 Thank you for your time and coming today and I have a few questions actually one is I think I don't know if you've touched the topic but the one is the concept of equality of opportunity I think even is of opportunity you know every had everyone has the right to you know to actually develop themselves but some people like you know Africa people they don't have maybe the capital or whatever to actually develop or flourish themselves so how does I think this is kind of part of the safety network too but how does in rain things and how do you think about this topic and let me let me take the questions one at a time because I can't remember okay I'm getting old true I I think equality of opportunity is a is a real misconception there's no such thing we can't equate opportunities right some of us have go to good schools and have what connected parents and you know and others don't and the only way to try to make it a little bit more equal is by denying some people opportunity for the sake of other people and then again you're back to coercion so what I'm for is a different type of equality I think the only type of equality that means anything that is real anytime you think we want equality of X and you know that equality of X is impossible metaphysically impossible because we're all different something's wrong with the statement equality of X what equality is possible the quality that the founding fathers talk about in the in the in the declaration of independence the you know where all man are created equal that equality means equality of freedom equality of rights equality before the law but where the law is a law that protects rights well all we're all born free we're all born with the right to pursue our lives free of coercion no matter what color skin we have no matter what ethnic background we have no matter what man woman we're all born free that's the only equality that exists now that a political system that respects that that preserves that equality of freedom that equality of rights is also I believe a political system that maximizes opportunities rather than equate opportunities maximizes opportunities for everybody so if you're a poor kid born in a free society you have more opportunities than a poor kid born in a socialist equal opportunity society society trying to equate opportunities so I want a political system that maximizes opportunity doesn't equate it so when I think of Africa I want to maximize opportunities for people in Africa how do you do that by making them free how do you provide capital to Africans there's a wonderful book by Hernando de Soto Hernando de Soto a great Peruvian economist an economist from Peru called capital ideas and this is what he says he says the problem in Latin America and the problem in Africa of poverty partially is because people lack capital but they don't really lack capital what they lack is legal recognition of the capital that they have so they don't have title over their home they don't have title over the land that they have but that is just government creating laws that protect rights government doing away with a feudal system that still exists in part of Latin America and part of Africa but if we recognize a farmer's right to the land that he's farmed for generations suddenly they have capital and when they have capital they have opportunities so the way to solve the problem is to establish the rule of law and when I mean by the rule of law is a rule of law that protects individual rights all the other problems go away thank you so I think this is I have another question sorry is okay go ahead is is about like when you talk about you know I'm free to do whatever I do what I what I want and then for example there are some common social kind of problems like for example unemployment and education and and this eats it will I think will like economically creates and increase the crime rates for example so if socially you want to decrease the crime rates because you want your child to be safe I think like just thinking alone on yourself and if you want to pay or know whatever it's a safe network it's linked it's kind of linked but it's I just wanted to know about how ain't rent think about this need and how people should take about like take care and and the last question is how did she think so you think about Japan how the this kind of social economy actually growth such as the level that is right now and it was it's not capital means we're like socialism as from from my view I think it's a mixed economy it's a mixed economy like every other okay let's so let's so see you ask two questions I can't remember the first one one word about the first one was it yeah social problems you mentioned education and employment crime so the government's job in my view its only job is to protect me from criminals so the government should do its job there's also no evidence in the literature of a correlation between crime rates and and unemployment for example so we live today certainly in Japan but I would say really globally we live today in the safest least crime written period in human history they've never been fewer homicides murders they've never been fewer rapes they've never been fewer deaths by war than in all of human history this is the safest time ever and it nobody know you know there's not it's a clear why I mean I have a theory but it's not clear why it's certainly not related to unemployment or employment right so I ran would say there are no such things as social problems right individuals unemployed and they're much more likely to be unemployed the bigger the status it's fascinating but capitalism when industry is left alone it always everywhere it's tried creates more jobs than there are people thank you United States during the 19th century in order to keep the economy going that import millions and millions and millions of people in order to keep it going indeed even the United States today in spite of all the mixed economy we still need millions of immigrants I mean partially because some Americans won't do certain jobs they'd rather collect their welfare checks than actually go to work but you know Silicon Valley we talked about Silicon Valley during the talk I lived there in the 1990s and dabbled very badly in some venture capital and stuff like that half the startups in Silicon Valley are started by immigrants Indians Chinese Israelis Swedes half so you know it's self-generating capitalism generates more jobs than they are people and there's actually an economic reason for that people are scarce and therefore you innovate in order to reduce your dependency on people so all these problems are really eliminated by freedom and those that are not like crime that's the job of the government the one job of the government the only job of the government is to rid ourselves of that is to is to police it's to create that so there is this notion that I hear sometimes of people is we should vote for statism because if we don't the poor will rise up and there'll be a revolution against the rich and I hear a lot of that rich people always say this to me oh I I I want a big safety net because otherwise if we just leave poor people alone that there'll be a revolution but if you look at human history it's never happened in a free country true in in in France in the 18th century but that's because there was a king and what did what did Marie Antoinette say you know let them eat cake you know she was so detached from from from the reality right because we are shocked but but in a free economy where people rise up and they go down and there's never been a revolution of the peasants right there was a religion of Russia because there was a saw but not because there was freedom okay so that's that's the first question the second question very quickly about Japan I mean the fact is that countries do well economically to the extent that you allow them to be free post-World War two you had a constitution that allowed for quite a bit of individual freedom the Japanese Constitution is the only constitution in the entire world that has the statement that individuals have a right to life liberty in the pursuit of happiness which MacArthur put into that which doesn't even exist in the American Constitution but exist in your Constitution so you have a strong element of freedom and have individual rights even if it's not completely absorbed by the culture it's there in the legal code to some extent so that you've had a lot of freedom and therefore you've done well financially to the extent that you reduce that freedom you stagnate and that's what happened to some extent over the last 20 something years and the same is true everywhere when you allow the Chinese a little bit of freedom boom they explode it with economic growth when you like Thailand a little bit of freedom they create economic growth when you reject it they shrink so it's all connected to how much imagine how rich you would be here in Japan if you really were free economically if the government really stepped back and allowed you to produce and allowed you to creative shunt Chet's creative destruction if that were allowed in Japan wow wow you would be so rich it's hard at first to imagine how rich we're so rich today in spite of the mixed economy not because of it we talk about morality and setting a sense of values does each individual set his own standard of morality because one person's morality affects those around him does it not no it does not or it affects it all right no but to say that each person sets his own standard would simply mean subjectivity no what sets the standards is the science of ethics that is a branch of philosophy its particular task is to define moral standards then it is up to each individual to decide what he agrees with which standards he considers right if he thinks which standards he considers rational now an individual may discover a new set of standards but it is not subjective it is not just up to him if he discovers such a subjective code this is not really morality this is not ethics that's just what we call limb worship