 I want to start here by asking you a few questions, we're going to try to do this in a sort of a dialogue kind of way. I'm a huge fan about The Struct. I've done many, many, many, many presentations about the book. I'm as much a fan also of The Fountainhead, as much a fan of Anthem, as much a fan of many of the other novels. And as a matter of fact, I've actually done a little bit of reading on something called Objectivism, which is the philosophy that Inran tried to sort of name her, her philosophy of Objectivism. Could you tell us a little bit about, first of all, why the name of Objectivism? Secondly, maybe a few words for those of us that aren't familiar with certain basics. Maybe you can do a... Yeah, so let me start with the basics and then we'll get to the name, because I think the name will make more sense once we understand the basics. So, in Inran's philosophy, reality is what it is. Now, that sounds kind of obvious, but many philosophers in the history of philosophy says, now, our consciousness creates reality, or reality is imposed on us by an external consciousness, by God or something, and they can make a change at any time. A is A, a very Aristotelian term from Aristotle. For Iron Man, reality is what it is. There's a law of identity, there's a law of causality that's immutable. It's independent of our consciousness. But we have a tool to understand reality, and this is our reason, our faculty of reason. Our faculty, we can observe reality, we observe reality as it is, and we can understand it, we can integrate it, and as a consequence, we can reshape it. This table didn't exist before some human being took elements of reality and created a table. So, reality isn't what... So, the way you learn truth about the world is not through your emotion, it's not through mystical revelation, it's through the use of your reason. And really, this is where the term objectiveism comes from. Subjectiveism relates to the fact that reality is objective, it's independent of our consciousness, and we know about the world by using reason to identify this reality. Well, that's what's objective about it. Objective relates the facts to actual reality and what's out there. Now, so that's kind of the philosophical, epistemological, metaphysical basis. I know those are big words for business students. I'm a business guy, so I'm not a philosopher. But what does this mean? It means that if reason is how we know reality, if reason is a tool by which we survive as human beings, who reasons? Who thinks? Who uses their mind? Only the individual does. There's no group consciousness, there's no group reason, there's no group think, in spite of some business theories that try to suggest there is. We each have to think as individuals. So, as a consequence of that, our survival, our pursuit of values is dependent on our own use of reason. So, for when the whole moral focus is on the individual, it's on what's good for the individual, and that's at least for self-interest. She rejects the idea that the purpose of life is to serve other people, it's to sacrifice, it's to live for the group, for the collective, or for your neighbor. But she also rejects the idea that other people should serve you, that they should sacrifice for you. No, we should each be independent people, living our lives for the purpose of our own happiness, our own fulfillment, and ultimately our own flourishing. And here she follows Aristotle's kind of, Aristotle's, again, ethical code where the whole purpose of morality is to achieve eudaumonia, which in Greek means something like happiness of flourishing. Your own, not the groups, not other people's, but yours. And then the whole problem of morality is, how do you live a good life? Morality should teach you how to live a good life, should give you the principles, the ideas of how to live a good life. Now, what political system is appropriate for an individual who must use his reason to live a good life? Well, a political system that leaves the individual free to do so, because we need to be able to use our reason and follow our values. We might be wrong, then we learn from our mistakes, we might be right, but then nobody else can tell us, oh no, that's not a good value, don't pursue that. They can't force us. So political system free of coercion, which is capitalism, so she rejects any form of coercion, both on the left or on the right, and she believes in a system of government that separates state from ideas, the state has no ideas, it doesn't indoctrinate ideas, the state has no economics, it doesn't have an economic policy, it doesn't promote economics, it doesn't repress economics, it's a separation between the state and economics, the state doesn't educate, the state doesn't do science, the state does one thing and one thing only, and that is protect us, protect our rights, protect our freedoms. From foreign invaders, you know a little bit about that, from crooks and criminals, and has it been disheveled to obitrate disputes other than that it stays out of our lives, leaves us alone? You just, that's the whole flow, you know. You just picked up a whole bunch of questions. I can imagine. I'm not sure if this mic is working, yes it is. There's going to be a whole bunch of reaction out of the audience because I saw a whole bunch of eyes go up, so what I'm going to ask you to do is formulate your questions, and I'm going to open up the floor to a lot of questions, but as the moderator I'm going to use my own self-interest for about 10 minutes, and I'm going to try to ask a couple of questions myself, if that's okay, alright? And the questions that I have actually don't relate to the separation of the state from economics yet. We'll get to that, good, and the role of the state, we'll of course get to that because one of the issues in Ukraine is you picked up one of them and that's judiciary. We'll get to that. Your statement was that Ingram is talking about, the rent is talking about let's, every person should be interested in living a life that is of self-interest. Neither, and we all remember, those of us that have read the book, we remember Galt's Oth, yes the word was Klerko. The Galt's Oth, which was, I will always, you know, never ask another to live for me, nor shall I live for another man. Approximately, just a little under two years ago, a couple of things happened. Three months, people froze, people stood, people protested. And I would challenge that probably most people in this room had some, if not physical, that emotional attachment to that event. And that was about being selfless for a cause. It was about being selfless for the cause of freedom, very much about self-sacrifice, and collective sacrifice. So how do we, I mean, in order to get to collect, in order to get to individual freedom, we have to get through self-sacrifice. That kind of sounds like original sin. I mean, that's the bad way of doing things, isn't it? Well, I mean, I reject the premise. That is, I don't agree that it's self-sacrifice, I don't agree that it's self-less. Those people out there, just like any fighters for freedom, including the founders of America, who are clearly individualists, are fighting for themselves, for their freedom, for the values they believe in. What's the point of having a philosophy of self-interest if the state is going to tell me what to do? If I'm going to be oppressed, then I don't need a morality of self-interest that I'm going to be oppressed. Society in which morality is meaningful, that morality has meaning, is a society that is free. I can express myself. So fighting for freedom is selfish. It's a requirement. I'd say, I don't believe in moral duties, but it's as close to moral duty as you get. It's a requirement of any self-respecting person with self-esteem is going to fight for their own freedom and for the freedom of the people they love and they care about, which includes a lot of people. I care about a lot of people because I think there are a lot of good people out there, but I care about them because they're a value to me, not in and of themselves. So I believe that most revolutions are for freedom. The funny fathers, and I mention the funny fathers only because I know their history and I don't know the creamy industry, they signed the Declaration of Independence. The odds were, if you were betting, you would bet clearly that odd makers in London would have predicted, well, London was biased, but let's make it in Las Vegas, that they would all die if Las Vegas existed. Well, of course it did, but, you know, that they would all die, right? And indeed at the bottom they said, we're signing, we acknowledge that we're risking our life, our honor, our life, and our property for this. But they also realized that our life lived as a slave. Life lived as a surf. It's not a life worth living, right? So fighting for freedom is something you're willing to risk your life for. Fighting for freedom for yourself and for the people you love is a selfish, self-interested act, and indeed it would be irresponsible if you had the choice between surfdom and freedom not to fight for freedom. I would say it would be immoral if you had that choice not to fight for freedom. Freedom is not optional. It's not like that. Freedom is nice, but I could do without it. No, freedom is necessary for human flourishing. So you have to fight for it. And yes, you risk your life for it. I'm not being a committing suicide for it, but risking your life for it, risking your life in a significant way like the founders did, absolutely. I view that as completely selfish. So what about those people around us that don't have the ability to fight for freedom? You promote it in another way that you can. Look, I mean, hey, Rand didn't have any kids. I got four. Do I have a responsibility to them? Sure, so I'm not telling you that it's your one responsibility to go out into the streets and risk your life when you have four kids at home and you need to feed them. You have to make that evaluation. If I have no obligation to live for another man or to live for anyone else, what about the obligation to feed my kids? You certainly have an obligation to feed your kids, and the reason you have an obligation to feed your kids is you chose to take on that obligation. Whether you like it today or not, whether