 So, thank you all for coming. Hopefully, hopefully we don't need a translation here. Everybody gets my English. I'm going to talk about, I've been asked to talk about the morality of capitalism. Now I know that since there are a lot of objectivists in the room, I'm probably not going to say anything new to anybody here. So I apologize in advance for that. We can do a Q&A and you can ask me new stuff in the Q&A. But on this particular topic I don't have that much new to say. But let me put it this way and I think this is true for anybody who is an advocate for free markets, for capitalism, that we're all really challenged. We're really challenged by a real contradiction, if you will, a real mystery that exists out there. And the mystery is this. Capitalism works. It's obvious capitalism works. All you need is some eyes to see the world, to know a little bit of history, or to know the science of economics, and you know that capitalism works. It doesn't require any particular massive level of sophistication to figure out capitalism works. We're in Latin America. It's relatively easy to give you an example. You've got two countries in Latin America right now. One, which 30 years ago was the richest country in Latin America on a pro-capita GDP basis, has more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia. It's not really good oil, but it's still more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia. But it should be a rich country. They were a rich country 30 years ago. And then they adopted socialist policies and what happened to them? They became the poorest country in Latin America, right? This is Venezuela. It's easy, right? We can see exactly when it happens. We can see the cause and effect. What happens when you collectivize farms? What happens to food? There's huge shortages of Venezuela people are literally starving. Babies are dying for lack of nutrition in a country that has incredibly fertile land. Why? Because farms are collectivized. And when you have collectivized farms, how do we know that when you have collectivized farms, it leaves the starvation? Because everywhere it's tried, it happens. That's exactly what happened. It happened in Ukraine under Stalin. It happened in China under Mao. Everywhere where you have collectivized farms, it leaves the starvation. So it happened in Venezuela as well. Big surprise. Shocking, right? That if you do the same thing over and over again, you shouldn't expect exactly the same result. And then, not far from here, you've got another Latin American country. The 30 years ago was one of the poorest countries in Latin America. And today is the richest country in Latin America that are pro-capital GDP basis. Why? Because they implemented pro-market reforms. This is Chile. And those pro-market reforms have led to wealth. And it's very simple, right? That's just one little example. But everywhere in the world you go. Socialism leads to death and destruction. Capitalism leads to prosperity and success. That's true in Asia. That's true in East versus West in Europe. It's true in Latin America. It's true everywhere you try it. The consequences of socialism are always the same. The consequences of capitalism are always the same. Now this is the mystery. If that's true, and I think it is true, I think it's undoubtedly true. Again, you just need eyes to travel around the world and you can see there's a direct correlation between economic freedom and prosperity. What we care about is the poor. What we care about is wealth creation. It's standard of living that capitalism is overwhelmingly the white system. Not knowing anything about economics just by looking at different countries and looking at their examples. How many people have been to Hong Kong? Anybody been to Hong Kong? I always say, you've got to go once in life to see Hong Kong. It's amazing. It's an amazing place. More skyscrapers than New York City. A GDP per capita higher than the United States. And yet, 7.5 million people crammed on this little space. And yet, 700 years ago, it was a little fishing village. There was nothing there. Hong Kong has no natural resources. Nothing. So why is it so rich? Why is it so successful? Why is it so beautiful? Because the British came and all the British did was establish the rule of law, protect contracts, protect property rights, and nothing else. No safety net, no welfare, no free healthcare, nothing. Just property rights and contracts. You couldn't even vote. And yet, because it was fundamentally economically and socially free, people from all over Asia went there and they came there poor with nothing. But they were free to start businesses, free to innovate, free to be entrepreneurs, free to work hard and keep their money, free to make stuff and build stuff. And they became rich. They became rich. So everywhere it's tried, it succeeds. So this is the mystery. If that is all true, then why do we all still hate capitalism? Why is the West and everywhere else really moving away from capitalism, not towards capitalism? Why is every single place on the planet, almost every single place on the planet, moving today away from free markets? Why does Donald Trump think that you can increase wealth by increasing tariffs, by having, by barriers to trade? It's mind boggling. It's nuts. And yet, this is the pattern all over the world. We move away from capitalism. We don't want capitalism. We still think capitalism is a dirty word. Nobody, nobody is actually moving towards the system. We all know works. We all know works. Even the socialists know it. Everybody knows it. Everybody knows it. Because again, all you need is eyes. And to travel a little bit about an old, and it's right there in front of you. Evil Argentina was much freer when it had a free market, and