 What's up guys? We are live. We got Yaron Brooks joining us. Did I pronounce your name correctly or what? I knew Yaron Brooke, but it was close enough. Okay, cool, cool, cool. All right, so this is a Debate that you guys requested quite a lot. So I'm glad we can make it happen Honestly, I am not too sure if there's a lot that we're gonna debate about might be more of a discussion because as I was doing research On you last night. I came to the conclusion that we agree on like 95% of the things So it might be debating like the small details. Well, let's start off with a little background intro for anyone Who's not familiar with who you are. There's a little about you sure, I mean I was for many years the CEO of the Iron Man Institute from kind of 2000 till 2017 I am now chairman of the board of the Institute at my own YouTube show You run book show. I traveled around the world speaking. I just got back from a three-week trip through Europe giving talks and you know in the previous life I'd been anywhere from a civil engineer to a finance professor. I was always also born and raised in Israel and Served in the Israeli military for three years Cool. Yeah, I got some family in Israel. So Okay, so Let me start off with this. So most of the time when I'm doing research for a debate I feel like, you know, most of the time I debate I don't know if you're familiar with my content But I did be like black pillars and like the stuff I'm researching is like feminism has ruined the West So every time I do research, I feel like I get done with her. But with you I actually felt the opposite There's a lot of stuff to actually learn myself when researching so I just want to acknowledge that I clearly you're pretty smart and reasonable guy But let me start with this like clearly like for you and Rand Probably butchered as well has had a strong impact. Why is why is and ran so important? Why has that influenced you so much? So it's I'm but but okay, I'm seeing that's fine Look, I was I Was growing up in Israel like everybody pretty much growing up in Israel when I when I was growing up 60 70s I was a real socialist. I was a collectivist. I you know, I viewed myself as My job in life ultimately was to sacrifice for the Jewish state for for my collective group And at the age of 16, I read Atlas Shrugged and it blew my mind it completely Changed the way I thought about the world the way I thought about my life the way I thought about my Goals in life and in my orientation my focus in life and it really shifted to How do I maximize this one life that I have how do I live the best life that I can where should I live it? So I kind of came to the decision about leaving Israel around that time and And just how should I live? How should I focus my mind? How should I think about the world so that I can live a great life? She really gave me a philosophy for living a philosophy for understanding the world and over the last You know, it's been a long time 40 plus years that I've kind of attested her Theories over and over again tested her views attested explanations for the world She's right. She gets she got it. She and she gave us this amazingly powerful tool that sadly most people in the world are Ignoring and I think it's to all of our detriments when they do ignore him What is the crux of that philosophy? Well, the crux of the philosophy is that the purpose of life is To live the best life that you can To to to be successful in living and to pursue your happiness. How do you do that? You do it by pursuing what is uniquely human and that is our capacity to reason a capacity reason to be rational is our basic means of survival so Using rationality using reason and she has a whole morality of self-interest whole Egoistic morality of what is involved? What are the principles? What are the virtues and values one should pursue if one's gonna make the most of one's life and ultimately attain happiness? To do that, you know, first of all, you have to again be rational, which means oriented towards reality Facts of facts Emotions don't create the world emotions don't explain the world. You have to use reason for that the world is not Created by any consciousness. It is what it is and and you need to accept it understand it and then shape it and then now the only political system in which human beings can Use their mind to pursue their values in pursuit of their happiness is a system of capitalism. It's a system where the government is limited to The the protection of individual rights to the your protection from fraud and murderers and criminals and Fallen invaders, but other than that the government should leave you alone and and let individuals pursue their values again using their reason their mind Free of coercion free of intervention free of authority Yep, that's pretty interesting because I've never ran and ran. I've obviously heard of her I've never read any of her work, but these are all the same conclusions that I have as well So I just I think I've just naturally come to all those same conclusions. So was that like Like you said it changed your life. What were your like? What was your thoughts before that like how because these are all things that I think are fairly like, you know, common sense No that like, you know, there's a sense in which the common sense, but nobody accepts them, right? The standard mall code in the world today is that to be Good to be a good human being you have to sacrifice You have to give to others the whole orientation and morality in the world in which we live is how we deal with other people and and Generally placing their interest above our own interest is the good is to be moral is to be Altruistic it's to be place the world being of other people above your own will be And I basically bought into that when I was look I was young, right? I was 16 But I basically bought into that. I was a collectivist. I believe that the you know, the You as an individual should be willing to sacrifice for the state for the community for the collective for the group And in my case it was kind of Jewish nationalism as as expressed in the state of Israel So and I was a socialist I believe that the world of government was to make us all equal into we just do the wealth and all of that So I was the exact opposite of everything. She She believed it and and look I think there are a lot of people who think You should live for yourself, but usually they emphasize emotions and will like a Nietzschean view It's willpower. It's whatever you feel like I think she's the only thinker in history to really connect The idea of living for yourself living the best life that you can With the exercise of the faculty of reason with being rational and identifying that as the crux That is the means by which we live a good life Yeah, I see what you're saying. Wouldn't you say though that in some situations collectivism is naturally is Is essential like for example a good one would be military service like for example, let's just take Ukraine, right? Like it's not in the best interest of each individual Ukrainian to go out there and fight the Russians because you know There's a high likelihood they will die But you know if they don't do and their state will collapse So that's like a situation right in my mind where there's like, okay Collectivism has a purpose because if you know if everyone is thinking, okay What do I what how can I do what's best for myself? Well, then no one's gonna fight the Russians So what's kind of your take on that? So collectivism is never good There's never a situation where some collective good is above your own and take your reasoning You know if I die what is collectivism helped me by it so that Ukrainian can survive as an abstraction as a Ukraine You know, why do I care? Well, I care not because of collectivism not because the collective is more important than me I care because You know if you ask if you ask the Ukrainians right now why they're fighting and people have done this So you can you can see interviews and they say I'm fighting for my land my home My family my freedom, right all of those are self-interested pursuit, right? It's their property How dare you take my property if you if you come at my home and you're not gonna defend it Mm-hmm, and and there's no difference if I'm defending it against the Russians I'm defending it against a mug. You know just somebody breaking into the house. It's my family You're gonna not gonna hurt my family. You're not gonna kill my kids with my wife I'm gonna fight you if