you like your kids or not, right? I hope you do. But let's say you didn't, right? Got contracts. I'm sure you were in business, you signed contracts. Later, you regretted them. Tough. You signed the contract. Having kids, I shouldn't say this. This is a religious country. But one of the reasons I'm pro-abortion is because I believe that signing that contract of having a kid is a big, big commitment. You should have as many outs as possible out of that. So once you have the kid, you know, you're signing an obligation to feed them and clothe them and educate them for the next 16 years, and as you're more responsible, it's a contract. So that's just the way it is. That's why I urge you, before you have kids, think about it a lot. Make sure you want them. Make sure you're going to love them. Make sure you're with a partner that's probably going to be with you for a while because kids and divorced marriages are not that great. You know, they don't do that well or it's unpleasant for them. It's an important decision. And it's a contract you're signing for 18 years. In business, we rarely sign a contract for 18 years. Here's a contract for 18 years or 16 years or whatever. But you see, I don't view, and it's related, you didn't really ask this, but I don't view what we do for our children as sacrifice. Because if we really love our children, they are of very high value. So if I don't go out to movies and I stay with my kids, it's because I love my kids more than I love the movie. Right? And I've got this contract. So it's not a sacrifice. I view... I try never to sacrifice in life. So never to give something and not expect anything in return. I always expect something in return. And for my kids, I get a lot of pleasure in return. Now, they're adults now, so it's more iffy about the pleasure. But I'm very proud of my kids and my kids are fantastic. And they pursue their passions, which is what I taught them to do. Okay, so I promise I'm not going to monopolize this conversation. Okay, so we've done sort of general cosmology philosophy, that sort of thing. We went to Maidan. We've talked about kids. I want to go back to politics for a second and then I'm going to open up the Florida business. Okay, so you'll ask the business questions because I have a feeling that there might be a few business questions. Politics. The role of the states that you mentioned and that is a very limited role and that is to maintain order. In other words, police, army and to be some sort of right, well what do you do in a country like this one where people trust each other but don't trust the state? And one of the things that we're doing right now which I think is probably most people would agree is successful is bringing in a new kind of policing. But we still have a massive problem with creating that really just arbiter, which is called which is called the judiciary. In fact I think most of the people that would be reading out of the shrug would be seeing Wesley Mooch in a lot of judges and they'd be seeing a lot of James Taggart in a lot of judges as well. So how does that work? Well, I mean, transitions are messy and transitions are difficult. There's no secret formula. You don't have to have a free country without an independent judiciary. I mean to me the foundation of freedom is a rule of law, an objective law and for that you need an independent judiciary you need a judiciary that's not corrupt and it is not either from the side of let's say the business activity or corrupt from the side of politics politics has to be independent. Now if you have a lot of corrupt judges I would fire them all. Clean house and appoint new ones and make sure like in the United States a point for elect well I think that's open you can, you know in America for example some are appointed, some are elected there's no empirical evidence that I know of that the states that do appointment are better than the states that do election or other way around. So I'm not sure it's critical. As long as somebody is elected right that point needs to be elected and as long as many of the judges are more local than the federal that is it could be at the local level that they're appointed it shouldn't be all be elected by it shouldn't be all be appointed by the federal government. That is a recipe for disaster. You want to make it local but the important thing is to have, so one is to have a new set of judges but would you really need a loss because that's Steve and the law should be clear so that you could read them as a business student and understand them so you don't have to have a law to read to get them and they should be objective in the sense that they relate to reality and can be interpreted justly so that when there is a judge that's corrupt you can say look here's the law right it's not this hard it's not that hard you're clearly way off and somebody can kick him out or impeach him or unelect him right elect him out of office so to me if I were coming to a country like Ukraine and as an advisor the first thing I would try to fix is the judiciary because again but not just the judiciary also the laws and what laws primarily the laws that define property rights and contracts those are the most important laws for business most important laws for day to day activity you want to define what property is how it's exchanged owns it under what terms what they can do with it and so on you want to define them in clear terms and then you want to define clearly what a contract is and how it's arbitrated and so on and then you want to you want it as many judges as you could trust to get in there and partially maybe firing them all even though some of them are good addresses the judiciary of trust because at least it's a clean slate we don't yet not trust these guys because they're new and I would start with that if you ask me I would have a whole series of programs on how to fix the economy and get it going I think they're all simple I actually think economic growth is one of the simplest thing and most understood things that yet nobody nobody in the entire world except maybe a few countries in Asia practice it people have a great ability to ignore the obvious and the other thing I'll say is nobody actually nobody's an exaggeration almost nobody learns from experience we like to say we learn from experience but nobody actually does people repeat the same mistakes over and over again which is what Einstein called you know what Einstein called that doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results that was the definition insanity according to Einstein if that's true this world is nuts it's completely insane all our politicians are insane and most of us are because we just think of your own life how many times you made the same mistake over and over again and you refused to learn from the last time you did it now you're going back to my four kids see I stopped it too I figured that out what's the what are the basics and the obvious for the economic growth the basics the obvious is freedom every country every country that has allowed its population economic freedom respect for property rights respect for contract law and that people alone has thrived and my favorite example of this is Hong Kong I don't know if anybody's been to Hong Kong once in your life to Hong Kong so here's a place that 75 years ago was a little fishing village there was nothing there there's no natural resources, nothing and the British came there and they established the rule of law British legal system because they kept the 19th century version rather than the socialist version of the 20th century and that's it hands up, no safety no nothing, just we protect property rights, we protect contract law and millions of people came from all over Asia the poorest people in the world no skills, nothing today Hong Kong has more skyscrapers than New York City the GDP per capita which is a measure of wealth per capita is the same as the United States so it took Hong Kong 70 years to do what the United States took it 200 and something years to create and the United States has natural resources Hong Kong has not all you need to do, and this is what China discovered it started out in the south of China near Hong Kong and they said okay we're going to do an experiment we're going to let them give them freedom and give them pseudo property rights we're going to pretend they have property rights and let them pretend and sent Jian and Dongguan and Guangzhu skyscrapers, industry Dongguan makes 50% of all the shoes in the world, shoes you're wearing are probably made in Dongguan because of freedom and China today, over the last 30 years this is a statistic nobody talks about over the last 30 years 1 billion people have come out of poverty 1 billion people have come out of poverty in India, in China in South Korea in Taiwan, in Hong Kong in Thailand, any place that's adopted capitalism even a little bit but of course the more the better boom, wealth is created and the poor benefit proportionally more than anybody else because they go from starving like they did at a mall potentially middle class so it's basically freedom now how do you implement freedom you know, it means in a country like Ukraine privatization on mass, not a little bit not just the Ukrainians open the capital markets up let Germans in, let Americans in anybody except Russians in let them buy Ukrainian land let them buy Ukraine let them buy the country it's great, that poor in capital they'll bring in the management expertise they'll bring in the business, deregulate eliminate regulations in business lower them significantly and then a tax system that's flat simple you know, I think Estonia has a good model for flat tax unfortunately, even Russia has a model for a good flat tax it's got a corporate tax, an individual tax no VAT no complicated, messy stuff from business taxation and I bet you, you do those three things privatize lower regulations, flat tax and there's no reason the Ukrainian economy, given where it is today can't grow at 5, 6, 7% GDP growth now you're talking about becoming a developed country very, very quickly and a rich country and if you want to defend yourself against the Russians get rich it's the best defense let's open up the floor does anybody have some questions because we made some