it's much poorer when it moved towards socialism and statism. All of the historical evidence is on our side. All of it. So the question is, why the answer is in economics. I think we won the economic debate 50 years ago. We have the smartest, best economists on our side. Whether it was Hayek or Mises or Friedman or all the Austrian economists all in Latin American, US or in Europe. We've won. It's not an economic argument that the left has made that we do not have an answer to. We have all the answers. It's not a historical argument. History's on our side. Every example in history suggests socialism leads to death and destruction. Capitalism leads to prosperity and good stuff. Even for poor people. They're better off under capitalism. By far. Not even close. So what's going on here? What's going on here is I think that we're losing other more fundamental ideas. So let's talk about that. What is at the end of the day? What is capitalism about? What's the essence of capitalism? Why do we go into the marketplace? Why do we participate in the market? Any marketplace? What's the purpose of it? Yeah, but why do we want exchange? What's the purpose of exchange? Who's happiness? My happiness. Your happiness, yes. The marketplace is a place to which we go to in order to make our own lives better. The marketplace is a place where we pursue our self-interest. Why does Steve Jobs make one of these? Why does he make this? Because he makes a lot of money. Because he makes a lot of money, right? And when people say that, usually not, maybe not in this group, they always laugh a little bit because it's uncomfortable to say, I do this to make money. That's self-interested. You're not supposed to say stuff like that. But was it just about money? No, I think it's Steve Jobs. He didn't invent the iPhone just for money. There's a personal satisfaction in it. Yeah, he loved it. But let's be clear. The profit margins on this, when they first came out, were 60%. Steve Jobs did this to make money. And because he loved it, because he had a passion for it, because it's beautiful. And he wanted to create beautiful things in the world. He didn't do it for me. He didn't do it for you. He did it for Steve Jobs. I'd like to tell the story of my first iPhone that I bought in 2008. And I went by, you know, the US economy was declining, it was going into a recession. And I went to buy my first iPhone because I wanted to help stimulate the US economy. I grabbed my canes and I knew the consumption drives economics, because I wanted to help drive the US economy, because I know that's why you go shopping. You go shopping because you want to help your fellow man. You want to make sure people have jobs, and you want to stimulate the Argentine economy, right? Chinese economy. What's that? Chinese economy. You want to stimulate the Chinese economy. Well, you're shopping in Argentina, so you want to stimulate the Argentine economy and the Chinese economy. Trade is not a zero-sum game. Win-win. No, you go shopping because you want to make your life better. We all do that. We want a nice clothes, because we want to look good. We buy an iPhone, because we want to be cooler, because we want to be productive, because in some way it enhances our own lives, or at least that's what we believe. We make mistakes. Sometimes you buy a lemon, which you call a lemon, right? A product that is not, I don't know, it's translated, but it's Spanish. It's a product that doesn't work out. It's bad, it's flawed. Or it turns out you didn't really want it. You didn't really need it. But your intention is always to improve your own life. So markets are a place in which we come together in pursuit of all self-interest. This is not a new observation. Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations says, the reason the baker bakes his bread is not because he loves you. He doesn't really care about you. He's making the bread because he's trying to make a living for himself. Hopefully he likes making bread, and he's enjoying it. But his primary reason is to make money so he can feed himself and feed his family. So this idea about self-interest has been around for a long time. But this is the problem. And I think this is a really deep fundamental problem. From an ethical perspective, what do we think of self-interest? Morally, is self-interest a good thing or a bad thing? Now, I know in this group you guys are unusual, right? But what does the culture believe about self-interest? Is it good? No. I mean, when you're this big, I mean, I go up and I had a good Jewish mother, right? My mother taught me what? If you want to be good, if you want to be noble, if you want to be virtuous and moral, you must be self-less. You must sacrifice. Sacrifice meaning giving something away and expecting one in return. Nothing. Nothing or something less valuable. So nobility, virtue, goodness, the very essence of morality means to be self-less. But nobody's self-less in the market. Capitalism isn't about being self-less, it's about being selfish. It's about being self-interested. So my argument is even if we know that capitalism works, we're uncomfortable about it. And we don't want to believe it. And we'll make excuses not to believe it. Because it cannot be moral. It cannot be right. It cannot be just because it's about self-interest. We are taught that self-interest is the devil. It's evil. It's bad. I mean, think about somebody like Bill Gates. Bill Gates, second richest man in the world now, keeps changing. Jeff Bezos is number one. And you can do this with Jeff Bezos, but it's better with Bill Gates for a reason you'll see in a minute. Bill Gates made 70 billion dollars for himself. How did he do that? How did he become a billionaire? General question. How did he become a