 Thank you all for coming today. The story about the Department of Agriculture is perfect because one of the things we point out really in the book is that there's a mystery out there. And the mystery is this. The data that we have over the last 200 years is inconsistent with the theory that dominates economics and political theory today in the world. And that doesn't bother anybody, right? Except a few scientists here and there who recognize it and actually go digging and figuring it out. But it doesn't bother anybody. So Keynesianism doesn't work, never has work, never will work, right? It's been tried over and over and over again. Doesn't work, and yet doesn't bother anybody. They keep trying. Stimulus, right? Stimulus, right? How many times has that been tried? It's tried during the Great Depression. It's been tried many times since then in this country. It's been tried over and over again for the last 20 years in Japan, right? Every year they have a new stimulus package. Doesn't work for them. George Bush tried it in 2002. He tried it in 2008. But it was too small. So Obama tried it again in 2009, added $600 billion to what Bush had done, made it $900 billion, nice round figure. Still didn't work, so what's the argument? It's too small again. So we try these things over and over again. They don't work, so we try them again. Einstein had a name for this. You know what Einstein called trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? Insanity. We live in an insane culture, in an insane world. But for 200 years we've been running an experiment. 200 years. On what social, political, economic system produces the goods, produces a higher standard of living, produces wealth, raises the poor, and the evidence is overwhelming, right? It's overwhelming. Capitalism works. Statism in whatever form you try it. And they've got lots of different forms, fascism, socialism, mixism, anything, right? Keynesianism, all this stuff is all the same status. They don't work, right? And we've run this experiment across cultures. We've run it in Asia. We've run it in Europe. We're running it in the United States today. The results are always the same. We've run it across time. We started in the 19th century, late 18th century, 19th century, 20th century. The results are always the same. Capitalism produces higher standard of living, more growth, more wealth, better life for poor people. On every parameter you measure, capitalism from a material perspective works. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. I mean, if people cared about their material wellbeing, if that was all people cared about, then they would vote freedom every time. But obviously they don't care. And this is not hidden, right? This knowledge about freedom is not hidden. You can see it right in your face, right? Just a little bit of research into history will tell you that we grew much faster in the 19th century than we are today. Real incomes doubled twice during the 19th century. What are real incomes today? Barely moving. They're a little up if you count benefits and everything else, but barely. Over the last 30 years really comes the barely moving, right? Double, twice in a century. We're not even anywhere close to that. And what did we have in the 19th century? You know, as close as we've come to free markets as compared to today. My favorite example of this is a little place called Hong Kong. Anybody been to Hong Kong? A few of you have. Before you die, you gotta make it out to Hong Kong at least once. It's an amazing, amazing place. Right, so it's a rock in the middle of nowhere. 100 years ago there was a fishing village there. That's it. Now, today, it's the most stunning metropolitan you've ever seen. Skyscrapers everywhere on both sides of this bay. Luxury hotels, 7 million people. 7 million busy people. Productive people. And how did they get, how did the seven people show up on this rock? Right, they went on rafts, they risked their lives, they came from all over Asia. Why, what was on this rock that they didn't have anywhere else? Protection of property rights. They didn't even have to vote. People think voting is the most important thing in the world. They didn't have to vote because they were ruled by the British for that period of time, but they had a great governor, who actually understood economics, and said, all I'm gonna do is protect property rights and leave you guys alone. No safety net, no free healthcare, no social security, no Medicaid, no Medicaid, none of this stuff. And they risked their lives to get there. And they are thriving. Per capita GDP, to the extent you believe these numbers, but per capita GDP in Hong Kong is equal to per capita GDP in the United States. And all they have, all they have is freedom, economic freedom, that's it. No natural resources, nothing else. Even now when the Chinese are there, they're still respecting property rights enough to keep this machine going. And if you're poor there, you better be working because there's no welfare. And they work. And they're still, if you open up the borders, they would still flood into this place. And it's crowded. That's why they have skyscrapers, they build up, because there's no land there. So anybody who wants to see, anybody who's willing to open their eyes, anybody who's willing to look at the data, right, it's right there in front of our faces. This is not rocket science. You know, once you get into Austin economics and the role of the Fed and Goldstein, that's maybe rocket science. But the general notion, the general notion that freedom works and statism doesn't, that freedom produces a higher standard of living and statism produces a lower standard of living, that is plain, simple, in your face, anybody should be able to get. And yet, nobody does. You said 50%, 90%. Well, where's this 50% who agree with us, right? Certainly not the Republican party, right? So let's be honest. It's 90% if we're generous. Maybe we have 10% of Americans on our side. I know it's depressing. But it's a reality, it's reality guys, right? I mean, even the tea parties who are loved, and I think are great because at least they stood up and said enough's enough, right? Even they, you know, have signs saying things like, keep your hands off of my medicare, right? Even they, when it comes, they want a smaller government, except for the stuff that they think is important, which is most of the redistribution. The knowledge, and it's not, again, economic knowledge, it's some economic knowledge, but people don't get it. People are willing, in a sense, to close their minds, close their eyes, evade the data. Not just ignore it, but evade it. They know it's there, they know Hong Kong exists, and they're gonna look over there because they don't wanna see it. People don't learn from experience. People don't learn from history. You know, people tell me, oh, when the collapse happens, that's when World War I is up. No, in every example in history where collapse happens, you get a dictator and it's the end. Collapses are not good. People don't learn from collapses. It just reinforces all the bad stuff that they brought with them to the collapse. People don't learn, and the question is why? People aren't that stupid, they're not. It's not an issue of intelligence. People learn about other stuff. You can have rocket scientists, you can have engineers, you can have really, really, really smart people. I mean, look at liberals. Most liberals are really smart. They just choose to evade a whole part of their life, which has to do with economics. And that's, again, two of Republicans as well, who, you know, they want smaller government, right? What did Romney say in the debate? His best performance to date, right? But he still said, oh yeah, we're for regulations. Gotta regulate. We just are gonna do it better. You gotta redistribute wealth. We'll just do it more efficiently. But if you regulate, if you redistribute wealth, that statism, that doesn't work. Just from a working perspective, just from an economic perspective, it's central planning. We know what central planning does. It's destructive. So what's going on here? What is it about our culture that makes it possible for people to evade such a big chunk of history, of knowledge, of economics, of the data? Now, I'd argue, Rand would argue, what happens is people shape their understanding of history, of experience, of data. They shape it based on more fundamental ideas. So they come to the data and economics, seeing what they wanna see. What they wanna see is shaped by their morality, by their philosophy. And there's something about capitalism. There's something about freedom, that we as a culture find a sense of it. We find that upsetting, we find it bad. What is it? Because every time a financial crisis happens, every time an economic crisis happens, before the data's even in, who gets blamed for it? A greedy capitalist. Greedy capitalists, free markets, rubber barons, and almost always the bankers. The bankers are always the