assumptions here that everybody is very much familiar with the philosophy of Ain Rand and libertarianism and objectivism and the first half an hour we got into a very I guess pretty complicated discussion if there's people that want us to step back a little bit that's fine, we can do that or if you've got questions that relate to your business or to your personal lives or to your political politics now's the time to ask thank you for your lecture thank you for coming, my name is Vera six years ago I read Atlas Shroud and it made me join the libertarian party of Russia and I was the first elected official from the party and later I moved to Kiev for obvious political reasons and three years ago there was a kind of civil uprising in Russia that unfortunately didn't end up the same way as here in Ukraine Atlas Shroud was a very popular book and now in Ukraine I see that many young people are involved in Ain Rand and objectivism and libertarianism so my question is do you connect the popularity of Ain Rand books with people's willingness to live in a free country and where in the world you think her books are more popular and another question sorry may I ask too the first one I'm getting gold so is there a connection between Ain Rand books and kind of movements to freedom I don't I hope so, I think so but there were movements towards freedom before Ain Rand let's put it in perspective the founding fathers existed without Ain Rand and there would be many movements over history that have wanted real freedom and economic freedom what Ain Rand gives you is a sense of moral certainty moral confidence and she gives the liberty movement, we'll call it in a general sense a philosophical foundation in my view for the first time in human history I mean John Locke tried that but he's weak in many of his philosophical assertions I think Ain Rand's solid gives it a solid for the first time in history the idea of freedom is solidly defended philosophically so I think that'll give freedom movements as we move into the future a greater passion greater stability and greater influence because I don't know how much history we want but if you think about the Enlightenment the European Enlightenment which really led to all the freedom movements and led to all the good things in life they had a weak foundation and I think what Ain Rand does she's an Enlightenment philosopher she solidifies the Enlightenment and gives us the ability to establish freedom in a way that's more sustainable than it has been in the past I am delighted and fascinated by the fact that Ain Rand is so popular in Russia and Ukraine and generally in Eastern Europe I'd say right now Poland all the way down to Bulgaria and Serbia the Serbian translation of Alistair came out a couple of years ago and now the translated fountain head and virtue of selfishness which is a non-fiction book of Ain Rand's it really seems to be a big surge of popularity with Ain Rand in Eastern Europe which I think is fabulous and very exciting because I think there's a huge amount of potential because you guys know much better than we do in America the evil of socialism you get it because you've lived it that or your parents or your grandparents lived through the evil of fascism you know you've got a bit of that on your eastern border right now so I'm not originally from America I'm originally from Israel so I know a little bit more about the world than I think most Americans do Americans are pretty lazy life is good you know and if it's deteriorating economic growth there's not the air and jobs are it's still good we get a new iPhone every year we get an Apple TV I've got an Apple Watch things are good why are we about freedom in America at a fast rate nobody worries about it because life is too comfortable life's not comfortable for you within a generation or two you've lived all of them so I think that's why there's a sort of existential angst in Eastern Europe and I think when there's that angst people are searching for answers and I think I'm going to present answers you agree with them or not she presents a point of view people like to engage in that it's a little too lazy oh why should I engage in new ideas you guys need new ideas you know you need new ideas she presents some, engage with them you like them, great, you don't like them, fine but at least engage so I think at the margin there's certainly things like Students for Liberty and the growth of certain libertarian forces within Europe and even in America are direct consequence of Iron Man there's a book written a long time ago in the United States called it all begins with Iron Man it's not a very good book but basically that if you're a libertarian you almost always started with Iron Man to become a libertarian and I think that's true, I think that's why we've got a large libertarian movement in the United States and in Europe and in South America and even in beginnings of it in Asia Iron Man is essential for that and she's making those ideas more popular and again you can see with ESFL, with European Students for Liberty where Iron Man has a significant voice just as a point of information these two couches many many years ago this would have been four years ago I was sitting there and the gentleman on this side would have been a person that probably is concerning would have been recognizable to anybody in the room Petro Poroshenko and one of the questions came up of what's your favorite book and interestingly enough one of the things that he one of the authors that he mentions is Ayn Rand you may not see that as voters but perhaps it started with Ayn Rand and it's gone in other places she is often beloved by people who hold the completely opposite philosophy I'll give you an example I don't know how many of you know out of a stone he made a movie Wall Street Oliver Stone is a committed Marxist I mean he will admit to being a committed Marxist and Wall Street is an excellent movie from a Marxist perspective it's very aesthetically it's a good movie but it's pure Marxism the whole presentation is a Marxist presentation Oliver Stone's favorite book is The Fountainhead and his dream is to make a movie of The Fountainhead he would turn it into a Marxist book now The Fountainhead is an anti-Marxist, anti-collective is pure individualist book but all of a stone is complete so people get all kinds of stuff out of Ayn Rand I have the Hollywood actors and actresses have said that I would shrug this is their favorite book and then they go off and spew some leftist nonsense so she has an impact on people at some level and sometimes that's all they get from it is some emotional response you don't walk away from Ayn Rand neutral it hits you in some way and sometimes people misinterpret what she says for example The Fountainhead is often misinterpreted as form of subjectivism do whatever you feel like doing that's Oliver Stone's interpretation but it always impacts people and it's really interesting all the list of people, celebrities who say Ayn Rand is a favorite author it's one of the reasons it's a powerful experience she had a second question second question is that I see it as you mentioned that we in the Eastern Europe we had that awful experience of communism but besides that there are many people who still vote for left politicians, for populists and those who are strongly convinced that individual liberty is very good they do not connect it with economic liberty what do you think is the reason of this problem why it happens so as I said people don't actually learn from experience and the reason they don't learn from experience is because they feel it's something having the ideas shape the way they interpret their experiences so I know a lot of socialists who say communism's never been tried they didn't do it right they've only had been in charge or that socialist country Venezuela right now people are starving in streets there's no toilet paper there's no soap might remind you of a distant period in Ukraine's history and yet nobody's learning just like Venezuela Chile, the richest country in South America because of capitalism, has elected a socialist twice to become president it's because it's shape or fallacy so what is it about philosophy that prevents us from accepting that capitalism works and that socialism doesn't well what are we taught in morality what are we taught in ethics from when we're this big we're taught that to be good means to sacrifice to be good means to give to be good means to share to be good means to be self less well what political system is consistent with that socialism, it's very selfless it's all about sharing it's all about giving to each according to his needs, from each according to his ability that's the morality of selflessness morality is much more fundamental than economics so people feel like socialism is white it's just, it's fair it's moral, it's an ideal capitalism's all about making money pursuing your passion, whose passion my passion, it's egoistic it's selfish, it's self interested so they urgh, they don't so yeah, you get skyscrapers it's unpleasant, it's not a nice thing and people vote in morality there's a saying in America, in American politics people say, people vote in pocketbook they vote in pocketbook issues not true people never vote economics never is again exaggeration, but they don't vote economics people vote what they think is right what they think is just and the fact is, we live in the world in the west that socialism is just and capitalism is unjust there's a huge debate going on in western Europe and in the US about inequality, but it is good there's no white equality about it they learned anything from it, no some people produce a huge amount they make our lives better, they get rich some people produce a little bit and that's okay too, we're teachers we know we're not going to be billionaires teaching until the internet really takes off but it's enough a lot of fun exactly, so we've actually we're probably smart enough to go out there and make some money but we've done a trade off we love teaching, it's a lot of fun we take less money, huge inequality between me lives around the corner from me cool, he's doing what he loves I'm doing what I love, that's great that's inequality is a good thing, it's not a bad thing but people, what