 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Brad Thompson, and I am the executive director of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism. And I would like to welcome all of you here for our Cope lecture for this semester. Before we begin, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the Cope Foundation in Northern Carolina for their very generous support of today's lecture. Down to our main events. Our speaker today, Dr. Iran Brooke, is a world-renowned public speaker. As you'll see from his extraordinary CV, he has accomplished a great deal in his lifetime. He is the host of the nationally syndicated Iran Brooke show. His radical capitalist series can be heard on Wattop radio and YouTube. Dr. Brooke was formerly the executive director of the Ein Rand Institute for 17 years, where he remains the chairman of the board and its primary intellectual spokesman. Iran Brooke was raised in Israel, where he served in the Israeli military intelligence. He has a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from Technion Israel Institute of Technology in Israel. And he has a PhD in finance from the University of Texas at Austin. In 1998, he co-founded BH Equity, a research equity firm and hedge fund. And he is currently a director at BH Equity. Dr. Brooke is a regular columnist at Forbes.com. And his articles have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Investors Business Daily. He's also a frequent contributor on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. Last year alone, Dr. Brooke delivered over 100 lectures around the world, speaking on topics such as the causes of the financial crisis, the morality of capitalism, ending the growth of the state and American foreign policy. Dr. Brooke, over the course of the last number of years, has published several books. His most recent book is In Pursuit of Wealth, The Moral Case for Finance. Equal is unfair. America's misguided fight against income inequality. Free market revolution, how Inran's ideas can end big government. And finally, my favorite of all of his books, which he co-authored with me, Neoconservatism and Obituary for an Idea. Ladies and gentlemen, it is with great pleasure that I introduce my dear friend, Dr. Yaron Brooke. Thank you. Thank you, Brad. And it's a real pleasure to be here, back at Clemson. I've been coming to Clemson for, I don't know, it's been 15 years now, I think, on and off, at least once a year, usually twice a year. And it's always fun, and it's always good to be here. Capitalism versus Socialism. Wow. I mean, every time I'm asked to speak about this topic, I wonder, what do we have to do to make this topic go away? Because it's getting a little boring. The fact is that the debate, capitalism versus socialism, should have been over decades ago. The evidence of one versus the other is overwhelming. It's not even close. So the real question which we will get to today is, why are we still having this debate? Why is this still being discussed? Why is socialism still an option? Because look, we have two systems, two systems, social systems, economic systems. They've both been tried to some extent. Now, I know the socialists among you are going to say, we've never really tried socialism. And I know that the capitalist among you are also going to say, we know that we've never really tried capitalism. And to some extent, both are true. We've never really tried capitalism. I would argue we've tried socialism. But OK, I'm willing to even grant you we've never really tried your particular mythological view of what socialism could be. But this, I would argue, we've done lots of variations of socialism. And we've done some variations of capitalism. We've done, we've gotten really close to what ideal socialism is. We've got really close to what ideal capitalism is. And the results are in. And we know what each system results in. We've done a lot of mixtures of the two. And it's interesting to study the mixtures as well. So before we get to what those results are, let's think for a minute about what each system actually is. What is socialism and what is capitalism? What do we mean when we say these terms? Because they're easily thrown out there and used. Socialism basically is a system in which the state owns the means of production, in which private property is minimized if not completely eliminated. The group, the collective, but the state at the end of the day is the owner of the assets in the country. No hands yet. You'll have plenty of time to ask questions. I promise. I relish them. And I'm glad to see some socialists in the audience. So it makes my day. Socialism essentially is a form of statism where the state or the group or the collective supersedes the individual and manages, in quotes, the productive capabilities of a society. Capitalism is a system of individual property rights. It's a system in which the only job of government is to protect rights, primarily property rights, where the job of government is limited to only protecting those rights and otherwise leaving people free. Individuals free. Those are two systems. State owns everything, runs everything. The individual is left alone. The state basically protects him and leaves him alone otherwise. Those are the two options that we have on the table. Socialism, state owns everything. Or the group owns everything, if you don't like the word state, second option, individuals. All property is privately owned. State is there just to protect those property rights, just to protect your freedom as an individual. OK, so let's take a sampling of history. Let's take a sampling of countries, of states, of economies that have functioned based on socialist ideas and a sampling of countries, states that have functioned, generally speaking, based on capitalist ideas. And what do we get? Well, we certainly tried for 70-something years what's called communism. You could argue an extreme form of socialism where the state really owns everything. And communism's history, it's pretty bleak. Probably somewhere between 100 and 200 million people died under communism because they were slaughtered, because they were starved, because the system just didn't produce enough food for them to eat. Under Stalin, tens of millions of people died. Again, partially because he just killed them, slaughtered them, and partially because he let them starve purposefully in order to eradicate certain groups he didn't like, or in order to establish communal farming, communal farming everywhere and everywhere it's tried leads to disaster. And it was tried in the Soviet Union and led to disaster in the Soviet Union. A different form of communism, some would say, was tried by Mao Zedong in China. And there, the numbers are very similar to the numbers produced by the Soviet Union. Somewhere between 40 to 100 million people were murdered, killed, starved during the rule. Did you hear that? Was that just me? Oh, it's getting worse. All right. It's I'm yelling. All right. Communism's history is a history of death and destruction, of poverty, of misery. And I know, for your generation, you have to tell people sometimes, you know, the Berlin Wall was built not to prevent Westernism escaping to communism. But because communists wanted to run away from Eastern Europe to the West and needed to be shot in order to stop them from doing that. Eastern Europe would have been emptied out if not for the Berlin Wall and the fences and walls that went out all over the border between East and West in Germany. Communism, as practiced everywhere, has led to nothing but blood-suffering poverty. Soviet Union, in China, in some ways even worse in Cambodia, when the killing fields of Cambodia, 40% of the population was murdered in the name of equality, in the name of socialism, in the name of making us all the same, in the name of eradicating private property, eradicating differences, eradicating so-called classes. The history of socialism and communism is the history of bloodshed, murder, and destruction. And knowing these facts, it is stunning that we still have socialists around. Now, that is one variation, you would say. But every variation of socialism has resulted in a similar outcome. Maybe not as much blood, but certainly poverty. Right now, we're living through an experiment in South America of socialism. There's a country in South America. They used to be the richest country in Latin America. On a per capita basis, by far, the richest country in Latin America. It was a country, it is a country, that has more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia. It should be a rich country. It was a rich country. And yet, because of socialist policies over the last 20 years, it has become, today, the