 So maybe the most amazing story in all of human history is the story of what has happened to humanity over the last 250 years. About 300 years ago, how many people do you think, what percentage of the world population do you think lived in extreme poverty? And when I say extreme poverty, I mean the poverty of the poorest of the poorest people here in Peru, who are living on, let's say, $2 a day or less in real dollars. And maybe there's nobody in Peru who lives that poor. But there are people in Africa and there are people in parts of Asia who are living on $2 a day or less. I mean, imagine even in your life what that would mean to live on just $2. That's less than a latte at Starbucks, right? For a day. What percentage of the population in the world do you think lived on $2 a day or less? 300 years ago. Over 70%. Over 70%. Anybody else? 90%. 90%. 80%. 95% or more. Almost everybody. And I'm talking about everybody, Western Europe, England, the whole world. 90 plus percent of the population lived on $2 or less a day. People woke up in the morning, mostly. They went out and they farmed. Most of the population were farmers. They came home. When the sun set, they ate a quick dinner. They went to sleep. No reading. Nobody could read. No electricity. No light. No toilets. No running water. No iPhones. No internet. No TikTok. Can you imagine? That was 300 years ago and that seems like a long time ago. But for all of human history, for 100,000 years, basically human beings lived about the same. There were some changes. We became agricultural at some point. But we were still poor. And what was life expectancy during that period of time? How long did people live? 40. 40 in the most prosperous, best places. 30 in the rest of the world. I am long dead. Long, long time ago. You guys are already in middle age. You've got 10 years to live and you're finished, right? That was life. 50% of all the children died before the age of 10. 50%. One of the reasons people had a lot of kids is that they knew half of them would die. Life was brutal. You were short. You was unpleasant. You had no choices in your life. Who did you marry? Did you choose who you married? No. Your parents told you who to marry. You didn't choose your profession. You did what your parents did. Most of you were farmers and you continued to be farmers. But if your father happened to be a blacksmith, you became a blacksmith. There were no options and if you were a woman, forget it. Zero options. You did what you were told. And yet, look at us today. Look how rich we are. Relatively speaking, we're gazillionaires. We have running water and electricity. We don't live on two dollars a day or less. Indeed, we spend two dollars on a latte. We have iPhones. We have amazing technology. We live your generation. Could live to be 150. It wouldn't surprise me at all if biology doesn't advance the point. It's too late for me, I think. But for you, I think we're going to see real life extension. Already, the life expectancy today for me is probably well into the 80s. More than double what it was. Just not that long ago. What happened? What happened to take us from that poverty to this wealth? And why don't we appreciate that more? Because what happened is we became free. What happened is we allowed people to start businesses, to build, to create, to innovate. What we got was a little bit of what people today call capitalism. And yet, we hate it. We hate capitalism. We denounce capitalism. You and Peru have elected a leftist government. But so is Colombia, and so is Chile, and so is Argentina, and so is Brazil, and so is almost every country in the world. So what's interesting is during the 19th century and early 20th century, we had a system where wealth was created that was basically a system based on the idea of free markets, of leaving people free to pursue their own ideas, to build your own businesses, to not ask for permission in order to start a business and to employ people in order to transact with one another. We had a system where basically people were free and left alone. And we created unbelievable wealth. It really is unbelievable how wealthy we are by historical standards. For 100,000 years, nothing happened. Suddenly, we became rich. And that should be the most interesting, important question in all sciences. Why? What did we get right? And what basically we got right is freedom. And the most important question we should ask ourselves today is why is it so easy for us to give it up if it contributed so much to our success? Why are we willing to give up our liberties and our freedoms? Why are we willing not to have a free market but to control it and regulate it and try to manipulate it in every country in the world? Why are we so attracted to leftist ideas that have failed everywhere they have been tried? Socialism, to the extent that it is tried, leads to starvation, death, destruction. Under communism in Maoist China, anywhere between 20 to 100 million people died. Under communism, under Stalin, anywhere between 30 and 100 million people died. In Venezuela today, people are struggling to eat, to find food. In Venezuela used to be the richest country on a per capita