they value and if you want to ask me about inequality, I've got a book coming out in March about it's called Equal is Unfaith there you go so again people vote what they think is right let's see this example and then we'll take the next question which people you would think want to keep their money the rich would never vote for higher taxes if they purely voted economic interest, they would only vote for low taxes but what Obama read for president of the United States in 2012, he promised to raise taxes on the rich promised, and he fulfilled that promise how do you think the rich voted? if they were voting economic interest, they'd vote against Obama but they didn't the 10 richest counties in the United States went for Obama in California, there was a referendum everybody got a vote on increasing taxes on the wealthy from 10% to 13% that's on top of federal taxes, that's an addition 10% to 13% 30% increase how do you think rich people vote? for it, they think it's right because they think it's just because they feel guilty about all the wealth that they've created and this is, I'm not talking about stupid wealth, I'm talking about Silicon Valley so Silicon Valley overwhelming they voted to raise taxes on themselves because they vote morality, they don't vote if I can jump in here, I'm not seeing any hands so put up your hands if you want to ask more questions but I'm going to jump in here he's going to dominate the, yeah exactly because I'm having a lot of fun the issue is that in the business school environment, we see this a lot of owners business owners asking themselves is it right that my salary is 10 times higher, 50 times higher 100 times higher than my cleaning ladies or my other employees I mean they have a right to earn more, don't they and it's a question that we get a lot of and it's a question of guilt it's the guilt of success I want to ask you about that because if we read Rand, it's really simple because she assumes that people that have money made it due to their own ability to what do we do with people that have laid an awful lot of money but not necessarily due to ability and I think that everybody in the room will recognize who I'm talking about when I say people like Ahmetov and because there's very little ability there in terms of perhaps those of you that have seen interviews would know and some of the other really, really, really rich people in Ukraine, they're not the Hank Reardon types they haven't developed a new metal they're certainly not the types that have gone off and done some sort of huge innovation they haven't made their money in the Silicon Valley way I think the best and most just way to deal with it is to create competition so that they lose all their money because stupid wealth doesn't last for free market now they does in a politicized market in a corrupt market they use the government to protect themselves but if you take away that protection and this is why I insist on inviting foreign capital in create competition to your oligarchs right let them compete let them feel like if they don't work hard they're going to lose their money you could courts and redistribute their wealth that's very messy and very dangerous and prone to injustice because the real entrepreneurs will be sucked in with the bad entrepreneurs the best way to do it is to create real competition and they'll lose their money this happens everywhere around the world when people don't really own their money and you create freedom around them they lose it or they lose it within a generation the kids lose it and one of the board is privatize create a great great business environment with anybody in the world people work hard the smart people I just need to get rid of all the cut them off so that would be my solution to the oligarchs with a hand here thank you very much for your presentation it's brilliant really I'm a Ukrainian journalist and I spent enough time in Washington DC where we were on our one thing promoting Ukrainian interest in the United States I'm a bit familiar with the situation actually I had the same question about the role of oligarchs in Ukrainian society because they're also pursuing their own happiness and they really don't care about the society and they literally buy politicians and in the end of the day the politicians do what they demand and actually as I know the United States also faces the same problem it's a big issue in the United States so what's your opinion about money in politics should it be split off or how to deal with this how to fix it because money played a huge role and lobbyists and all this K Street all this stuff so let me comment on something you said earlier first and then I'll comment on that I don't believe these people are pursuing their own self-interest I don't think they know what their self-interest is I don't think they they use this in pursuit of their self-interest they are emotional they want power they want money money for their own sake I doubt any of them are happy any of them are fulfilled certainly none of them are flourishing in the Aristotelian sense of the word money does not equal flourishing money power certainly does not people who remember Iron Man's Oath don't live off of other people what does it mean to buy off politicians it means you're leaching off of other people leeches you know what a leeches sucks your blood it's an organism that sticks to your skin and sucks your blood that's a leech, in economics a leech is somebody who uses politics to suck money that's force wanting you to sacrifice for them that doesn't lead to happiness it doesn't lead to success at least the money and power money and power do not equal happiness and success I don't know anybody who's got power who's really happy political power in town now how do you deal with it the only way in my so I don't believe in getting money out of politics I think that's a disaster because that's an issue of free speech the fact that I could all that money doesn't mean you could silence me if I want to use my money to make political statements I have every way to do that it's an issue of freedom of speech the only way to reduce cronyism to reduce the involvement of business in politics is to shrink politics it's to make politics impotent to make politics impotent so if politicians can't regulate business why would I so in the 19th century America when America had small governments and wasn't involved in every aspect of the economy there was very little cronyism even 50 years ago there was less cronyism than today the reason there's a lot of cronyism today is because government regulates everything and I'll give you my favorite example of this in 19 I think it's 1994 top executives of Microsoft were invited to the senate in the United States and they sat there in front of the senate and the Republican this is a Republican not even a Democrat, Alan Hatch is a Republican senator from Utah he yelled at them and he said you have got to start lobbying you've got to build a building in Washington DC if we Washington is impotent and the guys from Microsoft said look we don't need you we're developing the most innovative software in the world we're changing the world literally Microsoft changed the world that's this department, it goes after Microsoft why? because they did monopolies they might offer you something for free how bad is that so what did Microsoft learn from that lesson and of course this dragged up for years and they lost the court case and they had a bureaucrat station that Microsoft for 10 years Apple went like this, Microsoft went like that all because they refused to play the game the games set by politicians guess how much they spent today they got a beautiful building inside Washington DC you know you could walk to the Capitol you could walk to the White House if you take the way the power of politicians to regulate to control if you create a tax system that's flat, no deductions you can't deduct any expenses or just tax revenue revenue expenses and that's it then why should I lobby you don't control anything now I have to run my business so the only way to stop cronyism the only way to stop this oligarch type relationship the power relationship is to make politics impotent and you do that by having a simple tax and by eliminating regulation minimizing the regulation to really the protection of property rights that's it you don't need government to do anything more than that the marketplace can take care of it they really need the marketplace to tell you what taxi to take Uber is a great example I can rank from driver to drink at me the marketplace is taking care of all of that I don't know about here but there are fights everywhere because the taxis or government controlled if government regulated are saying this is unfair and it's right, it's not fair we should stop regulating taxes not stop regulating Uber stop regulating taxis because we don't need the regulators we can regulate ourselves Uber is proven to us I don't see any hands I know monopolies wow I mean, okay I said stuff you must disagree with what was the challenge for me there we go there's a hand okay, alright I was gonna go on the taxi bit but okay ideas to install all these Tesla batteries and all those of producing energy systems will that bring us to the world we do not need a government at all because my house will be heated my telephone will be recharged who the hell should they pay the taxes what will it happen just in 20 years time if we actually do not need the at least heating and electricity and water and anything like this but yeah, think about it this way I mean in America I buy my electricity from a private company not from the government I buy my water in some places from a private company now the government unfortunately regulates those but they wouldn't be better if they didn't almost all the heating all of that today in America in Moscow and I'll say something about it in Moscow in a minute I have a lot to say about it what's that yeah, I'm not a fan I'll tell you why in a minute so none of those things do we need government now for we could privatize all of them and you should privatize all of them you don't need government to supply you with electricity Thomas Edison was not working for the government he was working for himself motivated by the profit