 And welcome back to another episode of a mere proof in today's episode. I have Yaron brook. Yaron brook is an Israeli American entrepreneur Writer activist. He is an objectivist and current chairman of the board at the Einren Institute So before we continue a little bit house cleaning Number one We did this video a day ago and zoom was having some issues and there's some bandwidth issues for so for the first One to two minutes of the video has been cut off due to the very nature that you couldn't even see it or hear properly There are some parts within this interview that might be glitchy once again For bandwidth issues, but you're gonna really enjoy this episode We talked about why free markets are very important why individual rights supersede nation-state rights and why we must I Can't stress this stress this enough. We must focus on sovereign individual rights We must focus on free markets freedom of speech and freedom of expression for us to have a better Global society. I hope you guys enjoyed today's episode now on with the show well, the reason why I brought you on the show is I've been watching you for a while and You know, you talk about the free market You get the best thing is what where you go around to the university specifically in Europe And you talk about the free market and you bring up the story is like, you know Did Apple create more opportunities for people as opposed to like say governments, right? how many people came out of poverty towards the free market and In our current situation with the pandemic with the coronavirus and the United States government doing all the in not just us every centralized federal reserve around the world doing bailouts It's more or less looking like to me this whole notion and in the last like 20 30 years has been kind of Being mitigated but the whole notion on free markets like we don't really don't live in a free market system anymore. Do we? No, we haven't lived in a free market for a long long time and and every decade it gets worse So, you know, maybe it got a little bit better in the 80s with Reagan and Thatcher But generally and in the you in in Canada, maybe it got better, you know in the 90s But generally the amount of regulation the amount of controls the amount of intervention has only increased by decade since probably 1914 or something in the US at least Yeah, no, I know the last thing I read so the bailout part of the proposition for this bailout was they're not even giving money They're literally buying equities within the companies. And so like the classical definition of socialism is the means of production So when I read this I'm like, is this like socialism like hidden socialism? What is this? So I don't think I don't think they're actually gonna buy equities I think I think they've walked away from that they and it there was some plans to buy equities But it became obvious that that was that was gonna be ridiculous What this is is a form of fascism of economic fascism Fascism when applied to economics put aside the racism the Nazism just just fascism is Controlling the economy without owning the means of production. So what they do is they say, oh, no, your company's yours You own it, but you can't do this. You can't do that. You can't pay your employees less than this You can't play your CEO more than that They tell you exactly what to do and how to do it So in a sense they control every aspect of your business, but you have a piece of paper saying it's yours So what we get and this is how they dull the American people and how they they get this American people to go along because they pretend to the American people. No, we're still capitalist We're still private property. We still believe in markets and I make people say, okay, we'll find them But what they don't realize is no, they're no markets. There's no private property. There's no businesses everything is You know to some extent large extent controlled by the government So we we live today in a mixed economy with a lot of state control and a little bit of freedom and the piece that's free keep shrinking and And this big stimulus package, you know politicians, what do they say never let a crisis go to waste? Of course Politicians as soon as they see a crisis the first thing they jump in it is more controls more limitations more power for them Yeah, and I always tell people like listen up. I'm a serial entrepreneur. I love building businesses. I love the challenge and When you look at the reality, it's it's daunting because it's like how on earth does a brand-new startup compete the answer It's no like when you have government-backed companies that have a bankroll that's unlimited Unlimited that has policies and regulations a stifle especially these patent wards that they have which is ridiculous You look back and you sit back. You're like, I can't even start. I can't even do anything Yeah, I mean what government does is it creates it provides monopolistic powers to companies it creates regulations that barbie from entering and if you think about it that That's what's gonna happen when you give politicians a lot of power So I always you know people like to blame the businessman. Oh the business man manipulate the government But it's not it's the government right my favorite story here is in the 1990s when Microsoft was the largest company in the world They had the highest market cap in the world They they spent a lobbying in Washington, D.C. Exactly zero dollars Never went to DC didn't have lawyers. They didn't have lobby is no buildings nothing and Congress said Microsoft we want to talk to you so they brought Microsoft executives in front of car in front of this committee in Congress and Literally these these congressmen started yelling at them and and aren't hatch who is a Republican from Utah stood up And he and he was a young senator then and he said you guys need to start spending money here You guys need to start lobbying you guys need to build a building here in D.C. You better start Lining our pockets. He didn't say it that way, but basically that's the implication. Otherwise, you're in trouble and Microsoft walked out of then basically the The guy who was there wasn't even Bill Gates. I was there said, you know, you leave us alone. We'll leave you alone Well, you know, you've got nothing to give us we create jobs. We're producing. We're busy competing, right? six months later Not gonna do it Microsoft. We're from the