 You'll figure it out. Okay, we're switching to English. Quick question, I think I probably know the answer to this question. How many people here have grad Harry Potter? Alright, almost everybody. Cool. But you see the problem with Harry Potter is that Harry Potter is responsible for a significant increase in inequality. Inequality has increased dramatically because of the seven Harry Potter books, the 9, 10, 11, 12 movies, the Disneyland rides, and the entire variety of Harry Potter products. I as a parent know that I've spent thousands of dollars on Harry Potter. My sons are about Harry Potter's age. They're older than you guys. And every time a book came out, we had to buy two copies. That's like $25 each, because they were hot cover, they were expensive ones. And then I wanted to read Harry Potter as well. So we got the audio tapes, and we would take a road trip and listen to the Harry Potter thing. And then we had to go see the movies, and then we had to go read the rides, and I figure I've spent thousands of dollars on Harry Potter. And at the same time, and this is really what is so upsetting about the whole thing, at the same time as I got poorer by thousands of dollars, J.K. Rawlins became a billionaire. I mean, that's horrible. Inequality exploded. She got super rich, and I literally got poorer. And how can that be fair? That can't be right. But that's the inequality that everybody's talking about. We get poorer because we keep buying things like iPhones, and buying things like clothes, and buying things stuff for ourselves. And these companies keep getting richer and richer, and their owners become the .001%, and the gap between those of us who are poor, middle class, and they're very rich. The owners of these companies, if you will, get richer and richer and richer, and the gap between us just rose. And that's just awful, right? I mean, why is that wrong? Why would I talk about Harry Potter in this gap? It just doesn't seem right. What's wrong with that? You didn't have to buy it. Oh, certainly I didn't have to buy it. It's a lot. I bought the books. I got poorer. Those got bigger. And inequality went up. Why is that not a bad thing? Everyone's better off. Yeah. How am I better off? I just told you. I'm sure thousands of dollars. How did I get better off? Because you enjoy the road. Yeah, because I enjoy reading the books. I enjoyed them so much that I happily paid the thousands of dollars. So I gained a spiritual value, a material value from reading the books. I was willing to give up a material value, dollars, to get that spiritual value. But you know what? There are a lot of hard science guys here. In economics, we don't know how to measure spiritual values. We don't know. We can measure bank accounts. We can measure dollars. Everybody heard of Thomas Piketty's book, Capital for the 21st Century, which was the big book that kind of made this whole quality just explode. And he basically measured my bank account. And he measured JK Wallin's bank account. And he said, Yuan's bank account got smaller. And JK Wallin's bank account got much bigger. So therefore, inequality increased. And since it doesn't look like Yuan got anything in return because we can't measure it, it must be a bad thing. And he got exploited. But I enjoyed it. And we know I enjoyed it, by the fact that I voluntarily went and kept buying the books. And I enjoyed it by much more than their amount of money. I spent on it. How do we know that? Otherwise I wouldn't have spent the money. I'd rather have kept the money in my pocket. Right? It's simple. How much is this worth if I spent $600 on it? How much is it worth to me? More than $600. It was just worth exactly $600. I wouldn't have bought it, right? I would be indifferent between the iPhone and the money in my pocket. I might buy it, I might not. But no, I ran to buy it because it's worth much, much, much, much more than $600. When I spent $25, $50, thousands of dollars on Harry Potter, it's because Harry Potter's worth more to me than the thousands of dollars I spent on Harry Potter. So yes, I can't get that much smaller, but my life got better and J.K. Rowland's made a little bit of money off of it. Cool. Thank you, J.K. Rowland's, because I only had to pay $25 for a book that increased my joy in life by much more than $25. But again, economists can't measure that. So if we just look at numbers, it looks really bad. But people say, well, but J.K. Rowland's because it's a book, but that doesn't work in the real world. That doesn't work. That's not how markets work, right? Really? What's the secret of becoming a billionaire? How do you become a billionaire? Not a millionaire, a millionaire is easy, but how do you become a billionaire? Anybody know how you become a billionaire? This is incredibly valuable information for you guys. Find something everyone wants. Yeah. Everyone wants a private jet, so you're not going to become a billionaire by designing private jets. Probably not even selling them, because it's not a big enough market. How do you become a billionaire? Everybody wants it, but there's something missing. Everyone wants it. Everybody's willing to pay you more than what it costs you to produce. So find something that hundreds of millions of people are willing to pay you more than what it costs you to produce. And if hundreds of millions are willing to do it and if they're willing to do it over and over and over again, like a Microsoft product or an Apple product, or like an Amazon product then you'll become a billionaire. It's easy to become a billionaire. In other words, or put it this way, why are people willing to keep buying yourself for that price, which is higher than what it costs you to produce? Why are they willing to do that? Because they are getting a benefit from it more than what they're paying for it. So in other words, the only way to become a billionaire is to come up with a product that everybody wants. That they're willing to pay for it more than what it costs you to produce because it benefits their life. You can shorten that and say they don't even become a billionaire. It's to impact the lives of billions of people for the better. That's how you become a billionaire. You become a freemort who has made the world a better place to live. My definition whether it's Amazon I don't know how many of you guys use Amazon, but I couldn't live without it. It's unbelievable how much my life is better for having Amazon, or more. And probably they have how much my wife's life is better for having Amazon. We do all our shopping, who the hell wants to go to a mall to a store or anything like that. Wow, I mean, there's time saved from not having to walk in all these stores and go and look for stuff. You can click and find things and seconds and it used to take you hours. Think about how much life you have saved because of Amazon. So, Bezos, Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the world. And yet, I don't think he has anywhere near what he deserves. But what I saw Jeff Bezos the first thing I'd say to him is thank you. As much money as you've made off of me you've benefited my life a thousand times more than the money I've contributed to your bank account. And yet, we hit those guys up on top. We resent their wealth. We want to knock them down. We keep saying this inequality it's a real problem. It's a real problem for both ends. We believe poor people are too poor and rich people are too rich and we want to crunch them all together. We want to make them more equal. That is the story left that right everybody basically supports the agenda of increasing equality in society. I don't know if anybody in the world of politics or the world of public policy who does not argue that inequality is a problem. And yet, if you go back to economics if the rich get rich by making all of our lives better then why is it a problem? If the gap increases but everybody is better off while the gap increases why do we care? People mention, you know we have real problems in Israeli economy and American economy and Western economy generally. The poor seem to have less mobility less ability to rise up from poverty but they seem to suck in some ways compared to maybe 20, 30 years ago at least in the United States. Economic growth seems to be slow all over the West. Some people who get rich don't get rich by making the world a better place how do they get rich? Not enough. They have a manipulating government to provide them with favors by corruption. So there are problems in the world out there. But none of those problems not a single one of them has anything to do with the gap. Inequality is a gap. It's just a numerical function of the difference between people in their what? 1% however you want to define it people in their bottom 10% or in the middle of the top however you want to define it, it's just a gap. And it's absolutely zero economic feud that relates the gap to any of these problems. It doesn't make any sense that the gap in itself would cause people to stay poor. That the gap in itself would cause corruption at the top. That the gap in itself would slow economic growth. Quite the contrary I would argue that attempts to shrink the gap attempts to shrink this gap are what actually cause all the problems. We can talk about that. So what is it about all of you that would find so offensive because it's not economics it's not that we have a problem with people, we shouldn't have a problem with people creating wealth if they really create it. And what is it? Well, a lot of it's envy at the end of the day real envy of success, real envy of progress. But before we get to envy one of the problems is that we have this deception of wealth in society. We just assume that it's you that it's today. And people use this analogy and I know they use it in Israel they use it in the US, they use it in every way of a pie. Piketty uses it in his book. There's a pie. We have wealth in society. And we have this association when you bring a pie and you're all friends and you have it around the table and you put a piece of it in the middle of the table the assumption that everybody's going to get the same amount. And if you're in a family and like you're slicing up a piece and the kids get a bigger piece everybody else goes, oh you got a bigger piece of something. Because the assumption is it's our pie and if it's our pie we all get to share it about equally. Great. So we have this assumption that wealth in society is a pie. And now the question is what do we do with this pie? And how do we give it up? If you have this family association of how a pie split up in a family will go, oh you got a bigger piece of something. Now what's the problem with that? I mean there are many problems. What's the one problem with that? It assumes more about the pie. Yeah, it's fixed that this pie exists. And it's fixed that it doesn't grow. But we know that's not true. Wealth grows constantly. That the pie actually constantly gets bigger and bigger and bigger. But it's more than that. How this pie is divided affects whether it grows or it doesn't grow. And the more you divide the pie up equally the less it will grow. Because the fact is that only some people can make it by growth. Not everybody can make it by growth. Only some people know what to do to make the dough rise or whatever you want to call it. Only some people know how to create wealth. Not in large quantities. There's only one J.K. Rollins. There's only one Steve Jobs. There's only one Bill Gates. The people who really or Steve or Jeff Bezos really grow the pie significantly. And if you start slicing it up equally then just on purely economic perspective you create massive disincentives. You create massive mis-education counter. And the pie is just not going to grow. It probably will start shrinking. Indeed every example of history where we've tried to divide the pie equally what happens? It shrinks. Look at Venezuela. They pie it short dramatically. But there's a bigger problem with this pie analogy. Much bigger problem with the pie analogy. That it's fixed. What's the bigger problem with the pie analogy? The bigger problem is there is no pie. There's no such thing as wealth that society has. A GDP. In a sense. There's no the wealth of Israel. There's no pie. There's your pie and your pie and your pie. We make our own pie. And yeah economists and politicians squish all the pie together. We can add them all up. And tell you yes on average this is what it is. This is the aggregate of wealth in society. But society didn't create the pie. They didn't own the pie. You own the pie that you made. It's yours. And I don't get to take your pie and punch it up with mine and pretend that now it's one big new pie that we have to divvy up. Who the hell gets to decide how we divvy up the pie? It's not of anybody's business. Don't