motive motivated by his own passion for new discoveries and for ideas what do we need the government for the things that only a government can do which is guns we need a government to protect ourselves so that I don't have to carry a gun when I walk around the streets afraid of being mugged I want the police force I want the police investigating a murder I want the police investigating I want them to be good at it I want them to be professional and I don't believe in private armies and private police forces because I think all that generates is conflict and violence and the worst type of anarchy so I believe that the government should be involved in guns that's it a military to protect us from bad guys overseas terrorists, invaders and a police force to protect us from each other and for fraud and a judiciary because we're going to disagree once in a while and we need somebody to be able to arbitrate disputes that's it that's why I said separation of economics from the state what do you need an international representation for I believe Tata should be zero capital flows should be allowed and immigration should be for the most part open so why do you need an embassy in the United States under those conditions okay, so we do but is it that important? no if Americans want to come here great they want to send their dollars even better they want to invest here, wonderful see see the whole field of international relations in my view is a creation of statism we've got alliances and these powers and those powers again and we're going to allow this industry to come but not that industry because these guys are this is all benefits the elites who control the countries I mean, if I were running America I can't speak about Ukraine but if I were running America a lot of countries I wouldn't have embassies in why does the US have an embassy in Saudi Arabia? I hate everything about Saudi Arabia the way they treat disgusting place why does America sanctioning the existence of Sharia law by having an embassy in Saudi Arabia? should it's not national it's based on their morality based on whether they're good or bad and some countries are bad and some countries are good oh well, now we're getting to more subjectivism and this is good now we're getting to philosophy good there's one standard for morality and that is the standard of human life if a regime or a country if a culture you've grown up with multiculturalism one of the most evil ideas in human history cultures are not equal some cultures promote human life they encourage human life they support human life they thrive and I have no idea why these ugly paintings are in here and not only are they ugly but they're scary put up today so this is that painting some some cultures produce Newton some cultures produce Thomas Edison other cultures don't produce anything they produce female genital mutilation that is evil that is not good that's an evil culture it's an evil country a country where a woman can't drive is an evil country you have every right as a human being to do whatever you think is good for you independent of your woman or man that some king the king of Saudi Arabia can tell a woman she can't drive or that she can't have sex or that she has to marry into a polygamous situation is disgusting it's evil it's immoral they're cultures that are good and they're cultures that are bad and I'm willing to criticize my own culture fanatically will do just Jews fundamental Jews that is an evil culture I despise them they treat women every morning a man wakes up and says the first blessing he says is thank you guys for not making me a woman and they treat women that way that's not you can't say that's the same as normal culture in a western country normal culture in a western country is a Jewish or fundamentalist anything in my view so it's not the same as some carving in tribal Africa sorry one is great art and one is... we have to have values we have to have scales not everything is the same this is why I'm against equality I don't believe equality exists some people are better some people are worse some cultures are better some cultures are worse some people are damn evil some cultures are evil judging is important in life judge and be ready to be judged it doesn't go one way it goes both ways that's life she don't shoot me say anything about it a lot not stupid remind me and I'll say something thank you yet another humongous thanks and for the privilege of being here a friendly professor of philology over here a friendly neighborhood professor I have a philosophical question if you will in view of the prior statement that had to deal with the cultural divide my question is in view of that how different the cultures are how different are the places that the cultures come from ethically identity wise anything how applicable is in fact objectivism to cultures that come from a fundamental a different place than the one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all hey wait a minute you do realize that Anna's name was Anna Rosenbaum and then she came from St. Petersburg okay Aiman was born in St. Petersburg to middle class Jewish family it's what will convert bad cultures into good cultures Saudi Arabia and they are fighting just like you fought for freedom they are fighting for freedom in Saudi Arabia and hopefully one day they will have their revolution and they will get rid of Akkadian I felt we got rid of kings long time ago and replace them with an elected body that protects their individual rights as that document said the document you were quoting which is the declaration of independence it might be the greatest political document in human history all men are created equal equal not in a sense of equality of outcome but in a sense of embodying freedom embodying liberty and if I would give it an epistemological all men have reason all men are capable and women of course are capable of reason men in old English refer to both men and women which is pretty chauvinistic so the idea and of course the founding fathers got us wrong the document was written made it to have slaves and all men are created equal that they had to have a civil war 600,000 people had to die free of the slaves so contradictions don't last so I don't care if you're a tribesman in Africa or a peasant in China or an intellectual in Ukraine human nature is human nature and Ayman's philosophy is consistent with human nature it's consistent with man as a rational animal which is Aristotle's term again all of them are rational all of them are only going to achieve values through reason all of them need freedom and liberty in order to achieve those values capitalism is the only system that works and here's the example right there was no capitalism in Asia ever when they tried a little bit of it incredible success in Taiwan, in South Korea in Hong Kong, in Singapore and now in China they're not westerners but they respect individual rights to some extent Japan has to ask the Japanese to write a constitution and the Japanese handed General MacArthur a constitution based on Japanese principles and General MacArthur said this is crazy this is a stupid constitution it won't work, he shredded it and he as an assistant wrote the Japanese constitution and it's the only constitution in the world and in many ways all individuals have the inalienable right to life and liberty in the pursuit of happiness taken from the Declaration of Independence and guess what Japanese and Japanese are very very well under constitution written by an American general and his assistant because these are inalienable truths they are reality for all men Japanese, Chinese, Americans doesn't matter there is a superior culture there is a culture of man as a reasoning being it's a culture of individualism and if Africa adopts that culture they will do fantastically well if they don't adopt it they will do fantastically bad your example is a little bit dangerous because we have another little guy that wants to write our constitution for us but his name is not MacArthur well it's a question that's a problem so my name is Elena and I have actually two questions so first one you told that immigration shouldn't be regulated if it wasn't regulated for example in Europe Europe would be destroyed with all the migrants all over the world so let me answer that and then you can ask me the second question so in a free society in a completely free society and in a society that's not at war it's the Europe I believe immigration should be free now that doesn't mean citizenship citizenship and immigration is not the same thing people should be allowed to come and work citizenship you should have a requirement for citizenship a lot of years lived in a certain knowledge of the constitution and the system of law under which you're going to live but let's take Europe right now first of all it's not free Europe has an advanced very lucrative very corrupt welfare state so why are all the immigrants going to Germany and Sweden they don't want to go anywhere else Germany and Sweden why because they know when they get to Germany they get to Sweden they get a check and then they get a home the Swedes there's a huge shortage of housing in Sweden but the Muslims who come they get a house so the welfare state is a magnet so you can't have a welfare state and I believe in eliminating the welfare state then you can open up the borders but the second qualification is you can't be at war now I believe and this is controversial but I believe that the West isn't warped with radically slum it's a war we're afraid to name it's a war it's a war we won't even fight you're at war with them you certainly can't let them flood your country so it's legitimate for Europe to say look you guys we're at war with you you can't come in just like Americans didn't accept Nazis into America during World War II they said oh generally you can come but if you're Nazi you can't come now by World War II even America closed off its borders so those would be like two qualifications no welfare except for Ukraine and war with Russia to say ok Russians you can come no Russians because we're at war with you after the war we can talk after the war as long as there's hostility there's nothing to talk about so those were two of my qualifications about my question look