 That your success places a maw responsibility on you. I think that's wrong. But first, why capitalism is cane and looking out for number one can be noble. This is Bible. You often don't hear people say there's a moral case for capitalism, but I believe there is. Our next guest is Yaron Brooke. He is with the An Ryan Foundation or Institute, sorry, out of California. He joins us now from Toronto where he dropped by for a chat on that issue, the morality of capitalism. Mr. Brooke, thanks for dropping by. Thanks for having me on. People think capitalism, morality, no, no, capitalists are crooked, they're in bed with the government, they're buying people off. Is that what you're fighting against or are you supporting that? No, we're fighting against a whole perception of capitalism as based on fraud and based on buying off politicians. That's not capitalism. That's cronyism. That's what capitalism is evolved into because of the growth of the state and because of government intervention and the extent of regulation and taxes and so on. Businessmen, unfortunately, have become crony, crony, but that's not what capitalism really is about. Capitalism is about building stuff, creating, but more fundamentally it's about individual freedom and individual liberty. That's why it's the, I believe, the only moral economic system because it allows individuals to pursue their own happiness, to pursue their own rational values, to make the most of their own lives. We hear lots of complaints in Canada about, well, we've got the big banks. They make so much money. The big five or the big six, depending on how you count them, they make so much money. They're ripping us off and they perceive that as capitalism or the cell phone companies and our, I don't know if you know this, but mobile phone bills in Canada are among the highest in the developed world. People say, well, see, capitalists are ripping us off, but these are all, the most profitable industries in this country are all highly, highly, highly regulated by the government. And there's government oversight agencies and people move back and forth and a lot of back slapping and a lot of cronyism going on there. Look, you can't blame anything that happens in the world today on capitalism because capitalism doesn't exist in the world today. What we have today is a system of massive government regulations, particularly in the banking industry, at least in the United States, a market that I know more about. Banks are the most regulated industry in the country. Before the financial crisis, every bank in the United States was regulated by five different entities. So to me, it's kind of ludicrous when people blame the financial crisis or blame what goes on today on freedom in banking and there's not enough regulation. These banks are almost public utilities. They're almost controlled exclusively by the government. So when we want to look at capitalism, we have to look at errors in which the economy was freer, in which government was dramatically smaller, where there was less regulation. We have to look at countries which might be freer and evaluate. And when you do that, you see that capitalism generates enormous amount of wealth. The poor live better under capitalism than under any other system. You see that during errors where there's real capitalism, there's real competition, there's real wealth creation, there's real innovation and those are the primary characteristics of capitalism. Where would we find that? Before we get on to the moral side, where would we find such examples? I can't think of any. The closest we've come to was in the 19th century in the United States. You saw that and you saw the largest expansion, economic expansion in human history, a huge migration into the country and massive quantities of wealth creation, the establishment of the middle class. Before the Industrial Revolution, all of us were poor. By 1900, 1920, 1950, a whole middle class was created. And the poor were far better off. But even today, look at a country like Hong Kong or like Singapore where they have at least economic freedom, they thrive. And when you look at their neighbors that don't have those same economic freedoms, they suffer and they're much poorer and they do a lot worse. So what we want is to the extent that a country is free, economically free, to that extent they do well from an economic perspective. Also capitalism is a system of generally individual freedom. So you get a respect for individual rights. You get a respect for freedom of speech. You get a respect for the civil liberties in addition to the economic liberties. The Rand Institute promotes the ideas of the founder, Ms. Rand, also promotes objectivism, an idea that she put forward. People that know a little bit about it might be saying, well, objectivism and morals, they don't connect there. And neither morals doesn't connect to capitalism. Explain the moral case. Well, I and Rand redefined, in a sense, morality. She challenged our existing morality, 2000 years of morality. It says that your moral purpose in life is to serve others. It's to sacrifice, it's to be selfless. Indeed, that conventional morality that's out there today is incompatible with capitalism. And as a consequence, capitalism is in decline. What she defined as a new morality, a morality of rational self-interest, of long-term rational self-interest, of the individual trying to make the most of his own life without sacrificing to others, but without expecting other people to sacrifice to him, without being exploited and without exploiting living your life and making the best of your life. That's a morality. And that's a morality that only capitalism respects. Capitalism is the system in which individuals are left free to pursue their own happiness without government telling them what they can and cannot do, how they should live, what they should do. And this is true both in the economic realm and in the social realm. Capitalism is the system, the social system of freedom, of individual liberty, of the pursuit of happiness. And Rand's morality, Rand's moral code, and she has a whole theory of morality is all about, at the end of the day, the pursuit of the individual, the pursuit of happiness. You're happy. I think where we part ways, perhaps, because a lot of what you say makes sense, but I think where we part ways is where you say, the idea that I have a moral obligation to look after somebody. Now I part ways with socialists because they say, well, the moral obligation to look after somebody who's down on their luck is that you're going to pay me an awful lot of taxes, and I'm going to pay my friend a very good civil service job, and then they're going to spend a little bit of the money and run it in effective program. I would actually say that there's a moral obligation to look after those who are down on their luck to help them up so that they have an opportunity. Do you say that that just doesn't exist, or how would that work in your view? I would say that you take on a moral obligation by choice if you so choose, but if it's consistent with your rational values, with your life, that a charity is OK, it can be a virtue, if it's consistent with your values. But this idea that as soon as you're born and you're successful and you work hard, that you somehow have this burden placed on you that your success places a moral responsibility on you, I think that's wrong. And I think it doesn't help the people who are struggling. I think their moral responsibility is to make the most of their lives. And when we give them these checks, when we hand them goodies, when we hand them favors, what we're doing is suppressing their ability to take care of themselves, to achieve their own personal happiness, to get a job, to get the self-esteem that that entails. So I think it goes both ways. You don't have. You are not born because you're successful. With a moral obligation, you can choose to help. And it's only wrong with choosing to help. But it's not a duty. It's a choice. You should never be forced to do it. If you do it, you should do it voluntarily because it's consistent with how you want to live your life. Mr. Brooke, an interesting talk and an interesting book for your Mark of Revolution. Thanks for dropping by. We'll chat again soon. I hope. Thank you. Absolutely.