poorest country in Latin America. Babies are starving, dying of starvation. There are no pets in Caracas, no cats and dogs, anywhere in Caracas, because they've eaten them all. The zoos were emptied, and the animals, they eaten. Middle class kids like you are dumpster diving to find food. This is a country that has more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia. This is a country that has some of the most fertile land in Latin America. And yet, that land was collectivized 20 years ago, turned into collective farms, and is producing nothing today. And people are starving. Same result, same system, always happens. Now, Latin America is interesting, because not far from Venezuela is another country. They used to be the poorest country in Latin America on a per capita basis. Also has some natural resources, nowhere near as rich as Venezuela. But over the last 20 years, has implemented economic policies that are reverse of Venezuela. They privatized everything, or as much as they could. Not quite pure capitalism as I would like it, but in that direction. And over the last 20 years, this country has become the richest country in Latin America. Shocking, isn't it? And that country is Chile, which adopted relatively free market policies, and has a consequence done fantastically well from an economic perspective. Now, that shouldn't surprise us. Because the flip history of socialism is the history of capitalism. How many people were poor, you think? Like poor, like UN level poor, the way the UN defines it. $3 a day or less. I don't know how many of you live on $3 a day. I assume nobody. $3 a day in today's dollar. This guy does. Somebody give him a sandwich. He looks hungry. How many people lived on $3 a day or less in the West 250 years ago? What percentage of the population? Anybody? How much? 50. Anybody want to challenge the 50? 90, much closer to 90. Over 90%. Over 90% of people, 250 years ago, lived basically on less than $3 a day. They were subsistence farmers. They grew the food. They ate it. Some lived in the cities. And workmen. Life expectancy. Anybody know what life expectancy was 250 years ago? Yeah, 39, something like that. I'd be dead most of you in middle age already. It sucks. 39 life expectancy sucks big time. But that's what life was. That's what life was. Not that long ago from a historical perspective. 250 years, not a long time. And yet, here we are, sitting in a beautiful auditorium. Comfy. You guys are definitely considered young. Even I sometimes think I might be young. You might all live to be 100. Life expectancy, if you stay away from opioids, is pretty sweet in the US. It's pretty long. And all of this has happened in 250 years. Nothing like this has ever happened in human history. Because at $3 a day, where 90% lived, there was pretty much human history going all the way back 10,000 years. We basically didn't improve our living standard that much. Over 10,000 years, and then suddenly in 250 years, wow. It went through the roof. How did that happen? Well, sometime in the late 18th century, and the founding of America as an important part of this, people were granted, if you will, freedom. They were left alone. The state started protecting property rights, recognizing property rights, and leaving people alone to flourish. And people did. They went out, and they did what they wanted to do. And they created businesses. Some of them became entrepreneurs. They came in from the farms into the cities. And life was often rough and difficult. But you know what? Within 100 years, during the 19th century, life expectancy almost doubled. And then it increased even more the following 100 years. And the quality of life improved. Life became more comfortable, more easy. We worked fewer hours. We had more fun. How many people went on vacation 150 years ago? Nobody. Like maybe a few people at the top. There were no vacations 150 years ago. Today, wow, if you don't like in Europe, if you don't get six weeks of vacation, you start a revolution. But that's because we're rich. We're unthinkably rich in comparison to where we were 250 years ago. Nobody 250 years ago could imagine us being as rich as we are today. How did that happen? It happened because we adopted, to some extent, and to various extents, elements of capitalism, property rights, respectful individual rights. We let people live free. And what we got was incredible prosperity. And this country is representative of that prosperity. But this is true everywhere it's tried. One of my favorite examples is Hong Kong. How many people have been to Hong Kong? Not many. I tell people, if you do one thing in life, you've got to go see Hong Kong once in your life. You've got to go see this place. Now, hopefully, it won't be destroyed by the Chinese takeover, but Hong Kong is amazing. It's a tiny little rock in the middle of nowhere. 75 years ago, it was a fishing village, which a relatively small population of a few thousand. Today, it has a population of 7 and 1 half million people. They have more skyscrapers in Hong Kong than New York City. Their GDP per capita, adjusted for cost of living, is higher than GDP per capita in the US. They are richer than we are. They have no natural resources. They have nothing, except what? Except economic freedom. They have a government that for 75 years did nothing but protect property rights. And people came from all over Asia to this little rock in the middle of nowhere, because they wanted to be free, because they wanted to be able to own something. They wanted to be able to build something for themselves. There was no safety net in Hong Kong. They didn't arrive and get free health care, or a welfare check, or free housing. All they got was the knowledge that their life and property would be protected, that whatever they built, whatever they created, whatever they owned, they got to keep. And as a consequence, the economy has gone through the roof, and they are richer than we are. Capitalism works even when you try it just a little bit. Like in China, when you just release the entrepreneurial spirits just in a few areas in China, not even all over China. When you give them the semblance of private property, not even real private property, just a little bit, they feel like they've got private property. And people suddenly go out and they make, and they produce, and they build, and they have energy, and they become entrepreneurial. People tell the story of going to China in the 70s and seeing people shuffle around, not even walk, shuffle, all dressed the same in gray kind of uniforms, head down, looking down at the ground with no personality, no zest for life, nothing. Because life under socialism sucks, and you could see it in their faces. And today, if you go to China, oh my god, everybody's dressed different, everybody's yelling, and shouting, and moving, and driving, and running. Nobody walks in China, nobody sits in China, because they're too busy living, because they got a little bit of freedom. And unfortunately, it's only a little bit. One can only imagine how incredibly rich China could be if they actually liberated the place and actually turned it into a capitalist country. They could blow us away, blow themselves away. How successful, how rich, how prosperous they could be. So there is no, when it comes to economics, when it comes to standard of living, when it comes to wealth, when it comes to quality of life, when it comes to any material standard, there is no debate between socialism and capitalism. There is none. It's bogus. Capitalism works. Capitalism has been successful. Capitalism has created prosperity. Capitalism has extended human life. Capitalism has made life wonderful. And socialism is a disaster every single place it has tried. Now, I grew up in a socialist country, not a communist country, in a socialist country. I've experienced socialism. I've experienced socialized medicine. I moved to America, right? Because I wanted out. Your opportunities as individual are suppressed. Your opportunities to get ahead, to succeed, to innovate, to prosper, to live are limited. And one of the saddest things for me is to see this country moving toward socialism against history, against the facts. So the question has to be why? Why? Because it's not about economics. It's not about wealth. It's not about what succeeds and what doesn't from an economic perspective. There has to be something else going on. And a lot of socialists, including Karl Marx, admit to this. Karl Marx did not deny that capitalism produces the goods. Indeed, quite the opposite. Karl Marx said, yeah, it raises people into a middle class. It creates a middle class. It creates wealth. It creates success. That's not his objection