GDP basis in Latin America. Chile used to be the poorest country in Latin America on a per capita GDP. Venezuela turned socialist and became the poorest country in Latin America. Chile turned a little bit capitalism, not a lot, just a little bit. And it became the richest country in Latin America. So who does everybody in Latin America want to copy? Venezuela. The failure, that's all we want to copy. We reject the success. Something about free markets, something about capitalism we really don't like. We really reject. And again, not unique to Latin America, you see this phenomenon all over the world. What is successful is freedom and capitalism in free markets. What is failure is government control, government manipulation, central planning, socialism. That's always failed. What do people choose? Socials. Why do we choose failure? You wouldn't do that in your personal life. I hope. I hope some of you might. You know that boy friend who's not good for you? And you keep going back to him? That's like socialism. Keep going back to him, even though we know it's not good for us. But in our personal lives we learn quickly. In our public lives we don't learn at all. Why? There's something about capitalism that really is yucky, unpleasant. We don't like it. What is, what is, what is, what are free markets about? What is the essence of markets? Just even not free. Just markets. Why do we go to the marketplace? Why do we go to the marketplace? To do what? To trade. But why do we want to trade? Like, why did Steve Jobs make an iPhone? Why did he make one of these? It's pretty, right? I like my iPhone. Imagine if the government had made one of these. A government committee would have made one of these. It would be the size of this room. Really ugly and never work. Why did Jobs make one of these? Steve Jobs, the former CEO of Apple, who died. He made this because what? It helps him make, just yell whatever, whatever comes. Money, right? It helps him make money. He made it for the money. A lot of profit in this. They sell this for 50% profit margins, which is high. Right, Steve? He made it to make money. Every business, every business out there, everybody who sells you stuff out there, is doing it because they make money. Why do they make money? Because they live off of it. They invest off of it. They become rich off of it. Is it only about money? Did he only do this for money? No. What else? Innovation. Innovation, but what about the innovation? Yeah, he enjoyed it. He loves this stuff. This is so much fun. And hopefully when you get a job one day, or you start a business, you won't just do it for the money. Also for the money, money's important. But you'll do it because you love it. Because you're passionate about it. Because it really gets you excited. You get up every morning excited about making something in the world. You have a vision. Steve Jobs had a vision. He made it a reality. So who at the end of the day did Steve Jobs make the fight from four? He didn't do it for us. He didn't ask us what we wanted. Do you know how many focus groups? Focus groups, if you're taking a marketing class, they teach you about focus groups. Do you know how many focus groups Apple did before they put the iPhone out? Zero. Zero. Ford, the guy who Ford from the cars, he once said if I asked my customer what they want, they would say a faster horse. We don't know what we want. It's geniuses like Ford and Steve Jobs who tell us what we want. They present us with a product that we fall in love with. So Steve Jobs built this for Steve Jobs. And he sells it to us because he benefits from it. And I went to buy my first iPhone in 2008. It was 2008 when iPhone first came out. And the U.S. economy was going to recession. And I went to buy my iPhone because I wanted to help stimulate the economy. I wanted to help my fellow man, and I heard from Keynes, the great economist, that if you consume, the economy gets better, so I went to consume because I care about the economy, and I wanted to help my fellow man. Because I know that's why you go shopping. You all go shopping because you want to make sure people have jobs and you go shopping because you want to help stimulate the economy. Right? Anybody here go shopping for that reason? Usually there's one. There's one person. No, nobody goes shopping because of that. I didn't go shopping because of that. I didn't care about the economy. I went shopping because I wanted an iPhone. Because it was cool. Because I wanted to improve my own life. You go shopping because you think that the stuff you buy will make your life better. You go shopping because it's for you. Some markets are places where buyers and sellers meet in pursuit of their own self-interest. Markets about the pursuit of self-interest. Free markets about the pursuit of self-interest. We're trying to make ourselves better by working, by producing, by creating, or by consuming. We consume for our own benefit. We produce for our own benefit. We're not doing it for humanity. We're not doing it for the public interest. We're not doing it for the common good. We're doing it for our own good. But what did your mother tell you? Or your preacher? Or your