villains. They are the evil ones. For 2,000 years, we blamed every single financial crisis in history on bankers. They are the moneylenders. They're the bad guys. Something about freedom, about capitalism, about banking, is visceral. It's so deep in sight that we don't even want data. We're not even willing to wait until the economists figure out what actually happened. We know. We know deep down. It has to be free markets. It has to be capitalism. It has to be Wall Street, that is it for. And almost every time, if you do wait for the data, sometimes it takes economists a long time to figure out the data, it's quite understood that that's not what happened. The best example is the Great Depression. At the time, it was Wall Street that caused it, right? It was freedom that caused it. It was too little regulation that caused it. It's not familiar. Today, even the Keynesian, almost nobody thinks that. Everybody knows the Federal Reserve caused it, and government policy caused it. And any decent, half decent, tiny little bit decent economists know it. And yet, we still teach it, by the way, in schools. We still teach it. The Great Depression was caused by the greedy financiers. And Wall Street, because it's somehow, that's an appealing answer. So what is it? What is it that causes us to have these visceral reactions in spite of the facts, in spite of the evidence, in spite of everything? We need to look at what capitalism is, and what it's about. So what are markets about? What are people going to markets to do? To trade, trade for what purpose? What do they want to trade for? Make a profit. Make a profit, for whom? For themselves. So Steve Jobs makes one of these. Why does he, why does he build it? What's that, to sell you on? Why, why does he want to sell you? What's that? That's why you buy it. I don't think Steve Jobs cares about you taking pictures of yourself and putting them up on Facebook. He's doing it to make a profit. That's not the only reason. Why else has he been doing it? Because he loves beautiful products. He's got a lot of himself in these things. He has a passion for this. He had a passion for this, unfortunately. He loves it. Steve Jobs make these for Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs is about Steve, right? And if he cared about me, he could have sold these at half price. And still made a profit, by the way, because the profit margins were 60, 70% on the original iPhones. I think they're lower now that he's got competition. Now, I, you know, the first iPhone came out in 2008 and the economy was spiraling out of control and going down and things were bad. So I went to the mall, bought one because I wanted to stimulate the economy, right? Because that's why you guys go to the mall, right? That's why you guys buy stuff. So why do you guys buy stuff? To take pictures and put them up on Facebook, right? You buy stuff because you want to, because it's good for you. Oh, you think it's good for you, right? Because your intention is to make your life better. You know, you go to the mall to look better, to buy stuff to make you more productive or to have fun with or whatever it is, it's about you. So what's the marketplace about? It's about people coming together to pursue their self-interest. And this isn't new. This isn't a revelation, right? Because Adam Smith got this in 1776. It's in the Walt of Nations, right? The baker makes the bread, not because he cares about any of you. He doesn't. He bakes the bread because he cares about himself, his family, his kids. He wants to feed them. He's good at baking bread. He actually might enjoy baking bread and he's making money for himself. The guy who delivers the bread to the grocery store doesn't care about you, doesn't care about the baker, doesn't care about the grocery store. He cares about himself. He's trying to make a living for himself. The grocery store doesn't care about anybody. They care about them. The marketplace is about self-interest. It's about people pursuing their values, their values, their self-interested values. That's what it's about. Now, Adam Smith felt uncomfortable about this as do 99% of people in the world. Because this is the real secret behind what's going on out there. People don't like to think about self-interest that way. Why? What have we taught about self-interest from when we're this big? It's not good. I mean, my mother taught me, I grew up in a good Jewish family, right? Think of yourself last. Think of others first. Be self-less. When we think about something noble, about something heroic, about something ethical, virtuous, good, saintly, do we think of somebody pursuing his own self-interest? What do we think of? Sacrifice. What is sacrifice? I give something and what do I get in return? Nothing. Or something less. You have to bring in another life in order to justify it, right? But in this life, what am I getting in return? Death often, right? But nothing or something negative or something less. We elevate sacrifice. We elevate self-lessness. That is what's virtuous. That's what goodness is. So Adam Smith, when he says, the marketplace is all about self-interest, ooh, that doesn't feel right. So how does Adam Smith justify capitalism? He has to go through a whole argument about the fact that capitalism, if all these people pursue their self-interest, which you know is not so good, but if you add it all up, if you add the effects of all that up, something called the invisible hand makes it so that society is better off. And since society is better off, since society is the standard, not the individual, society is the standard for Adam Smith. Then the self-interest of behavior that an individual is justified because it's for the common good. Nobody buys it. Nobody buys it. Nobody buys that you can behave in a way that's ignoble. That's not consistent with morality. That's not consistent with nobility and the good. And yet if you add them all up, nobility comes about. Nobody believes it. We don't trust self-interest. We believe it's somehow wrong. It's fraud. It's gonna lead people to do what? What does self-interest lead people to do? Let me finish, because I promise I'll answer that. I don't think any of those people are self-interested. They're all self-destructive. They just don't know it. But they're certainly not self-interested. Self-interest, as you'll see, I believe is an achievement. It's not something that just you're in moats. It's not what you feel like doing. That's not self-interest. So self-interest is achieving stuff. It's creating stuff. It's not living off of others. That's self-destructive. The biggest victims of food stamps are the people who receive them. They're institutionalized into servitude. They'll never have self-respect. They'll never have self-esteem. They'll never be happy. There's nothing worse than that. But nobody ever tells them that. Nobody ever tells them what human happiness requires because nobody cares about human happiness. It's not about human happiness. Morality is about sacrifice. That's not happiness. Happiness over here, sacrifice over here. Your happiness, that requires self-interest. Properly, proper self-interest. But what do we associate with self-interest? Food stamps, which is, in a sense, self-interest is exploiting other people, right? Living off of other people. That's self-interest. I mean, you, first thing that came into your mind is food stamps, they're being self-interested. What else comes into your mind when I say self-interest? Bernie Madoff, right? Lying, cheating, stealing, backstabbing SOBs. That's self-interest. That's what we've been taught. Who has an interest to teach us that? People who hate capital. Because they know, we don't know this because we deny it because we bought into their morality. They know that markets are all about self-interest. So they set out for the last, for hundreds of years, they set out to convince us that self-interest is evil, because that's how they can control it. Self-interest is about lying, cheating, and stealing. Bernie Madoff, self-interest is taking care of self. How did Bernie Madoff do? He's taking care of himself. Pretty well? Let's assume he wasn't caught. Pretty well? Is it all about money? Is life about money? Bernie Madoff happy before he got caught? Just ask him. He'll say he's happy and now in jail than he was before he was caught. You don't achieve happiness, success, self-interest from lying, cheating, and stealing. I mean, they would like us to believe that. They would like us to believe the self-interest that people do that. But that's because they want you to buy into the sacrifice, self-lessness, morality. Because what does that require of you? What is the commandment, if you will, of sacrifice, selflessness, of a morality that says place other being before you? Well, you gotta take care of them. You gotta take care of them. They are more important than you are. Your whole moral code is about serving them. It's about providing for them. You are your brother's keeper, well, keep