 So one of the great mysteries in the world, one of the great questions that I think we all need to be challenged with is, why is the world not freedom? Why do we not have more free markets and generally freedom for the individual than we have today? Because the reality is, if you look around the world, the reality is that there is a direct correlation, a direct relationship between how free a country is and how wealthy a country is, how satisfied the people living in that country are. Freedom works. Freedom produces results. It actually generates wealth and it allows people to flourish, it allows people to pursue their own values and to live a better life. In countries that are free people live better lives than in countries where they are not free. So why is freedom so rare? Why is freedom the exception? I mean if you look at human history, we've been free very very very little of the time that human beings have been around. If human beings have been around maybe, I don't know, a million years or several hundred thousand years, freedom is a concept. Freedom is an idea, capitalism, free markets. Even the idea of voting, the idea of democracy, as a white-spread phenomena is what, 200 years, maybe 250 years out of a million? Almost all of human history we have been unfree. And as a consequence throughout almost all of human history we have been poor. Almost forever human beings, I mean the state of the normal state of being for human beings is poverty. It's to be poor. It is truly an exception. It's truly unusual and rare for us to be rich. And if you look around this room, even in Medellin, Colombia, we are rich. By every standard of human history we are super rich. We live longer. Life expectancy just 500 years ago was 30 in rich countries. For then it was maybe 39. Wealth, 90 plus percent of the population, lived at $2 a day or less. Imagine today, living on $2 a day or less, maybe the poorest people in Colombia lived like that. Certainly nobody in this room does. We, by every measure, are incredibly rich as compared to any period in human history. We drive cars, we have electricity, we have air conditioning. Most people in this room are richer than the richest person in the world a hundred years ago. In terms of the actual quality of life, just the idea that you have running water and electricity, what made all this possible? What made possible the riches and the wealth that we all have and we all, you know, benefit from? Because, again, it is the exception in human history, not the common thing. What makes it possible is the idea of freedom. The idea of freedom based on the idea that each one of us as individuals has the capacity to take care of ourselves. We don't need mother government or experts or philosopher kings telling us how and what we should do and how we should live. Each one of us has a mind. Each one of us has the capacity to live for yourself, has the capacity to choose your own values and to pursue those values using your mind. You're not dependent on others, you're not dependent on people dictating to you what to do. But for thousands, hundreds of thousands of years, you were told you're impotent. You were told you cannot think for yourself. You were told you need experts. You need other people to tell you what is true and what is not. What is good for you and what is not. Is there any way to shut them up? It's hard when somebody is talking to the back of my ear. So the idea that you can think for yourself, the idea that you can live for yourself, the idea that you can follow your own values, that is an idea that is necessary for the idea of freedom. And when the tribal leader starts, you know, runs the tribe, he doesn't want you thinking for yourself. The king, the pope, the authorities, the politicians in Bogota, they don't want you thinking for yourself. They want you to believe you need them. They want you to believe that you can't live without them. They want you to believe that you are dependent on them. That's how they maintain power over you. So it's only when individuals recognize and acknowledge the idea that they live and they can live for themselves and they have the power to live for themselves. They have the ability to live for themselves. They don't need those authorities. Only then do we demand freedom. As long as we believe them and think we're dependent, we're too weak to demand that freedom. But this idea of living for yourself is a very controversial idea in the history of mankind. What do our, what do our religions teach us? Who should we live for? God. What do our, what is, what does Marx teach us? Who should we live for? The proletarian. The nationalists tell us you should live for the state. Your mother tells you you should live for your neighbors. Everybody always tells you, everybody, all the secular philosophers, all the different religions, all the political philosophies tell you the purpose of your life is to live for others. Outruism is the dominant morality. It is a morality of otherism. The idea that your life should serve other people. Think of a purpose greater than yourself. What do they mean when they say that? Every politician in history has said you should all live for something greater than yourself. What do they mean by that? The state, society, the proletarian, God, something above you. Ain Rand tells us no. She tells you, she, she asked a simple question, she asked you to ask a simple question. Why should I live for other people? Why are other people's lives more important than mine? I'm alive, I'm here, I'm me. Isn't my life to me more important than your life? I mean, I have to tell you for me, I'm more important to me than you are to me. I care more about me than I care about my neighbors. I do. Most people do. We're just ashamed to say it, right? If your kids are drowning in the pool and your neighbor's kids are drowning in the pool, whose kids do you say first? Who saves the neighbor's kids first? Nobody. You save your own kids first. But most people feel guilty about that. Why? It's your kids. It's your life. It's your happiness. That should always be your priority. That's what Rand teaches us. She teaches us to care about our own life. She teaches us to value our own life. And if you value your own life, then you demand the ability to make your own choices. You demand the ability to make your own decisions. You demand the ability to follow your own path, to achieve your own values. Not values that other people chose for you, but that you choose. Why? Because you care about your own life. All politics starts with the decision of who do you as an individual care about. If you care about