billionaire? What's that? Well, it's an interesting story. He bought a software for a very cheap amount of money, 1,000 to 1,000. That's the essence of it. It's not the essence of it. It's clearly not the essence of it. Because lots of people have bought cheap stuff and tried to sell it for expensive. Something... So how do you become a billionaire? And it's not just Bill Gates. Every billionaire in a free market. Right? They're billionaires. Yeah, but lots of people make good quality and have great service and do all that. How does it... What is the difference between a businessman who makes a lot of money that's okay and a billionaire? What do you have to do to be a billionaire? I mean, this is a secret. The owner must be listed and... Okay. A lot of companies are listed. I own a lot of stock and listed companies. I'm not a billionaire. Not even close. I'm not a billionaire. What's that? I'm not a billionaire. Yeah. What is it that makes you a billionaire? Keeper of this? A lot of money? Yeah, but it's a lot. How much is a lot? To be moving the quality of crowds. The quality of life of crowds. Yeah, it's a crowd starting to get to it. Right? The way... Maybe something everybody wants. Yeah, you have to make something that everybody wants. Hundreds of millions of people want. Maybe even billions of people want. And not only do they want it. But they're willing to pay for it. And how much are they willing to pay for it? More than it costs you to produce. And is it making their life worse or better off? Better because of exchange, right? If they gave up $100, it means a thing that they bought was worth more than $100 to them. It added to their life more than $100 worth of stuff. So the way to become a billionaire is to offer hundreds of millions of billions of people a product they really want that will enhance their lives at a price that gives you a profit. And if you can do this over and over again, you will become a billionaire. Easy. So think about it. The way to become a billionaire is to make the lives of hundreds of millions of people better. The way to become a billionaire is to make the world a better place to live. The way to become a billionaire is to change the world for billions of people. It's the only way. If you do it for a little group, you don't become a billionaire. It has to be large numbers. And it has to be a significant improvement in their lives. Otherwise they won't keep coming back and buying your product. So the only way to become a billionaire is to make the world a better place to live. For everybody, I can't think of a human being on the planet. Maybe some tribes in the Amazon who have not been affected by Bill Gates by the standardization of computers, by the fact that we can send... I mean, I'm not sure the internet would be what we think of it today without the standardization that Microsoft created. The world is dramatically better. Okay. And Bill Gates made $70 billion of that, by the way, a tiny little fraction of the wealth he created in the world. The wealth he created in the world is trillions of dollars. He got $70 billion. Now, how much moral credit, ethical credit, does Bill Gates get from making the world a better place to live? No. Not zero, negative a little bit, because he did make $70 billion in the process. How dare he? He's into the philanthropy now. What's that? That's why he thinks of philanthropy now. Yeah, so we'll get to that, right? Changing the lives of hundreds of millions, maybe billions of people, and getting negative moral credit. But when does he become a good guy? Starts a foundation. Now, notice, he doesn't just start a foundation. He leaves Microsoft. God forbid you make any money. You build something, you create something. That's a no-no. That gets you negative moral credit. No, no, you have to leave it all and become a full-time philanthropist, which is what Bill Gates has become. He was a good guy, and now we like him, because he's given his money away. You know, it's dirty the way he made it. That's yuck, yucky. But giving it away, that's good. How many people, how many lives will he change giving his money away? Maybe even tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands, not billions. Nothing in charity, it just doesn't have the leverage. It just doesn't have the scope. It just doesn't impact the lives of people the way Microsoft did. Now, he's still not quite, we're in a Catholic country, he's still not quite a saint. We're not building statues for Bill Gates. We're not naming boulevards for him. Why? He's still a little self-interested. He seems to be enjoying giving his money away. You guys go to museums. Have you ever seen a painting of a saint smiling? Now, that's not the point of being a saint. The point of being a saint is to suffer. The point of being a saint is to sacrifice. The point of being a saint is to be worse off. Now I have not spoken to the Pope. He's an Argentinian so you guys might be able to speak to him. But my guess is for Bill Gates to become a saint, he would have to give up all his money. He would have to move into a tent and he would have to bleed a little bit for us. Then, oh, statues, boulevards, he'd get it all. Because then he really believes in the cause, right? He's really suffering for it. That's the standard. Note how sick and perverse this really is. Building, making, changing the world. Benefiting mankind in ways nobody could have imagined. Eh, we don't really take that seriously. Oh, but giving it away, that's good. And suffering while giving it away, that's even better. Happiness isn't the standard. Happiness is the standard for vice. Immanuel Kant, the great German philosopher, once said that if you meet a happy person, you should be suspicious. Because happy people are self-interested