Justice Department and We're here because you're violating antitrust laws. What were they doing? They were offering a product for free Like you're too young to remember this but when the first internet browsers came out you had to pay for them downloaded Netscape and you had to pay 70 bucks to use it and Microsoft was offering Internet Explorer for free So then they went through court cases 10 years and then another 10 years of a government regulator sitting at Microsoft and Telling them what they couldn't couldn't do and you know controlling everything. This is when Bill Gates left the company and everything What was the lesson Microsoft's law? Yeah, we better have somebody in Washington. So this doesn't have to happen again So how much money they spent today on lobbying? tens of millions of dollars So for businesses a lot of the lobbying is just self-defense now It's true after a while when they get into the habit of going to politicians They start asking for favors and they start manipulating the market instead protect start protecting themselves But the only way to get rid of Cronism is to get rid of government power over the economy I would love to rewrite the American Constitution and have a separation of State from economics government should have no role in economics. I Agree, you know, I always say Nassim to leave has a good saying it's like I'm not opposed to communism. I think communism is great with my family It works perfectly between my my mom my brother my sister one You know, I know them. It's a small group of people. That's it beyond that It doesn't work, right? So the higher the higher level you go up. It has to be Even in the family You don't it's not true that you sacrifice some for the sake of others It's not about sacrifices and it's not about equality. It's not about equality You we don't you know, the kids don't have as much say as I do. No, no my home I'd bring the money in my words That's like communism. So it's not some it's not some You know, there's no nothing good about egalitarianism. There's nothing good about Sacrifice what the home is is it again? It's contracts and trade when you have a child You basically Having entered into an implicit contract to take care of that child for 18 years and do your best to Produce a good human being so so you take care of them You're not sacrificing you commit it to this any more than a business sacrifices when it pays its employees because it's got a contract with them No, that's what they do right and with your spouse Even if let's say she stays home and you work. It's not you're not sharing the money equally because no There's a trade there, right? You have a relationship that is fundamentally a trade relationship. Yeah, there's that there's definitely not equal share money No, you get egalitarian is is a it's a pipe dream Inism is evil through and through there's nothing good about communism and Not in the family not outside the family I mean if the seam was serious and he actually practiced communism in the household his wife would leave So brings me that question though is like I'm a hundred percent firm believer that the government's only responsibility is Military defense and private property protection. That's it. Everything else education leave Private corporation. That's it leave you should just defend my freedom of right speech my sovereign to individual Protect the borders and protect my right on proper everything else bugger off Correct, correct But At the exact same time what we're seeing is the opposite. We're seeing the bureaucracians as I call them grow in Employees every single year. So it's not the opposite the government increases by size every single year You can't fire these people. It's impossible. So they have no accountability whatsoever So they can make a million times mistakes, but no one's held accountable for these mistakes And yet here we are sitting back and you know, we're preaching what Iran talked about Individual responsibility self-sovereignty more or less kind of like the non-aggressive principles But I'm also a realist when I'm what I see right now I still think if I'm looking around the world still United States is still one of the best countries per se comparing to the global Even here in Canada, I don't have the same constitutional rights as you guys have in the United States You know freedom of speech is not really freedom of speech in Canada to be honest with you Like I can end up to jail saying some things over here Reminds you like communist fucking Yugoslavia the parent my story the parents my stories my parents told me and The question is what can we do? Is there any actual steps that we can take to change things? I mean the only thing I mean people always want shortcuts and they always want a quick solution to these things But but it doesn't work that way. Unfortunately. I wish there was and I don't know if there is one I don't know to me. It's about education education education. It's about speaking speaking speaking It's about doing podcasts and writing Editorials and in recommending people read out was shrugged and trying to get the word out there to people people have been inculcated with an ideology of What I meant called altruism an ideology that says that basically your life your happiness is not what's important Your moral duty your moral responsibility is to take care of others And if you have to sacrifice for that self-sacrifice for that if you're worse off of that then that's okay That's why we view Mother Teresa as a moral hero, right because she suffered to help other people Bill Gates helped many more people than Mother Teresa did But he made money doing it. So that's a no-no So we live in a culture that believes that's self-interest that pursuing your own happiness that pursuing your own life The pursuing your own values is bad Now that is inculcated through Christianity. That's inculcated through our secular philosophers That's inculcated from every direction in the culture and that's what we have to overcome We have to undo the programming that so many people have just accepted and bought into and the Revolution really is not about economics or politics. It's really an ethical revolution We have to teach people that their life is theirs that they should be pursuing their happiness Not just because that's what the self-help gurus say but that's because it's their moral Responsibility and the only way they can pursue their happiness