touch my pie. My pie is mine. Get your hands off of it. You don't get to aggregate my pie with a selectivistic big pie that there's some central plan against to divide up in some whatever manner. And I don't care if I get a big piece or a small piece nobody gets to touch my pie. Nobody should touch your pie. You made it. You did build it. So there's no such thing as collective wealth. Again, economists need to aggregate stuff so we can talk about the macroeconomy. But there is no such thing really as an macroeconomy. All there is is you and you and you and you acting and creating and building and making and trading. And if you make a big pie and I make a small pie how do I have a claim against a big pie you made? Why? You made it? Not me. I didn't do it. So the whole idea of a pie is a collectivistic myth that assumes that what you create is owned by all of us. And that's just wrong. What you create is yours. What I create is mine. That's the fundamental basis of a free society. So people think in distorted ways about the whole issue of wealth creation the whole issue of inequality. Indeed, they really can't think about it partially because they're distorted by these collectivistic notions that add nothing, that contribute nothing to an understanding of the actual underlying issue. I mean if you look around this room and if you look around this room you can do it. People next year want to look. Everybody here is different. I mean how shocking is that? There are no two people who are the same. And that's true in every single room I've ever spoken at. It's quite bizarre. And it turns out that if you take a bunch of people who are different and you leave them alone you set them free and you come back a few years later are they all going to be the same? No, they were different and they're going to stay different which means you're going to do different things. Because you have different skills you have different abilities you have different model character you have different work ethic you're different in so many dimensions that the outcome of any activity you engage in is going to be different. It's not going to be the same. Some of us will choose a started technology company incredibly successful and change the world and benefit mankind in a massive stale and become gazillionage. And some of us will choose to be teachers and never make any money a choice. It doesn't mean one is smarter than the other doesn't mean one is more virtuous than the other it just means one chose a career path that generates money and other one because of their scale on which they function and other one teaches where the scale is very small. If you teach you can affect tens of thousands of people throughout your career one great technology innovation that you bring out into the world can change the lives of hundreds of millions of billions of people. Think Amazon again change the lives of billions of people yes it's not surprising Jeff Bezos makes more money than I do he's changed the world he's much more profound in a way than anything I can do and in a material world but of course life's not about money life's not about money it's about flourishing and happiness and success as an individual it's not about how much money I die with Jeff Bezos won that but it's not a competition it's about making the most of the life you have and sometimes for some people it's about money for some people it's that it's about pursuing what your values are, what your passions are so if we leave people free they make different stuff the outcome is going to be different they're going to have different wealth after a very short period of time because metaphysically not a social construct but metaphysically we are different again we're different genes different parents of an environment different choices that each one of us makes that is going to result in different outcomes anytime somebody wants to in a sense overturn something that's already metaphysical it's part of nature it's part of reality something to screw so that's the only way we can take the differences among us and make them somehow equal by force the only way to do that is by force and even then we can't really do it we can just approximate it so yeah some of us create a lot of value and some of us create a little value what can we do in order to equate things we can take from those who create a value and give to those who didn't create value now how is that just how is that right to use force against those who created to give to those who didn't create where is the morality in that where is the justice in that idea but that's exactly what those who tell us an inequalities problem it's exactly what those who want to solve the problem of inequality want to do and of course why stop the money we're unequally lots of different things how do we equate inequality in any respect relationships what's that how does that work what's that a woman for every worker there you go or a man for every worker it depends right on your orientation and that was very sexist because you assume that men work you're in trouble now you're in trouble now no I mean there are many dimensions of which we're different there are many dimensions of which we're unequal and the only way to try to remedy that is by using force there's no other way to do it and if you accept that force is bad some dimension or another then the try you mean towards equality cannot be a good thing if it requires physical force and it does there's just no other way to make a sequel and indeed even with force you can't make a sequel some of us are smarter than others some of us they're more ambitious than others some of us we all have different interests how do you make a sequel you can't and you can't overcome those metaphysical barriers so the whole idea of trying to establish equality is in my book an evil idea indeed it's probably the most evil idea what can I add there's only one sense in which equality means anything when the funny father the Declaration of Independence in America write that all men are created in equal what do they mean because we're not we're not equal not equally what's that yeah we're equal in our rights we're equal in our liberty we're equal in our freedoms we're each born with the right to our own life to our own liberty and our own pursuit of our own happiness we are born free we are born with the right to live our lives as we see fit free free of coercion from our neighbors free of coercion from our government we're born these rights we're born equal before the law if you want if the law is properly understood as defending protecting our rights in that sense we are equal should be and that's something you can actually control by structuring the right kind of government and understanding of individual rights but notice that any attempt to establish equality of overcome any kind of overcome necessitates violating the idea of equality of rights because any attempt to establish equality of outcome means taking the pie that you baked by force from you and giving it to somebody who didn't make it the violation of your rights to your own property to the product of your own labor to your own life so there is a trade-off a direct trade-off between the striving towards equality of outcome which is impossible to get to the striving towards equality of outcome and freedom and liberty if you value liberty and freedom if you value individual rights if you value your right to live your life if you see fit you cannot value equality of outcome and of course if you value equality of outcome you do not value the rights of an individual to live with in that kind of setup between equality and freedom I'm outside of freedom and not on the side of equality now that's true even if you don't believe in absolute equality it requires violating somebody's rights even if you want so equality of opportunity what is equality of opportunity not discriminating now equality of opportunity is not not about discriminating because it's because the fact is that we all have different opportunities it's very much an outcome think about it what do they complain about equality of opportunity for example a poor kid is born with parents and don't have a lot of money and therefore might not say it's as good as school they might not have a computer at home they might not have books at home or whatever it is my kid was born in a relatively wealthy family and had a computer at home and books at home and parents who loved them and he had more opportunities than that of course how are you going to equate the opportunities if we were going to equate opportunities by equating the outcomes of one thing well again it's another form of outcome the only way is to equate some way of outcome in other words is to equate from some to give to the others so again even the idea of equality of opportunity as understood by most people requires the violation of rights and requires the violation of some people's freedom I think it's more about the average people want that the average poor child will have as much as a chance to be average rich but he's not going to there's no way to do that unless you take from the rich and give to the poor and necessitates the same kind of action is that morally acceptable? well that's a good question but is it ever acceptable to use force in order to fulfill your or anybody's social ambitions or social ideas the fact is again the fact is they were all unequal were born into unequal circumstances were born with different genes and now you want to penalize in a good situation for the sake of somebody who's born in a bad situation is that morally right? I worked very very hard a lot of hours to give a huge amount of opportunities to my kids and now you want to tell me no your kids have too many opportunities we're going to penalize them we're not going to allow them into schools we're going to take some of their opportunities away because somebody else for whatever reason didn't have those opportunities right? the alternative is that the poor will remain poor no why would the poor remain poor? because they lack opportunities but they don't lack opportunities they just don't have equal opportunities there's a big difference between lacking opportunities and not being equal opportunities they have a smaller set of opportunities but that doesn't mean that they can't rise up in need in economies, in countries in the world where we don't redistribute where we don't take from someone's gift to others where we don't try to establish equality what happens to the poor people if they're ambitious? what was JK Walden before she moved to Harry Potter? a single mom basically living in an office and she was good poor what was the money before she moved to Harry Potter? to the 6th President's Center of Living what was the money then? the fact is that what percentage of population was poor 250 years ago? 95 $2 a day or less I don't know how many of you live up to $2 a day as students my assumption is none of you $2 a day or less but 250 years ago 95 plus of all human beings on the planet including in the west lived on less than $2 a day and what happened? what was the inequality back then? the quality of opportunity the quality of outcome it was very equal man we were equal we were all equally poor and then what happened? you didn't provide equal opportunities what did you provide? freedom just provided freedom everybody got richer but some people got much richer but everybody got richer that's pretty cool how many people today live on $2 a day or less in the west? nobody how many people in the whole world live on $2 a day or less? just under 10% under 90% by 2030 at the rate we're going now nobody in the world will live on under $2 a day and why is that? because of welfare creating equal opportunities redistribution of welfare it's all that money the government's spending in Asia and Africa that's what's generated this disappearance of poverty by the way 30 years ago anybody know how many people are under $2 a day? 30% so over the last 30 years over a billion people have come out of extreme poverty why? what's that? more jobs why and then more jobs? do you like to start a film? what's that? these are chains these are a lot of language you can't fix it this is the most important question in politics and economics today in over the last 30 years over a billion people have come out of extreme poverty the question is what? organization globalization yeah it's an aspect of globalization but what is about the ability to take advantage of globalization they still look like 9% or not and there's a reason why they haven't what made it possible? capitalism capitalism in free markets freedom a little bit, not even that much China they freed up the economy in China and suddenly a billion Chinese got rich or relatively rich India in 1991 they start