them. And if he's in need and he's not being kept, whose fault is it? It's yours. And I'm the government official that's here to help you be better. Look, you're not giving it up, right? Your 10% tithing is not taking care of those people. So I'm gonna add another 10%. And when it turns out that's not helping them enough, I'm gonna add another 10%, another 10%, another 10%. People don't vote their economic interests. They don't. I'm in California, believe me. People do not vote their economic interests. We've got on the ballot a tax measure. It's gonna raise taxes and everybody earning $250,000 or more. But we already have one of the highest tax rates in the country, second only to New York, I think. It's gonna go increased by 2% from 10, I think to 12% for the highest back. Guess what most rich people in California are gonna vote? For it. Not against it, for it. Why? Because they feel guilty. No, I mean, it's still gonna raise their taxes. As many deductions as you can take, particularly with alternative minimum tax, it's not gonna affect you at the state level. I mean, if my income tax rise by 2%, I'm gonna take, sure, I take as much deduction as I can. I'm still gonna pay 2% more. I'm gonna pay more than I pay now. You guys, because you belong to an economics club, you think people vote economics, they don't. They don't care about economics. They don't care about how much money they make. They wanna feel good. They wanna feel like they're good people. They wanna do justice. They wanna be fair. They wanna be moral. They wanna be ethical. And they've made a lot of money and they're feeling pretty good about themselves and they're rich, but they feel guilty about it. So what's 2%? Big deal. For, to feel a little better about yourself, 2%, that's nothing. To appease the guilt, it never goes away the guilt once you get it. It's, you're stuck with it because it's never enough, right? Remember, marginal tax rates in the 50s were 90%. You can always increase marginal tax rates. But it's all about the guilt. And the guilt, why? Why they feel guilty? Because they're supposed to be selfless. And what have they been the entire career if they've made money? Really, they've been self-interested. You can't make money without being self-interested. You can't make money without focusing on the profit motive, but trying to make a profit. That's what they do. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, all these guys, right? But they're supposed to be selfless. That's how you get into the good side of our moral culture. Supposed to sacrifice. So if I'm doing one thing, but I think I should be doing something else, what's the emotion that that evokes? Guilt. We live in a society filled with guilt. Liberals are all guilty. Most conservatives are guilty because they don't live up to their moral ideal. How many of them are Mother Teresa? None of them. I mean, it's the beauty of this moral system that it creates guilt among everybody. And again, guilt is a way we control you. Because if you feel guilty, I have the magic bullet. Just give me some money and I'll pat you on the head and say, you should feel less guilty. It's exactly what government does. It's exactly what government does. So we've got to, I mean, think about Bill Gates. There's a guy who created billions and billions and billions of dollars worth of wealth. He created it by how? By trading. So when he sold Microsoft product and we bought it for 100 bucks, who lost? Nobody, we both won. I was better off because I bought a product that was worth more to me than what I paid. Well, Gates was better off because he made a profit out of every product. Everybody who lost, culture-wide, everybody in the world, every human being on this planet, in my view, benefited enormously because of Microsoft. You can't measure how much they've been. How did we think about Bill Gates from an ethical moral perspective? Good guy? Noble, valiant, this is my model of ethical behavior. Now, we hated the guy. I mean, we might have admired him business-wise, but from an ethical moral perspective, we hated him. Now, when did he become an okay guy, a good guy? When he starts giving it away. When he left Microsoft, he's no longer greedy, he's no longer profiting. He's just working to give his money away, right? That's when he becomes a good guy. And I can guarantee Bill Gates said to it, and I can guarantee Bill Gates said to it. I haven't talked to the Pope yet, but I think I can guarantee that. How would Bill Gates gain sainthood? What would he have to do? Because there's a flaw, I mean, we like him today, but he still lives in a big house, and he seems like he's enjoying the stuff about giving away, he still has a big smile, and he has a nice family, and all that stuff. He's being too self-interested in his philanthropy. What would he have to do to become a saint? Exactly, he'd have to give it all away, move into a tent, and if he could show some blood, if he could show some blood, he would be guaranteed to be a cultural, none of us would want to be him, because we're all hypocrites, but he would want, we are, we're a culture of hypocrites, but he would become an icon. He would. For generations, people would look at, wow, look what this rich guy did. I mean, I don't want to do it, but wow. I mean, it's sick, it really is sick. We live in a culture where making money, creating wealth, trading with people, trading as a win-win relationship. In win-win transactions, that from a more perspective we view as, eh, giving it away, suffering while giving it away. That's good. Sacrifice, right, is lose-win. The whole idea of a sacrifice is lose. If there's no lose, there's no sacrifice. Win-win, not so good. Lose-win, that's good. I mean, we've got a completely upside-down, reverse, nutty ethical system going on, and it's taught everywhere. Every mall thinker out there believes in this stuff. It doesn't matter if it's a religion or if it's secular, they all hold this. Right, I mean, they're exceptions, but 90%, right? The first thing that comes in our mind is, so let's think about this. So if we believe that you are your brother's keeper, and that you have to help your brother, that leads directly to the entitlement state. Health, healthcare, how did we get Medicare and Medicaid? Well, there were some old people and some poor people who really needed better healthcare. They weren't quite dying in the streets, but they just didn't have good healthcare and everybody else got great healthcare in America, in the private system, right? And we said, those people are really needy, we're not taking care of them. So the government came and said, we'll help you take care of them, we'll just increase your taxes a little bit, or print money or whatever, in the 60s it was print money, and we'll be able to take care of them. You'll be able to feel better, you'll be able to sleep at night because you'll know that your brother's being taken care of. And we said, sure, let's take only a small group, right? But then that group, there's another group over here that doesn't quite get those benefits, but doesn't quite rich enough to buy insurance. What about them? Oh, okay, let's add them. And then the children, the children, they're not getting good healthcare, right? And these are children that are not quite poor enough to be on Medicare, but on Medicaid, but not quite their families can't afford a healthy children. There's a program called CHIP, CHIP, that just targets those children, by the way, that CHIP has been expanded to their parents now and today. All kinds of people now belong to CHIP. And by the way, who passed CHIP? No, a hero, somebody you admire, Reagan. 