to capitalism. And I don't think most socialists today are delusional enough to think that it is the path to prosperity. But for whatever reason, they believe that it is the path to morality, to virtue, to goodness. Now, in this context, what do we mean by virtue and morality? If the standard is human flourishing, if the standard is individual human well-being, the ability to make the most of your life, then the argument again is over. So there has to be some other standard that the socialists pine for, that they want, that they desire. So what makes socialism attractive? Why do we think it's cool? Because it turns out most American youth think socialism is cool. In spite of the blood, in spite of the disasters, in spite of the poverty, it's cool. Now, part of that is just plain ignorance. And I think a big part of it is just plain ignorance among young people. They just don't know the history. And it's incumbent on those of us to teach the history and to teach it right. But I don't think it's just ignorance. There has to be something more. And I think this goes to the heart of what we perceive or what we take as ethics, as morality, as virtue, as the good. Because when we're very young, we are taught that what virtue and morality and good means is not flourishing. It's not success. It's not happiness. It's what you do with other people. It's sacrifice. Sacrifice is noble. We tell everybody. That's standard stuff. And sacrifice, yeah, I mean giving stuff up and getting nothing in return. Now I'm very capitalist. It's about sacrifice. It's about being selfless. It's about living for other people. The moral code that we have ingrained in us, more so in Europe than here, but even in the United States, is a moral code that says that the group somehow, the group over there, is more important than the individual, more substantial than the individual. And the ideal for the group is that we all be what? Equal. The ideal for the group is equality. That we all be the same. That we all have the same. Not just equality of rights, not just equality before the law, but equality of outcome. That we all be equal. Now we know it didn't work under communism because they didn't try it right. And we know it didn't work under Paul Pot in Cambodia. They didn't get it right. We're this time we're gonna get it right because the goal, the utopia, the ideal is still the right one. Equality. Now where this comes from is a long story, this idea that to be equal is somehow good because look around this room. I mean, I can see all of you and let me tell you something. You're not equal. You're all different. Thank God for that. You're all different. You have different abilities, different skills, different characters. You look different, different ages, different experiences. We're all different. And that is so cool. I mean, it would be awful to live in a world where everybody was exactly the same. Even if everybody's like me, it would be terrible. It would be terrible. And part of the reason we're so wealthy is because we're so different. Because we have a division of labor society where we specialize and where we can do what we have a comparative advantage doing. It's that division of labor society, that freedom to do what we enjoy, what we have a passion to do, what we have a comparative advantage to do, which is what partially would make us wealthy. But replace all that with some ideal. Some ideal that says we must be equal. Why? Because. Because the metaphysical fact, the fact in reality is we're not equal. And to deny that is to deny reality, to deny existence. And the only way to make us equal is how? How do you make people equal? What's that? My hatchet accent saw. Hatchet accent saw is pretty good. I mean, I think the people who took that most seriously, the idea of equality, was probably Pol Pot in Cambodia. I don't know how many of you know the story. But these were well-educated people. Educated in the Sorbonne in Paris, came back to Cambodia with the idea that they were gonna create an equal society. But they confunded an unequal society. Some people lived in the cities and some people lived in the fields. In the countryside, so what did they do? How do you make those equal? You empty the cities. You drive everybody out of the cities. And as a consequence, some people starve. But that's okay, because the goal is equality. And we're moving towards equality, and it's good. So some people starve. Sacrificing the individual to the collective, that's okay. We've said morality equals selflessness and sacrifice. So we're okay. And then they said, yeah, but even in the fields, even in the countryside, some people are more equal. Some people are more able than others. Some people are intelligent. More intelligent than other people. Some people maybe are educated and other people are not educated. Some people have a profession, a skill. Some people don't. What do you do? What do you do? How do you create equality when people are so unequal? Well, you basically take anybody who has any kind of exceptional anything and you shoot them. And they did. If you had glasses, that was a sign that you could probably read and you probably went to school or something and you were shot. If you were a good forager, a food, you were shot. If you could read, you were shot. And they killed 40% of their own population that way. And they killed all the intelligentsia. They killed everybody who had any education. And yeah, at the end of the day, they had a more equal society. It's called the killing fields of Cambodia. You can look it up. You can read about it. It's very morbid, very tragic. But that's what equality of outcome necessitates. There is no other way. Now, I'm gonna make the claim, which I think should be kind of obvious at this point, that that's pretty immoral. Worse than that, that's evil. That's downright evil. And I would argue that the whole goal of trying to create equality of outcome from people who are unequal is an evil goal. It counter to nature, counter to reality, counter to human prosperity, existence, and well-being. It is an evil goal, which makes socialism an evil ideology, not just in practice, but in theory, an evil ideology because its goal, its mission, is to do something unnatural, to do something that necessitates the destruction of human life. And I don't know what you believe in ethics, but the destruction of human life is evil. So, to finally get rid of this socialist tendency, I think what we need is to challenge, to challenge these very deep beliefs about morality. Why is the well-being of the group more important than the well-being of the individual? Why is they happiness more important than my happiness? Why isn't the standard of morality my well-being rather than all of our well-being in some collective group? Why is equality a good thing? Where did that come from? And there is no answer to these why questions. To defend capitalism. To defend capitalism, which has led, again, life expectancy, to prosperity, to human well-being across the board, everywhere it's tried. I think what we need is a new moral code. I think what we need is a new approach to morality, an approach to morality focused on the individual, focused on individual well-being, focused on how to make my life and your life as individuals the best that they can be. I think equality as a goal needs to be scrapped completely. The only value equality has is political equality. We should all be equally free. What happens when you take a bunch of different people like in this room and put no constraints on them, leave them free? What do you think happens? Out comes the same? Everybody turns out exactly the same? Now we're all gonna produce different things. We're all gonna make different stuff. And it's not just about money, right? Some of us will choose professions like your professors here in the room choose professions where they're not gonna make a lot of money. They're all smart. They could have gone into business. They could have gone to Wall Street, done something, made lots of money. But they chose to be teachers. Why? Because you know what? The fun of teaching this is more fun than money. It's not about money. It's about living. It's about enjoying life. It's about making the most of your life. That's what it should be about. So scrappy quality. All we want is the freedom to live our lives as we see fit. And what we need is a morality that says that that's okay. And here I'm gonna recommend, I know some of you have read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, but I'm gonna could recommend that you read Ayn Rand. Because Ayn Rand actually presents a morality of self-interest. A morality that gives you the virtues and values necessary to