people. Because you don't get it. That's how you become happy. If there's a vice, we know that. So you better watch it. The standard is not happiness. Quite the contrary. Quite the contrary. And this is ingrained in our culture, both in Christianity and from German philosophy, the idea of suffering, the idea of selflessness, of self-denial, of self-ejection is at the heart of our morality, of our moral ethical code. And that is the opposite of everything capitalism has to offer. Capitalism is the negation. It's the rejection of the altruistic morality that is Christianity and German Romanticism. And that's why nobody, nobody wants to be a capitalist. Nobody wants to believe the history. Nobody wants to believe what they see with their own eyes. They're willing to ignore the evidence that they can see firsthand in the name of morality. Because in a battle between economic knowledge and ethical knowledge, between historical knowledge and ethical knowledge, ethical will always win. We want, as a species, as individuals, we want to be good. We want to be just. We want to be virtuous. And if you're good just and virtuous, given them all code we have in society today, you have to be a socialist, or you have to be some form of stateless. And it's why we keep voting to it in America. Left, right, that doesn't matter. We're becoming statists. We want to help people. That's the focus we're going to give with producing, creating, and that's what those greedy capitalists are. And nobody, and this is the great tragedy in my view, nobody has offered an alternative to this morality except for Ayn Rand. And the sad, in my view, the tragic thing in the Liberty Movement, if you will, is that the great thinkers in the Liberty Movement have never taken morality seriously and have never taken Ayn Rand seriously. But without her, we will not win. Without her, capitalism cannot be successful because she is the only person ever, certainly in the last 2,000 years, to seriously challenge the morality of altruism, the morality of placing the well-being of other people as most important as the primary as your focus in life. And not only did she challenge that, but she provides an alternative. Because what do the altruists tell us about self-interest? They don't just tell you it's bad, but they give you illustrations. Because when I say self-interest, what do people think? What kind of people do you think are self-interest? Businessmen with a lot of money. Yeah, but how do they get that money? What's automatic? They lie, they steal, they cheat, they'll do anything to get their way. That's what self-interest means. We've conditioned ourselves to think of self-interest as lying, cheating, stealing. SOB, right? SOB means what? Right? So we pointed the kid in the schoolyard and said he's self-interested. What do we need by that? He'll do anything to get his way. Lying, cheating, stealing, walking corpses, anything. So this is an alternative we'd be presented. You could either be a good altruist, and therefore not a capitalist, or you could be a lying, cheating, stealing, bad guy. That's it. That's the only alternative. And Iron Man says, first time really in history, since Aristotle, he says, wait a minute, there's another alternative. How about being rationally long-term self-interest? How about thinking about what self-interest really means? Does lying, cheating, stealing, is it good for you? Not if you understand what we as human beings are. Not if you understand what we are as a species, as a being. Lying, stealing, cheating are bad for us. They're destructive for us. You might get the money, but you'll destroy your soul. And worse than that, right, you'll destroy your soul, you'll get caught, you'll, you know, you'll, you know, best example of this is everybody remember Bernie Madoff in America, Bernie Madoff, pyramid scheme, asset pyramid scheme, stole money from his best friends and everybody around him, right? Bernie Madoff says, he's in jail now, he says he's happier in jail now than he was before he was caught. And I believe him. Because before he was caught, what did he have to live with? I don't know how many of you have ever lied. I don't really want to know. Lying is stupid, right? When you lie, almost always the lie necessitates more lies. You usually get caught in there by somebody. If you don't get caught, you're worried about getting caught. And then you're constantly thinking about getting caught and what the consequences will be, right? You, I mean, I am 56 years old. I can't remember what I did last week. I can't. I mean, I'm losing my memory. I can't remember what I did last week. I'm busy. So that's part of it, right? Now imagine if I lied about what I did last week. Not only do I have to remember what I actually did last week. Now I have to remember the lie. That's two things. I can't remember one. But it's not two things. It's more than two things. I have to remember the lie and the truth. Who I told the lie to, who I told the truth to. Why did I tell them the lie and why I told them the truth? It's way too hard. And I'm going to stress constantly. It's sweating, really worried constantly. Because I'm going to mix it all up. And I'm going to, you know, it doesn't work. So Bernie Mader was constantly worried he would slip up. Couldn't sleep at night because he thought he would get caught. Not by the SEC, not by the government. Because the government didn't catch him. The government wouldn't have caught him. They're too stupid and incompetent to actually catch crooks. They're too busy monitoring me and making sure I fill out my forms and I've dotted my eyes and crossed my T's and done all the nice, the regulatory things that need to be done. When they're real crooks out there, they can't catch the real crooks. They're