 I want to actually start with the first objection, and I think this is an objection that most intellectuals hold, whether it's an explicit philosophical idea or as an implicit idea. And that is kind of the notion that comes from Plato, that human beings cannot actually perceive truth. They cannot know the good. They cannot know reality as it truly is. They are in a cave watching shadows, real reality. The truth is something that is only accessible to the philosopher kings, to a certain class of people, to a certain trained group of people who have the ability to use their mind or whatever their soul to connect with real knowledge. With real knowledge that really lies in another dimension. And regular people just can't do it, whether it's an issue of IQ or whether it's an issue of something else. They just can't do it. And therefore, and you see this in the kind of elitism that pervades our culture. It's not an elitism that says rationally. Well, you know, there are experts, there are people who just know stuff about a particular topic, and I need their help. If I go to a doctor, he's the expert. If I can check him up, I can get a second opinion, I can get a third opinion, but he's the expert. And the economics experts and the finance experts and the medical experts, and I subcontract with them and gain their expert. But at the end of the day, I make the decisions. It's my conclusions. I get to choose who they are. I don't listen to anybody who calls themselves an expert. But expertise is of value. But there is a certain segment of the population among intellectuals who believe that in a different sense. They believe that you are basically incapable and incompetent of choosing your own values, of knowing what truth and what good is, that you cannot make those decisions for you, even take, take choice of a doctor. Even choosing a doctor requires thinking, requires some knowledge, at least the mechanism by which we discover truth. And since that is not available to most people because of Plato's view on the nature of man and the nature of reality and the nature of the world of forms and the reality we see is just a projection of the world of forms. It's just the shadows and you need some special skills, special sauce to actually observe the real world. Notice the dualism, metaphysical dualism, there's a world of forms and there's this real world. And then our inability to use reason to discover this world. So there are experts who believe that that is absolutely right and therefore we are incompetent. We are unable to know what we should do, which doctor to see, what treatment to get, how to invest our finances. And therefore it's not just that there are experts who we can get advice from, but that there are experts, there was an elite who should literally dictate how we live, what values we should pursue, which doctor we should see, what treatment we should get, how diverse fight-up or four-year should be, if at all maybe it should just be a state pension. So it's incompatible, this view, this philosophical view deeply held, philosophical view held by many, many people for 2,000 years now, 3,000 years. That is incompatible with liberty, incompatible with freedom, incompatible with capitalism. Capitalism not only is implicitly self-interested, implicitly a sanction of selfishness. But capitalism is also implicitly a system of reason, a system that assumes implicitly that individuals can take care of themselves, can know what's good for them, can choose their own values and can pursue those values. That reason is not something, and truth as a consequence, is not something exclusive to a particular class of human beings. Call them philosophers, kings, call them priests, but truth is accessible to everybody and therefore we all choose our values and therefore capitalism allows us the freedom to engage in trade, to engage in interaction, all in pursuit of values that are good for us, that we have chosen rationally because we have that faculty, we have that capability. But that is, that is a philosophical view, which most people, or a significant portion of intellectuals do not hold. And that's in capitalism is incompatible with the notion of a philosopher king. Capitalism is incompatible with the dualism with regard to reality of another dimension and a reality here and that only some people have access to this other dimension. Indeed, almost by definition, if there's another dimension, only some people have access to it. Since there is no other dimension, you can't fool everybody all the time. In that sense, so many of our intellectuals, so many of our political leaders, Elizabeth Warren comes to mind today, are a forms of philosopher kings that people who know what's good for us, we can't take care of ourselves. What we do without these, the guidance of these experts without the guidance of these philosopher kings. And notice here that there's one very, very popular ideology in the world today, very popular ideology in the world today that embraces this notion from Plato. What is that? Anybody know what ideology today popular prevalent ideology today embraces the notion of a philosopher king embraces the notion that only some people have access to the truth. Some people know what's truly in your interest. Only some people can tell you how to live and what to do. Who thinks that other than academic, some academic, academics, right? But who has this notion? Well, the fundamental, the postmodernist, no Christianity, particularly into specifically and in particular Catholicism. Catholicism has this notion. Catholicism is a platonic philosophy. It's a platonic religion, a neoplatonic religion. It is clearly the notion that only the pope and his cardinals or whatever have access to the truth. The pope and the cardinals can never be wrong. That is Catholic dogma. They can never be wrong because they access the world of forms. They are the true philosopher kings. The world of forms is God or logos or the perfect world that lives in another dimension that only God as through Jesus made real and some people have access to, but most of us do not. 99% of us do not. Christian dogma is written in that form. You don't have to understand the dogma. Indeed, much of it is incomprehensible. Think about the trinity. Incomprehensible. So Christianity inherently places people above us, whether they are the pope and priests and cardinals and bishops and so on, who can read Old Testament and derive from it and the truth or for worldly things we have an emperor. And Catholicism is always, at least up until maybe the 19th, 20th century, has always been together with some kind of political leader, some kind of political authoritarian who basically channels the worldly needs of the people and tells them what they cannot, cannot do. Whether it was the Roman Empire or the Holy Roman Empire in the pre-post, I guess, Charlemagne era, but the church embraces this notion of, and again, particularly the Catholic church because the Protestant church somewhat rebels against that because the Protestant church is claiming, no, no, no, every individual has access to God. Indeed, one of their big projects, the Protestants, was and one of the reasons they were successful was because the Bible was being translated and the Bible was being printed. Protestantism couldn't have been what it was