live your life as you see fit. Live your life for you. Where the purpose of a morality is how to live life, how to live the best life that you can live. How to achieve happiness. That's a scientific question. How do you achieve happiness? Given that human beings have a particular nature, what do they need to do in order to be happy? In order to be successful versus to fail. Morality should be about how to achieve happiness. How to achieve success. How to prosper in life. Not monetarily, but holistically as a human being. It's only when we have a moral code like that that says it's okay to live your life for yourself. That capitalism can be defended morally and therefore can be accepted in a society. Socialism has failed. It's failed everywhere. Capitalism has been a success. If, that statement is true only if, what we value is individual human life. That statement is true if, what we value is the ability of the individual to prosper and succeed and live free and live well. But we don't value that. What we value is the group. What we value today more than ever is the tribe. We don't care about individuals. We have to sacrifice a few here and there, so be it. As long as the tribe is better off. That's what is driving us towards socialism. That's what's driving us towards statism. And that's the idea, this idea of tribalism, this idea of the individual has to be scrapped. So I'm hoping that those of you being tempted by socialism take this opportunity to rethink it. And that those of you who are already kind of on the capitalist side think about what it's gonna take to defend this system. What it's gonna take to protect our ability to prosper and succeed and be wealthy. And I think, my argument is, that we're gonna have to discover a new moral code. We're gonna have to discover a moral code of individualism and reject the morality of tribalism that exists and is prevalent today in the world. Thank you all. Thank you, Iran, for a fabulous lecture. We've got lots of time now for Q&A. So what I would like first, please, is for people to actually ask questions. We're not interested in long five, 10 minute statements. We're here to hear Dr. Brooke. So my strong request, please, is that you ask a short and to the point question. And we don't have microphones which we typically do on the aisles. So what we're gonna have, have you doing one of the reasons why we need to ask short questions is for purposes of the video recording, Dr. Brooke will repeat the question. So please keep it short and to the point. It is our tradition at the Plebson Institute to take the first couple of questions from the students. So if there are students in the audience who have questions, let's get your hand up. This gentleman right here in the front. I first want to talk about the history of cannibalism. Well, at first, the history of cannibalism, I definitely believe it's one of justice, violence, and blood. So from its beginning, England, the men for the war, for the criminal force. Okay, I get it, we're trying to keep it short. So the first is the whole blood thing of the 1960s when capitalism was born. I get it. Yeah, I like that the thing happened before the time of crisis. The time of crisis, got it. The time of crisis, yeah. Basically, we're going to do a warm-up for the Rhode Island. No mobility, got it. Okay, I'll take those three. All right, so the challenge is our one isn't capitalism full of bloodshed and injustice, taking people off their land and forcing them into factories. And then second is economic crises. And the third was social accountability. First I've heard of that. Mobility, social mobility, mobility, yes. Okay, let's start with bloodshed. Oh my God, I think it's one of the greatest tragedies, I think, of modern education, is that you don't learn what happened in the 19th century. You learn what Marxists want to believe happened in the 19th century, but not what actually happened in the 19th century. You don't learn that, again, 90 plus percent of humanity was dirt poor. They weren't forced off the farms, I'm not saying they weren't here and there some exceptions, but they weren't forced off the farms. What they did was left the farms for better opportunities in the city, just like is happening all over the world. Still, people are leaving the farms because the farms, anybody, what's life like in a farm? Wake up in the morning at sunrise. There's no electricity. You work all day and you go to bed when the sun sets. And what do kids do in the farm? Everybody blames the 19th century as child labor. Oh my God, children worked. What did they do before the Industrial Revolution? They worked. From sunrise, well, actually, mostly they died. Because most kids didn't make it to 10. They died. So during the 19th century, they left this horrible lifestyle and they went to the cities and got grubby jobs or we would consider today grubby jobs, just like Chinese today are leaving the farms and going to work for Foxconn, right? In what we consider in the West, grubby jobs. For them, it's a path to middle-classhood, but for us, it's grubby jobs. Their life expectancy increases dramatically. Their kids are not dying. Wealth is being created so now parents can afford to send their kids to school. Parents can also now afford cleanliness, which is part of why life expectancy increases is we learn where germs come from and we have the wealth to be able to be clean. This is one of the 19th century. In context, it's the most magnificent human century in history. It is a century where we go from poverty to wealth. It is a century in which we go from, nobody gets an education, almost everybody gets an education. It's a century in which we go from living horrible, miserable, pathetic lives to the kind of, the beginnings of the kind of lives we have today. And instead of studying that period and trying to understand exactly what happened and how it happened, we demonize it in the name of demonizing capitalism, but that is not the reality. The reality's not blood, suddenly not. It's anywhere close to the proportion of blood in socialism. Socialism is rivers of blood, not to say everything that happened there is rosy and good and virtuous, but overall the big picture is fantastic. If the standard is human life, if the standard is human prosperity, if the standard is your life and your kid's life, the 19th century is the pivotal century in all of human history that made what we have today possible. And it should be taught and studied like that rather than demonized in the name of ideology which I think is what is happening. Crisis. Now this is another one of these mythologies. There is no crisis under capitalist. Now, yeah, sometimes overinvestment happened and your correction happened, sure, but systemic crisis, crises that impact the entire economy, great depressions, great recessions are not phenomena of capitalism. They're phenomena of statism. The state is what has real systemic risk. Systemic means economy-wide risk. The Federal Reserve, when it makes a mistake, we all suffer and it always makes a mistake by the very nature of the Federal Reserve. It is never quite right, because it's a central planner and central planners screw up all the time. So if you go back to the Great Depression and you study it properly, you realize that it wasn't a market phenomena. It was a phenomena created by the Federal Reserve policies and by smooth Harley government policy and by everything else FDR did during the 1930s that sustained the depression. The depression is 100%, or as close to 100% as you can get, government created phenomena. The Great Recession, I don't have time, I've given a six hour course, it's online, you can take it on the causes of the Great Recession. Markets did not create the Great Recession. It happened in finance and it happened in housing. Two of the most regulated industries in America. Banking is the most regulated industry in America. That's where the crisis happened. It's not surprising. And that's where systemic risk happens because it affects everything because the government's involved in it. When the dot-com bubble collapsed, which you could argue is somewhat maybe a market phenomena, it didn't create systemic risk. One sector went down because it was overpriced, big deal. But when banking went down, it was everything because it involved the government, it involved the Federal Reserve. Now social mobility, now this is the funniest one I have to admit, right? Because whether the system has any social mobility, any capitalism is the only system in human history that is allowed that has made possible poor people to rise up before capitalism, yet feudalism, basically. You had aristocrats and peasants, and that's it. And the peasants