liberalizing the economy getting rid of all the socialism getting rid of all the government constraints they still have a long way to go but even a little bit that they did tens, hundreds of millions of people come out of poverty South Korea, Taiwan Singapore, Hong Kong the Asian countries, Malaysia, Indonesia and even some countries like Rwanda and Botswana in Africa are suddenly discovering simple principles of capitalism property rights, rule of law equality before the law and they make huge amounts of money it's not equality of opportunity that brings people out of poverty it's freedom that brings people out of poverty it's political equality that brings them out of poverty it's respect for their rights it's protecting them from murderers and cooks and thieves and fraudsters that brings them out of poverty because then they engage their mind they start up businesses they trade with other people and that's true of poor people that is of rich people everybody can do that now yes, poor people have few opportunities that's reality that's life there's no way to fix it unless you create a victim of some people but why? how is that model of the right to penalize people for their abilities to penalize people for their little bit better so now, it's freedom that makes us rich it's freedom that brings people out of poverty it's freedom not equality of anything again, other than equality of rights equality of liberty equality of fear and the more we strive towards more equality the more destruction we unleash on the world I mean, my favorite example of this there's a small group of intellectuals in the 1960s and 70s studying in France with the best philosophers of the time Sartre and Cameroon Foucault and all these guys and they learned the really egalitarian philosophy everybody should be equal everybody should be the same this is the ideal and they said, you know, we want to implement this we want to make this a reality so they went back to their home country and they actually took political control they became the political leaders of the country they said, okay, we can establish a really equal society I mean, citizen of the 1970s not that long ago but people aren't equal in our society so what are we going to do? some people live in the cities, some people live in the countryside what are we going to do about that? what do you do? some people live in the city some people live in the countryside, they're huge benefits they're living in cities so these people are richer, have more opportunities they have better services and the people in the countryside are barely surviving through some systems farming how do we make those two groups equal? move them? farm cities what's that? farm the cities, they didn't quite farm the cities so then that would do it what do they do? they economically farm the cities what's that? they economically farm the cities yeah, you can economically farm the cities but they weren't a hurry guys they didn't have time for this long-term economics so some people say, well, education we'll get them all equal they didn't have time for education they wanted equality and they wanted equality now what do they do? you kick everybody out of the cities and they literally did this they emptied their cities they marched people out into the countryside well, yeah I'll tell you and now they're in the countryside and now you've got a problem because there's not enough food but some people so the people are foraging foraging is going and picking nuts and berries and hunting animals little animals because there's not enough farmland for all these people to cultivate but it turns out that some people are better foraging for food than other people so what do you do? I mean, you collect them and you don't nest, then I collect them and that's not fair and it's hard to catch everybody who's collecting a lot of nuts and distributing to those who don't collect nuts so what do you do? you ban foraging some people starve but that's okay because we starve people but it's still a problem I mean, these people are frustrated, right? some people had any education some people did not some people are smart some people are not some people could you know, could do stuff with their hands some people could not what do you do? I mean, there are all these differences on people how do you create equality? lobotomize them you could lobotomize them that's true you could lobotomize them and they say we are all equal in the grade yeah, you kill them so if you wore glasses literally if you wore glasses they assume you read or you are in some way more intelligent and they shot you if you had a high school education they shot you if you could read, they shot you if you exhibited any sign of knowing a little bit more than everybody around you they shot you they killed 2 million people anybody know where this is? what's that? it's the Cameroon project in Cambodia this is the Cameroons in Cambodia these are the killing fields of Cambodia and this is exactly what they did you read about these were all trained smart intellectual people Paul Pot was not some barbarian came in from the jungle he was a terrorist and the people around him all studied at the Sabon he didn't study at the Sabon but everybody around him did these were intellectuals dedicated to the idea of equality and at the end of the day the idea of equality leads to nothing but death and destruction and a disappearance a complete disappearance of freedom and what happens on the other flip side they get rich relatively speaking the poorest person in the west today is richer than the richest person who was 250 years old we have supercomputers in our pockets supercomputers this is like a craze somebody told me this is more powerful than a craze supercomputer is that right? more powerful than a craze supercomputer was in the 80s and a craze supercomputer was an old room and it was like whoa it was like you guys went around in the 80s and it was like wow that was impressive now we have them in our pockets and this is not a product of equality of outcome or equality of opportunity this is a product of some genius and allowing that genius to be free to manifest itself in the world so inequality in my view well not in my view in reality is a feature of freedom it's part of parcel of freedom it's not a bug it's what happens when you leave a street equality requires the disappearance of freedom equality requires violence every society in the trade in every place on the planet violence is the result and the more equal they try to make the society the more the violence is extreme the coming news is obviously an extreme example but it's real not made up, real story and everywhere where they try right now everywhere where they try to achieve more equality ultimately the result has to be death and destruction and the disappearance of freedom in the world so if you value your freedom then you should celebrate inequality if it's generated if it's generated from that freedom and to the extent that this call means then how do you get rid of colonialism you know government people manipulating that how do you get rid of colonialism smaller government yeah you get rid of the power of government to regulate to control you guys know the story of Microsoft I'll wrap up in a second you know the story of Microsoft so Microsoft in the early 1990s in the world spent exactly $0 on lobby 0, nothing no lawyers in Washington no building in Washington then basically the idea of Microsoft was you leave us alone, we'll leave you alone we're not interested you have nothing to contribute to our project biggest company in the world and they were invited to congress and they sat in front of the senate and all in half which was the senator from Utah he's still unfortunately in the senate a republican yelled at literally stood up and yelled at the way in the figure you guys have to start lobbying you got to build a building in Washington DC you've got to hire lawyers you have got to have a presence here in other words he said if he was in Latin America he would have said you've got to start bribing me but you can't say that in America so you have to start lobbying and Microsoft walked out of the meeting and said leave me alone, we'll leave you alone we're not interested six months later not going to go within the justice department and we're here to sue you for antitrust violations what was the crime Microsoft committed having 933rd building in Washington DC yeah I say those days to get a web browser you had to pay $70 to Netscape and you could download a web browser there were no free web browsers I know today it's like whoa we don't give anything online never mind the browser that makes it possible for us to do whatever we do online but that's Netscape whole business model was selling the browser for $70 and Microsoft came around and said if you buy DOS or Windows I guess at that point if you buy Windows we'll give you the browser for free that's not acceptable it's called bundling or dumping free not good antitrust violation Congress went after them I mean the Justice Department went after them guess how much money Microsoft spends today on lobby like tens of millions of dollars a year they have a beautiful building in Washington DC but equal distance from the White House and the Capitol it's true exactly where the buildings I've given a lecture in that building what's the lesson the only way to get rid of cronyism is to get rid of government power over business it's the shrink government it's to eliminate the possibility of government having power over you so if I don't have power over you you're not going to lobby me you want to help economic growth then get rid of all of the distribution because where does economic growth come from just pure economics where does economic growth long to come from saving investors who saves and invests what's that do they it's like if you take the distribution of income who in the distribution of income actually saves and invests the top the top right there's only so many yachts you can buy what do poor people do with the money they have they spend it they have to they need to consume the stuff that they have they need to live so if you care about economic growth you need to be as low as possible because they're the ones who invest they're the ones who create the economic growth economic growth does not come from consumption it comes from saving and investment it comes from production and if you care about the poor you don't want to equal their opportunities because equal opportunities means less opportunities for everybody which you want is to maximize your opportunities and to maximize opportunities which you need is freedom economic freedom maximizes opportunities for everybody not equates them maximizes so in other words if you care about the problems we have in the world and we have problems the solution is always more freedom not more control not more violence not more coercion but more freedom so to hell with inequality we're for freedom thank you all thank you I have a couple of questions first one is which subjects may be doubted or still may be doubted about objectivism you thought about a subject you were not really sure the whole of Objectivism, we're like kind of nauseous. No, so I'm not far on to any. No, I mean, Objectivism works, it's how I live my life. I've been studying it for scary, but 40 years, 41 years. I read Altschalk when I was 16. And it all integrates. It's all consistent. Now I'm not a philosopher, so I'm not going to say that I know with certainty that everything she wrote about epistemology is true. That would be ridiculous. I don't know. But it's not like I found anything that contradicts it. But why would I? I'm not a philosopher, so I don't really study those things. But it turns out my life, in terms of the knowledge I have in economics, in terms of the knowledge I have when I look at the political, when I look at the people I know, it works. It's apt, bitch. And you know, it's right. I don't find any rabbit holes that cause me to say, oh my god, she's wrong about this or that. It doesn't mean I agree with everything she ever said. But qua philosophy, I have no doubts. Question? Yeah. Hi, I saw a lecture by Jordan Peterson. Yeah. I remember that you said that. What? Everybody knows you exactly the influence Jordan Peterson. And he said there was a study that saw that crime was created when there was differences in wealth. Yeah. Everyone was poor. There was no crime if everyone was rich. There was no crime once there was. So isn't it in our self-interest? So let me just say, Jordan's not here. Let me just say, bullshit, Jordan. You're a better scientist than that. Correlation A is not equal to causation. B, that's simply not true. Simply not true. When you look at somewhere like Hong Kong, or even China today, which