1986, 1986, Ronald Reagan signed CHIP because if you're your brother's keeper, these are children, they're suffering. How can you ignore them? You would be immoral if you ignore them. That's the moral code we live under. You cannot let them, and you know, there's charity and it's not taking care of them. It's not enough. Once you accept this morality, entitlement state is a done deal. You cannot fight it. And that's why Republicans can't fight it because they've granted them all high ground to the left and now they're playing on the same playing field. And once you accept the left's playing field, now you say, look, we can run the entitlement state better. Let me just, I can do it more efficiently. That's the only argument. If you look at Republicans and Democrats, I mean, the other, but the fundamental is we can do it efficiently, you know, you can. That's it. That's the choice we have. Now, what happens, this is not a flip side, right? What happens if you believe that self-interest leads in the marketplace, if you lead people to be self-interested, it leads to lying, cheating, and stealing? Then what do you need to do? You know, to control those evil businessmen. Regularly. So if you believe that businessmen in the marketplace are going to be inherently as part of what it means to be self-interested, they're going to lie, cheat, and steal, then you're going to have to regulate. And that's what we do. My favorite example of this is Sabain's Oxy. I don't know if you remember Sabain's Oxy. It was passed, oh, by a Republican president, George Bush, Republican House, Republican Senate. Costs the US economy somewhere between 1.5, $2 trillion in real wealth. It's caught how many crooks? Zero. Prevented the financial crisis? Didn't prevent the financial crisis. Why was this bill passed? By the way, it passed the Senate. Anybody know how many conservatives voted against it? 98 to zero. Nobody voted against it. Why was it passed? Because in 2001, Enron, Wiltcom, Tyco, we had all these CEOs who were clearly corrupt, who were bad guys, and they were caught. An immediate thought that everybody had was, see, businessmen are corrupt. They lie, cheat, and steal. They're all corrupt. So we need to pass a law, and this is what Sabain's Oxy is, that puts a government official on the shoulder of every CEO in America, and monitors everything that they do, and every employee under them. Sabain's Oxy is a way to monitor every single little transaction that you engage with within a business, because you're a crook until proven otherwise. And you're a crook because you work for a business, and you're a crook because you're motivated by the profit motive. That's the laundry. Now, how many of you watch Bill O'Reilly? Yeah, that's the right response. So I was in Bill O'Reilly showing 2002, in the spring of 2002, and Bill O'Reilly in the spring of 2002 wanted to, he was on a campaign. And his campaign was to fire every CEO in America, because they were all crooks. How does he know? Because we caught four. And they were all selfish. They were all greedy. They were all motivated by profits. They all must be crooks. And I had to go on Bill O'Reilly show and defend business. And he got so angry with me. I've never seen Bill O'Reilly so angry. He turned red. He was pounding on the table. I mean, he was going nuts. Over what? Over the idea that every CEO in America is a crook. But that's the belief. That's what it does to you. So if you believe that self-interest leads to lying, cheating, stealing, then you're going to want to regulate. And there's no anti-regulation. There is no anti-regulation. Saban's actually caught nobody. It's obviously weak, because there must be crooks out there. So we need more. The financial crisis was caused by what? Greedy financiers. So what do we need to do? Regulate them. And so we pass Dodd-Frank, which is this massive regulation of financial industry which is going to cause what? Next financial crisis. I can guarantee it. If you study the next financial crisis, you will be able to link it back to Dodd-Frank and the Federal Reserve and a bunch of other nonsense that they're doing right now. And what will we learn? We'll learn that Dodd-Frank wasn't strong enough and we need something even stronger. Because if you follow the path of regulation, that's always the case. And why? It's because the greedy, profit-seeking businessman are out to get it. As long as we believe that you'll never have free markets, but that's what people believe. That's what 90% of the population believe. They will never articulate it, but whenever something happens, that's the emotion. That's what comes up. 98 to zero, Saban's actually got it. Not a single senator had the balls to stand up and said, this is BS. And it's not like people weren't writing about how awful this bill was. People were. There was a lot of people writing about it, didn't there? Nobody had the guts to stand up in front of their constituency saying, no, most CEOs are actually pretty good. They create all the products that you use, all of them. All the stuff that you have around here was built by corporations, by businesses that are motivated by profit. And yet you buy their stuff because it's worth it to you, right? Nobody had the guts to say that. So in my view, if we want freedom, if we want people to get economics, if we want people to be willing to face the data and get it, we have to change their ethical belief. We have to challenge the very foundational ethical beliefs in this culture. And Rand, I think, is the only thinker to actually do that. To stand up and say, what you believe is wrong, 90% of the people. Not just about economics, not just about politics, but in a much more fundamental sense about ethics, about the morality, very moral nature, what morality is. And she argues that morality is not about selflessness. It's not about sacrifice. It's not about giving up stuff. It's not about living for others. She says, no, morality is about living for yourself, but really understanding what that means. And here she's an Aristotelian. She follows Aristotle's thinking. Morality is about human flourishing. What does it take to make your life the best life that it can be? What does it take for you to flourish as a human being? And that's why taking fruit stems does not lead to human flourishing. Quite the contrary, it leads to human suffering even for the person receiving it. The biggest mistake of this 47% that Romney mentioned is that those are the people that Republicans should be going after. They're worse off because of the entitlement they receive. And many of them know that, many of them are working-class Americans who would love to have a job. And it's these ridiculous policies that are preventing them from having a job. People know, particularly people who've worked in life and then are unemployed, they know the sense of pride you get from working, the sense of satisfaction, the self-esteem you get from your work. And they know how debilitating it is to go in the door. That's who we should be appealing to, not giving up on. I mean, that's absurd. So Rand talks about a real self-interest, a self-interest that is focused on making your life the best life that it can be. And that the most important thing, if you believe that, if you want to make your life a good life, is to exercise the one thing that produces all the values we have as human beings. What is it that makes possible everything that we have, our clothes, the camera, the building we have around us, the lighting, everything? Because if you look at your neighbor, it's your neighbor, pretty pathetic, right? Weak, slow, no fangs, no claws, just try biting into our bison after you've run it down, right? We couldn't survive in nature. We could not survive in nature if not for one thing, and one thing only, and that is not our thumbs. That's the leftist nonsense, right? Thumbs make us human, right? It's our mind. It's our ability to reason, ability to rationally figure stuff out. Imagine the first person who discovered agriculture, who discovered that if you put a seed in the ground and you water it, something sprouts up. That's it. Incredible scientist, that's Einstein of his day. And then you have the entrepreneur who says, ah, I can actually do a whole field of this stuff and sell the product. Wow, that's Steve Jobs of his day. That's bigger than an iPhone. That all requires this. So if you wanna be self-interested, what do you need engaged? What's living about? It's about using your mind. So Rand talks about rational self-interest. And self-interest not in the moment, not about, oh, there's drug, there's behavior, and if I snort it, I get a high. I'm pursuing my self-interest. Am I? Is that gonna make me better for the next 40 years, my whole life? No, that's not good for me. I like to say being self-interested, make it even harsher. Being selfish is hard work. It requires thinking. It requires figuring out what's good for me. Not obvious. Should I go after the job that gives me a lot of money? Should I go after the job that gives me more satisfaction? That's hard. People tend to make those choices emotionally. But no, you need to sit down and think, what career should I pursue? What kind of friends should I pursue? What grown man should I pursue? All of these are difficult issues. They're not simple. And when people pursue their emotions, what happens? They often fail. Because when not, emotions are not tools of cognition. It's all about what's up here. So being self-interested is hard work. It's figuring stuff out. But that's what ethics is, according to Rand. Rand says ethics is about figuring out what's really good for you. Figuring out what will make your life the best life that you can have. And that's a challenge. Now imagine if people were willing to accept that. Accept that their life does not belong. It's not about sacrifice. It's not about being selfless. It's not about serving others, but about serving themselves, about pursuing their own self-interest, pursuing it long-term. It's about trading. Why is trading good? Benefit, other side benefits. Win-wins. It's about taking care of yourself. Taking care of yourself means working, being productive, making money, creating wealth. Those are virtues. Bill Gates is a hero. A moral hero for building Microsoft, for creating tens of billions of dollars, for