could never become aristocrats. Suddenly, we freed it up and we opened the floodgates. And poor people became middle class and some people became rich. What was Rockefeller initially? Poor, nothing, he had nothing before he became the richest man in the world. Carnegie, most of those guys. They became, you could become middle class, middle class people became rich, and indeed, if you go to Hong Kong, I mean, all these people who came to Hong Kong would do it poor when they came to Hong Kong. They had nothing when they came to Hong Kong. Now they're middle class and rich, at least a big chunk of them, richer than we are. How did that happen if there's no mobility? If there's no mobility, they'd also still be poor. Hong Kong would be exactly the same as it was 70 years ago. People would have gone there and stayed poor. They came poor and stayed poor. All those immigrants who came to the United States in the 19th century would still be poor, right? Your ancestors who came here with nothing. Maybe some of you, your ancestors came here with something. I can tell you, my ancestors, they didn't come here, but wherever they went, came with nothing. They were poor Jews from little stettles, farming communities in the middle of Poland and Lithuania and Latvia. They knew nothing. They had nothing. They went and because of capitalism, they rose and they became middle class and some of them became very wealthy. Capitalism is the only system in human history with mobility. No other system in human history is allowed poor people to rise up from poverty. Allowed. It's not even allowed. You just leave people alone and what happens is they produce and they create. So, yes, there's less mobility today in America than there was in the past. And that's sad and that's horrible. And the reason is that we're not capitalist anymore. We're far from capitalist. The reason is regulations and controls and minimum wages and all the things that government imposes on us to keep poor people poor. Minimum wage being the primary of those or one of the primaries. Minimum wage keeps poor people poor because it prices young people out of the job market. So they never get a job, which makes sure they always stay poor. Simple economics. So no, social mobility doesn't exist in any other system. Capitalism when properly functioning has a huge social mobility. It used to say in the 19th century in New York from short sleeve to short sleeve in two generations or three. Three generations, right? First generation was poor, made the money. Short sleeve is poor, represents poverty, right? Second generation lives off of that wealth. By third generation they've lost it all, they're poor again. So you can go from poverty to wealth and back to poverty like that. And there are plenty of families to this day who've experienced that. That's real capitalism. Now today, because of regulations and controls and again, licensing laws and minimum wage laws and all these stuff, we reduce sub-reduced mobility. That's tragic. But that is because we moved away from capitalism, not because we moved towards it. All right, next question. Yeah, I'll come to you. So earlier when you were speaking, you said I don't think there's anything. Okay, I'll give you the hundred million. And audience, but in the past 10 years alone there's been 75 million deaths, or 10 deaths of people living in capitalist countries. Is that a concern of the state? Or are they just not working hard enough to prevent themselves from that? So that is 100% made up number. The capitalist state has killed nobody. People are not dying because of capitalism. There is no mass starvation because of capitalism. The only mass starvation is caused by socialism. There is no mass starvation because of capitalism. 75 million is a complete BS number made out of, comes out of nowhere. You can laugh all you want, but that is a fact. Socialism killed, killed, murdered, more than 100 million people. Okay, case, I rest my case. Oh, 75 million people died from hunger? Yes, absolutely. In places like Africa that doesn't have capitalism. In places like certain parts of Asia. In capitalist countries. What? Oh, that's right, I forgot. I forgot how rich Africa was before. Colonial, you know, we all came there. There were these skyscrapers there. They were making semiconductors, and we stole it all from them. Give me a break. Africa was poor before. That doesn't justify anything the colonists did. The colonists, many of them were evil and exploitative and horrible and murderous. But the idea that there was a rich Africa, and we, somehow a royal, we, we destroyed it and now they're poor, is absurd, nutty, and an evil idea. Let's get it straight. The only system that creates wealth in human history is being capitalism. When Africa, when Africa adopts, when Africa adopts capitalism, Africa will be wealthy. It's very simple. And indeed, countries within Africa that have become more capitalistic are becoming richer and becoming wealthier. Now, a single person in this audience came to hear you lean about and be rude. So, we've had a chance to ask your question. We appreciate your question. Thank you very much, and we'll go on to the next question. Yeah? Is there, I was talking about why I'm not a true professor at that. Apple of your, the absolute richest except for all the other systems. So, I'm not a true professor at this point. How do you think we're going to reconcile three markets with the Catholic consumption of America? I'm very proud of your wealth and service over the money. So, I know there's at least one economics professor in the room right now. So, the question was that he was told by his economics professor that capitalism is the best system we have. It's not a good system, but it's just the best system we have. Well, that's tragic if that's what's being taught in economics. Capitalism is a great system. It's not just the best system we have. It is fabulous. Because what is capitalism? Capitalism is freedom. Capitalism is leaving people free to live their lives as they see fit. It is a system that says that all the government does is protect your property rights and leave you alone to produce or not as you see fit. And by the way, if you want to be a socialist under capitalism, you can do it. You can get your friends together. You can go set up a commune somewhere. And to each according to his need, from each according to his ability, and live your pathetic miserable lives in the commune. That's great. I mean, nobody's going to stop you. That's the beauty of capitalism. It's freedom, right? As long as you don't coerce anybody, you can go live your socialist life under capitalism. But to your question about the depletion of natural resources, what do we do? We're massively consumption, right? And if Africa ever becomes capitalist, they'll start consuming. The Chinese are already consuming. Asia's consuming. We're all consuming. We're getting richer and richer, so we're consuming more and more and more. What happens to natural resources? Well, let me recommend a book to you. It's a fabulous book by an economist by the name of Julian Simon, who died about 10 years ago, called The Ultimate Resource. And in the book, Julian Simon articulates the case, which I support 100%, that there is no such thing as limited resources. That the only limited resource is the human mind. It's the imagination. It's our ability to figure out new solutions to problems. So I've been hearing about peak oil my entire life. We're running out of oil any day now. And somebody uses their mind and figures out fracking, and suddenly there's no limit to the amount of oil in a foreseeable or unforeseeable future. But let's say we run out of oil. What is the resource at the heart? Is it oil? What's the real resource? We're looking for energy. And then, so are there alternative energies? There's nuclear, maybe solar, maybe wind. Maybe there are resources that we can't even imagine today. There are unlimited resources in the world, and that's even before we really get wild. But why not get wild, right? Why limit our imagination? What about mining asteroids? What about going to the moon and seeing what's under there? What about going to Mars? What about shipping resources to Earth, right? Why not imagine and think big, right? There is no limit to human ingenuity, to human resourcefulness, and therefore there is no limit to natural resources. I am a believer in human reason, in science, in our ability to create and make and innovate. And I think that every time a resource gets expensive enough, entrepreneurs go and find alternatives for it. That's the history of certainly the last 250 years under capitalism, and there's no reason. And there's no, you lack imagination