 Let's start over. Welcome everybody. This is your own book. I'm broadcasting today from the United Kingdom, from London, from my hotel room in London. A little bit of a different setup when I travel and always, always seem to be some glitches, but hopefully, hopefully we'll get through it. Okay. It looks like the sound of video right now are pretty good, so we'll hope that lasts. I'm here. I'm here in the UK for a school tour. I do this once a year. I travel around the United Kingdom and speak at high schools. It's really a lot of fun. It's a great age. I find that British kids in high schools tend to be, I don't know, more questioning, more thinking than American kids. I think it's an educational system. Remember, I'm also doing these talks at the best schools in England, so I wonder if the best high schools in the United States maybe have a similar stance, a similar position. But it's fascinating and a lot of fun to talk to them. Of course, they're inculcated with a typical leftist agenda that they get from their professors and their teachers and it's just in the culture, and that is hard to avoid. But it's a lot of fun to engage with young minds, minds that have never heard the ideas before, and open them to new opportunities and open them to new ideas and to Iron Man's thinking. And I think a lot of these kids are going to read Iron Man. I've got a certain history here now. This is the third year I'm doing this tour. I'll be doing nine talks, most of them in London, although four of them will be in the Oxford area. But some of them outside of London, but in the London region, for example. So today, I was at Westminster. Westminster is in really the heart of London. It's probably one of the best, if not the best of the English schools, academic-wise. Really, really bright kids, really good kids. We talked about free speech. We talked about the whole trigger warnings, the whole idea of placing your emotions above reason. So the whole issue of free speech was discussed. It was really good. We even talked a little bit about egoism. And the kids seemed really interested. I think next time I'm going to come, I'm going to do a talk straight on egoism at Westminster, because they really seemed interested in that topic. And I think there's a real opportunity to open up some minds and open up these kids to Iron Man's ideas. As I said before, I think many of them actually do go on and read Iron Man because they are stimulated and they become interested because of the talks that I give. Tomorrow, I've got an interesting event. I've got two events tomorrow. One at St. Paul's Girls' School, which is one of the probably three, four top girls' schools in the UK. It's a day school, not a boarding school, but all girls' school. I was scheduled to speak at St. Paul's last year. But they got about an inch of snow, and they canceled school that day, so they had to cancel my talk. So I'm back there this year. So that'll be interesting. And then in the evening, and I'm really looking for this in the evening, I'm doing a debate at Eaton against a speaker who claims that inequality is a real social and economic problem. So we're going to debate inequality at Eaton. I don't know how much of you know about Eaton. But Eaton is like the top boarding school boys boarding school in the UK. YouTube looks like it's a disaster. So I'm just going to, I think Facebook's still functioning, so we're going to keep going this on Facebook and keep going at it. So Eaton's going to be a lot of fun because these are really smart kids to get into Eaton and to stay at Eaton. You know, these are really, really smart kids. So I'm looking for the debate. I'm hoping they videotape it, although I have a feeling they won't because these kids are typically not organized around that. And high schools are very sensitive about videotaping events and around the presence of cameras in the classroom. So we will see. But Eaton should be fabulous. The debate should attract a lot of people. And that'll be good. Then Wednesday, I'm doing another boy school, I think. And Thursday, I can't remember what school I'm doing Thursday. But all of them, you know, top schools, top schools in the UK. Overall, I'll be doing nine, at least nine is possibility of a tenth school coming together. Actually, in addition to the school, though, I'm doing Sutton Grammar School on Thursday, which is another type of British school, I guess, grammar schools, public schools funded by the government, but they're the best public schools. So again, I'll have a great, really, really smart audience. And I'm looking forward to that in the evening. On on Thursday, I'm doing a debate at University of Kent. If you're in the UK, you're invited. It's open to the public. It should be a lot of fun against a Marxist. And we're going to debate capitalism versus socialism. It should be a lot of fun, particularly with Venezuela collapsing, I guess you'll claim Venezuela is actually capitalist. And that's why it's collapsing. And finally, let's see, finally, we'll be doing, I'll be going to St. Petersburg, Russia, both places of Iran, where we will be doing an event to celebrate Iran. There's a big event. They're expecting hundreds of people to come. We'll see if that expectation gets realized. And I'll be talking about individualism and political freedom. But it's going to be a whole day of programming with lots of Russian speakers, I don't know, all talking about Iran. So that should be fascinating to be in St. Petersburg to talk about this. From there, I go to Stockholm, where I'm doing a Douglas Murray event. I'm hoping that'll