has massive amount of inequality, crime is very low. And you look right now, for example, in Sweden, where inequality is not that great. Crime is hugely on the rise. Not partially because of Muslim immigration. But the point is, there are other causes. So the inequality is one parameter that you're suddenly drawing causal relationships from. And it's just not true. And the fact is that when we were all poor, when we were all poor, 250 years ago, was crime higher or lower than it is today? On a pro-capital basis, there's many, many more people today. Was it higher or lower? Higher. When we were hunter-gatherers, and we were all pretty much equal, was crime higher or lower? Were violent deaths more prevalent in hunter-gatherer societies or in our society today? I don't know. I don't think it's obvious. But the empirical evidence is unequivocal. We live in terms of violent deaths, even in Israel, even with everything going on in the world out there. We live in the least violent period in all of human history. And I would say the reason for that is we're freer than in any other time in history. As a human race, there's more freedom today in the world than ever before in all of human history. And as a consequence, when you're free, you're less inclined towards violence. When you respect individuals, when you respect their right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, you're less inclined to be violent. But the fact is that if you look at charts of violence, they've gone, they drifted down, and then they collapsed as we got richer and freer. So Jordan is wrong, not the only time he's wrong. He's wrong in a lot of things, right? But certainly on that, and he makes a big deal out of inequality, and he's wrong. And that's just sad. By the way, if you want to understand the violence, if you want to understand this concept, that we live from a material perspective by every single dimension of human flourishing in the best period of time throughout all of human history, it's never been better to be alive than right now. At least on the material side, you can argue about aesthetics and other stuff, but there's a fantastic book that just came out recently called, in the legend now, by Stephen Pinker, the psychologist, it's excellent. And chapter by chapter, it takes every feature of human life, life expectancy, health, wealth, violent crime, terrorism. By every single dimension, you know in Europe, everybody, you talk about terrorism in Europe, right? And everybody's panicking, Muslims are coming in this huge amount of terrorism in Europe. There was more terrorism in Europe in the 1970s, and there was today. More people died in terrorist acts in the 1970s that are dying right now in terrorist acts in Europe. I mean, the terrorists are different. There were loxists, it was the IRA, the Irish Republican Army, it was the PLO, and now it's mainly ISIS or whatever, right? But more people died then than do now. But nobody knows that, nobody cares. We're panicking all this coming to an end because, you know, probably somebody went on a night attack in London and the world was ending. But no, we put it in a historical context. We live in the safest, wealthiest, and most amazing time in all of human history. All right. Yeah. You're going to solve it? We're going to solve it, right? We're going to solve it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not going to solve it, I'm not going to solve it. But you are? I'm going to solve it, but I'm not going to solve it. What are you going to solve it? Yeah. You're right. I'm going to ask you a question about the Egyptian people. Yes. That, in all of this, in terms of equality and equality, what do you think is the answer? Where do you think that, yes, we need to make sure that there are people who are willing to pay for their rights? No, no, no, we don't want to pay for our rights, we want to get rid of it. How do we solve it? So, I'm going to ask you a question. So what about, you know, compassion and caring about other people when they're not getting good nutrition and they're not getting good education and they're not getting good? I mean, if you feel that, like, you have every ability to help them out. You can voluntarily write a check. You can establish a charity that helps people out. But what you don't have a way to do or follow a way to is force me to support your charity, right? And after the government does the welfare, right? The majority decides on who should be helped and for what you should be helped. And then it forces everybody to participate whether they like it or not. So if you feel like there's some people you want to help, go help them, I'm not going to stop you. I'd say more than that. I think the welfare state, right? The system of welfare. And I'll get to education in a minute. The welfare state actually harms the people you're supposedly trying to help. Because what happens when you institutionalize this idea, don't worry, you don't have to go work, I'm going to give you a check, I'll take care of you for the rest of your life. What does that do to somebody's self-esteem, to their motivation, to their ambition and distortion? It basically tells them that other people think they're incompetent and they can't take care of themselves. And that's a disaster. The nice thing about private charities is most private charities are only going to help you up to a point. They're going to teach you to fish instead of giving you the fish, right? To use an old power. So if people want to help, then they can help. But people should not be forced to help. Force is always wrong because it undercuts our own ability to live our lives as we see fit. We get to substitute other people's values for our problems. What if my value doesn't involve your charity, these people who are under nutrition? I want to help babies who might have been born with a genetic or whatever, right? I want to put my money there. But you'll say, no, your charity's more important than you. And you have to force me to invest in your charity. I don't want to force you to invest in what I believe. Don't force me to invest in what you run. But let me take education from it. The solution for the fact that people have a bad education is what? Is that the government provided education? Well, it's a solution every western country has come up with, right? But if you look at what government provides, it's a lousy product. So poor kids go to these lousy government institutions in which they get a lousy education. And rich kids go to private schools. Why? Why can't poor kids go to private schools? Because we don't give them the option. So I want to get the government out of education because they do a horrible job and it's none of their business. They have no business doing education. And I want everybody to have the opportunity to go to private schools. And I want them to be competition in innovation. And what happened from the competition in innovation in industry? What happens to quality? Goes up. What happens to price? It goes down. And then if there are kids who can't afford to go to one of these private schools that I imagine, what would we do? How many would be willing to help those kids out in order to send them to that school? You guys are cheap. Usually, everybody would go somewhere. Start a foundation, start a charity, and help kids go to the private school. But more than that, prices are going to come down. It's going to become really cheap to send kids to private schools. And the private schools are going to treat parents and students as what? As customers. Who did the teachers, who did the schools treat as customers today? The teachers union. They don't care about satisfying the kids and the parents. They care about satisfying union bosses. It's all about the government bureaucracy. It's not about kids. Nobody cares about kids. They're just cogs in the machine. So I want freedom so that poor kids can have the best education in the world. And the only way to give them the best education in the world is by privatizing education. And if we're worried about how do we transition from one place to another, have the government fund education but not run education. And how do you do that? You give every parent a check from the government. What the government would have spent on the child's education at a public school, call it a voucher. And then that parent can use that money for any form of education that parent believes in. A private school, a homeschooling, an online school, anything. And they can roll the money over. And when the kid graduates, they get the money themselves. And they want to be frugal, so they're going to shop for the best quality education out there for the best price. You want to create a consumer kind of environment, a consumer drive. So there are market solutions for all these issues, right? But a more fundamental point. To me, morality is not about moussada and morality. It's not about what you do to other people. I mean, that's one aspect of morality. But not what you believe is an important aspect. The most important thing about morality is what you do with your own life. It's how you live your own life. You have one life on this planet. One. You don't get a second chance. There's no Buddhist reincarnation. Believe me. And if there is, you might be reincarnated to cockroaches. And you don't want to take the risk, right? You got one life. My view is morality should teach you how to live the best life that you can live on this Earth right now for yourself, for your own happiness, for your own fortune. I don't measure people's morality based on how much they help other people. I measure people's morality by based on how much they make of their own life. I love Bill Gates and Steve Jobs because they helped the world because they made their life mean something. They did something important. And they lived a whole, complete life, it seems, like it. Not that they were perfect. Not that everything they did was right. But in the most important aspect of their life, at least for us outsiders, in their productive life, in their career, they did something amazing. So to me and them all, not because they helped the world because they made their life mean something. They flourished as human beings. And that's what I want everybody to do. I want everybody to have the freedom, as an individual, to make the most of their own life. And if part of that means helping other people, cool. But you should be measuring what's good or what's bad based on how much we help other people. Other people want to ask for the reality. But the most important person for you to help is you. You got to live. You got to live the best life that you can. And most of us do. Most of us don't care that much about other people. But people are dying all over the world. How much money do you guys send them? I mean, you could literally, as poor as you guys are, you could send half the money you have to Africa to save a few children every single day. But you don't. Good. Because you're focused on your own life. That's what matters to you. What should matter to you? What about health care? What about health care? What about it? I think everybody deserves to be living. Some people can be very successful, but in the way they get past problems. So some people are very successful, so they have a lot of money, so they're going to be able to find the market. They'll be able to buy health care, which is a higher quality. Some people coming from good houses will be there at the end. In the way, some people are unfortunate things. Yeah, so unfortunate things happen. I don't understand why health care is different than anything else. Rich people eat better food than poor people. Rich people drive nicer cars than poor people. Safer cars. It's even a life or death thing. You know, my Audi at home is far safer than a, I don't know, than a Toyota Corolla. That's just a reality, because I have money and other people don't. So I get to drive a safer car. So why would health care be any different? Yeah, if you have money, your health care's going to be better than if you don't have money. Everything else is better. One reason to be motivated to have some money is to live a better life. Money does buy you happiness, at least to some extent. There's no question money buys you happiness. So go get some money. Try not to be poor. It's not a good idea to be poor. I don't get it. Health care's just like any other product. If you left it free, if you actually had a free market in health care, which doesn't exist anywhere in the world, but if you actually had a free market in health care, prices would go down and quality would go up. And even poor people could buy health insurance. The health insurance wouldn't be as good as mine, but the car isn't as good as mine and the food they eat isn't as good as mine. So