you're gonna try to do that. So that's a self-interested motivation I don't want you hurting the things that are important to me And yes to some extent a country if it's a free country is a value to you But that was all Self-interested pursuit. So you said that's not in their self interest But it very much is in their self-interest if you understand self-interest is not just momentary pleasure It's not just what I feel like doing today or what gets me off today If you understand self-interest is the everything that's entailed in living the best life that I can live I can't live the best life that I can live if I'm a slave I can't live the best life of I can live under the boot of Putin I can't live the best life that I can live if my kids and my family are murdered I can't live the best life that I couldn't live if I'm a refugee I can't live the best life where I can live if I just give up in the face of somebody trying to hurt me I need to fight for myself. That's part of what it means to be a man to be a human being It's part of what it means to have self-interest and self-esteem and value your own life Yeah, I see your point just to kind of play devil's advocate on that though Like for example, let's say take your average Ukrainian citizen like for them, you know, they there's a lot of immigration options They're open. They can go to Poland. They can go to a whole bunch of EU countries They're taking them. So if we're just taking a look at their survival or their family's interest It's probably a lot more logical for them to just run away to Poland because again like their family You know if they do that their family's hundred percent guaranteed safe if they stay in Ukraine, you know They are putting their family at risk. Like, you know, Russians are not above, you know shooting random people So so like wouldn't if we're just talking about logically purely logical self-interest Wouldn't it make more sense for them to? Immigrate to Poland or something like that Look if they hate Ukraine and they long-term plan is not to be in Ukraine and maybe but but if somebody attacks you And places your family and yourself a threat and let's say you live in your neighborhood And there's some somebody that's constantly harassing you and and the ones that the ones that take your house You know, you could just leave and move to another neighbor take the loss You know, so so so you give up the house and just hand him the keys and Walk away and and it's his if you stay you might have to get into fight with him He might hurt your family and so but that's that's super cowardly and it's not rational You know, it's it's what about the next house? What when you give into evil? You are you're giving in You're basically giving up your own life. You're giving up your own independence. This is my life. This is my home This is my land. How dare you threaten me? I'm not just gonna walk away from that without a fight And I think that's true in your home These are the crooks now. Hopefully you have the police to help you with that one But it's also true of Somebody invading your home. Yeah, we could all be cowardly and run but we know that the consequence of that ultimately are no self-esteem no self-confidence and and And the fact that evil chases you, right? If Ukraine folds Putin will just chase the next target Sure, but when you say though in the statement You are evil chases you then that implies an element of collectivism because it's like You know, you're basically, you know fighting to stop evil, which is a collective goal Right because the assumption is put in as evil, which you know, I think we can all semi agree with Right. He's you know, if we don't stop him if Ukraine doesn't stop him He's gonna keep going and spread that evil to other people So it's a working with other people is not collectivism Collectivism is the placing of the other people above your own well-being. Okay. I think your well-being is tied in to the idea of fighting for your values Fighting the bad guys who threaten you now if it's a bad guy like I'm not volunteering to go fight in Ukraine Not gonna do it I'm not gonna sacrifice right you're not gonna sacrifice. Well, but if somebody's attacking your house I You know, some people are going to run away But I think I think that the people who value their life the people who are most Egoistic in a sense who value their property who believe in themselves are actually gonna put up a fight when somebody attacks you Look at the founding fathers a fart of America fart You know the the British the greatest military force at the time. They thought that we get a die They didn't think they win and yet they fought it Why did they fight it because they wanted to live as free man? They wanted to live under freedom and they were willing to risk everything in order to attain freedom And that was an incredibly self-interested logically self-interested thing to do Because in logic your ability to live a good life under freedom is so much greater than your Ability if there is any to live a good life as a slave or surf or under the boots of a dictator So you want to fight and you want to and this is why I think soldiers rationally You know fight for their country not so much because the country's more important than them But because part of what it means to be an individual is To fight for your own freedom for your own liberty and to care about your own family your own property And and the people that you love and careful. Okay, I see your point. So let me ask you this So I think you know, this is a question that and And ran proponents Yeah, you usually get but basically it's how this ties into hyper capitalism So if you are a successful business person, right, it's probably not in your best interest It's it's not in your personal best interest to for example, you know Recycle right or to responsibly dispose waste. It's your best interest to just dump it, right? But you don't do that because you know society has rules against that and you could fuck things up Other people if you dump your waste in the river and whatnot. So how does that tie into there? Like how do you be like can you be you know and and ran proponent and be like, you know Responsible business person who doesn't always think about themselves, but actually cares about you know the environment and shit Well, again, I don't think that to any contradiction. I think they do think about themselves But they care about the environment at least to some extent, right? So they live in the environment. So you dump your shit You pollute everywhere you breathe it your family breeze it your friends breathe it the community Which you live breeze it that's not good for you And we we we need to get away from the perception of self-interest to some narrow Emotional a short term You know, you don't love anybody. You don't care about anybody because that's not self-interest You want to love you want to care you want to have friends You want to you want to be part of something but even even beyond that You know, we all agree that I can't bring a dump truck and dump all my garbage in my in your backyard, right? And and the reason is not because I care about you, right? The reason I can't dump my garbage in your backyard is you can assume me, right? You're gonna I'm violating your property rights in it and that we know that we live together That is not acceptable. The law is in your favor. It's against me So if I dump stuff in a river that's owned by somebody and ideally under capitalism rivers are owned by people Then they'll sue me that you know the bankrupt me if I spew stuff into the air that's going to actually hood people Again, they will launch a class-action lawsuit and drive me out of business And there is a role for government to say look you cannot do Harmful things to other people you cannot violate their rights. You cannot make them sick. You cannot destroy their property So the the government has a role in protecting rights and I think pollution is is an example of where the government has some function some role and and Where that kind of provides me with the right kind of incentives even if I I don't know if I if I if I Somehow conclude that it was okay to dump the stuff in the river I've got financial incentives under capitalism not to do it. Okay. I see your point Yeah, I would argue that in the u.s. The government doesn't really do a good job of that Especially in the last 10 years of preventing this kind of stuff But that's well, but I would say that the real