if you can't see that continuing forever. So I don't care how many people live on the planet, the more the better, from my perspective, because that means more minds, figuring out more solutions to more problems, and that's fantastic. But we're probably gonna maximize it around 10 billion. I don't see any problem in finding the resources for whatever we need with those 10 billion, and I'm not even counting then space exploration and everything else that is possible to human beings. I mean, one of the really sad things about your generation, I think, is that you brought, being brought up to not have big imaginations about the future, because you're like the stagnation generation. Things are just, okay, they're just growing slowly. We should think big, we should think boldly about what's possible in the future. Yes, and then I'll go to the back side. I am going to the back. I hate to subvert the point you literally just made, but so if I had to say what it might mean to repeat some of the secret solves of capitalism is, it would be that in capitalism, you're allowed to think, and you won't start to net or get some. But with certain emerging technologies, like genetic modification, anti-technology, artificial intelligence, I worry that if we get it wrong, then it's just game over for humanity, the species goes extinct. So how do you see capitalism's acceptance of failure navigating us through this builder with the species coming out alive on the other? So I guess I worry less about that than you do, right? Because I'm more optimistic about human nature, I'm more optimistic about what people, what is possible for individuals to do. I mean, again, the last 100 years, we have a tendency as human beings, and we can speculate on where this comes from, but it's clearly a tendency to be millennial, to believe that the end of the world is coming any day now, any day now. It used to be millennial cults, used to be all kinds of cults, and now it's technology, but it's been technology for a while. We were gonna starve to death, Paul Ehrlich told us that hundreds of millions of people are gonna starve to death in Europe in the 1970s, and then the seas are gonna rise and they're gonna flood us all, and we're gonna die, and that's after, of course, the global cooling of the 1970s. So there's always some story out there where we're all gonna die. You know, and I'm skeptical, I think we're pretty resourceful people who figure out ways around it. Now, the story about technology, driving out all the jobs and are starving and things like that, again, is something I've heard over and over and over again, and it never comes to fruition. And again, I think it's because people underestimate the resourcefulness and they underestimate the fact that our needs are infinite. What we want as human beings is infinite. Now, I don't know what the future's gonna bring in terms of robots and genetic engineering and AI and artificial intelligence, but I think it's exciting, and I think it's fun, and I think you guys should be optimistic about it, not pessimistic, because the pessimism will decay progress, and you should be bold about it. We're gonna, I don't know what human beings are gonna be like 200 years from now. You're gonna have to be a science fiction writer, to find out, are the chips gonna be inside of us? Are we gonna have companion robots? I don't know. But it's kind of exciting that we have the possibility of seeing that in the future. So I take it optimistically and positively in terms of what's possible in the future. And yeah, there are gonna be risks, but if the risks are as big as you portray them, then there will be, there have to be ways in which to contain those risks, to contain the experiments, if you will. You see Planet of the Eighths? Right, yeah, I mean that's the doomsday kind of, we play with the virus and it kills us all, right? Okay. Let's be careful when we play with viruses. And I think when people value their own lives, and when people care about their own lives and their families, and that's their focus, and that's what they're really focused about, and they're not doing it for the state, and they're not doing it for the sake of some collective, then I think people are more careful, more cautious and more thoughtful about what they do and the science they do. Nuclear weapons were not created by individuals for their pleasure. They were created by the state in order to destroy other states, maybe justifiably, given the war that was going on. But they were created by a state in order to, for the sake of protecting a state. And when people are more focused about themselves, when we live in a place where states are not, enemies are one another because each is just focused on protecting its own individuals inside that state, that's when I think you can progress in science without that danger. I think when the state gets involved in that science, that's when it becomes dangerous, and that's what socialism will bring us. So all that technology in the hands of socialists is a thousand times more dangerous than that technology in the hands of capitalists. Yes. So I'm not sure that I share your confidence on something about the future, especially regarding the automation of jobs. So there are a lot of estimates that put the figure around like 40% by the year 2030. And let's just take that as the truth. So in that scenario, how will you capitalists, economic systems, count for the fact that not only are 40% of the population involved, but they're actually on the portfolio side? Yeah, well, you don't accept that fact because it's not a fact. It's pure speculation. By Luddites, who have been making the same speculation for 250 years. If you go back and read journals in 1800, they say the same thing about manufacturing, about jobs in England being replaced by these sewing machine things that are replacing sewers. And the same thing, I remember, I've got a Marxist uncle, I've actually got two Marxist uncles. And I remember visiting my Marxist uncle in London in 1986, right? No, 1987, on the way to the United States. And he was so depressed because he said computers, they're destroying all the jobs. All the jobs are gonna be gone within 10 years. 40% of the population is gonna be unemployed because computers are replacing everybody. I've heard this story so many times. And to me, when we were young, we never thought these kind of thoughts and it's tragic to me to see young people thinking, worrying about the future. Don't worry about the future, go live it. Now, this is where I go back to human needs are unlimited. We want, I can't imagine what we'll want in 20 years, 40 years. So let me take some professions that 30 years ago I didn't imagine would exist today. Well, 40 years ago, 100 years ago, whatever. You drive in California, I don't know about here in South Carolina, but in California, every strip mall has a nail salon. There are literally thousands of nail salons within driving distance of my house. Now, I don't know what they do in nail salons. My wife goes once in a while, but, you know, but this is massive business. Let me tell you, 20 years ago, there wasn't a single nail salon within driving distance from my house. But there they are. Restaurants, and you guys grew up with the phenomena of celebrity chefs. Chefs, people who cook and now celebrities. That's bizarre. It's just strange for our generation. That's strange, right? What's celebrity chef? How does that work? You may flip a hamburger, that's food, right? But there's a massive industry today of chefs and most of us don't eat at home anymore because why eat at home when we've got celebrity chefs who cook for us and make great meals? I love it. I love celebrity chefs. I become a foodie, which is bizarre because I never thought I would be a foodie. But I travel the world to go to celebrity chef restaurants. Like, that didn't exist 10 years ago, certainly not 20 years ago. I don't know if we each will have a celebrity chef in our home every single day in 20 years when the robots take over because, well, it'd be so wealthy that we'll be able to afford a celebrity chef in our home and a masseuse and a personal manicurist and whatever, a pedicurist, right? I don't know. The point is that, again, go back to human ingenuity. What we imagine, what is possible to human beings and what we want and what the desire and what we need is infinite. And we're way too limiting our imaginations, they imagine that robots can do everything, that AI will replace all jobs. I'm not worried at all. When I have kids your age, I worry about them, but not because of robots. Because they followed their passion, like I told them to. Who figured that they actually listened to me on one