what? Right? Again, the incentive not to be poor. So, I mean, why is it that when it comes to health care, stealing from other people's okay? Because it's basic right? No, food is a basic right. Basic right if someone owns it. No, no, no. Food is a basic right. Food is much more important than health care's because if you don't eat, you don't even get. But the fact is that the government does not provide us with food. It doesn't. We have private industry that provides us with food. We have supermarkets that sell it. We have farmers market, we have a whole gamut of market mechanisms to get food to our table very efficiently, very productively. And yet it's much more important than health care. So why do we want to take something really important? Health care, very important. And give it to the idiots in Jerusalem or in Washington DC to run for us because we're too stupid to take care of ourselves? No, the market would provide you with a hundred times better health care than co-patrolling. Social life medicine averages everybody out to a very low common denominator. Just like socialism does to every field. When the government runs food farms, when they collectivize farming, what happens? Everybody stops. Everybody stops. Everybody stops. So guess what? When they collectivize health care, we get a pretty lousy product. And I know Israelis think they have great health care. You don't. They don't. I've been there. Here and there. And I have insurance in America. And I get the best health care in the world by fall. But you're pretty much one. Do I? I pay a lot less taxes than you. I have a lot less interference in my life than you do. So I pay a little bit more on the insurance side than health care, but I pay less elsewhere. So do I really pay? You think health care is free in Israel? It's not free. It's just your pain. Directly for it. I think you should check your policy. Your policy. You should really try. And the idea of health insurance today in the United States, I have a health insurance policy that is way overpriced. I wouldn't buy the health insurance policy that I have today if I had a choice. But I don't have a choice. State of California tells me you have to buy this health insurance policy. And this health insurance policy includes coverage for pregnancy and childbirth. My wife and I are not having any more children. Two, plenty, we're done, right? It covers acupuncture. You know, needles sticking in you. I've done it, it doesn't work for me. I don't want to act, but I have to get the coverage support. And that's all regulations. It's all government-informed. If you gave me a plain vanilla health insurance policy that covered the things that I really value, like hospital stays, surgery, cancer, heart disease, it would be half the price. And again, I get the best health coverage. I get the best health treatment in the world. I can go in anyway, get in there in five minutes. I don't have to wait three week lines like you guys do here, die in the process. So no, I don't think health care is any different than any other thing else. I value it so much that I do not want the government to have anything to do with it. The government's good for one thing. A gun. Gunmen is force. Gunmen is courage. And the only place force and courage belong is in law enforcement. It's in police. It's in the military. And that's it. I don't want guns in school, which means I don't want government in school. I don't want government in my health care. So I don't want the government in my health care. I want market voluntary training, voluntary transaction in every aspect of my life, except the aspects that are inherently use of force, which is policing and military. And that's all I think Gunmen should do. Yeah. We all have to find a way to get rid of them, including the government, and then we can get rid of them as much as we can. So how do we do that? Wow, so let's say that governments have no rights to the land. Land rights are the TV thing. It's part of our nature. But the citizens either control the human rights or they control the people's rights. The definition of the state, the Egyptian state, the correct state, is to prevent human rights. There is no correct state in the world today that prevents human rights from happening. There are all kinds of human rights, but there is a variation. There is Saudi Arabia, where people can't go to jail. So this is the difference between human rights. Do you agree that there is a difference? Maybe, according to Karatei Beyton, that we met with the leader of the people, who made a decision to let them go and put them in jail for a week. So who knows what we are doing in Saudi Arabia. But I think there are six different states of human rights. In general, there are two different states of human rights. A little bit, let's say, in the Arab world. But all the states of human rights are wrong. What I want the state to do is that everything it does is wrong. It doesn't work. The same thing in globalization. Globalization is not the state's law. It's a law that I do in China. Because in China, they produce better and better and better than what I can do. So I invite you to China and bring you to the United States. What? The United States is not a state's law. There is no way to bring China to the United States. No way. There is simply no way. Because in the states of human rights, the United States is not a state of China. I invite something from China that creates something. The American society invites something from China. But the American people can't do it. If we get in and say that we want something from China, we want 20%. What is this? It's wrong. It's wrong. But everything in the state of China is wrong. It's not wrong. It's wrong. It's wrong. Because if everything in the state of China is wrong, it creates something. So I can bring everything that I want to China. All kinds of people. No, I can bring everything from China to the United States. What is the purpose of China in the United States? And if I have an agreement in the United States, and I want to take the tender to Mexico, and put it into action, and bring it back to work in the United States. What is the problem of China? What is the purpose of the United States? Who will be responsible for it? No one? It's wrong. It's wrong. These things in the state of China, these things that people had done before, with the agreement, with everything that was done before. It creates the people's history. And I don't. And it's wrong. What is wrong is the nature of China. It's a violation of the United States. So it just protects that you're free to globalize. On out. You can decide the only buy-in from the United States. Local. There's a big local community. But you get to decide. Not the government. The government shouldn't have to decide where you buy your stuff from. But it tries to stay to be. And that's why they're yours. The whole of us, I'm kidding. There are two questions. The first one. There are a lot of things that have a lot of money involved in these things. There is a difference in interest, that there are regulations, regulations, and a lot of things related to the deal. So the question is how can we prevent it? Like, it's not a problem that you always have. There's a difference in interest. There's a difference in interest in the deal. To prevent the deal. And the second question. It's not a problem for me. So let me ask you the first question. I'm sorry. How can we prevent the problem? First of all, I don't think it's right. For example, Google has interest in the government. It's simply not right. And it's not wrong to go to Google. If you go to the CEO of Google today, what do you want? Do you want elections? Do you want elections? Do you want elections? Do you want elections? Do you want to be better than other people? And you don't want the government to come under law and say, even if it gives us interest, a lot of them don't want it. There are people who are suspicious. And they do want it. So how do you prevent it? How do you prevent it? How can you not give the government the power to do these things? So you need to rewrite the constitution. Just like the constitution has a separation of the church from state. And Israel doesn't even have a constitution, but you should have a constitution that separates the economy from state. So if you tell the state you can't regulate, you can't control, you can't dictate how business does business, then I have no interest in lobbying. It goes back to my Microsoft example. So what you have to do is basically make government impotent when it comes to economics and business. It's the only way to solve it. But if you make it legally impossible, so in the 19th century, there was a lot less lobbying and a lot less cronyism than there is today. The bigger the government becomes, the more cronyism there becomes. The only way to eliminate it is to shrink government and make it legally a violation of the constitution for them to intervene in the economy. Yes, but that doesn't mean there won't be a difference between the state and the state. There's no constitution in the world that is protected between the state and the state. Okay, the second question. I feel that in the world, every aspect of liberalism and capitalism in everything, and it's also coming out here, there are a lot more things than women. There are a lot more socialist women, maybe a regular woman, there's you, you can say, why this is happening, why all the time there are a lot more big women, everything that's happening. But I... But the question is... no one knows. You're making a mistake... You're making a mistake. It's not a question. In a different place, I don't know the correct answer. Right? that men and women are different. And they respond to different stimuli in different ways. Now, you could argue that that is social, that they mean socialized to be that way. And there's a good argument to make, I think, to remain, that they have been socialized. Expectations on girls are different than expectations we set for boys. And therefore, from a very young age, they're trained in a particular way. But even if you take the most egalitarian societies where men and women are girls and boys when they're young, are treated the most equally like in Scandinavia, where they really make it happen. To give dolls to boys, to give little cars to girls, and to treat them as equally as possible. There's still differences in career choices and all kinds of other choices that they make. But there are differences. And one of the ways that those differences seem to manifest themselves is, don't ask me why, because I don't know. I'm not a psychologist, and I haven't dug into the numbers. Is in interest in some intellectual pursuits. There's some intellectual pursuits that men seem to be, on average, more inclined towards them more. And it's sad, sad for us guys who are in these movements, right, because there's not as women, but it's a fact out there. You know, YouTube, for example, if you look at YouTube, 90% of the consumers on YouTube are men. And 10% are women. It's 90-10. But if you go to a podcasting app, you will find that women listen to a lot more podcasts. So I don't know, it seems like men are more visual, and they need the visual stimulus in order to get auditory information, and women can just hear, and they don't have to see, in order to get that information. I don't, you know, that's speculation. And that's just a fact, that YouTube is overwhelmingly male. We like cat videos, I don't know. That's what mostly on YouTube. So there are differences, and they manifest in these kind of audiences. And I think it's mostly socialization. I think it's mostly the way goals are raised, because when it comes to reason, I don't think there's a difference between men and women. We all have minds, we're all the rational animals, and we all control our emotions. Maybe women are more sensitive to some things, and men are less sensitive to them, but we all have reason, and we can overcome that sensitivity if it exists, right? So there should be quality, in terms of intellectual suits, among men and women. But there's something about how we socialize, I think, or how we educate, or expectations that we set, that create the difference. That's the best I have. But it's true that in every group, where these kind of ideas certainly, but I think most ideas. And by the way, I don't think it goes socialism, I don't think that's the split. I don't know exactly what the split is, but there is, obviously, there's just more men, and all of my talks, anyway. And if I look at, it's even worse than YouTube, literally on YouTube, watching my videos, just mine. It's 98 to two. It's 98 to two, which is unbelievably depressing. It really is. And I don't know if it's other thinkers, but maybe I'm just not appealing somehow