problem in the United States and if we were in the world is we don't have enough Property rights 75% of all the land west of the Mississippi is owned by the state where the federal local or state Imagine if all of that was private property imagine if the rivers were private property imagine if the coastline was private property then You wouldn't be dumping it you wouldn't because there'd be somebody with an interest Monitoring you and making sure that you didn't Destroy the value of their property. So the most filthy places on the planet are public spaces The most filthy places on the planet are places that are not owned by anybody But once you own something you clean it up because you care about it. It's yours So the way to solve pollution problems in the United States is To privatize what is in private and a lot of what we have today is not private So so the worst thing for pollution is public property. Yeah, so I would actually argue with you on that Because you there's like wildlife reserves and protected national parks You can't make it private because then that is going to get destroyed. You see this happening with Amazon for example There's the privatization of the Amazon jungle and what do they do? You know, they basically cut down the trees and use it for for farming of bananas or whatever the war of rice Privatization that's the problem with Amazon problem with Amazon is nobody owns it So what happens is very poor people and unfortunately in Brazil has a lot of very pure poor people because it doesn't have capitalism They go in they clear cut a forest and they and they use it for agriculture and then they move on right because they don't own the land There's no property rights. They don't own the land. They can't cultivate it over and over again They move on click at another forest the problem with Amazon imagine if it was privately owned People would have an incentive to use it effectively and indeed environmentalist groups could buy huge chunks of the Amazon and Protect it right under property right laws right now. There's no way to protect that law the way in which The way in which the best way to protect land is to put it into the hands of private people I mean in Africa the way they're protecting things like elephants and and lions is To privatize is to actually have private ownership over lands in which the elephants and which the lions and say these elephants are yours and Now I can sell the right to photograph them. I can even sell the way To kill them but then I monitor how many are killed and make sure that the hood is replenished and that there's a constant Because I have a financial incentive to do it so it turns out that privatization is actually the best way to preserve land forest animals The one could imagine well, what's to stop once you privatize like a big piece of land where there's let's just say Whatever a certain type of wildlife that's not found anywhere What's to stop that person who bought the land from chopping down all the trees and building into land and developing into condos because that's much More financially, you know beneficial for them, right? That's a lot more. There's a lot more money in you know Condos and you know having tourism then it is protecting, you know elephants or whatever So what's to stop them from doing that? Well partially? I mean if you build condos the tourists won't come Right, so the tourists are coming to see wildlife and you're building condos It doesn't work quite that well, but nothing right in a sense nothing and nothing should stop them, right? So, you know species have gone out of existence Since the beginning of time You know human beings are part of nature part of what we do part of our activities Probably forces some species to go out of existence So what right? So they so if you value a particular species if you value a particular forest if you value a particular place They get your friends together and buy it up and and and don't allow any development of it But by what way do you tell me I own this property and you're not willing to buy it from me I own it now What I can I cannot do with it right and and which animals and who gets to decide these are all very You know ways in which we try to control individual people's lives So I say, you know, you love them. You love spotted owls buy a forest and are again and and help protect spotted owls But don't interfere in how I use my property The thing is is that sounds nice in theory, uh, you know, just uh, if you really care about this buy it up But in practice it almost never works that way because the amount of money that environmental groups or animal rights groups have Is Jokeable to the amount of money that development groups have so in reality You know, we're not going to give that much land because we don't have a fraction of the money they have I'm not not exactly right environmentalist group if you look at the environmentalist group, they have Billions and billions of dollars. I mean they have a lot of money and more than that if they didn't spend it on Trying to control me and trying to control and lobbying congress and trying to pass laws and trying to control everything They probably have even more if they targeted This if there was an appeal look we want to buy x piece of land because there's a Some animal that you know help us I think they'd have a lot more money But look, I don't think the standard is the environment the standard is human life And the fact that the environmentalist groups maybe can't raise as much money as development Can if that's true is is a sign that we value as human beings develop more than we do The environmentalist policies. So we definitely do. Yeah, so so good. So so let's develop right So why if you are a minority view that think that we should protect x y z Why should you impose your will on the majority view that doesn't want to protect x y z but wants to live a better life? so You know again, the nice thing about a marketplace the nice thing about capitalism is that You know, we get to see what people's real preferences are if you really care about something get to put your money into that thing And if you don't care about it, you don't get to put money into it And so the environmentalist groups will put will buy as much land as they can Given how valuable that is to the people involved instead. They play politics Um, and that's exactly what I think is damaging. It's damaging when you start using a gun in society when you start imposing your Values on other people and then if they do it and business does it and other people do it and now we get constant warfare in the political realm Of me trying to impose myself on you and you trying to impose myself on me. No, let's just make this voluntary Environmentalist groups buy whatever land they want. I develop whatever land I want and You know, let the outcome be what it is Yeah, so, um, I think every group is guilty of playing politics. Yeah, I think every group is guilty of playing politics It's not just that's why that's why we should get rid of politics In our economic life so that they don't play politics with our lives Be a politics. I want politics to be there just to protect me and nothing else Right. So the reason why and I'm not a big fan of imposing my will on other people But you know in some cases we realize that's important for example preventing murder and theft So as a society we realize that sometimes it is important for us to impose our will like for example child You know predators don't think there's anything wrong with we're doing but we decided we've decided no We're not going to allow old men to beg little kids. So right so we do impose our will You know and that's you know standard certain things But I think I do think that environment and protection of land has to be one of them Because human beings are naturally very selfish and short-sighted and it's going to be really sad when our grandchildren Don't have any water or any, you know nature that they can go in because we our generation was selfish and destroyed at all So I think there are some reasons where we have to we have to protect certain things I would argue that just like we protect little kids from pedophiles We have to protect the environment and you know animals from you know, we're going to be dead From destroying us simply because if we want to look at purely from a Utilitarian perspective is because it's going to affect our grandkids ability to you know Brief clean air and live like for example in china the