you, then you demand what? You demand freedom. Freedom is a consequence of caring about yourself. Because if you care about yourself, you want to be able to pursue your values. You don't want mother government sitting on your shoulder saying, uh-uh, don't drink that. Too much sugar. Don't eat that. Too much fat. You want to be able to make those decisions for yourself based on your own values, based on your own choices, based on your own mind. So if we know that we have a mind that is capable of making choices in the world, and if we value ourselves as individuals, we seek freedom. We seek getting the authorities off of our backs. We seek getting rid of people telling us how we should and how we must live. So you need a society, a people who value their own life, who have self-esteem, who want to be happy and successful based on their own choices and their own values, and who have confidence in their own mind to achieve those values and to be successful. That is the foundation of capitalism. That is the foundation of freedom. And that is the foundation of a moral society. Because morality, a moral society, morality is applied to society should be a system that allows us as individuals to choose our own path. An immoral society is a society that tries to impose its values on us, tries to impose what we can and cannot do, try to tell us how we can and cannot live, regulates us, taxes us, redistributes our wealth, controls us in a million different ways. So ultimately, capitalism rests on this idea of the autonomy of the individual, on the self-esteem of the individual, on the individual's capacity to take care of himself. And when we don't have a society like that, and no society in the world has people who respect themselves enough to say, get off my back, leave me alone. But that's the essential maru to freedom. It's the value in your own life. It's respect for your own mind. It's respect for your own ability. That's the foundation, the moral foundation of a capitalist system. We live in a world where you're told you can't think for yourself. We live in a world which says you should live for other people. So then it's just, we have competition between politicians. Some politicians tell you you should sacrifice for the poor. Some politicians tell you you should sacrifice for the state. Some politicians tell you you should sacrifice for God. And then there's just a competition between who you should sacrifice for. And there is nobody out there in the political world with a voice for the people among us who say we don't want to sacrifice. We want to be left alone. We want to be free. And it is this philosophical foundations that are missing. Because if you just look at the economics, if we forget about these philosophical ideas, if we just look at economics, the only system in human history to bring people out of poverty is capitalism. How many, what percentage of the world population lived in two dollars a day or less before capitalism? Ninety-five percent, almost everybody. If you look at countries that are wealthy, what is the difference between them and countries that are poor? How much freedom they have? The more freedom, the more wealth, the more success. It's not about natural resources. You know, everybody know Hong Kong? Hong Kong is this little island. It's a rock in the middle of nowhere. No natural resources, nothing. It used to be a fishing village just close to China, but with nothing. And then the British came there. And the British said on this rock, we protect property rights. We protect contracts. And you can do whatever you want. We don't, we don't allow violence. We don't allow fraud. We don't allow the bad things. We don't tax much. We're not going to regulate it all. No, no free health care. No free anything. And that's it. They just left the rock like that, just government did. Kept people safe. Millions of people came from all over Asia. Why? Because they were promised free stuff. No, because they were promised freedom. Because they knew they could do whatever they chose to do. They could pursue their values. They could pursue their happiness. And in 70 years, 70, this rock with no natural resources and nothing on it has today 7.5 million people, more skyscrapers, tall buildings in New York City, and a GDP per capita income higher than the United States of America. The richer than Americans. Why? Because they were free. So why don't we all want to be free? Why do the people out there don't want to be free? Why don't they want to be Hong Kong? It should be easy. You know, people ask me, how can we turn, how can we turn Columbia or any country? How do we make the country rich? And I say, just do what Hong Kong did. Get out of the way. Let people live. Let people build. Let people create values. And again, the reason they don't want it, the reason they won't accept it, the reason they fight against it is because they won't accept these philosophical ideas. They won't accept the idea of their own capacities. They don't have the confidence, the self-esteem to live free of the authorities, guiding them, helping them in their lives. What will happen if we have real freedom? Good things. Really good things. So I encourage everybody who's interested, really interested in their own life, interested in the world, interested in success and wealth and prosperity for themselves and the people around them. I encourage everybody to read Ayn Rand because Rand really has the answers. She gives you the tool as an individual to live the best life that you can live. And she gives us the tool as a society to create the maximum opportunities for people as individuals to live the best lives that they can live. She gives us the tools as a society, the intellectual tools to be successful and wealthy and free. So how do you make the world a better place? Fight for freedom. Fight for liberty. But fight for freedom and liberty not just on the economic arguments. Those are easy. Those should be obvious. Those are not convincing in the end. Fight for these ideas on the philosophical foundations. Fight for them because it's good for you. Fight for these ideas because your life will be better for achieving them. Life for these ideas because you as an individual want to be free. And if enough of us fight for freedom, ultimately we'll achieve it. Thank you. Also, if you'd like to see the Iran Book Show grow, please consider sharing our content and of course subscribe. Press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live. And for you, those of you who are already subscribers and those of you who already supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.