to them, but that's 98. Now in our podcast, again, in our podcast, it's 55. So again, kind of interesting. And again, your Facebook and Twitter, it's about 75 to 25, man. But in YouTube, 98 to two. That's just bizarre. But if 90% of consumers of YouTube are male, then you're gonna get 98 to two. So there's a lot going on there, not an expert, don't know exactly why, but we have to recognize that there are differences and certainly there are differences in the way we treat girls and boys and the idea of the reason and how they're applied. And you know, I am an advocate of a philosophy created by a woman. My man is a woman. And a lot of people assume she was a man, because they think only men can create these ideas. That's bullshit. All right, I'm gonna go here and move over there. I don't know how this will get to be patient. He has a passion. He has a passion. So we're killing people. Bombing them at the smell of reeds. We're killing people. So we're killing people. We're bombing them into smithereens and then some activities are somehow criminal and other activities are not. So I find it bizarre that in Syria you can bomb civilians, you can kill children, slaughter them all. But if you use chemical weapons, then the whole world goes nuts. Now chemical weapons are a really evil way to die. It's really horrible. But you start killing people, right? The difference is in a different degree. I mean, Assad is not a bad guy because he used chemical weapons. He's a bad guy because he's killing people in mass. That's what makes him bad. So the whole idea of war crimes, so if you initiate force, that's a war crime. If you start a war, that's the essence of a war crime. If you're acting in self-defense, a war crime would only be a crime if you did things that were not necessary for your victory, but just out of, in a sense, a sense of simplistic whatever. So if you killed people, not because it led to victory, but because you wanted to kill them. You're going to wake them up or whatever. So if it's necessary for victory and you're acting in self-defense, it's not a war crime in my view by definition. Now, that whole area is difficult and controversial and no one agrees with me almost, but to me it's ridiculous that you're willing to sacrifice your own soldiers for the sake of civilians on the other side. What's the difference? They have lives. A soldier's life is just as valuable as anybody else's life. He's put himself at risk for a purpose, not just at risk, period, but for the purpose of defending this country, defending the people he loves, defending the people he cares for. I mean, there's a lot to say about him. He's being patient. A lot of fields in life, even major ones say ISPs and the like, just to get a company started require a very comprehensive and expensive kind of grid to get going, and a great situation where major companies that are already in the field can kind of shut you down before you've gotten going and say net neutrality. It's very socialist. It's not capitalist. Very much against it. But the concept is I can't go and start an ISP. It won't work. I'll get shut down on the gate. So what's the solution to... I mean, but that to me is so limited and such restrictive way of thinking about the world, right? Barnes & Noble had a complete dominance of the book selling business. I mean, you couldn't compete with Barnes & Noble. So somebody changed the paradigm, changed the way we think about selling books, called it Amazon. And today Barnes & Noble barely exists. You don't even know who they are, right? Because they're gone. Because Amazon now dominates. So, yeah, there's a paradigm that it used to be in order to get the light in the house, you had to go kill oil, to get the whale oil, so that you can light a little thing, right? And, you know, first of all, killing a lot of whales. But secondly, you know, only rich people could afford light. And then somebody changed the paradigm, called it Rockefeller. And he took this mucky black stuff, called oil, which nobody wanted, which was actually lower the value of your property if you had it on your property, until somebody discovered that you didn't take this stuff and refined it and turned it into kerosene, and now you had light. And they drove, by the way, Rockefeller saved the whales. Because it's kerosene. Using and lighting, they basically destroyed the whaling industry, which was killing the whales, because nobody wanted whale oil anymore, because they were using kerosene. And of course, they drove kerosene out of business. And Thomas Edison, again, it shifted. So I don't know enough about ISPs to tell you that if you want to deliver a certain product, yes, they are dominant players in a particular industry. But that doesn't mean they're always going to be leading, history suggests, but they're never stolen. Right? Where's IBM today? And you guys are too young to remember when IBM was the dominant computer company in the world. Nobody came close, and everybody said, oh my God, we got to break up IBM, because nobody could compete with IBM. And then digital competed, you know, you don't even know who digital is. But digital competed with many, not big main fairs, but many, many computers. And then the PC came around, and Apple came around, and boom, IBM doesn't exist anymore. But really, not in the sense that it did back then. So paradise shifts are constantly happening. No, but I think the biggest difference is if Barnes and Noble was providing an awful product and for, you know, hiking up the prices, then I would go open a bookstore. And I could sell it for something that maybe wasn't as cheap as Barnes and Noble could have sold it, but they're choosing to have the prices so I can beat that. Who's selling a lousy product at a high price that you would like to compete with? I don't know, Comcast. Doesn't matter. Well, look, okay, Comcast, take Comcast. A direct TV. It's a direct competition at Comcast. I have, in my home, I get internet, not from Comcast. I get internet from new provider who uses Wi-Fi, who uses new technology, right, for wireless transmission of high bandwidth. I get 500 megabits per second in my home because of wireless technology. You can be living in California. No, I don't. I live in Puerto Rico. I live in Puerto Rico. I don't live in California anymore. I moved to Puerto Rico. And in Puerto Rico, we have wireless technology. The transfers, the reason you might not have it in Israel, it's not because of the ISPs. It's because your friends in Jerusalem who are regulating and controlling and getting famous from Comcast or equivalent from Comcast in Israel and not providing licenses for people to do the super speed, high speed Wi-Fi network in Israel. So the problem is not the inability to compete in a free market. The problem is you don't have a free market. And the reason you don't have a free market is because government is regulating. So get rid of the government. You're finding like a specific solution to... Because there's a specific solution to every example you give that the free market would discover. There is no such thing as a natural monopoly. There's no such thing as a situational way. Somebody with a lot of money and a lot of resources can keep real innovation out. It just doesn't exist. And I can give you a million examples from history because they're real. Because they happen. There's no quick face to healthcare. There's no quick face to healthcare. Very quick face. Very quick face. Deregulate, deregulate, deregulate. And you have a massive improvement in health quality, longevity, and massive innovation in healthcare space. That's a quick face. No, that's a quick face. Because it's not some YouTube that is going to make me heal. It's more about gene therapy now. That will make you heal. But gene therapy needs massive amounts of capital for its investment. It needs a private market in which people can actually try new things out and it needs to get rid of the FDA. So it doesn't cost $10 billion to develop a new treatment and a new drug so that you can bring new drugs to market faster. Of course there's a blue tooth in healthcare. And I know companies that do not research life extension. They are real possibilities of how to extend human life. And they won't research it because they can't get the capital. Because the FDA has said, we will not approve drugs that extend life. We just want to approve drugs that cure disease. The two are not exactly the same thing. So no, the government is what is holding back the lack of blue tooth in healthcare. But there is blue tooth in healthcare. There's blue tooth in everything. I mean, I know we have this category of technology. You know, these things. And then everything else. No, everything is this. Everything is this. If it's free. Right? We should have fine cars today. But one of the most regulated businesses in the world is cars. It's one of the wheels. So there's been no innovation. Basically an internal combustion engine for what? 60, 70, 80 years? Air planes. What was the last innovation in air planes? I mean, Q-Fly today has 787, Boeing's latest, greatest plane. How different is it from the 717 50 years ago? Very little innovation. Very little difference. They're actually slower today. I've actually seen a graph where every generation of Boeing planes is a little slower than the previous generation of Boeing planes. What was the last innovation in air planes? You don't even know. Because it went away so quickly. And the mechanical engineer student didn't even have to tell you that because the closer you are to non-speed, you're dragged, and that's when he comes up. Yeah, but there used to be a plane much faster than the 717. What was it called? Concorde. Concorde. What happened to it? It's been grounded. Why? Because there's no super-regulations. And by the way, there are at least two or three projects right now, independent, private projects, not by the big guys, not by Boeing, not by the government, trying to build supersonic commercial air planes right now. But that's, you know, it took massive efforts, a huge amount of capital and real risk takers in order to do that. But the fact is that because of regulation, it's taken 50 years for us to do that. And it would be great if mechanical engineers like you, you know, were free to actually invent stuff without having to ask permission from some pure breader who doesn't know anything about mechanical engineering. Yes, exactly. I heard that you don't have to go to the police, to the police station because of the security, the police, and the police. And it's in the police station? In the police station. Yes. I think that because of the fact that we do have a police station, for example, that are very good for development or are very good for the development of the environment and the development of the infrastructure and the facilities. No. No development and development of the infrastructure. No, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't have any official documents in these things. The point is that, in the case of SIVA, it's logical. If you say to me that there is a operation that the people of SIVA are doing, they are breaking into pieces, fizzing. So yes, if you ask me, there is a way to make it fizzing, to protect my wife's life. But you have to prove it. Not just speculate about it. You actually have to prove it. That there is real damage to me as a consequence of somebody else's activities. But most problems that are environmental can be solved through private property. So if you worry about clean water, clean, you know, clean rivers and clean lakes, the easiest way to make lakes and rivers clean is to privatize them. Is to sell them to private people. Because what do we do with our property? We keep it clean. The stuff that gets dirty is public property because nobody owns it. So we dump all our garbage there. So most environmental problems are solved when we privatize stuff. If you care about that species that is going out of existence, then buy it. You don't buy a bunch of owls and buy a forest and keep them on your forest and you can protect the species. But you can't demand that I protect the species if I don't care about it. They're not my property. So the solution to most of the fund and the people who do that is a conservation fund in the United States. What they do is they get contributions from people and they go around the world and they buy big pieces of land to preserve them. And they defend them, right? Because it's private property. That's how you deal with preservation of ancient forest. That's too private property. It's a private initiative. The government should have no role in that aspect that they find in it. And everything else can be dealt with with private property pretty much. And then again, if there's real damage if I'm choking because of