creating all those jobs, for making himself a gazillionaire, taking care of his family and his friends and so on. That's what makes him heroic. That's what makes him a moral person. The fact that he gives it away, who cares? I mean, it's nice of him. It's not bad, but is that virtuous? Now he's already sitting on 40 billion dollars. What's he gonna do with it? But making 40 billion dollars. Go try it. That's what makes him special. That's what makes him a good guy. That's what makes him heroic. He changed the world in his own image. Wow, that's amazing. Philanthropy? Easy. When we stopped, so I went to this awards winners, award dinner for lunch, for business leaders, right? And there were about five, six different awards and they went up and introduced them and when they introduced them, they read a long bio, right? And in the bio, the first two sentences were about their business career and then the next eight minutes were about their philanthropy and charity and community service. That's nuts. What matters is what you do at work. What matters is what you create. Whether it's wealth if you're in business or whether it's the minds of the kids that you influence, your productive work is what matters in life. Not the charity that you do. The charity you do is fine. There's nothing wrong with it. It's even good. But it's not the essence of your life. It's not how you take care of your own life. It's not how you build stuff. It's not what you create. Just other stuff that's what you create. But it's self-interested too. We don't want to talk about it a lot. We want to show how selfless we are. So Iron Man challenges all that. She challenges us to change our morality, to abandon this old morality, this morality that I think is destroying us. It's the morality at the foundation of every status regime in human history. We're always told that your life doesn't belong to you, that you need to serve the community. It's always done from Hitler to Stalin to the Crusades. It's always the common good. It's always for the human race. It's always for somebody else. And if you have to sacrifice your life, it's fine because it's for a good cause. What made this country special? The revolution that was, the American revolution was not about taxes. It was about a new conception of human life. It was about the idea that your life did not belong to the group, or to the king, or to the tribe, or to the pope, or to anybody else, but you. American revolution is about the idea that individual's life belongs to him. That's what the Declaration of Independence means. It's not just about the independence of a state. It's not like there was starting a state for the sake of, we don't like the British. We want to be Americans. That's not what the American revolution was about. It's what differentiates it from every revolution in human history. This is about saying, my life belongs to me, the Declaration of Independence is a declaration of independence of the individual from the state, the tribe, the king, the whatever. Because a key sentence there is that each one of you has an inalienable right. An inalienable right means that nobody can take it away from you. Not a majority, not a king, not anybody. Even 99% of the people can vote, you still have the right. And the right to what? To help your fellow man, to maximize social utility, to bring peace to the world now. It's to give a right, an inalienable right, to your own life. To live it however you see fit. Nobody has a right to get in your way. Stop, to use force against you. It's the only way to violate your rights is to use force against you. It's to use coercion in some form or another. It's the only way rights can be violated. Rights means freedom. Freedom from what? When we talk about freedom, what are we talking about? Freedom from force, from coercion. And why is that so important? Why is it so important? What does life depend on? We said a moment ago, what did life depend on? The mind. What is the answer to mind? What is the thing that holds the mind back? If I put a gun to your back and tell you from now on, two plus two equals five. Can you do engineering? Can you build a bridge? Can you invent new medicines? Force destroys the mind. Destroys reason, destroys rationality, and therefore destroys the ability of human beings to take care of their own lives. It destroys the ability of human beings to flourish. So individual rights is about getting rid of coercion. To allow people to go out there and try stuff and fail and learn from it. So you have a right to your own life. You have a right to your own liberty. Again, free of coercion, go out, live life, think whatever thoughts you want. The beauty of a free society is you can be wrong. You can be a socialist. Imagine a free society, true capitalist society. You want to be a socialist. Who's going to stop you? Find some friends, go open a commune somewhere. As long as you're not forcing people to participate, you can be a commie. That's the beauty of freedom. Now, you're going to suffer. You're going to, you know, I've been on a kibbutz. It's awful, right? They are, you know, it's just an awful way of life. But if you want to try it, go for it. That's the beauty of freedom. One of the beauties of freedom. The beauty of freedom is the good guys get to actually do what they want. The bad guys, they want either way. So you have a right to life. You have a right to liberty, your liberty, your life. And in the most self-interested political statement in human history, each individual has a right to pursue his own happiness. That's what we need to recapture. That's what we need to convince the American people that they really have that right. And that it's founded on a moral system of self-interest. That's just a throwaway line that they discuss in the debate so that Centro even denies, right? You have a right to pursue your own happiness. That's the revolution. The economics, the capitalism, people who want to pursue their own happiness. Do they want mother government on their shoulder telling them, don't drink that soda. Not good for you. Don't do this, don't do that. Can't open that business. Oh, you need a license if you want to shampoo hair in California. They don't want that. They want to be left alone. That's what people with self-esteem, people who are pursuing their own well-being want to be left alone. Capitalism is easy if you just convince some of that. So the book is a challenge. It's a challenge not just to fight the economic battle which we have to fight. There's a lot of ignorance in economics out there. Not just to fight the political battle but to fight a much more difficult battle. But a much more fundamental one and if we win this battle, we win it all. And that is to fight the moral battle. Thank you all. Do you have any questions? Yeah, yes, thank you, Ryan. That was fabulous, thank you so much. If anybody has a question, we have a microphone here so it's wired in. Just come up and stand at the mic. Give your question. Okay, and while we're waiting for people to Don't be shy. Get over there, shine us here. Trace, do we have anybody on the internet that has a question? Actually we do, Mr. Brooks, how does the object of this political philosophy scale to trends for supernatural corporations vis-a-vis jurisdiction liability and restitution? What? I don't know if I understand. How does the object of this political philosophy deal with multinational corporations who have offices all over the world that might suffer liabilities in other places and how does it all kind of work together? And what I'd say is all that the objective is political philosophy, if it, let's say we could just influence America, right? These corporations would be headquartered in America. They would abide by American property rights, right? In other countries, by definition, they would have to abide by the laws in other countries. And those other countries would be responsible for dealing with whatever they did in those other countries. The United States would not be policing its corporations in those other countries. I really don't think it's an issue. All this stuff about multinational corporations and the evil they do in the world is in my view, to put it nicely, BS. Corporations do so much good that the little bad that they do here and there is negligent. And I know that people here probably disagree with me, but so I don't think it's an issue. Let's get there and we'll solve it when we get there. Yeah. Okay, let's just remember the rules of the price being announced for the questions. There are three questions, not comments or statements or speeches, so ask an answerable question. Charlie, I'll give you a better at the end because you have something important to discuss when you move to the end. But let's make sure you're asking an appointed question that can be answered. Considering that we are in a largely two-party system, with third parties having little chance to fight against these big machines, do you find it as a smart strategy