average lifespan certain cities is like 35 years because they destroyed the air By being hyper capitalists like that's a big issue in china is they're super hyper capitalists And they just don't care about each other at all like they just completely You know just destroy shit for the sake of short-term profit. So it'll be my counter argument to that So so first There's a big difference between preventing pedophiles from abusing kids and protecting the environment And and the difference is force It is Completely appropriate to stop people from using coercion using force from from abusing other people physically and and That's the whole role of government government is An institution of force. It's a monopoly over the use of force and we wanted to use that force In stopping people from hooting one another physically hooting one another. So That's the one area in which government has The authority to act and that is to prevent crimes to prevent physical crimes to prevent thieves violating people's property rights and violating people's person violating, you know, Obviously child molesting murder And and assault and things like that. Yeah, I'm just Government is force right government is a gun that so it's a gun should only be used in self-defense. No other purpose John just got a comment on that issue. We don't only use it to prevent things of all force for example intellectual property theft There's no i'm not using any force when I steal your intellectual property Uh, you know, but you might say fard fard is fard is a form of force Stealing intellectual property is is a form of force It is taking something that belongs to me without me knowing You haven't pulled the gun explicitly because let's say you sneak into my house and take my stuff That counts as force the same thing as intellectual property the same thing as as fraud What if I just dump my waste on your lawn with that before us? Yes, absolutely because you're violating my property rights. Absolutely and you're using you're doing something physical to violate my property rights so stealing my stuff Destroying my stuff, which is dumping your your waste in my backyard is What if I dump my waste in the ocean no one really owns the ocean? My solution of that is is is let's get people owning the ocean I think it'll be cleaner if people owned it So I would like to apply the principles of property right how to do that is tricky maybe But to apply the principles of property right to rivers and lakes And and the ocean at least the shoreline of ocean so that you can't just dump your stuff in somebody else's property You know so so that's a way of protecting it, but let me let me Let me get to this idea people are short-sighted. First of all, I don't think people are short-sighted I think it's it's amazing how long-sighted human beings are I mean look at where we are today over the last 250 years life expectancy is well over doubled Over the last 250 years our wealth has gone up by really in terms of standard living by thousands of times Wealth has gone up None of that could have happened without people thinking long term people think long every long term every day and now Now should I think long term in terms of my grandkids? I think that would be bizarre I don't know what my grandkids will value. I don't know what my grandkids will want I don't know what will be available on a planet that my grandkids live in for example By every measure the number of people in the world when my grandkids adult is going to be actually smaller Than it is today. The the human population is going to peak at around 9 billion and start shrinking after that so Actually, what research is that based on because I've looked at that and it's it's it's it is going to slow down It's rate of growth, but it's only going to keep growing no In the west in the west we're already shrinking every every single western country with the exception of israel Every developed country with exception is visual Total world population like that total population assuming so china is going to shrink dramatically Very very soon. It's it's going to start declining India is going to is still growing for a while and then start shrinking. This is the fact Every population that reads that reaches a middle class income Starts plateauing or shrinking so there's no country in the world that has a Significant middle class that is actually growing in population except israel is also That relies on the assumption that third world countries will get to that point which they might not Well, they they the the reason they might not is because we impose Suddenly environmental regulations on them that prohibit them from growing But but absolutely they will there's absolutely no reason a third world country can't reach The scale and and the growth and the wealth that the rest of the world has Let me say something about china because I mean you just I think you're strong on china Let's expect into china. It's not 35. It was 35 in third cities No, in the inside the cities. It's not 35 at all. It's well into the 70s I mean i'm not exaggerating. It's like 45, but it's not 45. It's in the 70s Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what the source says, but it's um China is a aging population and and part of the Part of the problems china has is they're going to have to support a lot of old people in the cities Pollution is bad in the cities, but that's because they haven't reached their level of wealth where they can clean it up One of the things you have to do in order to get rich is pollute that's just a fact of of development The way in which you develop is you use cheap forms of energy in order to develop and those tend to be polluting Then you get rich enough you clean them up The most polluting period in in in western history was the late 19th century When we spewed coal into the air and yet that was a period in which life expectancy almost doubled So uh pollution is not what's holding back life expectancy It's it's behaviors like in the united states like obesity and taking opioids, which is I agree. I agree with you on that I mean there's there can be multiple factors. Okay. I found I found the source. Okay, so I heavily exaggerated It's uh from cnn air pollution cuts life expectancy by four point five point five years in china So definitely not as much To well five and a half years than the baseline in other cities. I guess we don't know what But first of all north in china I'm I'm typically skeptical of headlines like that You have to dig into the data and you discover that, you know, it's a cnn headline So it's it's going to be it's going to try to catch your attention But even if that were true, uh, what was life expectancy in that part of china before industrialization? And I would bet you that if you look at the net increase in The net change in life expectancy from pre industrialization to industrialization with pollution life expectancy's increased dramatically over that period And yes, it could be higher when they clean it up and they will clean it up when they get rich enough to clean it up You know clean air is a luxury of the rich and when countries developing countries get rich they clean the air so, um, uh, you know, it's just a matter of time before chinese cities Have clean air if they allow themselves to become rich. I'm not sure they will because I think china has lots of other problems That they might not allow them to get as rich as they can but look In every in every realm, uh, the environment gets cleaner and cleaner as we become richer and richer Because we're long-term thinkers and we live in the environment and even Those capitalists who supposedly don't think long term. They live in the environment. They don't want to live in a in a shitty environment But it's it's so Correct me if i'm wrong, but it sounds like you believe the free market capitalism basically takes care of pretty much every problem Is that correct or no except except force except, uh, except, uh, you know, as you said Abusing children and stealing and you need a set of laws to protect us from the use of force other than that The market takes care of everything. Okay. How about monopolies? There are no monopolies in a free market. They never have been and they never will be take take the example of Standard oil right which is always used as an example of monopoly Because the united states was relatively a free market at the time and standard oil in 1870s at 93 of all the oil refining capacity in the u.s Which is qualifies