not just about money. That's another. I mean, people always think of I ran in materialistic terms, but it's not just about money. It's about the kind of life you live and to live a good life, a life of pride and self esteem, a life that you can be proud of having lived requires, you know, following certain principles. And it's not always easy to follow those principles. The decisions don't always going to make you happy. I give you a given example from the fountain head, which you said you have read. I don't know if you remember the scene or not, but there's a scene in the fountain head. How it work is the struggling architect. And there's a scene in the fountain head where this bank is going to hire him to build a building and they're going to pay him a lot of money. But they just want to make few changes to his design. And a few changes to his design completely destroy the integrity of the building, the integrity of a design. And he says no. And he walks away and he lands up working in a quarry in order to feed himself. Because yeah, sometimes your decisions are very tough. Now, is he better off from making that decision long term, not taking the money and going to work in the quarry? Ayn Rand's point is yes, your personal integrity, living by those ideas and sticking to that integrity and living a complete life without compromise. Sometimes it's going to require you to go work in a quarry. Sometimes it's going to require you to somehow lose a lot of money and struggle. But if you follow through on it, you will be successful in living, whether it comes in dollar signs or not, you will be successful in life. And that is why they call it a fictional novel. But you see people who do that. It happens. But the opposite happens as well as the reality. I mean, there are many cases. The opposite. The opposite. I compromise on the building. I compromise on my value and I still live a happy life. The opposite would be the opposite would be in the short term, in the short term, you compromise that compromise allows you in the long term to take the fruits of that compromise and change the system. That is what the problem is. I mean, listen, this is like, I'll give you an example and then maybe this will be a good, we're getting into the politics. So it may be a good place to pause. I often have to make decisions about, listen, air travel. Would you grant that air travel does pollute the planet? We can disagree about what the solution would be or how much. But planes flying around this, this releases emissions into the atmosphere. Would you would you grant that you're on? I grant that it releases emissions into that. Very good. One could argue I should stop all air travel to places where I am going to speak about what I do. But I could also say, listen, the cost that I am exhibiting by releasing this is smaller than the number of people I might inspire who in the next 50 years will go and make positive changes. That that is how I might compromise my value in the short term. But in the long term, I actually am doing a better thing. Well, I mean, you know, if you really accept what you believe and let's let's say we'll accept an extreme version of that where the world is literally, you know, it's in the next 12 years. If we don't stop flying in the next 12, the world is going to end. Then I'm not sure that's a good compromise. I don't buy into that. I'm not sure you do. But but yes, one has to one has to have a hierarchy of values and figure out how to ascertain how to gain our most important values. And sometimes one has to give up a lower value in order to attain a higher value. And that's, you know, what I meant is arguing is for creating a higher care value, defining a higher care value and making sure you never give up high value, your integrity as an artist. Okay, or low value, that would be a sacrifice. But giving up a lower value for the sake of a higher value. Well, of course you do that every day, every minute that you live is a minute you can do 55 different things and you choose to do one. And in a sense, you're giving up doing the 54 other things, but you're not. So the idea here is, is to have principles by which one defines one's values, one creates a higher care value and then one makes sure that you're never sacrificing something higher for something lower one's life consistently based on that. All right. Well, we've now expanded to just beyond the initial definition, which was just about any compromise to the idea of a hierarchy, which I think is a more well developed idea. Sure. I mean, I, I, you know, this is a very short period of time, but we're talking about, you know, when I said compromise, I mean, a moral compromise. Obviously, if my wife wants to go to movies and I want to go to restaurant and we can't, and I compromise and go to movies with her, that's not a moral compromise that we're going to, you know, that, that I believe you should never do. So it's, it's a question of how important is something to you. Absolutely. And what should never give up what's really, really important for something less important. So let's pause the conversation there. In part two, we're really getting into economics and politics. And in part two, we're going to be dealing with capitalism specifically. We've been speaking with your on Brooke, who is chairman of the Ayn Rand Institute and host of the Iran Brooke show. And we will have our next conversation with your on coming up very soon.