professors? What did they tell you about pursuing your self-interest? Is this a noble thing? Is this a moral thing? Is morality about pursuing self-interest? What's morality about? Well, I can tell you what my mother taught me. My mother told me when it comes to morality, right, when it comes to life, always think of others first. Think of yourself last. If you want to be a good person, be self-less. Never be self-interested. What do we have a word, a ugly word for self-interest? We don't like. What is that? Your being? Selfish. Selfish is bad. Why? Selfish is, you know, you'll do anything to get your way. You'll hurt other people. You'll exploit other people. So the two options we're given in life is be selfish and be a horrible human being or be self-less. Put the interest of other people before your own interest. Sacrifice. Sacrifice means what? Give something and get what in return? Nothing or less. Sacrifice is about losing. What are markets about? What do we just say markets about? Self-interest. But morality tells us self-interest is bad. Morality, who loses in a marketplace? Who loses? When I buy my iPhone for $1,000, why do I pay $1,000 for my iPhone? It's a lot of money. Why would I pay $1,000 for an iPhone? What's that? Because it's valuable to whom? To me. How valuable is it? More than $1,000. That's why I'm willing to give up $1,000 to get the iPhone when you buy a nice pair of shoes and pay $200 for the pair of shoes. It's because the shoes are more valuable to you than $200. For me, I wouldn't buy those shoes. But to you, they are. So we're each buying things, exchanging money for something more valuable to us. And the person selling it to us, do they lose? No, they win too. I mean, trade, buying and selling stuff is like a miracle. Because they win and I win. Both parties win. Trade is win-win. They're no losers. There's no sacrifice. There's nobody worse off. It's an amazing thing. It's how wealth ultimately is created. It's created by creating these win-win relationships. So we're better off. We do it for ourselves. And yet our morality teaches us that being better off and doing it for yourself is kind of questionable. Morality tells us we should sacrifice. Morality tells us we should be selfless. Morality tells us we should lose, not win. That's noble. That's good. Everybody knows who Bill Gates is. It's very quiet. What's that? Everybody knows who Elon Musk is? Bill Gates. Do you know who Bill Gates is? Yeah, he founded Microsoft. Everybody uses Microsoft. Everybody uses Microsoft. I use Microsoft even though I've only used Apple's for 30 years. I still use Microsoft. Word and Excel and PowerPoints and all that stuff. Bill Gates got super rich. He became a billionaire. How did he become a billionaire? How did he become a billionaire? By selling people stuff they want for more than it costs you to produce but selling to billions of people. Over and over and over again. And why do people keep buying Microsoft stuff? Because they believe it makes their life better. So the only way to become a billionaire at a free market is to make other people's lives better. It's to make the world a better place. It's to increase the value of other people because now they can use tools and they can be more productive. So Bill Gates made the world a better place by starting Microsoft. Improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people all over the world. Did we think he was a good guy from a moral perspective? From an ethical perspective? Is he like a saint? Is he going to become a saint soon? No. No. Why is he not going to become a saint? He bought more people out of poverty than maybe any other person in our lifetime. You know, all the millions of people who work either for Microsoft or for the people who like software for Microsoft or the suppliers for Microsoft computers or all the businesses. He employed millions and millions of people. Made the world a better place for millions and millions of people. Why morally isn't he a good guy? He made the world a better place. What was his mistake? If he wanted to be a saint, what do you have to do? Sunder. Yeah, I mean, you can benefit from it. His mistake was making money while making the world a better place. Because our morality is not about helping other people. Our morality is about not helping ourselves. It's about being selfless. And if you become rich or you enjoy or have fun with other people, it doesn't count morally. Which is really interesting. To be a saint, what do you have to do? You have to lose. You have to sacrifice. You have to somehow be in pain. If we want to make Bill Gates a saint, by the way, Bill Gates used to be one Microsoft. What does he do now? Anybody know what he does now? Charity. Charity. He's a philanthropist. Do people like him more now than when he was running Microsoft? Yeah, a little bit more. Well, now there are a lot of conspiracy theories about him, but put that aside. A little bit more, because now he's giving money away, he's not making it. Is he helping more people or less people? Less. Why do we like him more? Because he's not benefiting, he's only giving away. We still don't like him a lot, because he's still rich. He