i guess as a monopoly and yet prices went down every year and quality went up every year the exact opposite behavior of what you'd expect from a monopoly because every businessman who's super successful knows that if they slack off If they abuse the power that they have there will be competition competition is just around the corner They will take them over indeed standard oil in 1870s was producing kerosene Which was used for lighting the competition around the corner was thomas eddison who invented the light bulb and and and knocked them out By the time they were broken up because of antitrust laws Standard oil only have 23 percent of the refining capacity in the u.s Why because of competitors the markets take care of companies that are too big Okay, so yeah, so I gotta Okay, so well on that. Well, how will you call facebook? Facebook is something that people love to use and they they use it extensively What's your competition to what's your what's your alternative to facebook if you want to use uh, if you want to use that They're facebook google youtube those are all about i can use i can use twitter i can use YouTube i can use google i can use all these are each competing with one another. They're all in generally the same space You know the fact that a lot of people choose to use facebook Maybe is a result of the fact that they like facebook and if facebook serves they needs I don't understand it i don't like facebook but but obviously billions of people do So the fact that a company is big and successful is not a sign that it's a monopoly and indeed Who is it abusing here? It's the price that it's charging its customers is zero the exact opposite of how A monopoly is supposed to behave There are there are huge issues with these platforms because they don't have competition Like what's what is the competition to youtube like we're on youtube right now and you know We can't say too much bad things. So they don't kick us off But what is the competition to you know, I'm happy to say bad things about youtube Um, the competition for youtube is is other services that are similar. They want to successful like vimeo Uh, but they're not but they're not even close. That's the issue. What's that? But they're they're not even close. That's the issue Because youtube provides a dramatically superior service and therefore has has done a better job, but You know, they what is the solution? Let's what is the solution to to youtube's dominance? I don't think I don't know if I have a good solution But the issue is with all these tech companies like youtube facebook is they have complete control When did youtube became when did youtube get its so so called complete control? By the way, twitter is offering a video service lots of people are offering you video services They're not as good as youtube Why they're not as good as youtube because we all of us including you and me Choose to use youtube. That is we have no choice. Yeah, and if we're not youtube, no one knows who we are You know, uh, what's his name? Uh, trump is launching a service with with with video supposedly Yeah, we'll see how you know all these other things have services But the reason we're not moving the reason not enough of us are willing to move a it's because youtube does a pretty good job for us and b Uh, because we don't want to move if enough of us decided to move we would move But the thing is it's not happening. They have complete dominance. That's why they're a lot of Dominance because they provide you with the service that you want so that so my point is Yeah, they're a dominant company, but a monopoly is somebody who supposedly extracts so-called monopolistic grants You're getting youtube for free almost everybody gets youtube for free What what ends are they extracting? What is the cost there? There's there's big issues a lot of these platforms Let's take instagram for example. I have my account deactivated due to uh due to someone reporting me for uh, Not being whatever not being myself. Clearly. I am alice volantra I I spend three months going through their customer service No person you can call no person you can email. There's no email I just no one you can talk to Constantly over and over spend three months the only way I was able to get my count back Is because I was able to meet someone who works at facebook and have them submit internally That's the only way you can get your count back Then you know what happens two weeks later I get my account taken down for the same exact thing that they already told me that i'm not And then I have to go through the whole process again Again, the only way I can get my count bag is because I work a lot of for example people Uh, you know, uh controversial people they get their counts They get shadow band they get accounts taken down and there's nothing they can do because that tech company Has decided that hey, we don't want you on a platform and we're gonna censor you And there's nothing you can do as a content creator about that I get it and so be it right that's the place you pay for living in in a world in which you get this amazing service You get an amazing platform and you get it for free and you get to use it And yeah, they suck at certain things and I agree they suck. I you know Facebook I have problems with facebook all the time they suck but On the other hand imagine a world with no facebook That is your the value added is obviously enormous and they suck at certain things Let's hope they improve and what would be really amazing is if somebody competed them away and did a better job at it Facebook didn't exist 15 years ago youtube wasn't dominant 10 years ago All these platforms are brand new platforms. They they drove out of business the previous platforms and 10 15 years You know, I don't know if they'll exist. I don't know if they'll be the dominant platforms in the world Maybe maybe not but the crux of the issue is that no other company has a fighting chance because they have such dominance unbelievably not true, you know For years and years and years everybody thought microsoft Was it and then came apple and google that are as big and for a while were bigger than uh than microsoft They have been yeah, who used to dominate the online space used to dominate search used to dominate news used to dominate all these things along cake google bump yahoo off In every space ibm used to dominate computers And the there was an antitrust lawsuit filed against them and then came apple and a bunch of other Clones and and took away their business. So this so the more free market we have The more competition there is The more these platforms will not survive unless they provide us a great service And and if they do we don't care and if they if they don't then competition will arise competition always arises You know, uh, what was this? What is this platform? I get stuff on them all the time. They talk what? No, there's this new the platform where people just talk clubhouse right clubhouse came out of no way That's not huge yet a sub stack sub stack has changed the way in which people blog completely It's completely changed that environment. It's it's it's potentially even go changing the way we consume news and and challenging The media i mean the next innovation the next company the next thing That people in silicon valley constantly funding Somebody trying to knock facebook off the top of the hill constantly. They're facing competition Mostly they do a good job So they keep they keep themselves on tops for us, but they do a good job for the majority of people who consume them Otherwise, you know pretty much all examples you gave there is just an example of One company taking dominance over another company the problem the problem with youtube the problem with facebook The problem with instagram is that there is no competent We don't if you're not happy as a content creator as a user with facebook There's nowhere else you can go and they know that that's why they don't have to offer you Basic decency or basic customer service because they know where you're gonna go Like if you don't like instagram where you're gonna go you have nowhere to go It's not like for example, verizon or atn t they're fighting for your service and in those situations Yes, I do agree capitalism does take care of a lot of the issues because verizon knows that if they let their customer service drop You're gonna go to atn t. What's to stop you so they're gonna? It's unbelievable to me right 15 years ago. You couldn't make a living