be live streamed both events, the all three events actually, the University of Kent debate on socialism versus capitalism, the St. Petersburg event about Iran, and the Stockholm event on the death of Western civilization with Douglas Murray, all of those events will be live streamed. And if you go to ARI Europe, I'm sure I'm sure Annie will be posting the URLs with all of those links for all of those events. Then I come back to UK. I do four schools at Oxford, which I'm really looking forward to. And then I fly to Prague, where the Ironman Institute is hosting our first European student conference, but it's not just for students. I hope to see many of you adults there as well. We're expecting several hundred people at the Ironman Institute. It keeps coming in and coming out in terms of the, whoops, now we lost Facebook. All right. No, we're back on Facebook. Okay. It keeps going in and out the internet. So I apologize, but it is what it is. All right. I thought what I do today, and you know, the bandwidth here is great. So I don't know what it is. Maybe I'm trying to stream. Maybe this is trying to stream at too high of a rate. I'm not sure how to change that right now. Let's even go to setting and change that audio video. No, I have no idea how to change that. So we got what we got. Let me just, okay, so what I want to talk about today, and I'm going to keep this fairly brief and because because we've got technical problems and it's late and because I'm jet lagged and I want to, somebody asked on Facebook if somebody asked on Facebook are very tired of the same questions being asked over and over again. I don't really, and I don't, I think I don't get really tired of the same questions being asked over and over again. It's because it's different people asking the question. The context is always different. And I'm interested in getting to the individual's mind. I'm interested in impacting the particular individual. So I don't think, oh, shit, they've asked this 100 times because this kid hasn't asked it before. And particularly when I'm speaking in front of what I call virgin audiences, audiences that have never heard this stuff before, then, you know, they haven't heard this. So it's completely new. And I try to answer the best that I can in the context of the question in the context of of the lecture in the context of where I think he's or she is asking the question from. And that keeps it from getting boring because my answers will change in a sense from time to time because they become the answers are always going to be, you know, contextual, the answers are always going to be within a particular context. So that's why I don't get bored. All right, I wanted to talk today about the rise of the left of, you know, the the if you will, the leftist view of economics. This is spurred by an op ed that was published by Noonan Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend. And, you know, Peggy Noonan is a traditional Republican. She's a good writer, but very confused philosophically. But she's actually right about this. She in discussing how it's short, you know, the CEO, former CEO of Starbucks, run for president or what looks like he might run for president, she says, look, this is a guy who's got a great story, right? He's a kid from New York, real working class family. You know, wasn't handed anything and get a million bucks from his family. Family went through real hardship, real challenges. And here he is. He builds a company. The company is brand is so well known. Everybody pretty much in the world knows about it. He's created 238,000 jobs as of 2007. And he's changed the world. I mean, Starbucks has changed the world. It's changed the way we drink coffee. It's changed the way we think about coffee. It's changed. It's it's it's become, you know, this phenomena is incredibly successful businessman. And he presents himself as physically conservative, socially liberal. And Peggy Noonan says, you know, that that's a losing proposition. Nobody's interested in physical service. Take physical services pro-free market and socially liberal. Put aside the socially liberal for a minute. But let's think about the physically conservative. She says, and I'm quoting Peggy Noonan here. America's head had left economically. 2008 changed everything. Deeply undermining faith in free market capitalism. One of the great sins of that time and of all the years after was that the capitalist themselves in their vast killessness couldn't even rouse themselves to defend the reputation of the system that made them rich and their country great. In any case, the most significant sound in 2016 was Trump's audience cheering his vows not to cut entitlements. They would have cheered even louder if he'd promised increases to entitlements. And Peggy Noonan's absolutely right. Trump governs. Trump advocates. Trump is a man from an economic perspective of the left. Not a free market capitalism. And entitlement is probably the best example of that. He is not about cutting or reforming or phasing out or privatizing entitlements. He's not for privatizing our healthcare system. He's not for privatizing anything. So reducing a little bit of regulation and cutting corporate taxes, which again nobody really debated the virtue of cutting corporate taxes. But he's not an advocate for the market. He's not an advocate for free market. He's also for tariffs. He's also for telling CEOs and telling businessmen what and how to do things. So, you know, I've talked a lot about Trump. I'm not going to talk about him now. The Habingdon party or those who support Donald