too busy for that. You know what Bernie Mader, there was a hedge fund manager who wrote the SEC, the SEC is the regulatory agency that's supposed to catch crooks. This hedge fund guy wrote them two memos. Long memos explaining why Bernie Mader was a crook and what he was doing. The SEC couldn't do anything about it. How was he caught? Anybody know how Bernie Mader was caught? His son called up the SEC and said he was a crook when his son discovered. Same son committed suicide a year later because of the shame of the whole thing. So this is where Bernie Mader was afraid of, that his son would figure it out or his best friends would figure it out that he's stealing their money. And he couldn't live with himself. Lying is an awful strategy for successful living. If you want to live a successful life, not just materially, but spiritually in every aspect of your life, lying is unbelievably destructive. And stealing, stealing is an admission that you're incapable of taking care of yourself, of producing the things that you need for yourself. So what do you do? You find somebody who can't take care of yourself and you take your stuff by force. That is destructive to your self-esteem. It's destructive to everything it means to be human. Thieves are not happy people. The only profession in which lying leads to success is only one profession which lying politics. And let me tell you, they're not happy. Have you ever met a politician who you thought was happy? I mean all you have to do is look at Hillary Clinton and they look miserable constantly because they are. Because liars are miserable. And this is true of all politicians I know. I don't know any politician who's happy. They're all miserable because they're all liars. When you create a profession where the way to succeed is through deception and undermining reality, you're creating a profession in which everybody's going to be miserable. So INRAND actually presents us with a positive vision of self-interest which means what's the most important thing for being human? What makes us human? What makes us human? Our reason, our ability to think, our ability to be rational, observe reality, integrate the knowledge from reality, abstract, think conceptually. That's what makes us human. So for her, being self-interested isn't about lying, stealing, cheating. On the contrary, it's against that. For being self-interested means being rational. Using your mind, thinking, exploring reality, understanding reality. Changing the world by using your reason. For that kind of morality, Bill Gates is a hero. Not because he changed the world, but because he used his mind to make his life and everybody else's life better off. He is the epitome of morality. Now, I don't know what else happens in his life, but in his business, he is a moral person. For INRAND, the fact that we all go into the marketplace to seek our self-interest, to make our individual lives better, makes capitalism a moral system because the suit of your own self-interest is the essence of morality. That's what morality is about. Morality should be a science that studies man and the things that he needs in order to thrive, in order to do well. And that which promotes human life, which is good for human life, is the good. And that which is anti-human life, which is destructive to human life, is the evil. Is the bad. So the whole point of life is to promote your own life. Now, people say if you promote your own life that you don't care about other people. Really? But if you care about your own life, why do you care about other people? I, for example, only care about my life. That's the only thing I care about. And because of that, I love human beings. I particularly love human beings that I really love, but I like, generally, I like human beings. Why? Because they interact with them. Because they provide immense value to me. Right? I love, I mean, he's dead, but I love Steve Jobs. I mean, he created amazing things for my life that improved my life dramatically. I like the people in China assembling iPhones. They make one like that. Generally, human beings, unless I know something bad about them, I think, wow, somebody with a brain, somebody who's going to be productive, who's going in some way, has the potential to make my life better. That's a beautiful thing. My life is incredibly better for people playing the violin and making beautiful music, for people painting beautiful paintings, for people making uber, whatever it is in business that enhances my life. All those people are making my life better. So I love them, not because I love them, I love them because I love myself. And if I value my own life, I value other people's lives. The idea that somebody who's self-interested wants to live on a desert island is resort. Desert island is boring. You want to live in civilization. You want to live with other people. You want to share and exchange, really, exchange values because that's how you enhance your own life. The marketplace is a life-expanding, life-enhancing mechanism for the individual. So when it gives us, I think for the first time in history, the proper moral foundation for capitalism, a foundation built on self-interest, a foundation that for the first time is consistent with how the marketplace actually works. So the evolution that we need to bring about in the world out there, it's not a political revolution. It's not an economic revolution. It's an ethical moral revolution. We need to change people's minds about ethics and moral. Now that's much harder, much, much harder than economics or politics or anything else. It's why progress is slow, but it's the only revolution that will have a real impact. It's the only revolution that can result in a truly free world at the end of the day. Thank you all.