right doing what you do There was just no no ability to do what you do and make a living So these platforms because they're so dominant because they have reached to billions of people have provided you with the means By which to make a living that was unthinkable probably even 10 years ago, right? There was just there was just no way to do it And suddenly these platforms have created a means by which we can make a living doing what we do and instead of being I mean, I'm incredibly grateful to youtube and facebook and twitter in spite of my Quarms about how they do it in spite of my complaints and i i also appreciate the incredible nature of Technology and markets that have given us these platforms that allow me and you to make a living And yes, sometimes we have to spend three months on fixing something But it's something that without these platforms never would have existed and we wouldn't be in this profession to begin with Yaron you could be grateful and see something as an issue I see it to the issue I see the customer service as an issue and I think if they don't fix it a competitor will arise and we'll take them out I I found it interesting that just yesterday I think alone musk it was announced that alone musk has taken a 10 stake a 9 point 70 stake in twitter Right, so here's somebody saying okay instead of buying instead of creating a competitive twitter I maybe she can buy twitter and fix it from the inside Capitalism has a variety of different ways to fix real problems that exist out there When we allow it to function and look we don't have pure free markets today For example, elon musk couldn't buy 50 of twitter and just walk into it. We never did seo He could have in the past he could have He can't just today can't because of disclosure laws and acc and a million other regulations He can't just take over the company and kick out the ceo. He has to Do it slowly and do it and and give them enough time to defend themselves But he was announced. He's joining the board today. So maybe twitter will change from the inside We'll see this is the beauty of capitalism how to predict how change will come But if they're not doing the job that we want them to do They will get replaced. Yeah, I guess where you and I differ is I have serious doubts about whether capitalism can take care of Every single one of these problems, especially where their situation arises where what I perceive to be a monopoly And I think you'd be hard pressed to argue that facebook and these tech companies are monopoly because again, there's no Yeah, there are what does monopoly mean? What does monopoly mean? They completely dominate the vast majority of that space And and does it matter whether anybody is Suffering as a consequence if there's a cost to it or not It does matter and there is a cost. I mean, I'm not saying these companies There's no cost to the billions of people to use it. There's a cost to us just creators once in a while In a certain in there's a lot of free speech issues yarn. There's a lot of issues that these companies People don't they don't like I agree that there are issues. I'm not If the issues are so big that they upset hundreds of millions of people then another platform would arise Obviously, most people don't care and maybe that's the real issue not the issue with facebook It's the fact that most people don't care about the these issues about speech and others Well, that's that's an issue in of itself But I think you know the founding fathers of america kind of acknowledged this They said we don't want the government run by the ignorance of the masses because they realized the average person was pretty dumb and uninformed Absolutely So the problem with with with uh was saying that facebook is a solution is a monopoly Is what is the solution the solution has to be the government coming in and breaking it up Well, then you're then you're putting power into the hands of the truly ignorant But yarn you can separate the problem from the solution. We can agree on the problem and disagree on the solution Yeah, I I agree. There's a problem. I agree their problems out there And I believe strongly that the only way to solve that problem is through competition And the only way to get competition is to get the government out of the way to allow more companies more capital creation And and more ability of people to start new companies and and compete with these guys Any favors the government gives any of these guys take them away I agree with you on that. I I agree with you on that But the problem is is that when you have a company that's so dominant They are going to influence politics that almost always happens Well, that's why you have to make politicians impotent if you make politicians impotent In terms of economic policy then then uh companies don't have any incentive to How do you do that politics? You have a separation of state from economics in the constitution. The state is not allowed to intervene in the economy So basically like No taxes, uh, so no, you know, maybe maybe maybe a simple flat You know tax no exemptions. No loopholes. No anything So just just something really simple that everybody pays the same amount on so Eliminate every single incentive possible for businesses to lobby government By taking away the power of government over companies But then you have to completely strip the government down to nothing. Yeah, I'm good with that police military and a judiciary That would be fantastic All of our lives would be dramatically improved and would be a lot richer than we are today And to start competitors to facebook. We'd all have enough money to do that I have my doubts about that I mean in order for this is the kind of the uh catch 22 issue that you have Is in order to protect some of these rights that you know are important to me and you You do the government needs to have a little bit of teeth now Look, I'm not a proponent. I need some military police and a judiciary that but you could shrink the government today by over 80 percent And and and have those as robust as they are today. No, I agree you can Is you know in the 19th century the government had a pretty good military pretty good police Judiciary and it only spend it spent less than 5 percent of gdp total state Local and federal today. It spends over 40 percent. So you can go 40 percent of 5 percent. That's a big That's a lot of putting a lot of money back in our pockets back in the private economy To to use in productive endeavors and make the stand of living dramatically higher Yeah, so I just to be clear. I'm not a proponent of big government. I do agree with you the government can be stripped down I don't think by 80 percent, but by a decent amount But then what do you do about okay? What do you do about, you know, uh, the money? Basically, basically like the issue with capitalism that you get quite often is that uh, well, actually It's more of an issue of technology is a lot of these jobs are going to be automated away So you have basically the average, you know a huge discrepancy between the guys at the top 1 1% and basically everyone else, uh, you know like between Jeff Bezos an average person And without the government coming in and to some extent redistributing those economics through various programs like for example, you know Andrew Yang has the $1,000 grant like how do you like how does that work with the average person? Doesn't even have a job because it's been automated away without government time in history no time in history you can't find one example in which Uh, total jobs decreased Under a semi free economy that is automation always creates more jobs than it Eliminates always it's always been the case. I mean the same argument was made when the weaving machines were brought in What are the weavers going to do every single time? I remember the 1980s computers are going to take all our jobs away But every single time automation creates more jobs We've got 8 billion people on planet earth today actually working In jobs and most of those jobs didn't exist 50 years ago. Certainly didn't exist 200 years ago So automation is a net increase in jobs It's a net increase in quality of life and that increases the standard of living that increase in wages again at every single turning point Automation has increased the standard of living and wages of the average person There's never been a time where the average person's income has gone down because of automation never Yeah, I mean the argument I would make is we've never had