your factory then I should be able to sue you and ultimately the government should be able to ban signage in the area. If it's objectively harmful. I want to ask you a question. You're one of the creators of this but we can't say anything about it. We can't say that but I want to ask you a question. You're a journalist and you're a journalist but you're a journalist so if you're a journalist you should be able to sue you because we don't know if I understand it. Okay, but let's go to Amazon. Amazon is a great example. Why do people they basically burn the forest. They don't cut them down and shoot them somewhere else. They burn the forest. Why is the Amazon being burned down? Because poor people in Brazil have no property rights. They have no land. The Amazon is owned by the state and these poor people need to feed themselves. And the state does not recognize their property rights of the land that they have cultivated forever. It's a feudal system feud. So feudalism is that. So what they go is they go to a neighboring place where there's a forest. They burn the forest down. They grow their agriculture quickly. They sell the product and then they run away because the government is going to come and confiscate the land back from them. The solution to that is one is to sell the Amazon. It's to privatize it. And B is to give poor people property rights over the land they already cultivated. If you go to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, the favela the favela is the way the poor people live. And you walk up into the favelas in Rio de Janeiro I don't know if anybody's been to Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro is a beautiful city in the world. There's nothing that comes even closer. And the best views in all of Rio de Janeiro are in the favela. So the poor people in the favela have the best views in the whole world. So why they rich? They own this incredible piece of land in great years because they don't own the land. They don't own the favelas. It's government owned land and they just built their homes in it. All you have to do to make the poor people in Rio rich is to give them title on the land that they own. And suddenly I want to buy a house there. So property rights sold the problem there. So I'll give you an example of how I cut the trees. If you're a private property and I have a piece of land and it's got trees up two paper mills or it's a wood manufacturing they paint. What am I going to do with that land? Or what am I going to do with that land? I'm going to plant more trees because it's getting thick. Then they'll grow and I'll chop them down and sell them again and I'll make more money. But it's a profitable business. What happens if this land is not mine? There's government land. And the government says, hey, you can chop down the trees and sell them. I've no incentive to plant the trees might not be mine in the future. They might give the trees to somebody else. And indeed all the clear cutting where they cut and they leave us is done in government land. But in private land if I believe that the demand for wood will increase in the future how many trees am I going to plant in my land? More. Not less. So this creates an interesting paradox of people. The more paper you recycle the fewer trees there will be. The more paper you recycle the fewer trees there will be in the future. Because the demand for wood in the future won't be lower. My incentive to plant will go down. So don't recycle the trees. Now you're trees. I'm 100% sale. But you're giving me the assumption that we need enough trees to keep the world green. But that's not true. We need very little trees to become more prevalent. We need even less trees. Let me ask you this. Are there more trees in the United States of America today than there were 100 years ago? There are many, many, many, many more trees. Why? To protect them. Why do you think there are more trees in the US than there were back then? Two is one. We need more paper. So we chop down more trees. Two, we use, because of computers, because of technology, because of productivity, because of innovation, we don't need as much agricultural land in order to produce much more food. So a lot of agricultural land is being abandoned. And guess what flow is into agricultural land when you abandon the trees? So the fact that we have more computers actually frees up more land for trees. Not because the government is protecting the government. It doesn't protect anything. It's clear cutting happens at government land. It's government land where trees get chopped down and don't get replanted. If I'm a private landowner, I have no incentive not to replant. But if it's public property, who cares? So, the more trees, the richer you get, the more technology advantage you get, the more efficient you are with agriculture, the fewer trees get chopped down for no reason. And the more trees get replanted because there's demand for wood products. But if there's L houses, if you beat America, all the houses in America built from wood. In Israel, nothing's built from wood. Yeah, they're all built from concrete. But they're all built from wood. So there's massive demand for wood. And yet there are more trees down. They're never woods. But in fact, we keep using huge quantities of wood. What would they be? More chickens or less chickens if we stopped eating chicken? Less. If we stopped building houses of wood, the more trees get chopped down, the more trees they will be. That's the basic economics. It's a renewable resource, and therefore the more you use it, the more there is other. So the bottom of the earth is all by the bottom. It's a lack of... So I don't think you can cross into pain for any kind of service. Everything should be volunteer. So are you asking me how the government will respond to it? I don't think we can do that. We're not going to do that. We're not going to do that. We're not going to do that. We're not going to do that. We're not going to do that. We're not going to do that. I'm asking you how the government will respond to it. So the government will respond to it? The government will respond to it? So the challenge is how the government will respond to the government without the government's support. So that's really important. We're not going to do that. We're going to do that. It's not that difficult. But in the past 50 years the government has been doing a lot of work on the budget. It's been time to shrink our budget so much. So first you have to realize that we still have a lot of things but I don't know how much your GDP is on the military. But in the United States you can shrink all of that to a few percent of GDP so you can shrink the military by 90%. And not affect the military by 80%. The amount of taxes you would have to get the US, I would have to pay 5%. So first, let's get the 5% and then, I agree with you, it shouldn't be closed. So how do you get 5% out of me without privacy? Well, one is you can ask. So I believe in voluntary taxation. That is that if people were told, we're not going to force you to pay to the government, but your defense depends on it and you won't have police if you don't pay and the court system is going to fall apart if there will be a basement. People would have to write checks, particularly if it's only 5% of the interest. You could also charge the services that the government provides. For example, if the two of us have a contract, let's say we're two big companies, and we have a contract with billions of dollars, and we want to make sure that the government courts will protect the contract if we get into the dispute, that we could pay a fee as a percentage of the size of the contract to the court system to keep it running. So there are all kinds of ways like that that you would have to think up to create that environment. But once we get to those small numbers, I don't think it becomes a big challenge to figure it out. And again, I think people are pretty benevolent and pretty rational, so that they would be happy to pay for their own policing and defense if that's what was required. And I think it would be. So people would voluntarily pay. Israel is about 6% of the GDP, the defense. Okay, so maybe Israel would have to be in 10% with you to look police and stuff. Maybe 8%. It's still tiny as compared to total government expenditures to be in Israel, which are probably closer to 40%. Or maybe even over 40% in terms of total government. So imagine shrinking your taxes that much. It would be huge. There is something in Israel that might be a bit different. It's something that we, what we call safe havens in the Middle East, that the Jews don't really care about what's happening, but they don't really care about what's happening in the Middle East. He knows he can go to jail, he can go to jail. Yeah, even if he's not an official. So... But no, there's nothing to worry about. You don't have to say anything. I think what you're saying is... You're going to jail. So what do you think? You're going to jail. But don't you care about it? That's all I'm asking. If you want, if you believe there's somebody, I don't. Tell with you, just because you're Jewish, I don't take care of you. Just because you're 89, I don't want to take care of you. I don't know you. You might be an awful human being. Why would I take care of you? So if you feel the necessity to take care of people, take care of them voluntarily. But don't force me to take care of people. I don't want to take care of them. I'll take care of the people I want to take care of. You take care of the people you want to take care of. And while Israel is a special case, and for a variety of reasons, I think because of the anti-Semitism, Israel is a special case, because it's a safe haven for Jews. It doesn't mean that we have to provide them with anything other than a safe haven. They come here and there's going to be no anti-Semitism in Israel. That's the only guarantee Israel should provide. Jews from other countries. They shouldn't get money. They shouldn't get a house. They shouldn't get a car. They shouldn't get welfare. They shouldn't get anything. They have to own it. Just like any other human being has to own their living. All Israel represents is that here you will not be persecuted for being a Jew. And the only reason I think Israel has a legitimate reason for existing as a Jewish country is the fact that throughout history and in reality today, everywhere in the world, Jews are persecuted for being Jews. And if they're not right now, they will be in 10 years, right? Because that's the trend of history, unfortunately. So that's the basis for Israel being a Jewish state. Because I hate ethnically-centered states. So the only justification for Israel to be ethnically-centered is anti-Semitism. If anti-Semitism is wiped out in the world tomorrow, I would say Israel should stop being a Jewish state. I don't think it's negative. I think it's negative. Yes, but I think it's negative because it's a political power. I don't think it's inherently negative. What makes unions, what makes unions corrupt is the political power that the government has granted them. So in Israel, you know, because of the history, it's the good because of the political power that it's the good having effect of the dying institutionalized itself into the bureaucracy of the Israeli state. But they don't even in Israel are unbelievably corrupted and unbelievably politically powerful. But that is a feature of the politics. It's not a feature of a union. Now, you make the assumption implicit in what you said that the differential in power is that the employer has more power than the employee. I don't agree with that. Sometimes that's the case. But a lot of times the employee has much more power than the employer. If you're a software programmer, you have much more power than your employer because you have 20 different employers bidding for your services if you're any good. And that's why there are no unions or programmers. But let's say there is certain jobs where the people maybe are not that smart and not that educated and they don't have as much marketing power as their employers. I have no problem with unions. But then you don't give the union any political power which means I can fire you if you strike. As you make a coalition of the right to power, we want to build a foundation that will not be a right to power. But it's just that the right to power is one. Yes, it's like it's like it's like it's like a right to power. It's like it's like it's like a right to power. It's like it's like it's like a right to power. Fire them all and bring in new people. Bring in new people. I want to build a nuclear power plant. And supply electricity. Because they might give nuclear and solar panels. I hate solar energy. I love nuclear energy. So I should be able to buy