thing. And they're both in the arts. And that's a great example, by the way. How many people today do art? I mean, I'm talking about music, comedy, acting, all the stuff that entertains us. Like, hundreds of thousands of people are in the arts. You go to LA, everybody's in the arts, right? Somehow they make a living, barely, but they make a living. How many people did arts 100 years ago? Nobody, or almost nobody, few people, right? Because you couldn't make a living at it. But we're so rich today, really, we're so rich. You guys are so rich. You have these supercomputers in your pockets where you can listen to music instantaneously. Pretty much every piece of music ever composed in the entire history of the world is on here. I mean, that's just stunning. It's stunning. And you take it for granted completely, right? So there are millions of people now making music so you can listen to on this thing, who can actually make a living doing that. Not a great living, but a living, right? That didn't exist, again, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. So I don't know what the jobs of the future gonna be. I wish I did. I mean, I'd invest in them and make a fortune, right? I don't know what they're gonna be, but I have real belief in the human mind, the human ingenuity and human reason. Now there's one caveat to that, that if we don't change our educational system, if we don't start training people to live and to actually do something productive with their lives, then you're right, then maybe 40% of the people don't have jobs and we've got a real problem. But that's not a problem of capitalism. That's a problem of lousy education produced by, guess who? By the state, by the government. Government schools, which Clemson, I guess, is one of, but that, to me, is the problem, not a problem of capitalism, but again, a problem of systemic risk where the government controls all the schools and therefore everybody gets, or almost everybody, particularly if you're poor, gets a really lousy education. That's the real tragedy. Not robots. Bring them on. I can't wait to have my personal robot. I mean, that would be so cool. Yeah, we're in the back. Yeah, and then you. No, him, and then you, all right. You mentioned in your lecture that you came from a socialist state that had health care that was run by the state. Yeah. How would you approach the health care market in a system with regards to capitalism and socialism? Yeah, I mean, I'm consistent. Zero state involvement in health care. Zero. No Medicare, no Medicaid, no insurance regulation. Nada. Let the market work and what you'll see is beautiful stuff. I am a true believer in markets. They work. When you leave people free to innovate, produce, sell, and buy freely, then you get the best products possible. So if you left the insurance industry free of all the regulations and all constraints, they would produce products that would be suitable for you. Whether you, you know, whatever your condition in life was. We would have insurance policies that insured us against pre-existing conditions. That is against one day in the future getting it. You know, who knows what we'd have, right? But what we need is 100% privatization of health care, a complete privatization of health care, not tinkering with Obamacan, changing these exchanges to those exchanges. Get the government out of the way. I often asked audiences, what do you think this is an iPhone? What do you think this would look like if a government committee designed it? Now, everybody laughs. I can do this anywhere in the world, any age group, even among socialists. I asked them, what do you think this will look like if a government designed them, they laugh. Because they know it would look horrible and it would function horribly, right? Even socialists know that. Okay, now this is not that important as compared to your health. So let's give government control of our health. They can't do iPhones, but health. Education. The two most important things in our entire lives, maybe. That we give to government. You won't even use the post office if you can use FedEx or UPS, right? But drop your kids off at the post office every morning and let the government tinker with their brain, that's cool. Or go to a government hospital run by the post office, that's okay. You know, it really, you know, if markets are good enough for iPhones, they're good enough for my healthcare, they're good enough for education, they're good enough for pretty everything. Because this, I'll tell you, this is gorgeous. And it functions brilliantly. And I want healthcare as good as this. I don't want to limit, it goes back to imagination. I don't want my healthcare limited by some bureaucrats' imagination. And that's what we get today. That's what you have today. And I could go on and on about how rotten socialized medicine is and how destructive it is. It's destructed to the doctor and destructed to the patient and destructed to everybody. But I don't need to, because you can experience it soon enough. Because that's where we're heading. Yeah, I promised you. Yeah, go ahead. How does the 100% capitalist economy provide an expensive, non-idol, not-to-google business, like an impactism layer or a functioning military? Well, it provides a functioning military because that is a one function of a government is to provide for military. So the one thing that the government should do, the one thing the government should raise revenues for, is to provide for military. With regard to an ozone layer, I mean, my view is you let people know that if they continue using product X, they're all gonna die. And in a free world, I think people stop using product X because there are lots of alternatives. I don't think it's that tough. I think this idea that we have to force people, that if we, and by the way, I think companies shift, right? Nobody has an interest in destroying, really destroying, not mythologically destroying, but really destroying the world. Because they live in the world and the kids live in the world and the friends live in the world. And if a company doesn't do it, we boycott them or we ignore them. So you don't need the state to come in with the guns and the rule of law to protect it. If you can show me that a particular product really damages other people, if there's real harm, then there's real harm and the government has a role to play. If you're spewing cyanide out of your home and I'm breathing it and dying, yeah, the government's gonna stop you and should stop you. So the role of government is to protect us from rights violations and to the extent that your activity is doing real damage to me, that government has a role in stopping you. But I generally think a lot of these problems are sold voluntarily. I, again, I believe in human beings. Yeah. On the left, you brought up that, I have seen examples where you work at a company with a carbon dioxide or a lot of expectancy would be great, but the truth is we're a lot of expectancy. Cyanidation, it's going down because of them. And we don't have regulations that say drug companies can't market the doctors with their clients and say, this works for chronic pain, they have the same time as we did in our pain, so how do you account for people not being in control? Yeah, I mean, I don't believe that the opioid epidemic has much to do with drug companies marketing to doctors. And indeed, I'm glad that doctors in the United States feel free to provide opioids to people with pain and the socialized medicine. You suck it up. If you're in pain, you suck it up. All right, now I've taken opioids because I've had back surgery, that's why I'm wearing this brace. And you take, you know, you get some morphine afterwards and that's good. I'm really glad that I had that morphine when I was in real bad pain. The challenge is not to get addicted to it and to know what you're doing. And I think it's stunning to me that, yeah, there's structural problems in the system and we can talk about where those structural problems are. Turns out that they're mainly in Medicare. They're mainly in the socialized part of our system. And with the shift in Medicare, more people getting Medicare with Obamacare, the amount of prescriptions of opioids went up significantly, so there's some correlation there. But more than that, it's stunning to me that nobody actually asks people to be a little responsible for their own lives. Opioids addictive, what a shock. I mean, I've known that for, I don't know, 30 years. So when I get out of surgery, I take a few pills and I'm cautious to how I take them, right? And I make sure I don't get addicted to them, right? And I don't take huge quantities. And if I do get addicted, if I did get addicted, then