to vote for a Romney and change from within rather than trying a third-party effort that has little success money and numbers to succeed? Yeah, so let me first say that I work for 501c3 nonprofit, so I cannot endorse candidates I cannot make those kind of comments, but let me see if I can say something without. I think the fact is that you have two candidates. Everybody else is irrelevant. If you want to vote for the best candidate, then vote for yourself, write it in. You're better than Gary Johnson or whoever it is and that's a phone or a vote anyway, so you might as well throw it on somebody who you actually care about. You, or write me in, I'm better than Gary Johnson, much better than Gary Johnson. Then write me in. What's that? Yeah, but I have as much chance of winning as Gary Johnson, which is exactly zero. So it's basically, in my view, the two guys running, you got a two. And one guy, I won't name names, is on a path that destroys this country very quickly. Very quickly. And the other guy is on a path to destroy this country slowly. Minutes, so I'll take slowly because slowly allows us to educate, slowly allows us to build up an alternative, slowly allows us to change, slowly allows us to grow old and die and then the world will do what it does. It's about life, it's about living, it's about enjoying life. So, I don't want to bring about the destruction quickly because I know what happens after the fall. You know, here's the story. When Rome was at its peak, it had well over a million people, population, well over a million people. A hundred years after Rome was set, you know how many people lived in Rome? City, 10,000. Went from over a million to 10,000 in 100 years. And you know how long it took another city in Europe to get to a million? Let's see, 400 to 1,900, 1,500 London in the 19th century. It's not pretty when the fall happened. It ain't pretty. Economic collapse of the United States is going to be very ugly. So I would vote for slow, any day. And you know, fight for the principles, fight for the purity, talk about the purity, educate to the purity, but don't vote for fast because that's what I vote for anybody but these two votes for the magic. Do you know where in the Bible my brother's keeper is referenced? No. It's in the New Testament, which is not my sponsor. No, it's in the Old Testament. It's in Europe. It's in the Old Testament? Yes. Genesis. Well. Cain killed Abel and God was asking Cain where his brother Abel was. He said, am I my brother's keeper? Well, the answer is no, I'm not. You shouldn't kill him either, right? That doesn't mean you're your brother's keeper. The point is, the point is the moral point. The point is, are you responsible for the life and well-being of others? And you are for your kids, for the people you've chosen to take on that obligation but you have not chosen to take on the obligation of the strangers, you don't owe them anything. You can choose to give them. Charity is not a bad thing when they deserve it. I don't believe in charity to the undeserved but that's your choice. The only people you have an obligation towards are the people you signed a contract or the people which is marriage and real contracts and kids, kids are an implicit contract. That's it, that's where your obligation ends. You're responsible for you, Prime Minister. And that's the key moment, that's true of everybody. And to the extent that you take that responsibility, seriously, you can achieve happiness and success in life. To the extent you don't, you won't. And the funny thing is in spite of the fact that my mother told me be selfless, think of other people last, all of that stuff, she didn't really mean it. Because no mother really means it, right? She wanted me to succeed, she wanted me to think of myself, she wanted me to make money, she wanted all that. But she couldn't say it because we don't have the language for it because our moral code is so articulated in the words of selflessness that that's all we can teach our kids. When Johnny's playing in the playground, right? And John wants to come and play with his tractor. What are we telling him? You gotta share. What does he? What can he trade? And why should he do anything? If he's really enjoying playing with the tractor himself? If a stranger comes up to you and asks for the cockies, do you share? Do you think Johnny doesn't know that you're a hypocrite? Of course he knows you're a hypocrite. And the reason you're a hypocrite is, the reason we're all hypocrites is we project on all idealism on our kids. We become cynical. We know socialism doesn't work. But if only, you know the people who say communism is a good idea, it's just not, it doesn't work in practice? No, it's an evil idea. Through and through and through it's an evil idea. And surprise, surprise, evil ideas are evil in practice. Sharing everything else self-constant is not it, it's not good. Now trading, that's what we should be teaching our kids. Okay, no statements from me politically. Maybe later. I heard you talk about how we need to focus on changing people's ethics and their minds. And it's pretty hard to do it now. Do you think it'd be easier when the economy finally collapses or there's still hope to push forward and trying to convince people who are basically in denial and persuaded them to change their ethic? Look, I mean, the way I see it, this is really, there's no way you're gonna do it after it collapses. After it collapses, freedom of speech is questionable. After the economy collapses, your means of communication are questionable. It's over when it collapses. I mean, I hope I'm wrong, but I really do. I hope I'm exaggerating. But history suggests I'm not. There's no example of a civilization collapsing. Oh, we didn't think of that. Freedom, that's good. It just doesn't happen. Now is the time. And the sooner the better, because Americans are losing. You see, the only reason I think we have hope is that the Americans in their gut believe in the right to life, liberty that should happen. They don't conceptually believe it, but in their gut they believe, right? Emotionally, they still, I mean, I called it an American sense of life. But that's declining. It's going away. And in 50 years it'll be gone. It's now or never. It's the next 20 years. We gotta be all out there. We gotta be all in. And the message has gotta be consistently throw individualism, throw the individual's right to life, liberty that should happen. The economics, in my view, can wait. I mean, you gotta integrate it with the economics. But the key is that your life belongs to you. You gotta live your life the best that you can live. You don't. You're not owned by the state. You're not owned by your neighbors. You don't have to sacrifice, live. If we can't do it in the next 20 years, then, you know, and it's hard. It's very hard. The chances of who we win, you know, if you really pushed me, what, 10%? Do we avoid another dark ages? And I think it's a dark ages. I don't think it's, you know, because if the US collapses, people think, oh no, you're probably on the leadership. You know, leadership is convinced, oh no, China's, nobody is gonna be successful if America goes. Because what you need in order to be successful is ideas, and the only country in the world that's ever had any good ideas is this country. And the only reason China today is in any good shape, it's because they look up to us. And if we go, everybody goes. Everybody goes, and it's gonna be disastrous. So now's the time to fight, fight, fight. There's no, you know, and if you have kids, you know, maybe the collapse will happen after we're dead. But if you have kids, you can, right? You got a kid. I read an article in the Wall Street Journal last couple of days, and it said something that really struck me in the free society of Castro's Cuba. Somebody said that they're running out of rights that people can barter for security. I thought maybe you'd want to comment about that. I didn't get that. They're, the people in Cuba are running out of rights, quote, rights that they call rights. Rights granted by the state, which are not real rights. But they were running out of those that they can barter for security. So that's how it is in a bottle. The problem is you don't get security, right? You don't get security, it's a myth. I mean, are you really secure in Cuba? I mean, the state can come in and take you to jail whenever they want. There's no security once you give up rights. There's no security once you give up rights, and there's only one type of right. I mean, this is the simple principle. You cannot have a right to other people's stuff. So you can't have a right to healthcare. Because healthcare is somebody else has to produce healthcare. Healthcare is not just there, right? So you can't have a right to somebody else's stuff. You can't have a right to food. You can't have a right to a job. You can't have a right. The only, what rights mean, people forgot. What rights mean, and right to invent it, you