your answers this came from my children my two sons they were the fourth generation born on a different continent wandering Jews we've been immigrating for thousands of years we haven't heard anybody my children were born in America I was born in Asia in Israel my parents were born in South Africa go figure and their parents were born in Lithuania they were your neighbors my wife's mother was born in Morocco my wife's father was born in Palestine but his grandparents came from Uzbekistan so I have no sympathy for I have a lot of sympathy for people moving around I immigrated from Israel to the United States and I think that's a good thing for me and I'm a little arrogant I think it's good for America too I'm very tolerant regarding all this I was born in Moscow but I was living in Ukraine and then I was studying in Vienna so I know a little bit about this thing my second question is regarding Elon Musk so he changed industry he had different ideas in different spheres and he really changed many industries but he was supported by Obama and actually if there wasn't Obama's support maybe some of the companies were bankrupt so what will you say he's a corrupt businessman he's no different than your oligarchs he's a crony where he made his first money that was PayPal PayPal never had any government involvement and that's how he made his fortune but then almost all of his investment have been in government supported businesses now I don't blame him too much for SpaceX the only client he has right now because of the way the government does it is NASA but Tesla bad, bad, bad business I don't like Tesla I condemn anybody who buys the car and this is why I'm subsidizing me I'm a middle class American and my taxes are going to Elon Musk who's rich, he's a billionaire he's taking my money and building cars that rich people buy that I'm painful that's him all but he disclosed all the technology in order to build the industry he disclosed everything that doesn't make him a good guy why does that make him a good guy? Apple never disclosed any of the technology every patent that Apple is locked up is that bad? is that bad? is that bad? no, they've got 100 ideas think about Apple Apple invented the personal computer it invented object based you know we use objects using a mouse it really invented the ipad the ipod turned the ipad into something it invented the iphone Apple has invented millions of things and they don't unleash the technology that doesn't make them bad so Elon Musk has the right to make this technology public but that doesn't make him a good guy the fact that he uses my money to subsidize his car and to sell it to rich people at my expense it's just wrong you know, you want an electric car pay the full price why are you taking my money to make it cheaper so the cost sells like $80,000 it should sell $120,000 if it sold $120,000 Elon Musk wouldn't make any money as Tesla doesn't make any money but they would lose a lot I think electric cars are stupid but the just to continue with that to play devil's advocate for a second what about the environment and what about the fact that Tesla is making cars that don't have emissions will make your grandkids healthier than your kids so I have a lot to say about this but let me start by the myth Tesla has no emissions where do you live what is electricity where does electricity come from the most filthy emission of all of them I call Tesla cars coal cars not electric cars, coal cars because the produced electricity has to burn coal there's no other way in America 50% of the electricity is made from coal the most duty of all forms of producing electricity or nuclear nuclear is very clean that would be the right solution now if you went nuclear and you produced and you actually had the cost it's a question of whether nuclear energy produces cheap electricity that's a question but if it did, then maybe then electric cars one day would come but right now, electric cars are coal cars they emit coal those batteries you know how much CO2 has to be emitted and how much pollution has to be emitted so there's a whole environmentalist movement creates this mythology about what's clean and what's dirty that's complete nonsense and we all buy it everybody in the West Bank it's complete nonsense I love recycling you guys love trees you like trees? I like trees do you know that recycling destroys trees in a free market why does recycling paper recycling wood products destroys trees this is economics 101 trees are a renewable resource let me ask you another question I'll get back to trees in a minute if we are stuck eating chicken everybody's stuck eating chicken in the world would there be more chickens in the world or less chickens in the world I think we better ask Yurko Kusuk that's one of the rich guys they'd be less chickens because people would have less of an incentive to grow chickens if we stopped using wood products tomorrow would there be more trees or less trees less people would have no incentive to plant trees and indeed the land that today is used to chop down trees and make a profit we would say it's a waste just being a forest maybe I can build a home there maybe I can build an industry there or maybe I can use the land for some other productive resource you know there are more trees today than there were a hundred years ago in America you know why because we use more paper so we have to plant more trees so we can cut down more trees so we can use more trees if I estimate that I will need more trees in the future than I do today I will plant more trees because I'll need more trees to chop down in the future to supply demand simple supply demand I will innovate I will find ways to plant more trees on the same plot of land to create more density now you say but you lose old trees fine but I don't really care about old trees that much I just care about trees and if you just care about trees you want to use as much paper as possible and you don't want to recycle because then demand will go up in the future and now plant more trees this is just but nobody knows it or recycling plastics and all the other recycling you know that the pollution from the truck driving to collect all the recycling bins in California pollutes more than putting it all into a landfill landfills are easy you dig a deep gold underground and you fill it up with a plastic trash the earth is huge there's plenty of room for all that trash so there's a lot of mythology in the environmentalist movement what do we do about global warming is that the issue of the day no I did a post on this the other day in the recent democratic debate democrats but they were asked the five democratic candidates were asked what is the largest threat to the national security of the united states largest single threat single threat to the national security of the united states and they all said climate change nobody mentioned the Islamic threat nobody mentioned Putin even though there are people out there that say that the united states is in fact their number one enemy can I just say that I think that's insane I mean let's go over the climate change that's happening I'm tempted to seem to be pretty flat in the last 12 years but even if it's happening there's a lot of warm out here in Ukraine you could use that a little bit trees love CO2 the more CO2 in the atmosphere the more growth of greenery there is the more food we get the more algae there is the more trees there are and that becomes habitable I don't get it many years ago somebody invented this wonderful invention that solves the problem of climate change it's called air conditioning in southern california on the edge of the desert the only reason there's green stuff all over the place is because we water it in the so called drought of california we still water everything by the way because of you the colorado river doesn't make it to the pacific anymore who cares I think a lot of fish care I don't care about fish really nature is there to serve us not for its own good we I'm selfish nature is there you like spotted owls buy some and if you want to buy a big forest don't let anybody develop it and grow spotted owls they don't taste that good come I mean nature is there the way human beings survive I'm being partially funny the way human beings survive a changing environment that fit our needs if we stop changing our environment we die as a species every other species adapts to its environment or dies we don't adapt to our environment we adapt the environment to us so when we didn't like caves we build mud huts we took mud which is environment we changed it and built a hut when we didn't like just picking berries and nuts we build animals and when that was inconvenient we rounded up animals and put them in pens and grew them for food that's what they do to chickens and cows and pigs today we we want to build a skyscraper we chop down a mountain and we take all the the bricks there and we build a building we go underground to get cold that's how we as human beings live so my response to oh we're changing the environment is cool that's great that's how human beings survive that's how we live now again I value trees I value nature and there's plenty of it if you fly over the United States 90% of the United States is empty there's plenty of nature out there but do I care about another fish in the Colorado River no I don't and the fact is that today in California I don't get water because they are pouring water into the Pacific Ocean to save some little fish in some river near San Francisco I'd rather take a shower I would and I think it's better for civilization that I take a shower the whole drought the whole drought in California is politically made we could desalinate the ocean there's a massive desalination plant in San Diego that produces all the water San Diego needs but yet they have to cut water use because there's a drought but in San Diego there's no drought but California has announced a drought so they have to cut water use but we could build 10 desalination plants and fix all the water problems it's expensive why because electricity is expensive in California why because we're shifting electricity from natural gas to alternative energies which are much more expensive so electricity is very expensive so the desalination is expensive