you don't seek treatment. Take responsibility for your own life. It's, we're so used to, oh no, it's the system did it to me. No, live it, you know. But there are problems. I'm not saying there are no problems. But the problem of the opioids has to do with the fact that the FDA is constraining their ability of drug companies to create drugs that would be alternatives to opioids. Nobody is doing research in alternatives to opioids in terms of pain reduction because it doesn't pay to do such research because it's so damn expensive to get a drug approved by the FDA today. Yeah. By the side of all emergency department. By each one. By now, the state of West Virginia has a class action lawsuit against the joint commission on the accreditation of hospitals as they actively sought the funding from the labor's body of the company to support their efforts to push all the way on the end of the day. It still stands in my CF patient's emergency department to a long long factor if I'm not administering my product within 45 minutes of their presentation, reimbursing to a long time of that treatment. So it created a huge pressure on the physicians to describe the movement of epidemic death. All of a sudden, it was like to revive the problem of the fact that they can't handle it. Yeah, there are all kinds of issues about this. What is the one that's fentanyl, or something that fentanyl that's coming in from China? And there's all kinds of issues. But it's not drug companies are marketing the drug. That is not the cause. It's much more government policies and the way and personal responsibility and a bunch of other things that are going on the FDA. And I warned drugs. I warned drugs as part of this problem so that people are afraid to seek treatment because they're afraid to admit that they're part of this. We've created this whole mentality around what it means to be a drug addict and so on. There's a way of issues around opioids is massive with this being the driver, right? And yet all we can do instinctually is blame drug companies. And I think the same thing with CO2, right? I'm gonna put aside the science because I'm not a scientist. I'm gonna put aside the science of global warming. It cannot be the case. It cannot be the case that the solution for global warming, if it's happening, is to stop using carbon fuels. Because to stop using carbon fuels would mean death and destruction to millions of people, particularly in Africa. So that can be the solution, it just can be. So I'm willing to discuss other alternatives, right? And there's even a whole science now going into sprinkling something into the atmosphere to cool the earth down, which scares me if we're not warming, then who knows what that'll do. But there's all kinds of issues we can discuss in terms of technology. Solar and wind will not substitute for oil and natural gas. It just doesn't work. It's fantasy, given the density of energy. Now, if environmentalists would come to me and say, you know what, what we want is a campaign for nuclear and hydroelectricity. Then at least I'd respect them in saying that they want a real alternative and they want to secure human life. But no, they want to stop carbon fuels, which means to me, they don't respect human life. They want people to die. Now what's the worst that will happen if the earth is warming? You know, Florida will flood. So they'll move. People will get up and they'll buy a house in Canada, which will now become habitable. Brad can move back to Canada. And they'll buy a house in Canada and they'll move. It won't be the first time human beings have moved because of climate. We move. So Florida will flood. I mean, big deal, right? I mean, it'll be sad for the people who actually live there, but it won't be a tragedy in historical proportion. What won't be a tragedy in historical proportion if we stop using carbon fuels? That would be a real tragedy in millions, hundreds of millions of people will die. So that can be the solution. So it's not drug companies marketing. It's just a fact of reality. Without natural gas and oil, we would all die. There's a wonderful book called The Mawr case of fossil fuels by Alex Epstein. I highly recommend it. The Mawr case for fossil fuels. Not funded by the oil industry, although he wishes he could get some funding. He does get some funding, but not for that book. The book is a wonderful book and it explains exactly this, right? If there is a problem, let's solve it, but let's think about how we solve it without killing off half of the people in the planet. Yeah. No. And I don't think there are barriers to entry in a truly free market. So take the worst case, so-called worst case in quotes, of a monopolist in US history before antitrust laws. And that was in the 1870s Rockefeller Standard Oil. At some point, I think they had 92% of all the oil refining capacity in the US. And standard economic theory would suggest that once they reached that basic into monopoly, what would happen to prices? Who's taking econ one-on-one? They would go up. What would happen to quality? They would go down. Well, it turns out if you actually go in the records and look, the exact opposite happened. Prices went down, quality went up. And you go, what, Rockefeller's an idiot? Why did he do this? And it turns out that Rockefeller understood that there are no barriers to entry in a true free market, that capital is always seeking a return. And if he drove prices up and quality went down, one, he would, competitors would arise. Two, there would be fewer uses for the product he was producing. He was refining oil. And the cheaper he made the refining process, the cheaper he made the product, the more uses there would be. Now, guess who competed Rockefeller out of his initial business? What was the initial business that you used oil for? What did we use oil for originally? Light. And do you know who, I don't know if you guys know, but Rockefeller saved the whales. Because before Rockefeller, what was used for light? Whale oil. The whaling industry basically was decimated by kerosene. Now who competed Rockefeller out of the lighting business? Edison. Now I want to find a bureaucrat who could have predicted that one. That's called substitution. It's a product that you couldn't, they're not on the same, like this is oil, this is black monkey stuff, and this is electrons moving. And he had one substituted for the other. Substitution, you know, now it turned out that by that point he'd made oil so cheap that he didn't really care losing the kerosene business. Because what did he move into? The gasoline business. And there was no competition of what would move cars. And gasoline went out because he had by that point made refining so efficient and cheap that it was the obvious choice for an engine for an automobile and he made his money that way. And by the way, by the time the antitrust people got around to breaking up standard oil, what percentage of the industry did he own by that point? 20 something percent. So competition had already driven him down from 90 to 20 percent and now they broke him up. So no, you look at the history, you look at Alcoa aluminum, you look at IBM, you look at all the big antitrust cases and what you find is prices were going down, quality was going up without the government going after these people. It made no sense and the fact is that people have, I mean, I believe people have a right to collude. It's not the rights of consumers, it's property rights. If you wanna get together with other business people and collude, you have a right to do it, it's not good economics. Almost always somebody cheats, something breaks up the little scheme that you are doing, but you have every right to do it. You as a consumer do not have a right to get a product at whatever price you want. Sorry. No. I'm sure we are now, over time, that Dr. Brooke will be happy to step around for probably another 15 or 20 minutes or so for anyone who would like to ask him questions. Let me just say that the Plumston Institute of the State of Capitalism is proud to offer a safe space after this lecture. A safe space with soft music, videos of frolicking puppies, puppy books and crayons for anybody who needs it. We always do that when Yaron Brooke is here. I'd like to thank all of you for coming out. I think this has been a fabulous time. Yaron has given us, I think, a lot to think about. And if nothing else, the Plumston Institute of the State of Capitalism is heavily invested in bringing new ideas to the Plumston University and hopefully instigating a campus-wide conversation about important topics. So I'd like to thank you, but most of all, I'd like all of you to join me in thanking our guest speaker, Yaron Brooke.