Trump are not pro-free markets. They have moved dramatically to the left of free markets. Of even the understanding of free market that was, if you will, the Republican party of 10, 20 years ago. And on the left, what you're seeing is the rise of Elizabeth 1, the rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the rise of Bernie Sanders, the rise of even more radical leftists. You're seeing a dramatic shift further out to the left. In the middle, the Democrats who used to be somewhat physically conservative, somewhat pro-free market, they're a dying breed. They don't exist really. And even they have moved to the left, because that's where the political party is. And if you're going to get votes, if you're going to win elections, that's what you have to play to. So, I think it's safe to say, as Peggy Noonan argues, that the country, there is, why? You know, why has this happened? Why has the country moved so significantly to the left? Now, Noonan states one argument that you hear a lot, and I've made this argument, and that is that we failed significantly in 2008 and afterwards in portraying the crisis as caused by statism, as portraying the crisis as caused by government, and refuting the idea that the crisis was not caused by capitalism, not caused by free markets. Indeed, we should have been arguing the case that there was no capitalism, that the crisis was a crisis of the mixed economy, as indeed it was. And she argues that the people who really didn't defend it were the capitalists themselves, and we know this, it was the bankers and the businessmen who refused to defend capitalism. And it was the politicians and it was columnists like her who did not defend capitalism because they don't know what capitalism is. They don't have a clue, and they can't defend capitalism. They don't know what it is, and to the extent that they think they know what it is, they can't defend it. Capitalism at the end of the day is the system of self-interest. Capitalism is the system of the pursuit of happiness, your happiness, the individual's happiness. Capitalism is the pursuit of the individual's self-interest, both in the producing side, on the work side, on the productive side, and on the consumption side. The whole economic system is built around the idea of individuals pursuing their own ha- This is painful. It's painful that the video cuts in and out. So it is it is that self-interest. It is that pursuit of happiness, that it's pursuit of individual values, that nobody, including Peggy Noonan, nobody can actually defend. Nobody is willing to defend. Nobody goes out of his way to defend. Indeed, they're uncomfortable in defending. At their best, they revert to an Adam Smith-like defense, which says, yeah, everybody pursues their self-interest under capitalism. But we know self-interest is no good. But if you add up all these pursuits of self-interest, it makes society better off, because of innovation, because of risk-taking, because of entrepreneurs, because of business, job creation, and all this. So capitalism is good because of that. So it's the Adam Smith argument. If you add up all the vices of all the individuals pursuing their self-interest, you get a better society. And the standard for goodness is a better society. And therefore capitalism is good. Now nobody buys that. That is like the weakest, most pathetic defense possible. It's true, as far as it goes, that yes, from a material perspective, capitalism produces the best society. But people are concerned with morality. And what you're telling people morally is that people are committing sins by pursuing their self-interest over and over and over again in everything that they do in life. And that somehow this is washed away by the invisible hand that gives us a richer, more prosperous society. Again, that is not a defense that can work, but that is the defense of Peggy Noonan and everybody else who tries to defend capitalism from the right. Everybody else, the libertarians and the conservatives try to defend capitalism. At the end of the day, that's a defense. Or a defense from ignorance and depravity. Do you know this defense that they give? People are so irrational. People are so ignorant. People are so depraved that you don't want to give them too much power. And of course what statism does is gives them. The reason we're opposed to statism is because it's because we don't want to give these depraved, ignorant, irrational human beings too much power. The beauty of the marketplace is that nobody has that amount of power. And again, but this is the argument, as I called it, the argument for depravity. So human beings irrational. That's why you don't want central planning. No! It's because we're rational you don't want central planning. It's because we have individuals are rational and we as individuals are therefore the only ones who can make value judgments for ourselves. It's not a lack of rationality on the part of the central planet. It's not a lack of information on the part of the central planet. It's the fact that he can be us. It's the fact that every individual is rational. Every individual can make decisions for himself and the central planet cannot be every individual and he cannot make choices, cannot make value judgments for individuals. It's the fact that we are competent, the fact that we're capable of virtue, the fact that we can pursue our own lives, our own happiness successfully that we don't want and central planning cannot work. A supercomputer cannot value for you. A supercomputer doesn't know what your passions are. It doesn't know what your values are. It