it from the nuclear power plant. And today we have little modular ones. So no, the problem is that you've given a monopoly and the state has given that monopoly. It's not a natural monopoly. It's a state-granted monopoly. Two have a monopoly. So yes, they have it by the boss. You're saying you're building a solar plant with nuclear power? They won't be able to do that? You're going to build it at the power plant? They're going to build it at the power plant? I don't want to get into this. I want to use it by myself. You can't. You can't. And you're not going to listen. You can't. But you can't. You can't. You can't. You can't, you can't. You can't. I am very proud of my son, I am very proud of my son. I am proud of my son. I am proud of my son. I am proud of my son. There are some who are from Tesla and with Tesla's battery, I can take the solar battery and put it in the battery. But I am proud of my son. You have a great son. You have a great son. You have a great son. Sometimes. But we have a generator in the building, without a generator. You have a great son. You have a great son. Money is the key to a career. There are careers that are very important for money. It is very important to see that not only people, but they can also do what they want. And then there are the most important careers that have a lot of people. How to do this? People need to do what they want to do. We are doing things that we do for the rest of our lives. People are doing things that we do for the rest of our lives. The reason is that we all egoistic TV is a lie. People who self-destructive TV. To be an egoist requires effort. The figure out which is really good for you in life requires effort. Requires thinking. Requires engagement. I believe you should follow your passion. I don't know if you've seen Steve Jobs' speech to the graduating class at Stanford. Aren't I hearing thoughts? No, it's what do you call those speeches? The commencement address to Stanford. Look it up on YouTube. It's Steve Jobs' speech. It's a great speech and I agree with almost everything in it. He basically says, you're going to spend most of your life working. Not family. You can pretend you like family. But you don't really like your family that much. What you really love or what you really spend your time doing is work. Love it. Do something you really love. Because you're going to be spending most of your life doing it. So when you get up in the morning you shouldn't be excited about going to work. Because that's what you do. You could have worked. So the most important decision you make is what kind of profession. But also I would say, don't worry about it too much. Because you can change professions. I've had five careers I think. You can have lots of professions. It's on one path in life. So go do something you love. It doesn't work out. Go do something else. Figure out what you are going to enjoy. What you're going to make a living at. How much money is important to you. How much it isn't important to you. You've got to figure out that for yourself. It takes effort. It takes thought. And it takes practice. It takes experimentation. People don't have to do it. It takes time. I think it's important to do it. Yes, but what I'd like to do is to do a career in law. Because I think I'm going to be in law. How can I know what I'm going to do in law? I don't know. I don't know. Maybe you're going to be a lawyer. But what do you want from God? How do I know? How do I know what I'm going to do in law? To do a career in law. Maybe you're going to be a musician in law. How can I know that? You can't say that you're going to be a lawyer, for example, and that you're not going to be a musician. But to us, to say that you're going to be a musician in law is very difficult. But I think it's important to be a musician. Because, no, as soon as you try to centrally plan, you screw up yourself. What you can do is teach people. Educate them. To do the thing that they love to do. Get them to watch each house's lecture. Get them to take their own life seriously. Get them to really think about what's good for them and what kind of career they really want to have. And that should incentivize them. If you do external incentives, if you try to nudge them, you can't nudge them. You don't know what's inside their heads. And if you provide incentives, you're going to provide disincentives to some people. So you don't know what's good for other people in terms of career choices. They need to make those choices. You can give them guidance. You can help them with a university. You can have them take tests in terms of what their attitude is. You cannot force people to do what's good for them. They have to choose to do what's good for them. And that's hard. Okay, last two questions. Yes. I talked a little bit about that, but we're going to talk a little bit about what's good for them. Let's say we have gas. Let's say we have water in the tank Do you have a question? We have water in the tank. We have water in the tank. We have water in the tank. We have water in the tank. My point is that the state doesn't want gas because it's a different country. So let's say it's a British company that wants gas. How do they find the interests of the Israeli government? There's no interest in the State of Israel. The interest of the State of Israel is zero. There's no interest in the State of Israel. There's no interest in the State of Israel. The people who have a public body that has people that want gas and have access to it In the State of Israel, there's no need to get gas From the state of Israel, What they didn't do because the State of Israel did they don't do that because it's difficult so people can get gas because it's difficult so people can get gas because it's a state, they want the State of Israel to be a state If you are a leader in the future, you don't have to deal with it in the right way, but just a few days will be enough for your victory, and it will be yours. And because it is in the area of Israel, then what you have is the rights of Israel. That is, the right of the State of Israel is to defend your right. So the Israeli side, the Israeli part, has to defend the one that the Egyptians come from, and take it from them. That is the right of the State of Israel. There is no right for people, not for you, not for you to do anything in the right way, but for you to do anything in the right way, especially in the right way, from what the American society has done to you, that you will do it, that you will do it. If you are a leader in the right way, then I will do it. Okay, so in the right way, like everyone else, we are talking about what is unique to natural resources, right? And you don't get a percentage of the business. If I drill in Texas, and I find oil, guess how much the state, the federal government gets of that oil, zero. Because it's my oil, I found it. It's on my land, it's none of your business. Keep your hands up on my natural resources. As in a horn, you need to have a lot of resources on your land, and I don't have a lot of resources on my land. I don't have a lot of resources on my land, I don't have a lot of resources on my land. I don't have a lot of resources on my land. Think about it a little bit. You can do a homesteading act for the seas, right? If you use it, it's yours. It's called homesteading. In the old west, before there were people in the western United States, they basically had a competition. All the wagons lined up, and it was a race. If you got to the piece of land and you put a fence around it, it was yours. And if it only shot you in the meantime, right? You can do the same thing in the sea. There's an actual gas over there somewhere. Go find it. If you find it, it's yours. So, we overthink these things. But the idea that the state of Israel, some mystical thing called the state of Israel, the Jewish people, whatever, however you want to call it, which doesn't exist, have a right to that natural gas is bizarre to me. Any one of the American people have a right to the gas on my plot of land in Texas. They don't. And the best system for extracting, guess where they invented fracking? Not in Saudi Arabia, though they don't need it there. But not in Russia. Not in Ukraine, where there's a lot of oil to be fracked. Not in lots of places. In the United States, why? Because I had a piece of land and someone came up with the idea, I can actually extract even more oil from this piece of land than I thought. And, you know, it's mine. I get to keep all the profits. So, the incentive to innovate, to produce, to create exists in a free market. So, what you want is freedom to be able to do that. So, no, I don't think natural resources belong to the state at all. They belong to the individuals who discover, mine it and bring it up. And the state of Israel. I'll say, the king's word is a bit bigger than what the public wants. Freedom of the land. So, each of you goes to the free market. Yes, yes, yes. So, you go to the free market. So, I'll open a free market, and I'll live with you for five years, every time I get in. And it will be rich and beautiful. And someone will buy it, and it's all... And how much is it? It's not expensive. So, what do you think? So, the free market is in our own way. What do you think is in our own way? In this context. So, if I'm the king of the land, then why is he not my king? What do you think is in the free market? Freedom of the land. There is a free market. A lot of people want to go to the free market, but I built a free market at home. So, you can all come to my house, and go to the free market. I have a great free market here. You're not rich. What's the point? Because there is a free market. You have to come. I have a free market. So, this corner of yours? No, with my free market. The question I have to ask you is, is it free? Of course, it is free. There is some good everysever. It is free. And he does much well. Let's go back to John Locke. How do you get property, right? When you make your labor with the land, in his conception, I would say when you make your mind, with nature... It's yours. That mixture, you created it in some respect. When you fend something up, and you clean it, and you take care of it, and you invite people in, and you charge for it. You have created something that didn't exist before, a beach, a pretty beach, where people can come and get chairs and umbrellas and whatever. Why wouldn't you charge for that? Why does that have to be free? It's ridiculous. People actually provide you a service. It depends who owns the can. Well, at this point, we're not in the state of nature, we're not in the beginning. You would have to figure out a way to auction off the can. And then, who is the Israeli people? Who are the Israeli people? I don't know who we are. You don't need the can. You've got desalination plants that provide you with more water than you can consume. You do. And if you don't, build another one. And then you'll have more water than you can consume. Well, it's weak. So the can, if it was truly auctioned off a number of different products, not just one, then you would have different interests. And even if you were bottling the water and shipping it out, you don't consume all the resource when it's a renewable resource. You have every interest in a canary filling up so that you can get more water to sell. It's not a renewable resource. It's not a finite resource. You'd be right if it was a finite resource, but it's a renewable resource. There is a debate over intellectual property. Whether it exists or not. Why does it exist? Of course it exists. And the essence of property is intellectual. The essence of what it means to have property is your effort. And because what human means, effort means intellectual effort. It's not about muscle. So I think the anti-intellectual property crowd tend to be closet bosses. In other words, they believe, and Anna Smith believed this too. He became a full marks in the late 19th year of value. The values created through muscle. I believe values created through the human mind. IP, intellectual property, is the greatest achievement of human mind. It's great ideas that really change the world. Yes, one should definitely have intellectual property and copyright protection. It's a creation. It's just like when you create something. And that's not the idea that is protected. It's the application of that idea in a particular physical form. We don't have IP over scientific theories. We have IP over the application of the scientific theory in a part. So, I mean, no issue of IP is a complicated one. But I'm definitely strongly on the side of IP property. It seems to me that the music is too rich, but even at that level of just theoretical property right, you have a right to the product of your own mind. All right, great, thank you all.