 I mean, if you go to a museum and you look at paintings of saints, you won't find very many paintings of saints where they have a big smile on their face and they're having fun. They're usually in the process of dying a brutal death by sacrificing themselves for some higher cause. That's the essence of morality that we live by. And my argument is that that morality is incompatible with capitalism. Capitalism is about flourishing. It's about happiness. It's about pursuit of values. It's about self-interest. On morality, it's about giving stuff up. It's about being selfless. It's about sacrificing. It's not about trading. Capitalism is about trading. What's the difference between a sacrifice and a trade? In a trade, I give something up and I expect to get what in return. Something of greater value to me. In a sacrifice, I give something up and I expect to get what in return. Nothing or something of less value. Then how come a sacrifice is better than a trade? To me, a trade is like a million times. Like a trade is win-win. A sacrifice is win-lose. So why don't we trade? Why isn't that virtue yet sacrifices virtue? Win-lose is virtue. Losing is a good thing in life. Why? So we live with an ethic that basically says losing is the greatest virtue in life. Sacrificing is the greatest virtue. Thinking of others, not of yourself. Pursuing profit, pursuing your own interests, pursuing your love, pursuing your values, eh, a moral at best, a moral at worst. I mean, I don't know how many of you have had your business ethics class yet, but I know when I took it, when I got my MBA, it didn't teach me ethics. Basically the rule, the only principle I got from the business ethics class was, look, you know, we kind of shouldn't be making money, but we kind of have to make money because that's the only way we can help people. So we should make just enough money so we can help people and we should give it all the way otherwise. And by the way, we can't really have a moral principle around that. So just don't do anything that will embarrass you if it appeared on the front page of the New York Times. That was the moral principle from business ethics. You know, don't embarrass yourself. Not a great principle by which to guide your life or your business. So in my view, capitalism is hated, capitalism is distrusted not because it doesn't work, not because it doesn't create wealth, not because it doesn't create a high standard of living, not because it doesn't work, but because it's immoral based on our ethical system. It just is not right. It's not noble. It's not just. And this is why the left wins all the time because for the left, the left is motivated by morality, which is to their credit. And they're motivated by justice, which again is to their credit. They have a wrong conception in my view of morality and justice, but they're motivated by ethics. And the side that defends capitalism has nothing to say about morality or ethics, except for Inran. And this is Inran's real big contribution to the debate about capitalism. Inran asks a simple question. Why should you live for others? Why should the purpose of morality be other people? Why is their happiness more important than yours? Why is their values more important than yours? Why shouldn't you live for yourself? Properly understood self. Why is the profit more than bad? Why is building, creating, making not the virtue, yeah, giving away is okay, but why is giving away where we get all on our credit from? And she challenges the morality of altruism. And she proposes an alternative, a morality of egoism, a morality of self interest. I'm all code that asked the question, if I truly cared about my own life, if I wanted to live and I want to be happy and I want to be successful, how do I do it? Because morality is supposed to give you the principles by which to live, the principles on which to guide your life, to choose between right and wrong, good and evil. So what should those principles be? She asks, well, what is the most important thing for human life? What is the thing that makes life possible? What is the thing that makes us human? And don't say thumbs. Our minds. Our minds. What makes us human is our capacity to reason, our rational faculty, everything that we have from the food on our table to the zoom that we're using to the roof above our heads is a product of somebody's mind, somebody's ideas, somebody's innovation, somebody's thoughts, discoveries, all human values are products of thinking. If you really care about yourself, what you venerate above all, your greatest value is your mind and your greatest virtue is exercising that mind, being rational, living a rational life. And of course, it's not just about thinking because to survive, you can't sit in a room and just think, what do you have to do? You have to go out there and act on those thoughts. And you have to create, get, produce the food, the products, the roof, the things that you need in order to live and in order to survive and in order to thrive. So you have to be productive. You have to go out there and make the stuff necessary for your own existence. So Fine Rand, the two most important virtues are rationality and productiveness. The idea that it's your moral responsibility to take care of your own well-being and to produce values is the only way you can really trade with other people value for value. So Fine Rand, capitalism is a moral system because it is the only system that leaves us free to think for ourselves, act on those thoughts, and engage with one another, not as thieves, not as exploiters, not as slave owners and slaves, but as traders, as people who exchange values in win-win relationships. So for all morality, it's not about sacrifice, it's about trade. It's not about losing. It's about creating as many win-win relationships as you can in your life. It's not about giving and not about sharing. Morality is about creating, building, making. Fine Rand's philosophy, which he called objectivism, for objectivism. Paul Gates is a hero, a moral hero for what he produced, for what he created. Yeah, he wants to give it away, fine. But that's not what makes him a good guy. What makes him a good guy is that he changed the world, that he took care of himself. He used his mind, he used his energy, he created values. He didn't force them on anybody. He traded with people. He made his own life better by making the lives of other people around him better. He took care of himself, his family, and by extension all of us. That's what makes him a hero. That's what makes him a good guy, a morally good guy. And indeed, businessmen generally are the greatest benefactors the world has ever seen. Nobody has benefited mankind more than businessmen. Nobody is responsible for the extension of human life, for the quality of human life more than businessmen. And yet, they're the villains of every story, of every TV movie, of every TV show. Because why? Well, because they're self-interested. Because they're out there doing their own thing, using their own minds, using their own effort in pursuit of their own values, and they they make money at it. They are self-interested. So if we care about capitalism, more importantly we care about the results that capitalism produces. Then we need a shift in our moral attitudes, in our ethical attitudes. We need to reject the morality of sacrifice, and altruism, and a focus on other. And we need instead to embrace the morality of self, but not self as an exploiter. Not self as a line-cheating, stealing SOB, but self as a rational, productive human being. Somebody who takes responsibility for his own life, works, produces, creates, builds, and then trades, at whatever level you can do it. Very few of us can be bogaters. Very few of us. And life is not about money. It's about doing what you love. It's about pursuing your values. Money is just one reflection in one particular area of life of those values. But many of us choose not to be rich. Like people like me who are teachers. No teacher is rich from teaching, right? We do it because we love it. So it's a morality that's about the pursuit of your own happiness. And at the end of the day, that is what it is something that the founders of this country understood deep down. With all the contradictions and the problems with the founding of America. I think the greatest thing about it is there was founded on this idea that we'll all have an inalienable right. We all have inalienable freedoms to pursue what? To pursue our lives. To pursue our happiness. And it is the American Declaration of Independence that ultimately makes capitalism possible because capitalism is the system in which we're left free to pursue our happiness. And what Rand provides us is a morality that says pursuing your happiness is good. It's small. It's the essence of morality. It's the purpose of morality. What other purpose could there be to life other than to live well? To live the best life that you can live. You only get one shot at it. Matters of all, make something of it. So what we need today is not an economic revolution, not a political revolution, but what we need today is a moral revolution. All right. What we need today, what I call the new intellectual, would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, wins or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism and impotence, and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist broods. And I noticed yesterday, when I appealed for support for the show, many of you step forward and actually supported the show for the first time. So I'll do it again. Maybe we'll get some more today. If you like what you're hearing, if you appreciate what I'm doing, then I appreciate your support. Those of you who don't yet support the show, please take this opportunity. Go to uranbrooksshow.com, slash support, or go to subscribestar.com uranbrookshow and make a kind of a monthly contribution to keep this going. 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