without the printing press because the Bible was being printed. Now everybody could read it and everybody could interpret it and everybody could communicate with God directly and God was in every human being's heart. And it took away the power of the few, the elite who were the only ones who could communicate with God, the only ones who could deal with them. And this is why Catholicism is overwhelmingly anti-capitalism. I mean, there are a few American Catholics, there are a few Libertarian Catholics, but that is the rare exception. What do you call it? There's a think tank of Libertarian Catholics. But almost all Catholics are some form of statists. Many, many, many of them are outright socialists. Take all the Jesuits today are mostly outright socialists. I taught at Santa Clara University, Catholic University, which was super socialist. The theology of South America, the liberation theology, which is borderline communism. And that makes sense because the whole assumption under socialism philosophically is somebody else will dictate your values. Somebody else knows what's good for you. Somebody else will determine what your values should be and how you should act. So the very foundational knowledge within Christianity, the very foundational assumptions, philosophical foundational assumptions in Christianity anti-capitalist. So when capitalism and Christianity butt heads, it's not just the altruism. Altruism is a big part of it. It's not just altruism. It's also the efficaciousness of reason and the efficaciousness for the individual. So Catholics cannot really be capitalists. I mean, again, their exceptions, they override their Catholicism with stuff they would rather believe. So I don't know what that means, Jim. And it's no accident, by the way. The capitalism, freedom generally, evolved and flourished in the non-Catholic areas of Europe because Catholicism, by its nature, is authoritarian. Catholicism, by its nature, is statist. Protestant, Protestant, Protestants, Protestants are non, is a non, particularly intellectual religion. It immediately fragmented. It's non-centralized. It claims a relationship between the individual and God. It's still anti-reason and anti-rationality. Indeed, you could argue it's even more anti-reason, but in favor of personal individual emotions. So Protestantism emphasizes emotion and emotional connection to God, but it rejects the authoritarian, the specific authoritarian grand scheme, access to the world of forms, notions of Catholicism. And that's one of the reasons that you see freedom evolve. In the north, there's more freedom to do so. There's less authoritarianism. In northern Europe, there's less authoritarianism of the church dictating every aspect of life from the position of only we can know the truth. And there's much more a willingness to experiment, a willingness to test, a willingness to go out there, observe, and a willingness for individuals to pursue their own values, and sometimes those values distance from the church. And you see that in England, you see that in the Netherlands, you see that in northern Europe as a Protestantism, Protestantism takes over northern Europe. There's another aspect. This is kind of cool. It's an interesting point that I keep thinking about. I don't know how important this is. I came across it when I did my studies of usury and finance, the history of finance. This is crazy, but one of the reasons the Protestants make room for economic freedom, make room for making money, make room for usury and banking. And again, it's why banks and industry and everything starts gravitating out of Italy and to northern Europe is because the Protestants believe in a way, much more deep way than the Catholics, that this world is an abomination. And then indeed, if you read Martin Luther, in particular Calvin, if you read Calvin, Calvin believes that what you do in this world has nothing to do with whether you go to heaven or hell. What you do in this world has nothing to do with whether you go to heaven or hell. In that sense, the determinists, he thinks that God already knows when you're born, whether you're going to heaven or hell. And what you do in this earth doesn't really matter. So one of the consequences of this is the Catholics who believe that your actions on this earth will determine whether you go to heaven or hell, at least most Catholics, Augustine didn't, but most Catholics. Before they died, if they were rich, they gave up all their money to poor people because they believed that that would buy them into heaven. But Calvin and Martin Luther didn't believe that. So Protestants didn't leave their money to the poor. They left it to their kids because they weren't trying to buy into heaven because they knew they either were going to heaven or not going to heaven and that was determined before they were born. So why make an effort? And indeed, why they were alive? Sin was much more palatable. Usury, much more palatable. In this earth, who cares if you commit usury or not? The only thing that matters is what happens in the kingdom of the Lord. There's no usury. But in this earth, it's grubby, horrible, disgusting, selfish, material. Yeah, absolutely. And in that sense, the perception of capitalism is, you know, this is why Christians, I remember what's his name, Novak, Michael Novak, if some of you remember him, a conservative from years ago, he wrote, he had this speech that he gave in Asia once, probably 20 years ago, maybe longer, maybe 30 years ago, about capitalism and praising capitalism and everybody, the Asians should become capitalists. And he ends the speech by saying, but look, capitalism only has one cheer, only one cheer for capitalism. Because they understood that capitalism was not moral because it was selfish. It wasn't good because it was grubby and material. And about this world, it was didn't fit into the kingdom of God, it fit into the kingdom of earth, which is there, which is bad, filled with sin. So sin, it doesn't matter whether you go to hell or heaven, it's been predetermined already. This is one example where so while the Protestants can be a little bit more open to ideas of capitalism or ideas of liberty, even that has to be constrained, it's only going to get one cheer. Because at the end of the day, they think human beings are sinful, they think selfishness is evil, they think making money is grubby and this worldly and materialistic, but they just shrug, okay, but that's just the way it is. See, see how different dimensions of Christianity, different dimensions of the philosophy are all arrayed against capitalism. So philosopher kings in the primacy, any kind of primacy of consciousness is going to incline you to be against capitalism. Capitalism is a system of reality, a fact. It's not a system of wishes and prayers. It's an issue that very, it's capitalism very much depends on objectivity. And again, on reason, reason, reason, reason, and anybody who advocates for anybody who holds really primacy of consciousness cannot be consistently an advocate, cannot be consistently an employer, never mind an advocate of reason. And therefore they're going to fail in capitalism and that'll turn them off. They fail and they have the philosophical justification for why it's bad, again, altruism and objectivity and reality and what's that reality stuff.