doesn't know what makes you happy. Only the individual can be inside his own head and know all that. Only the individual has a context in which he can evaluate that. Rationally of course, objectively of course, but objectivity. How can an external party be objective for you? How can a third party tell you what your values should be? So it's a central planning is not about human depravity. The inconsistencies of central planning, the impossibility of central planning, the impossibility of central planning is a consequence of the capacity of every individual to pursue his own self-interest, to be rational, to choose his own values, and that those values cannot be predicted. Why? Why can't they be predicted? Well, because we have free will. Not because the central plan is not smart enough, but because we have free will. And you can't model free will. You can replicate free will on a computer. You can't do it better. But again, conservatives, libertarians, many, many people out there, you know, they that's not their defensive capitalism, that's not their approach to capitalism. That's not how they think about capitalism. So the world has moved leftwards. The world has moved leftwards. Not just because we didn't defend capitalism in 2008. You know, I did. I, I, everywhere I could, at every opportunity I could, and every event that I could, on every TV station that would take me, on every radio station that would take me, I tried to defend capitalism as best that I could. But I was a lone voice out there. The conservatives, the libertarians, and the business community did not defend capitalism. And to a large extent, they did not defend capitalism because they could not. Because they did not have the tools. They do not have the tools. They do not believe in capitalism. They do not believe in self-interest. They do not believe in egoism. They do not have the moral basis on which, or the epistemological basis, the philosophical basis on which to defend capitalism. And that's why we moved to the left. We moved to the left because yes, all the problems are being blamed on capitalism. 2008 was blamed on capitalism. And there was no defense. But I would say there was no defense after the Great Depression other than Ayn Rand, maybe Milton Friedman of Von Mises, but basically Ayn Rand. After the Great Society, after the inflation of the 70s, how many people stood up and said, no, no, no, the Reagan Revolution is not capitalism. It's just a refinement of the of the mixed economy. And then by the financial crisis, yeah, Alan Greenspan said this is a failure of capitalism. This is a failure of markets. George Bush said we have to abandon capitalism in order to save it. And it's over. It's over. And what we're seeing today is a I think a lunge of the American public to the left. I really don't see how we get out of that. It's on the right. It's on the left. It's depressing. You know, and one of the signs of that is the now resurgence of Marxism. Marxism is now you know, back. It's sexy. Socialism is back. It's sexy as Venezuela is occurring right before our eyes. There's another socialist state implodes. Marxists are coming out of the woodwork. Marxists to everywhere. Socialists everywhere to make the case for socialist Marxist agenda. I was reading this article in Vox. Why are millennials why are millennials burned out? Question mark. The answer is capitalism turns out this new book by a guy named Malcolm Harris called Kids These Days. Human capital and the making of millennials where he argues that the millennials are bearing the brunt of the economic damage wrought by late 20th century capitalism. Not late 20th century mixed economy. Late 20th century capitalism. We haven't differentiated ourselves from the mixed economy. You ever said no. The late 20th century was not characterized by capitalism was characterized by the mixed economy and and it's the socialism within their mixtures created the problems. He says all these insecurities and the material conditions that produced them have thrown millennials into a state of perpetual panic. It's generations quote generations are characterized by crisis. Then ours is the crisis of extreme capitalism. Extreme the problem today is extreme capitalism. I mean what a joke if you understand anything about what capitalism is. Now this Malcolm Harris it turns out is a Marxist. He in an interview here you write well I take I take a very Marxist perspective on the world and later you write he says I think it's curious you know the problems of capitalism as as the problem of whoops I've lost him where did you say this here it is Marxist would refer to this as an increase in the rate of exploitation meaning workers are working longer harder and more efficiently but are receiving less and less in return. I reference Marxism here because conventional American economics don't really have the term for this. It's not something they like to talk about because they don't recognize that capitalism is built on exploitation. I mean yeah I mean this is really bringing Marxism back you know Marxism was deemed unsexy but now it's back it's popular it's sexy it's cool this book is going to be a bestseller or is a bestseller. So there's this supposed gap between productivity and hourly compensation and supposedly workers are not being paid for their productivity which when analyzed property is complete bullocks complete nonsense because if you play a level of productivity then all you have to do is leave your job and go find a different job. Somebody's going to pay you more that's how markets work there's competition for