has a big house. He has a nice car. What would make us like him even more? On the ethics scale. If he gave all his money away, if he moved due to a tent, and maybe if he bled a little bit for us, a little bit of blood helps you if you want to become a saint. If you're pursuing your own self-interest in any kind of way, our moral code, the moral code that our culture has today, in South America, in North America, in Europe, and pretty much everywhere in the world, is against you. You're not being moral. And for most of us, what happens is, we live a particular life, a lot of entrepreneurs, they make money, they do well, they create jobs, they change the world, they make the world a better place, but they know that they're pursuing their own self-interest, which they know because their mother's told them, it's not a good thing. So what do you feel when you do one thing but you're supposed to do something else? What's the emotion? It starts with a G. Guilt. Guilt, you know guilt? You guys are Catholic, you know guilt. Us Jews know guilt. It's because we live one life and we're supposed to live a different one. A one of charity, a one of giving, a one of sacrifice. So why do we hate capitalism? We hate capitalism and free markets and capitalism and free markets about people pursuing their self-interest. It's about people pursuing their own values, having fun doing it, making money for themselves, and yeah, making the world a better place for all of us, but they're doing it immorally. They're doing it in a way that's immoral and wrong. Morality and economics, morality and what actually allows humanity to advance on two different planes. They don't match up, they don't link. The one is fighting the other. Morality is constantly fighting against what makes sense economically. Morality is constantly fighting against what makes sense from a perspective of world creation, a freedom of advancing the world. And that's a conflict you cannot win if you're on the side of free markets. That's why we don't win. We always lose. Socialism is completely consistent with the morality of the world out there. From each according to his ability to each according to his needs. It's about sacrifice. It's about giving. It's not about creating. It's not about building. It's not about making. It's about redistributing. It's not about the pursuit of your happiness or your individual interest. It's not about trade. It's ultimately about sacrificing some people to other people. Socialism is great when it comes to sacrifice. Even if it means killing a bunch of people. That's okay. As Lenin said, to make it omelette, you have to break some eggs. He was talking about human lives, not about eggs. So our morality, our moral code that we as a culture all embrace is consistent with altruism. And in a battle between economics and morality, morality will always win. And that's why we always drift in a particular direction which is ultimately self-destructive. We then shift back. We go through this. We shift back a little bit to get the economy going again. And then we immediately go back to our status socialist policies to redistribute wealth. Because we can't live with the explicit self-interest that capitalism implies. We really care about freedom. We care about economic success. If we want to be as individuals and as a culture wealthy, then what we need is a different moral code. The economic system that works, we know. I mean, look, we understand economics. We know why socialism fails. We've had great economists who have explained why socialism fails and explained why capitalism works. I mean, great economists, you know, second to none. There's no economic questions out there that put in doubt the superiority of capitalism over socialism. What we need to do is catch up when it comes to our ethical beliefs. We need a morality that actually says that self-interest is a good thing. That being selfish actually means taking care of self. And does lying, cheating, and stealing, is that a good way to take care of yourself? Like, is lying a good strategy for living? Some of you look skeptical. You know, if you're not sure, here's a little experiment you can do, right? If you've got a boyfriend or girlfriend or just a friend, try lying to them for a day. Just lie to them, everything they ask you. Lie. And see how well that goes. It's incredibly destructive. It's really, really bad. In business, if you lie, people generally don't want to do business with you again. If you lie to your friends, you're not going to have many friends. If you lie to your husband or wife, divorce is in your future. Stealing, cheating. These are terrible strategies. These are not ways to make your life better. They're ways to make your life worse. So what we need is a real understanding of what makes our life better. And a morality. What's morality? What's ethics? When we talk about morality, highfalutin stuff, what does it actually mean? What's that? Yeah, code for living. A code of values that tell us what is good and what is bad. And I would say we need a code of values that tell us what is good and what is bad. And the standard for that should be what is good for life and what is bad for