a period in time like our time Like like for example, okay every time they say that they always say that right and it's exactly our time right I mean the fact is that that wages are going up standard of living going up and life becomes easier and easier and longer and longer Because of the technologies were developed because these guys become billionaires By making our lives easier and by making it easier us for live good lives So quality and standard of living are going up dramatically because these guys make billions I don't care how much money Jeff Bezos makes on the country the more he makes The more he's made my life better in one way or another There's no way to make money in a free market without making the lives of other people better Yeah, I agree with you on that like just to be clear. I'm not anti-capitalistic But I think that you are more pure capitalism where I'm more proponent of mixed capitalism Okay, let's just let's just take a historical example like let's just look at other countries Can you like find one example of a country that has pure capitalism that is doing better because all the countries I know that anyone wants to live in like europe scandinavia america canada They're all countries that have mixed systems where there's capitalism But there's also socialism coming in and protecting people's rights Absolutely and having healthcare and whatnot. So is there any examples of countries that have pure capitalism? No, I mean the closest we've ever come was the 19th century Second after 19th century in the united states Notice that during that period millions and millions and millions of millions of people came from all over the world here Even though there was no safety net no nothing No benefits tiny little government and and as pure of capitalism as we've ever gotten in history Hong Kong is another example before the chinese took it over recently Hong Kong was an island where almost no safety net no health insurance No free health care no government benefits no controls just As close to capitalism as we've come again And millions of people came it used to be a fishing village And it's seven and a half million people there. So In every example where we experiment with it, it's been an enormous success and then we dump it anyway Yes, europe and the united states and canada all mixed economies And I think that is to our detriment You know, let me give you a simple example if you um If the economy a mixed economy grows significantly slower than a pure capitalist economy If I economy grows at 2 percent a year for the next 40 years Then your wages will I don't know more than double right if if if they grow with the growth of the economy And this is let's assume real terms. So inflation adjusted Um, but if the economy goes at 5 percent a year for the next 40 years, then your wages will 8x The difference between doubling and 8x is huge Capitalism has the potential to eradicate any form of poverty to make every poor that assumes trickle down economics But trickle down economics always works. It always works. It's not trickle down. It's a flood down It's like a waterfall. Uh, the fact is that the greatest beneficiaries of capitalism are the poor They've always happened. Okay, let's let's let's take the late Late 19th century that you were described or whatever early ages century for the average person of life was total shit People are working in factories 60 hours 60 hours a day man. There was a need for that So they're working on the farm. So 50 years before that they were working on the farm dying at the age of 35 The kids uh, half of them were dying before the age of 10 Most of their women died a childbirth and they work from sunrise. I'm not denying that Sunrise to sunset by the end of the 19th century. They were working in factories not 16 hour days But shorter than that they were making a lot more money than they did on the farm They now had running water and electricity Um, and the kids were alive They were so much alive that they were now sending them to school for the first time in all of human history So the 19th century the late 19th century is the greatest error for the development for the advancement of poor people ever in all of human history it is you know, so Yeah, I'll take I'll take The economic growth of the late 19th century over any other period in all of human history anytime Now the the labor conditions you can't go from poor farmers have nothing To where we are today working eight hour days Maybe and having the kind of lifestyle that we have without a period in which we had to work hard in the factories That's just the evolution. That's why every developing country goes through the same process But the fact is that that period saw the highest increases among the poor of standard of living that they've ever seen in all of history yarn I'm not denying that technological innovation improves quality of life But the only reason we were able to go to what we have now eight hours days Is because the government came in and said hey, we're not we're going to not allow you to work people 16 hours a day We're not going to allow child labor. We're not going to allow you to absolutely not true statistically not true Now, I know Wikipedia will say something different, but it's just not true Is that if you actually go in and and look at the laws the laws always passed after the phenomenon is already in place that is uh Child labor was already in dramatic decline before any law was passed to get rid of child labor The work hours were already shrinking Well before the government or unions stepped in to start shrinking the working the working hour five day weeks were already being imposed in some places by By factory owners before again unions and government Collaborated in order to force everybody to do the same thing. So no Capitalism it was produced the short work day. Capitalism is what produced Children in schools and not working at factories. Nobody if you if you talk to any businessman Nobody wants to manage five-year-olds at the machines No parent wants to send their kids to the factory The reason they said they kids the factory in the late 19th century because if they didn't send them to the factory They would starve But when the parents made enough money to be able to feed their own kids they sent them to school So you're saying that without child labor laws the capitalism would have just naturally removed kids from the workforce Absolutely, and you see it in every single country. There's a great book by an economist by the name ben powell About sweatshops and he shows that in every single country developing country You see the same phenomena you see as productivity and wages go up Child labor goes down when product when when child labor reaches a certain percentage Of the workforce very low percentage government steps in and passes a law against it But it declines because parents are making more money and sending and taking the kids out of the factory and sending to school In every single country, it's the same thing and it's it's well documented empirically But then again every single advanced country on the planet has laws against child labor Yes, because because it's popular laws if i'm in the government and i want to get votes Then once i'm not once child labor is no longer a real problem I passed child labor laws and everybody thinks i'm a hero You can you can go and you can see it in indonesia and in malaysia and you can see the same thing pattern happening child child Labor goes down Then the law is passed not the other way around Yeah, i guess where you and i differ is uh, i i'm not as confident nearly as confident as you are they Pure capitalism will take care of all these problems But that's you seem to be pretty confident in the fact that pure capitalism of lift alone can basically solve every problem, right? Yes, i think i think if the government is limited exception of murder Yeah, i mean that's where the government if the government is limited to to protecting us from physical force and and fraud then The rest capitalism not only will solve all the problems But it will provide us with a kind of standard living in quality of life that i think most of us cannot even imagine Yeah, i have my serious doubts about that, but i guess it's kind of hard to say since it's never really been done I mean the The success is is just unbelievable. It's just hard to it's hard to grasp how good it made human life relative to the alternative You can see that over and over and over