know, it's a concept that John Law came up with. Doesn't exist before that. And what does he mean? He means you have a right to live. You have a right to be free of coercion. That's it. That's it. There's only one right. There's only one right. I know we say the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but there's only one. And that's the right to life. Everything else is a derivative. You know, to have life, you have to have liberty. In order to have life, you have to have property. You know, to have life, what does that mean? It means pursuing happiness. But life is the only right. And all you need in order to pursue your life is that nobody uses force against you. That's it. That's what individual rights mean. That's what it means in the Declaration of Independence. And that's why what that means is a government that doesn't use force against you. That's what a limited government, is a government that protects you from force, not inflicts force on you. And the founders knew that the biggest violator of rights is what human history was, government. That's why they created such a complex system of checks and balances to try to prevent government from ever violating our rights. Unfortunately, they failed, but they failed because we failed. Okay. Basically, I would like an explanation or your opinion on crony capitalism. I believe a huge problem in this country right now is the majority of people, both Republican and Democrat supporters, believe that we operate on a true free market system. So they're either pro or against it when they don't understand we aren't operating under a free market or a capitalistic system. So I just- So first of all, I don't like the term crony capitalism. There's only one form of capitalism. It's capitalism. True. Freedom. Call it crony socialism. Why should we get the bad rap? Let the socialists get it. Or call it cronyism. Or crony cronyism. But crony socialism, I think it's better because the essential feature of cronyism is statism, right? How does cronyism start? It's started by the government coming to a business, the first businesses where they did this on a big scale with the railroads and saying, we're gonna control you. If you want less control, slip me something on the side. And the best example of this is Microsoft. Do you know how much Microsoft spent on lobbying before the Justice Department went after them? Zero. Exactly zero. They even had their offices. They didn't have any offices in DC. The closest office was in Maryland, so. And you know who went after them for this? Armin Hatch, a good Republican from Utah, had hearings where he lambasted Microsoft for not lobbying. And not having an office in the building. Now the Justice Department went after them by the way for offering a product for free. So much for monopolies, gouges, right? For free. Now how much did they lobby? Tens of millions of dollars a year. They have a big office in DC. They have lobbyists all over the place and they lobby like crazy because they know what happens when you don't lobby. Right now, who's getting harassed by politicians for not lobbying enough? Apple. Politico just ran a big story about how Apple doesn't lobby enough. They're not spending enough money. How dare they not spread the good news around? So we have to understand where cronyism starts. It starts with government. And then what happens is that the corporations have to play the game. In order to play the game, they have to develop skills. What kind of skills? Political skills, not business skills. So who lands up rising to the top of a corporation and heavily regulated business? Politicians, not business leaders. And who do you think is more corrupt? Politicians are business leaders. Politicians by a long shot. So where do you think all the corruption happens in corporate America? In the most heavily regulated industries. You remember Enron, WorldCom? What industry were they all part of? Energy telecommunication. And it was going through, and this was all in the 90s. And what were they going through in the 90s? We regulation. Never use deregulation, because in America we don't deregulate. We change the regulations to change who the winners and losers are gonna be, but we don't actually get rid of regulations, almost ever. So who was the top of these businesses? People who could manipulate politicians and surprise, surprise, they were corrupt, they were the corrupt ones, they were the crooks. If you look at Ken Lay at WorldCom, he was a friend of the Bushes. He was a friend of all the politicians in Washington. He was there to manipulate the regulations so that Enron would win and others would lose. So if Republicans believed in anything, they believed in very little, but if they believed in anything, then this should be the number one thing on their plaque. The thing that they should do, Romney should start the debate with him. And he would get a lot of votes. I mean, he would win if they were willing to do. They would win. First thing I will do when I get to the white, is present a budget that cuts all capital A, capital L, capital L. All subsidies, goodies, favors to business. All of it, gone. That's half a trillion dollars right there off of tomorrow's budget. I'm not gonna wait 10 years. I'm gonna cut it immediately. Wow, Americans would go, wow, there's somebody who stands on principle. Corporations wouldn't like it. The crony ones wouldn't like it. The real capitalists would love it. Americans would love this. And it's good economics. We know that. We know the economy would boom. Because all these, all these, now I would deregulate at the same time. Get rid of the regulations at the same time. But just cutting those subsidies. I mean, you could even eliminate all the tax write-offs. All of them. And bring the corporate tax down to 15% and make it a flat rate. Because it should be zero. There's only people who pay corporate taxes, consumers, but that's a hard economic argument to make. What Gary Johnson's making exactly right? Yeah, no. Gary Johnson's right. Doesn't mean she vote for him. It just means he's right. No, we've got a whole bunch of pressure. The system, man, that means, you try to make some money, if the system destroys you, then there will be nothing to fix after this. If the system collapses, you'll have nothing to fix. So you'll have great ideas and you'll feel good about yourself for voting for the perfect. By the way, I'm even better than Johnson. Of course you are. Much better than Johnson. Much better than Johnson. Much more consistently free market than Johnson. So write me in. Well, you're better than Johnson. Write yourself. No, I'm not. It's the same vote. He's a very, very capable person. I like Johnson. I'm not against Johnson at all. I just think you're wasting your time. Anyway, put aside the politics. I can't hear a word. Go ahead. So one area where excellence and self-interest, rational self-interest is celebrated in the world is in sport. Is there a way to harness that world support of sport to be able to translate into a political environment? I think there is. I think it's a great example to use with people who are not convinced. But notice that even in sport, it's coming down, right? Because notice that in a lot of children's leagues now, that they don't keep score, right? The kids keep score. Because the kids want to win. But they don't keep score. Or I just, a friend of mine told me the other day that actually somebody at one of the talks told me the other day that in this one league, their son was like six, seven. So he was banned from playing basketball because he had an unfair advantage. So even in sports, it's starting to decline. Since the one area we still have, we need to use it as an example of what should be and what is possible. We need to keep going at it with examples of, and people like it. So in sport, people still admire talent. They still admire and they're willing to pay for it, right? Nobody cares that, what's his name? Kobe Bryant or LeBron James makes a huge amount of money. Nobody cares. I was quite happy with the $100 million contract because we still have that respect and that's why I still have hope for the American people. But that's what we have to hook into. It's that sense, that emotion, that idea, and then build on that. And nobody does, unfortunately, because people are afraid to talk about something. You brought up the Kibbutz in Israel and I was just wanting your thoughts on the difference between a Kibbutz and a life raft situation like Israel's in and something like that here in America. I don't need a Kibbutz as anything to do with a life raft situation. A Kibbutz is just, it's a commune in a sense. And it's a failure. The Kibbutz team was subsidized from really from the go, from the beginning, originally by wealthy Jews from overseas, later on by the Israeli government, direct subsidies to the Kibbutz team to keep them going. Today, what has happened to the Kibbutz team that has survived is they privatized themselves. They turned