life. Evil is that which destroys life. Evil is that which enhances life. So we need knowledge about what enhances life. Well, as human beings, what is the most important thing for human life? What is the thing that we need to do in order to survive as individuals and as a species? What makes us human? What's it going to treat us as animals? Yeah, don't say thumbs. Some anthropologists say thumbs. It's our ability to think. It's our reasoning ability. It's our rationality. We can figure stuff out. We can solve problems. I can put you in a new situation. You don't have the instincts to know how to deal with it. You don't have it coded in your DNA how to do it. You have to think. You have to accumulate evidence. You have to analyze it. You have to come up with solutions. You have to be creative. You have to use your mind. You have to think. You have to be rational. Rationality is what makes us human. And rationality is the one thing that leads to success. Emotions are wonderful. It's great to feel. I'm an emotional guy. I'm pretty passionate if you could tell, I think. But emotions are not tools of cognition. Emotions don't give you information about the world out there. What are emotions give you information about? The world inside there, inside here. They tell you about yourself. They don't tell you about the world. When do you get most into trouble? Following reason or following emotions? Emotions, almost always. When you get into trouble, you go, I should have thought about this some more. I shouldn't have followed my emotions. If only I'd remembered this boyfriend is a joke. And I wouldn't have gone back to it, right? Thinking. So what makes us human, what leads to our success, is to think. It's to be rational. And if you're rational, you don't like sheet of steel because it doesn't make sense. Those are all things that ultimately corrupt your mind. Corrupt your ability to think. To be self-interested means to be rational. To be a person of reason. I mean, this is Iran. We talked a little bit about Iran. Iran's real contribution to the fight for liberty is to ground it on a morality of self-interest. And this is why it's so challenging because it's much easier to convince people of economic principles than it is to change people's view of ethics, view of morality. Your purpose in life is not to sacrifice. Your purpose in life is not to suffer. Your purpose in life is not to do for others. Your purpose in life should be your own happiness. Your own success. Your own flourishing. I like to say live with a capital L. Really live. And to do that, you have to think. You have to use your mind. You have to be rational. You have to guide your life by your mind. And if you do that, if you guide your life by your mind and your rational, what kind of relationship do you want to have with other people? You want them exploiting you? No. You want to exploit them? No. What kind of relationship do you want to have? What's the alternative to me sacrificing to you or you sacrificing to me? What's the kind of relationship? Okay, here. What's that? A win-win relationship. What you want in life is to maximize win-win relationships. You want to trade. Trade in material values and trade in spiritual values. You want to benefit one another. Again, in individual relationships, right? If one, in a couple, if one of the couple does everything for the other and the other one doesn't do anything, back, how long is that going to last? Not very long. It has to be win-win. It has to be a trade. So a morality of self-interest is a morality in which each one of us uses our minds to pursue our values with the goal of success at living while engaging with other people in win-win relationships where ultimately everybody benefits from the transaction. And the other thing said, would it? Any other mistake to do? Yes, you respect them and they respect you. It's a mutual thing of win-win. And of course, people have that sense about their life. They want to be happy. They want to be successful. They want to live by their own mind in pursuit of their own values. Then what kind of political system would they want? They want other governments sitting on their shoulder and saying, don't eat that too much sugar. Don't start that business. It's wrong. You have to fill out all these forms in order to do anything. Like, Kendra, did we stop the day before in Peru? Like you had to fill it out. Everywhere, you fill in forms. And then you don't hear it here, go over there. Like, oh no, I entered Bolivia, right? I come into Bolivia. I hand the guy the passport and he says, you need a visa. Nobody told me, airline didn't tell me. Nobody said I needed a visa. $160. Pay over there. What a scam. And you fill in paperwork and they take pictures and they, what for? Leave me alone. A person who values his own mind, values his own life, wants to engage with other people and win-win relationship, wants to be left alone, does not want a coercive government telling what he cannot, cannot do, how he should, shouldn't live. Such a person wants to live free. So if we care about freedom, we need to care about morality, but we need a new morality, a morality of self-interest. Thank you.