is by taking personal responsibility By thinking for themselves by producing for themselves and that people who become dependent on government are never gonna be happy cannot be happy because they've given up their own self-esteem their own You know self-respect because now they live off of other people. They're like beggars in the street So the only way to attain happiness is to be an independent thinking Rational being and that to convince people of that is gonna take just a lot of Educating a lot of speaking a lot of getting them to read the right books And we'll talk against everybody else in the culture Everybody's against us, but it seems like getting worse and worse at the exact same time Like I made a video the other day and I'm looking and I see people actively Sticking their hands out and saying please government track my phone for this stuff. Please government Give me money. I can't even wipe my own ass with anymore. I just can't even be a human being You said it before when you said the government controls education and it shouldn't it controls education Which means it controls kids from when they're very young controls their minds controls their attitudes Tells them what is true and what it's not what is knowledge and what is not it doesn't teach them to think for themselves It doesn't teach them reality facts history what really happens math science those things are not important What's important is social sciences and kumbaya Feel and socialized socialization is really important and as a consequence you get these snowflakes these kids who Who are the results of this educational system? I can't think can't produce for themselves. They can't be entrepreneurs. They can't go work I Get a decent job and they don't know anything So they think Socialism is wonderful because they don't know anything they think the government will solve all their problems Because that's all they've been taught. It's all they've been so our job is to undo the programming and to get them when they're Young to try to get them in the 15 60 17 and and to really undo everything that the government schools Have programmed into them and again, it's hard and we're probably gonna lose certainly in the short run But I think it's the only thing we can do Yeah, you know, I agree when it's It's interesting because when you walk when I watch some of your videos with the students You have some who are like almost triggered like ah, this is this is impossible But then you have the select few who you kind of almost in real time You can see their gears are like wait a second. Yeah. Oh that oh shit that kind of makes sense Afterwards after talks like that's telling me, you know that it opened their eyes that they completely Completely changed their attitudes towards the world. So yeah, I mean, that's what you have to do You have to go out there and talk to people and present them that these new ideas these different ideas and I'm just gonna flop down on top of them and Too many kind of within the free market movement if you will too many people focus in economics Yeah, I focus in economics all the time It's not convincing to people You need to be able to make a moral ethical case for individualism for capitalism for freedom And and the only way to do that is to attack things that people don't like attacking like religion like Philosophy like like the ethics they mom they mom taught them, right? but It's the only way to do it and in Europe you have to attack tribalism on top of all that So at least in America, we have a little less although it's growing of the of the tribalistic attitude But yes, you have to up and all the fundamental beliefs people have Yeah, it's fascinating guys. I always tell people this to I'm like listen It's not like people are packing up their suitcases in United States and heading over to China or Russia It's the opposite way around it's not like oh man today's a great day I'm gonna leave and go to fucking live under the CCP because it's so much better over there and You talk these snowflakes you talk to these people who you know scream social and listen. I I understand why they want socialism I understand it. I get it, but then I'm like You're talking to somebody whose family grew up there You're talking to people who's lost their grandfather and grandparents and gulags You're talking to people who escaped China them chairman Mao killed a hundred million people first-hand accounts, but yet you Can't get through you see but this is the point socialism for them is a moral ethical ideal correct It's it's it's so the fact that it's been tried and failed Just means we need to try again and harder Because it's an ideal So unless you challenge the fact that it's an ideal and stuff like what Naseem Talib said about the family Doesn't help. You have to challenge it at its core. You have to challenge it at the level of You know, it's noble to sacrifice yourself other people, you know right now You know the corona virus we've all accepted the fact that it's okay to sacrifice young people for old people We've all said we're gonna change our lives. We're gonna stop working. We're gonna stop doing everything. Why? Because God forbid we only isolate old people and we treat them differently because the solution to this is to isolate the people who are most Sceptible to it who happened by the way not to be the workforce because most of them are tired So isolate them You know, try to try to put them in in places where they won't get affected And let the rest of us live our lives, but no The mall thing is you you can't treat some people differently than others egalitarianism requires you to treat everybody the same So everybody needs to be sacrificed young and old For the cause of I don't know say this reminds this reminds me of Rainier Rajard's memesis theory Where there has to be a sacrificial process some it's not our fault. It's not our sins. No God forbid It's our sins, you know, someone else's fault. Let's go sacrifice that person There's always there was there's always a scapegoat and there's always a Sacrificial element that kind of purifies you from it. I mean think about Donald Trump's campaign I mean you ran a campaign saying all the problems in America are your fault. They're not, you know Americans fault they're the fault of the Chinese and immigrants and Mexicans and elites and we can sacrifice them and then we good Good hearted Americans we will live better lives and