again, but what are modern examples of it being done? Well, yeah, hong kong was a modern example It's i don't know if you ever went to hong kong, but it's a pretty unbelievable I've heard i've heard good things about hong kong, but there was no no welfare. No, no, uh, no, uh, Very little regulation, but there was universal health care in hong kong No, there wasn't universal health. I'll believe so. I might be thinking of taiwan, but one of those Yeah, thank you taiwan and and in the system and you know, they might be today But there certainly wasn't 20 30 years ago when hong kong was was on what is the period of hong kong that you have in mind that you're Distributing oh it's world war two Okay, so you're talking about like what 1950s 1960s It started in it's not enough. Yeah, it started right after world war two. So when when did it end? Like when did I think it ended, you know two years ago the real growth now specific laws have changed over time. So the government has gotten involved more but um Yeah, so I mean they definitely right now have a universal health care type of system similar to aglin Basically, it's their health care system which again, I'm not even the biggest fan of I'm just saying, but okay, look just Okay, let's I guess the whole point We kind of went on the massive side tangent, but I think it was interesting. Uh, do you have another 15 minutes? Or you got about sure sure we can do 15. Okay. So let me let me start on this asking you What is your position on casual sex? Um, I think it's fine. Um, I think it's it can be fun Uh, I I think uh, I don't think it can be the I don't think it's the most fulfilling sex I don't think it's the most interesting sex. I don't think it's the most rewarding sex And I don't think it is a basis for kind of living, uh over the long run Okay, I mean I wouldn't even necessarily disagree with that. Uh, honestly I don't know if we're gonna disagree as much the only thing I okay I took this you had a podcast I was like the one we were discussing the me too thing Yeah, and you were discussing women using sex as a way of advancing their career or making money And you were saying in like the 21st century that we should be above that basically is that correct or? Yeah, I think so Okay, uh, I would argue that we are definitely not above that I would say it's probably more rampant now than it's ever been You know with only fans of whatnot and you have this phenomenon of women quitting their day jobs to do only fans And I can't even necessarily fault them Because they can because they can like a chick who's working, you know 40 hours a week has to go to the office She makes 4 000 she quits her job works from home shows her feet on only fans and she makes 40 000 So I would say that it's getting worse instead of getting better So so what I was talking about there is is women who are career women who are You know in business and tech and I don't know in the movies or whatever and in the past There was the expectation they would sleep their way to the top And hopefully that's gone away. That is that they're valued for their ability. They value for their mind They value it for the ability to manage and things like that now are there more opportunities To use sex in order to make a living. Yes. So only fans as an example of that But I think that is that is a consequence of the Shallowness and the and the fact that we live in a society That has degraded sex and has degraded life. Generally. I think people are living suboptimal lives broadly so that too many men need to get you know to get gratification online rather than gratification in person and therefore Are using platforms like only only fans and paying for it hopefully If we were more enlightened and and and took our lives more seriously I think that there would be few opportunities not more opportunities for women to use their bodies purely their bodies in order to make a living I would just say that's a humongous if But I think I think we live in a very I think we're very rich materially and very poor spiritually and I'm an atheist so when I say spiritually, I mean A function of consciousness a function of the kind of the what the kind of life we can live that is outside of the material realm I think we're very poor spiritually. I think our education about sex about art about aesthetic experience About what is possible in human life? It is pretty lame and pretty weak and I think if we had a more better educated more grown up More for for men more manly population then You know, they they would be they would be consuming less of This gratuitous nonsense online. Sure. I agree with that. But would you agree that the issue is just getting worse? Yeah, I think it is getting worse. I think spiritually we're in decline. I think culturally We're in decline. I think by the way a mixed economy. I don't think those are unrelated I think mixed economy encourages cultural decline, but that's a whole other topic. So So I think I think we are I think We have less and less of an appreciation for the kind of values that make a good life And again, this is where iron man comes in. I think iron man provides you with a personal philosophy to help you to help you Create a fantastic life Focused on real values and not focused on shallow degrading activities Yeah, I think I think then we don't even necessarily disagree with anything when it comes to To sex. I think we're pretty much in agreement there. I think the only thing we disagree about is something completely unrelated Which is there are all how capitalism like how successful capitalism is when it left alone I think we kind of had a good discussion on that Yeah, man. I mean, I think this was a good discussion. Is there anything you have any closing thoughts or anything you want to mention? No, I mean I I think we agree on sex. I mean, I think I think the ultimate in sex is when you love somebody and and You can have a an extended relationship with them Because you learn more about what what is better for them and for you sexually and You also have the spiritual elements on top of the physical elements And I think that is that is the ultimate when it comes to sex and that's what we You know, we're looking for I think when you're young. That's what you're looking for Hopefully is that kind of relationship and a world in which we have more of those kind of relationships is a better world So aside from an Rand, what are some other like authors on your reading list? Like what are some other books you would recommend? Well, I mean from an economics perspective I think the greatest economist who ever lived is a guy named Ludwig von Mises And generally what I will call the Austrian School of Economics, which is a very pro-capitalist free market school of economics You know, I also liked Milton Friedman and you know, the kind of chicago Economist also free market economist Other books I you know, I like I like some of the work of Steven Pinker I disagree with him on a lot of stuff but I think It's kind of a optimistic view of of of what we're heading is emphasis on reason and rationality Again, we disagree on certain aspects of that but generally I think I think that is Is a positive view. I'm currently reading The beginning of infinity by David Deutsch There's a ton I disagree in this book with but there's also a lot of really interesting aspects to it and particularly His optimism about technology about the future about man's ability to conquer nature Which I think is what life is partially about an ability to thrive as human beings that is a positive view of humanity Moving into the future. Sometimes you need kind of an optimistic jolt. It's very easy to become cynical in this world Yeah, well, that's an issue in of itself. All right. So where can guys go to support you and find your find your content? I mean youtube just put my name on a youtube and you'll find my content. I'm a twitter. I'm on facebook, unfortunately, and Uh, you can also go to my website. You're on book show calm Uh, and of course if you want to find out about iron rand and I hope some of you guys will Read alishwag read the fountain ed and you can go to iron rand dot org a y and r a n d dot o r g Cool. Cool. Yeah, I'll have to check out your debate with uh ben Shapiro or I guess at least that was more discussion So I'll have to try it was his show He kind of interviewed me. So I think you'll enjoy it. Yeah, cool. I'll check it out. All right, awesome Thank you. Y'all and I appreciate it. This is fun. Take care guys. Bye