themselves into basically kind of corporations. And they don't, you know, in the old days, I remember where a Kibbutz, you didn't have a kitchen in your home because everybody ate communally. You didn't raise your own kids. You had a baby. It was put in the communal home where you rotated, who took care of them? You didn't have a job because your job rotated. Every month you did a different job on the Kibbutz. I mean, true communism, true, you know, nobody had, everybody had exactly the same apartment as everybody else, same television, same sofa. Everything was the same because there were no, and it was a disaster. You know, the biggest disaster was people hated each other's guts. No, they did. Socially, spiritually, it was horrible because if I worked really, really hard, I had nothing to show for. So I started resenting other people and I believed that it was good that I didn't have anything to show with it. But deep down I knew it was bad and I started resenting people. And that resentment led me to do all kinds of sneaky things. And then they resented me and it was a disaster. You went out and Kibbutz and people hated each other's guts. Oh, it was one of the worst social environments I've ever been to and that's communism. There's no way around. Now, Israel generally, in my view, is not a like boat scenario. Israel could beat the crap out of anybody, right? They're the strong man. The only thing holding Israel back is the US, right? They were left alone. They could defend themselves quite readily. But they feel obliged to do what the American president tells them. And the American president typically is a whim. So Israelis become whims. But Israel doesn't need America. I mean, it needs to buy weapons. Even if it couldn't, we'd develop them themselves. Israel has a thriving economy right now. It's got less than 4% unemployment. GDP is growing much faster than the US, why? Because Israel for the last 30 years has been moving away from socialism as we've been moving towards it. And even if you're, as long as you're on that path towards freedom, you're better off. Now, they're a long way from being free. And they're a long way from being capitalist. But they're in that direction, and they have the best technology industry short of Silicon Valley in the world. More startups for capital than any country in the world. It's a booming place. They're not a like boat scenario at all. I think they should go away with a draft. I think they could have a volunteer army. And they could still win every battle that they fought. You know, that's it. I really appreciated what you shared economically. I think we're very much on the same page that way. My question is about philosophy. It doesn't seem, and correct me if I'm wrong, it doesn't seem like your philosophy leaves much room for sacrifice, if any. My question is, do you believe that sacrifice and your pursuit of happiness, they're both mutually exclusive or do you believe they can coexist? I believe they're mutually exclusive. I believe you should never go for a transaction where you know you're gonna lose. And when I talk about transaction, I mean all human relationships. Everything you do in life. Everything you do in life should be win-wins. I didn't sacrifice for my kids. I don't sacrifice my kids. I never will sacrifice my kids. My kids are huge value to me. When I give them stuff, it's cause I love them. And because what I give them is worth less to me than them. That's not a sacrifice. When I didn't go to the movies and spend time with the kids, it's cause my kids are more important to me than the movies. I don't believe in sacrificing anything. I think sacrifice is bad. It's anti-life, it's anti-human happiness, and therefore should be eradicated from our vocabulary, from our moral vocabulary. When a basketball player is going down and he doesn't take the shot but passes it, he's not sacrificing. His values are to win. And if the pass is gonna generate a win, he's being self-interested by passing. Sack, anything that helps you to advance life, to achieve happiness is not a sacrifice. So yes, I think sacrifice is a bad thing. Can you sacrifice temporarily to win in the long run? That's not a sacrifice. That's an investment. Sure, we all invest, right? That's not a sacrifice. The point is this, if you're gonna get more than you gave, that's not a sacrifice, that's a trade. And of course you, I mean, when you spend time with an infant baby, believe me, you're getting nothing in return right then and there because all they're doing is yelling at you and being obnoxious, right? But you're investing. You're investing in something that will pay off, hopefully, and some investments go sour. Some investments don't pay off. Still wasn't a sacrifice, it was a bad investment. And kids can be bad investments too, unfortunately. They have free will. And they can do bad things. And it's sad when that happens. You can make bad, so when I invest $100 with the hope of making $1,000 in the future, is that a sacrifice? Would you call that a sacrifice? No, you call it an investment. Sure. Sacrifice is a bad, and I know because sacrifice is so much of our vocabulary, particularly in religion, that it's impossible to let go of. But it's properly understood, it's not consistent with human freedom, with the pursuit of happiness, and ultimately with capitals, and good economics. Because good economics is about investment, not about sacrifice. Thanks. I don't know. If nothing, controversial. I don't have a question, so I'm gonna wrap this up. Trace, do we have any interesting questions from the internet? Well, we're not really any new ones. That's nothing new? Okay, you covered it. No, I'm with the old government. No. We'll take one more at the mic. I am signing books. I'm selling books that are 20 bucks. Books are written, they're not academic. They're written for a tea party audience, for the intelligent layman. So I encourage you to buy a few copies and give them to your friends. Okay, we'll have one more formal question. Then what I'm gonna do is announce, Charlie's gonna have some local politics or something he wants to talk about for just a minute. Now I'm signing books. You'll be signing books, and then I'll announce what we're doing next month, which might be of interest to you all. Thank you. Thank you, other than the, is it on? Other than the educating people on the morals and so forth, do you think the, what did she call it, the in Atlas shrug where they bugged out to their own place? They go on strike. Yeah, yeah, and well, not as much of that as the whole thing about creating their own society, a way for somewhere safe. Liberty districts, that is really the most viable solution, do you think? Well, I mean, the problem with that is that in Atlas shrug, it's a novel. So she could create this machine that creates this and they can hide. So if you can find a place where you can hide and you can still live a good life, then absolutely, go for it. I don't know if you've heard about these three cities in Honduras. I've heard there's something going on. So Honduras has changed their constitution so that they allow people to start their own free cities with their own constitutions and their own legal systems in Honduras and they're leaving them alone to do it. And the first city supposed to be breaking ground any day now funded by some billionaires. Now, whether it ever happens or not, it's still very speculative. People are gonna look for ways out. People are gonna look to go some way and do this stuff. Whether it's viable or not, I don't know. You can't go and start your own free city in the Colorado mountains because the government has the tool to come and shut you down and they won't let you because they want you. They wanna own you. Yeah, on that as far as a lot of people, libertarians and others are advocating that a bunch of libertarians move and basically take over a small town somewhere like the free state project but concentrated enough to actually work. So you're still gonna have to fight by all federal regulations and taxes. Right. All state regulations and taxes. So maybe your life will be a little bit marginally better off, but then you have to live in New Hampshire. Who wants to do that? Well, yeah, no, you find a small town somewhere where people would wanna live. Oh, I mean, sure. I mean, there are lots of options in terms of what you can do. You have to make those choices in terms of your personal life, what makes sense for you and that the solution is gonna be a viable solution and that the benefit is gonna justify the cost, right? Right. But each one of us has, it's not clear that we're gonna have one solution for everybody that is viable for all of us. That's where panarchy comes in, but I don't have time to get into that, but everybody can look it up. Let's not talk about anarchy. No, panarchy with a P. I don't know what panarchy is. Look it up. All right, well, let's thank you all very much and very deeply in heartfelt for coming. It's a wonderful talk.