of course, it's complete BS It's any problems that exist in America are the other results of American choices Hmm, you I agree you travel a lot you've spoken around the world a lot Do you see any places around the world that people are more I'm gonna say waking up a more Accepting of this type of story like kind of a surprise to you like certain areas around the world Do you see like people like okay, you know, I think it's places around the world where People are just fed up. Mm-hmm. They've tried everything and they've just it's just it just nothing has worked so far And they're willing to be radical. They're willing to question deep down big So for example, I understand for what you said before your family from Serbia. Yeah former Yugoslavia Yeah, the Balkans. Yeah, yeah, these are responses in the Balkans Poland Ukraine Georgia So former Soviet Republics who lived under communism remember fascism and Since the war came down of tried all kind of mixed economies and everything sucks. Everything's failed. It's all corrupt So young people they are willing to think radical ideas somewhat Latin America you get a little bit of that in Latin America still difficult but but young people again So pissed off they promise to be middle-class the poor The societies are going nowhere the economies are going nowhere. They're willing to consider something radical They're willing to think outside the box and that's an opening for us. Yeah, funny you bring that up there It's more of a counter-markets economy in the Balkans So you have you know, you have you know, the Balkans are screwed up You have Croatia slowly entering the EU the EU dollar has inflated everything and the locals like oh my this is fucked up please leave the EU and You know the average salary over there is probably two three hundred euros a month Which is nothing but you see you see people no one paid no one pays taxes Everybody's doing cash. It's a massive countermarket and it's fascinating. It's yeah It's fascinating to watch how people kind of completely go underneath the radar from like the government well, that's what happens in societies where the government is dysfunctional and corrupt and And interventionist and but but not off not totalitarian so they can get away with it see his establishment of a black market it happens in in Any country that that where you see that in South America you see it in all over Eastern Europe and in the Middle East any place where the government is weak and corrupt and Authoritarian there's a huge black market. Yeah, my biggest fear they're going in the future is and I got pissed off And I shouldn't have but like I see people applauding what China did during the coronavirus. I'm like Guys they fucking welded people shut in their homes. What the hell are you talking about? Doing something similar now. I mean a lot. Yeah in the US a model daft to China And and they say it worked rather than using the South Korean model. Yes travel bands No restrictions on at least small gatherings. No restrictions on travel. No restrictions like that and what they did is they test it They tracked and they isolated on a case-by-case basis They didn't shut down the economy So instead of that we're mimicking the Chinese model and it's truly atrocious and they look the left is Admires China for a long time. They admire the central planning. They they Misidentified what has led to China's success because it's not the central planning It's actually those parts of the economy where China's left alone We're kind of like what which are we less regulated than are here in the West That's what China's that's what led to China's success not the central planning of the of the communist party People also forget too when I talk about leftists and socialists the Psychology the psychographic design of a leftist is a sociopath They crave and yearn power absolute power It's a group of individuals that decide the rules for all and I tell that people Yeah, yeah totally. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah I would say they're the same left and right are the same like if you're look if you're looking at these different parties like I don't agree with everything that Chomsky talks about but like Chomsky has a good saying the parties in power You know, I think it's both left and right. It's yeah, yeah, both rest of the year one power That's what they are on that so they're they think they can run our lives They think they know what's better for us. They they have no respect for the individual no respect for the human mind They they are just power-lusting little dictators and that dominates who goes into politics left and right. Yeah, yeah, and So where do we go from here? Like what can people do as an individual person right now going through the we're in a big recession? Like I don't care what people say this is gonna be horrible, but what can a person who's Reading information and looking online like what's something active they can do? Well first Study the ideas study the ideas that behind freedom that at the base of freedom It's not enough just to get a superficial understanding because then you're not gonna be a good communicator to really Communicate and to help teach people and educate people you've got to be you've got to know the idea So here I recommend reading not just that was shrug But a lot of iron man's essays a lot of her nonfiction and then there's a gazillion of content on the iron man Institute website iron man dog if you come to what my YouTube channel your on book show calm In the end YouTube channel your own book you'll find because lots and lots of videos some of the lectures I've given in Europe and elsewhere. I mean study get good at it and then so two things know the ideas Live them go out and live them be successful be happy in spite of the recession make something of yourself. Hmm and then You know become an advocate You know become a supporter find ways to support people who are we're doing the work to promote these ideas And then you start promoting these ideas within whatever circle you have influence Well said, I want to thank you so much for coming on the show sharing your thoughts. What's the best? What's the best resource people can reach you at? so you're on book show calm and In my YouTube channel, of course, Twitter Facebook I'm on all those so just just put my name on to Google and all of that will pop up Awesome. Thank you so much. My pleasure. Thank you