in Orange County where I live in California we have the largest plant for water recycling in the world they collect all the rain water they collect the sewage water they treat it and they recycle it we don't have a drought in Orange County we have plenty of water because we're very efficient at using the water that we use can I just ask you something those facilities that you just talked about the desalination plant the water treatment plant aren't those run by the government? the desalination plant for certain isn't it's run by private enterprise but they're run by local governments these are usually public private partnerships well only because the government forces it on them but I think I'm pretty sure I might be wrong but I think that desalination plants in San Diego is private capital it's a private public partnership so the water stream you have to go public but there's no reason the water pipes couldn't be privatized it's just a phenomena we're going to wrap up here a little bit but I have a question sorry there's a question, I missed it yeah if you don't want him to wrap up then just raise your hand the Austrian I wanted to know two things do you want to think that all Saturdays on environmental stuff are kind of money? I'd like to know what you think about the Swedish model because Sweden is like kind of this almost perfect society high taxes very strong middle class people actually wherever you go in the world you meet more Swedish people traveling around in americans there's also kind of cultural stuff I would say but what do you think about the Swedish model? I've got a lot to say about Sweden and it's actually a couple of videos last year I was in Norway in Bogan and I gave a speech at the University of Bogan about the evils of the Norwegian welfare state it was a lot of fun what was the first question? oh, subsidies I'm against all subsidies all subsidies again, you want to preserve a particular environment you want to preserve the rainforest you want to preserve a particular part of the ocean and I'm not kidding you, buy it the solution to all environmental problems or almost all environmental problems is private property and there are funds in the United States there's a large fund in the United States that goes around the world and buys and turns it into private property endangered you know, ecosystems and that's great as long as you're using the private property model and not stealing my money you know, go preserve your spotted house and your smelt and your fish and whatever I believe rivers should be privatized if the river out here was private it would be clean because you know what, my backyard is very clean public property is typically good because it doesn't nobody owns it, nobody cares about it and there are ways to privatize rivers in the old west in the United States, they used to have water rights and they privatized rivers and they determined what to do about the fact that one guy's cows would poop at the top of the river and you were trying to drink from the bottom and how do you arbitrate those there's a whole theory and Ronald Coase was a famous economist in Chicago who wrote a lot about this but there's a lot of theories on how to deal with that but that's ideal if you could privatize lakes, rivers and the oceans it would be wonderful they would be clean and there would be lots of fish because there's no private incentive to destroy all the fish it goes back to chicken, right because we privatize chickens there's more chickens we privatize fish, there'd be more fish it's just a question of how to do it we need to figure it out so I'm against all environmental or any kind of subsidies government should stay out of economics out of any economic activity Sweden utopia when you start with Sweden so let me give you a little history of Sweden first because I think history is important between 1870 and about and certainly the second world war and maybe even until a little bit after the second world war Sweden had the most capitalist economy in the world in the world it was the freest economically of any country freer than America and indeed during that time major Swedish industries were created it was among the richest countries in Europe maybe I think it was the richest country in Europe when I took capital basis the biggest companies in Europe were based in Sweden their industry was famous it was incredibly wealthy society and then around 1960 Sweden decided to become socialist so what did they do they took all the money that had been accumulated by all these families over decades and they started redistributing it and they lost their industries and they lost their lead by 1979 the biggest industry in Sweden anybody knows what the biggest revenue industry in Sweden was ABBA the rock group the pop group you know what the second largest industry in Sweden was by the late 1970s Johan Berg the tennis player they had decimated their industries and by 1994 Sweden was basically Greece it was bankrupt since 1994 to today Sweden has been shrinking government spending reducing regulations even reducing payouts it has a voucher system for education which we don't have in the United States you can send your kid to any school and basically Sweden has become a lot less socialist than it used to be it still has high taxes, still distributes a lot less regulated than the United States it's easier to open a business in Sweden than the United States it's easier to be a banker than in the United States so first if it's utopia it's not a socialist utopia it's just a different mixture of a mixed economy than America is so that's one Sweden has no free speech Sweden has hate speech loss if you paint a painting that people find offensive you can go to jail you can look at this up on the internet a Swedish painter about a year ago went to jail for painting an offensive painting it was offensive he's a neo-fascist awful painter he still shouldn't go to jail for this freedom of speech should be sacred you should be able to say anything it could be stupid it could be insensitive it could be racist it could be anything you ever like to say you people can choose not to talk to you but you can't go to jail for that in Sweden you go to jail for somebody put up a YouTube video a couple of months ago a couple of months ago in Sweden claiming I don't know if you know this but Sweden has the highest rate of rapes in the western world maybe in the world as a total so somebody went on YouTube followed by Muslim migration I don't know if that's true or not they were brought in front of a judge they were taken to court for saying that and the judge said I don't care if that's right or wrong it's insensitive you can't say that's not a utopia in my mind Swedish entrepreneurs if you're really ambitious where do you go to America if I always suggest this experiment and I wish somebody would take me up on it let's have no immigration controls between Sweden and America and let's see which way they go I bet most of the Swedes go to America but let's make it hard because you might say it's because of the weather they don't want to go to California let's make no immigration controls between Sweden and Minnesota Minnesota is very cold and it's where most of the Swedish immigrants live I bet you they all go to Minnesota a lot of them go to Minnesota America is a much better place than Sweden our homes are bigger we're richer, we drive nicer cars we have a higher standard of living by any measure of standard of living there's no comparison Sweden if it was ranked based on states the wealth of different states would rank in the lower half of wealth per capita of states in the United States we're much richer in America for that it's more equal but equality is not if I'd rather be rich than equal let me there's one thing I want to say about Sweden would you rather be poor than you yeah I'd rather be poor than equal because then I can rise up an unequal society provides opportunities for people to rise up an equal society is stuck wherever you happen to be and if you want I mean you should buy my book on equality but if you want to know my views why I think the idea of equality in terms of the most evil idea in human history you can ask thank you for a very interesting lecture my name is Yuri and I have the question connected to Sweden about their neighbor a few days ago I read the news that they are planning to introduce so called basic income for early people in their country not dependent on what they need yeah so what do I think of basic income I think it's terrible because to give them the basic income you have to take it from somebody I don't believe in taking money I don't believe in taking from one person giving to another it's better than any other welfare program it's better in America we have food stamps we have welfare we have Medicare we have a million this is a voucher system basically you get money you spend it anywhere you want the government isn't telling you how to spend your money so replacing all of welfare with a minimum income and that's the only welfare you get you don't get anything else from the government you get the minimum thing you want to spend it all on alcohol fine but we're not going to help you once you're drunk it's a better than what we have today so if you were going to have any kind of welfare system that's the kind I still think it's wrong I think it's wrong to steal from one person and give to another the example I always use is if my neighbor has no money for food he's gone bankrupt he's lost all his money whatever the reason his fault not his fault whatever he doesn't have any money he can come to me and he has two choices he can ask me to help and I might help him if he's a nice guy and if my kids don't need the money right now and if I've got a little bit extra I'll help him because I'm a nice guy I value human life I think it's a good thing and I want to help people be successful particularly if you didn't lose it for his own fault if it's an innocent thing or he could pull a gun out and steal my money if he gets together with the neighbors and they all vote to take my money does that make it less than stealing? so if he comes to me with a gun and takes my money everybody thinks he should go to jail that's wrong but if the neighbors vote to take my money