labor but you know these people don't understand markets they don't understand what's going on they distort the data they you know make it up if they have to as as Thomas Piketty did quite a bit and they tell us the story about how awful the world is how the middle class has been left behind how life sucks for the middle class and by the way all of this is not the result of the mixed economy maybe the lack of capital investment because that capital is being taxed away from the producers it's not because of the redistribution of wealth and the disincentive of people to work it's not all the licensing laws to reduce the number of entrepreneurs in the economy and therefore reduce the number of productive jobs no it's none of those things it's extreme capitalism that we have today which is a problem so you know that I'm not going to give the full argument around about this I'm going to although I'm going to probably do it tomorrow night because I'm sure this issue is going to come up in in my debate about inequality at Eaton but what I want to point out is is the left today is happy to dredge up Marx is happy to self identify itself as socialist when is the right going to be willing or the free marketeers put aside right left when are those who promote free markets really willing to cite and quote and advocate for the greatest defend of capitalism in human history when are they gonna bring out iron ran the only consistent defend of capitalism in human history when are they gonna bring it iron ran the one mall defense of capitalism that exists when are they gonna figure out their attempt to use Christianity their attempt to use altruism their attempt to use collectivism their attempt to use conventionality to defend capitalism has failed when are they gonna have their balls the guts to actually revert to the thinker who could actually defend capitalism the left jumps on the opportunity to quote Marx jumps on identifying itself as socialist and they know what socialism is talk about what says knows what socialism is she intends to implement it on a grand scale you know it might be closer to fascism but at the end of the day it's going to be statism government intervention the economy redistribution of wealth she knows exactly what she's doing Elizabeth war knows exactly what she's doing when when are those defenders of the free market can embrace capitalism not the mixed economy but capitalism real capitalism real free market free of government intervention free of government regulation free of government controls when are they gonna embrace that and embrace the thinker who most represents laissez-fait capitalism who most defended laissez-fait capitalism who most inspired people to think about laissez-fait capitalism and that's Ain Rand Peggy Newton's no fan of Ain Rand Donald Trump certainly isn't stand out for a real self-interest based defense of capitalism and until we're willing to do that until there are enough of us until businessmen who are still expected in this country are willing to stand up and not be mealing mouthed about their wealth and not be mealing mouthed about the system that allowed them to create that wealth but businessmen standing up proudly and declaring that they built it that it's theirs that they don't owe anybody anything that is unchosen that they do not have moral duties that they stand by the system of laissez-fait capitalism consistently and they stand by the ethics of self-interest consistently and that they admire Ain Rand if you had a hundred or a thousand John Allison's John Allison the C.O.B.B.T. then yeah then the battle would be over then the left would be crushed we need those businessmen but to have those businessmen we need the intellectuals and if we have the intellectuals and we have the businessmen then we'll get the politicians so it doesn't surprise me that politicians are not advocating for this cannot stand up to the socialists we get the politicians we deserve all right we are having lots of streaming problems here so I'm going to call it a night I apologize I will try this again in maybe tomorrow night probably not tomorrow night tomorrow night I have a late night at Eaton but maybe the night after that we'll see I will try this again try to get the try to figure out why we're getting so much streaming errors I'll look more carefully at what we're doing maybe we're trying to stream at a too high of a bandwidth but let me check into that and I will let you know in the meantime I've noticed a lot of you were dropping Patreon and good drop Patreon but not all the people who are dropping Patreon are going and subscribing on Subscribestar.com so please if you're going to drop your support of your own Booksharp Patreon please add your support on Subscribestar.com otherwise right now losing many more dollars on Patreon that I'm gaining on Subscribestar so thank you for everybody supports the show thank you for everybody who intends to support the show but I encourage all of you those who are interested in seeing the show continue and thrive and grow to support the show Subscribestar.com and soon also hopefully within a couple of days on the your on Booksharp.com website I will let you know as soon as that live we're waiting for the final SSL certificate security stuff whatever so that that should go through soon so thank you for listening tonight again sorry for all the technical problems and I'll be back on this tour broadcasting hopefully with better technology in the next couple of days in the next few days talk to you soon have a good night from London this is your on Booksharp bye everybody