somehow magically we turn stealing into welfare and it's okay I think welfare is stealing I think it's daylight and robbery and I think the fact that people vote for it it just makes them complicit in the stealing so I don't believe in any redistribution of wealth zero if I want to help somebody I believe in charity I believe in free will I believe people should be charitable for you now remember what I wanted to say about Sweden one of the things people say about Sweden it's related one of the things people say about Scandinavia is that they're happy every happiness study Swedes are happy there are two things to say about that one is if you go to Sweden and you ask people if they're happy everybody expects them to say yes and they say yes and studies are sophisticated they're not that obvious but generally if you ask them if they're happy culturally they're expected to say yes Swedes were happy which is the exact opposite of Ukrainians I was going to give the example of Jews you ask a Jew if you're happy and they say yes then all the other Jews are going to say you're happy how can you be happy there's no such thing as happiness nobody's happy nobody's happy because it's culturally unacceptable to be happy so there are cultural differences but there's another issue of happiness studies if you ask Swedes if they're happy they say yes but if you ask Swedes in America if they're happy they're even happier Swedes rich but Swedes in America much richer because part of the reason Swedes are rich is a certain culture culture matters some culture is good some culture is not they have a relatively entrepreneurial creative culture they're educated when they go to America because there are more opportunities because there's more freedom they're even richer than they are in Sweden American Swedes live in Wisconsin and Minnesota they live in big, big homes they have incredibly comfortable lives and they're very happy even happier than Swedes so all these studies you have to really you have to control for the right variables we do regression analysis in business the whole point of regression analysis is knowing what to control for 90% of the studies out there they do econometrics or garbage because they don't do the controls right it's a tough thing to do we're going to wrap up but I want to ask you one more question and I'm going to save something that's specifically related to Atlas Shrug because when you were talking about Sweden and you were talking about subsidies and you were talking about the evils of taxation in fact the taxation of Sweden is theft you were basically talking like Francisco which is for those of you that have read Atlas Shrug one of the key characters but Atlas Shrug has an interesting ending to it and the reason I mention this is because the third volume has just come out in Ukrainian translation and it's about something called Gulch now I'm not going to for those of you that haven't read it I'm not going to reveal what Gulch is all about but for those of you that have read it you're immediately smiling because it's a pretty special place and one of the things that I found in this room and in other classrooms where I've talked about I've talked about Iran is the reaction of many business people that buy into the philosophy of objectivism is you know what let's all get together and get the hell out of here let's all just Ukraine is a country that's got all kinds of problems it needs to fall apart before anything will be done with it any of the business people in the room will turn around and say that's a cop up so I guess my question is is Iran telling us to cop up or what's the message behind Gulch is clearly a literary thing but if we all decide to cop up then the world collapses but it's not your responsibility to hold the world up which is part of the message of Atlas Shrug you're not responsible for other people's errors and Dagny who doesn't buy that who wants to fight on for the world learns the hard way that the world doesn't want to help and all she's doing is subsidizing even subsidizing destruction and by leaving she actually makes a bigger impact but I don't want to give away the ending but so there are two problems with the idea of let's all go somewhere else there is no Gulch Gulch Gulch Gulch is a literary mechanism it doesn't exist in reality you can't create it in reality I know billionaires who want to buy an island and start a new country nobody's gonna let you do that you know if you create a country that's too free guess what will happen if you find an island you start it and you set up a free bank bank that will take deposits all that what will happen the Marines will show up nobody's gonna let you do it ask the Cayman Islands why doesn't Switzerland have private banking anymore because America told them you can't do that and if you do that we're gonna shut you down we're gonna boycott you we're gonna destroy you so you can't create a truly free country this is why America is so important without getting in a sense of permission from one of these superpowers I told the guy you can do that you can buy an island you can start the country on one condition that you buy a nuke with it and you point it at Washington DC and you prove to them that you'll actually use it then they'll leave you alone but other than that they'll never leave you alone I know you've got a big thug that you're dealing with to the east I deal with a thug in Washington not quite as bad but bad still a thug still politicians and you've got thugs here around the corner involved they're all thugs politics is about thugs it's about taking money from some people and giving each others in the modern world doesn't have to be that way shouldn't be that way but it is that way so what do you do I mean a lot of American businessmen since the financial crisis have said I've had enough they shrugged and they've retired they worked part-time they're not willing to pay into the system anymore they're not willing to make an effort some of them even have left and gone to Singapore, Hong Kong, I know a guy who says I'm going to Thailand next crisis I'm up I can't blame them your responsibility is to your life if that's going to lead to the best life possible for you you should do it I believe America and the western civilization can still be saved and maybe that's just because I'm in the business of trying to save it so I have to believe it can be saved because otherwise it won't be the purpose of my life so you're more Dagny than John Gollum yeah in a sense in a sense I am and in a sense I understand Dagny more than I understand John Gollum there's a sense in which I do it and you can see in the characters for those of you who've read the book Francisco is the one who struggles a little bit well I'm sitting around right particularly in the beginning he has a hard time you know this world is worth fighting for there's too many good stuff you know I love life and I love the world we live in I love America I love Silicon Valley if you haven't noticed I love Apple I love that there's a new iPhone every year I'm not willing to just go on to Desert Island somewhere and give up my new iPhone but I love other people I love being able to engage with people and I love a lot of people don't agree with me because they're incredibly productive because they do great things because they make wonderful products because you know not this guy but some of the paint beautiful I'm just sitting opposite this you're absolutely correct I mean all of them it's like life is not worth living in that universe I mean I have a view of art I want to live in the universe of his painting I want to be there I want to live in the universe of Michelangelo's David I'm even willing to live in the universe of Michelangelo's Pietà because it's heroic and it's beautiful and it's a mother carried for her child put aside any religious element that's the world I want to live in I want to live in the world of 19th century paintings of romantic you know that's the way this stuff is there I want to run away you know I want to live in the world of great romantic music of passion, of excitement, of fun of adventure that's the kind of world I want to live in and there's a lot of adventure and fun in the world as it is today I don't want to go with five of my best friends to some isolated place I love you guys too much in a sense I love the interchange I love the exchange I love what you do with your lives and the products that you produce that make my life better and this is why and I'll ask a question to myself a lot of times objectivists are critiqued as you're cold hearted you don't care about other people and you don't care about the poor no I love poor people who are ambitious and I would actually help them in a free country I love people generally I love human life I love the idea of human life I love the little babies because I love the potential that they have to become fully flourishing human beings objectivists are lovers that's how I perceive humanism is the philosophy of love it's about loving yourself it's about loving life and if you love yourself and you love life you love human beings not evil human beings to be able to do that you have to say Hitler was evil these people are evil they're bad they should be gone right but these people are not they produce beautiful things they create wonderful stuff so you have to be judgmental but the focus is on love to be able to truly love you also have to be able to truly hate you can't have one without the other because you have to appreciate the value and you have to appreciate this value it's a lot I think you define objectivism in a new way for me and that's called judgmental optimism or optimistic optimistic judgmentalism I like to call it a philosophy of love because love involves judgment you don't love everybody you love some people a little bit you love hopefully your spouse a lot and I've been lucky I've been married 32 years two kids and I love her I believe in love and it's about life that's what it's about philosophy I don't recall the philosophy a philosophy for living on this earth a philosophy for living on this earth that to me is what it's all about to live I want to thank you very much for coming tonight and I want to thank particularly Aaron for an inspiring session