 In the most talked about issue of the day in the United States these days and you know traveling in Israel and in Europe when people talk about the U.S. it seems to come up very frequently in conversations and there's a major election right now in the U.S. who will have a lot of bearing on this issue. Is the issue of health care? There is a massive debate and a massive new legislation with regards to the situation of health care in the United States. And what's the problem we are told with health care in the United States? Well, it's too expensive. Costs, a huge percentage of GDP is being spent on health care. We all know there's some optimal level of GDP that should be spending on health care and we've exceeded that optimal level we are told. There are many, anywhere between 20 and 30 million people who are uninsured don't have health insurance in the United States. And now we are told it's a real serious problem. So, it's too expensive. People don't have it. So then the solution is obvious. What's the solution? The solution is what? Government needs to do something. Government needs to act. We need to force people to get insurance. We need to subsidize their insurance. We need a lower cost because costs are too high. So the immediate response is more government. More government in spite of the fact that if you look at American health care, you'll find that somewhere close to 50 cents of every dollar spent on health care in the United States is spent by the government. So you've already got the government being a major purchase of health care. Yes, the prices of prices keep going up. So now we want to go to buy more health care and the expectation of prices will go down. If you look at health care, you see massive regulations throughout the entire industry in order to make health care cheaper, more accessible, more available, more comprehensive, and so on. Government is everywhere in health care. There is no markets. There is no free market. There is no free choice in health care in the United States. It is completely, well, half of it is government run and the other half is government regularly. So what is it that leads people so instinctually and by the way, you know, if you read the polls and you read the newspaper articles of a lot of people in the U.S. against the health care plan. The polls are somewhere around 40% of forward and somewhere around 55% to 60% of against it. But a lot of people against it because it doesn't do enough. So you actually look at why people reject the health care plan. A significant percentage of them are rejecting it because it's not, you know, it's not enough government intervention. And a lot of them are against it because it's so, this particular plan is so obviously corrupt. I mean, people were paying markets of money to vote for this. And people just don't like the sleaziness, but nobody, or very few Americans, are actually objecting to the idea that government needs to step in here, take care of health care somehow, make sure that they get the insurance and lower the costs in some way. There's almost, there's a minority that thinks that government should stay out of it. But it's a minority. When the Republicans proposed an alternative to what Obama's proposing, it was basically the same thing that the Democrats had proposed, just fewer pages. It was simple. It was less government intervention but still an increase in government intervention, just slower. You know, the Republicans in the U.S. want to socialize everything just in a slower pace than the Democrats. So why is the response, why is the energy so much behind this notion of there's a seed problem? Let's get the government involved. Let's get the government to solve it. Let's increase the world of government. And I think it has to do with the fact that there are people out there that have a need for health care and that need is not being met. So the people out there who are suffering who are not getting the kind of care they would like to get, they would imagine again that people who are spending more than they would like to spend on health care. The people who feel, and this is very much an emotional level, feel like they should get more. And the people, most people look at them and say, yeah, you should get better treatment. It should be cheaper. It's not fair. Health care really comes down to this question of fairness. This issue of need. Some people need it. And they deserve it. And they should have it. And we need to find a way to provide it. And that need is perceived today as a need for health care. It's perceived today as a right. People have a right to health care. They have a right to the treatment that they want. They have a right to get that treatment cheaply. Not to pay too much for it. And if somebody has a right to something, we perceive that somebody has a right to health care. Who? A living wage. Who's job to provide for rights and defend rights and protect rights and take care of the rights of people. So if somebody has a right to health care and we need to provide him with health care and the only entity that can provide that is government. People have a need for jobs. They have a right to a job and the only entity that can provide that is government. That's right. All the government is to protect individual rights. That's the sexual characteristic of the American government. It's in its founding documents. And if we define health care as a right, if we define housing as a right as we did before this crisis, talk about this banking crisis, this housing crisis, a lot of it came about because housing and rights in the government spent huge amounts of money subsidizing it. If you want me to go through the causes of the financial crisis you can ask me in the Q&A and I'd be happy to go through that quickly. But that idea that housing is a right is a big part of the cause of what happened here. So how do we define rights and things then? Big government, social life government, government intervention, government involvement is going to only escalate. Now of course it should be quite obvious to people that if there's something wrong with the notion that somebody has a right to health care because if somebody has a right to health care then somebody else is obligated to provide him with that health care as a product, a good service that somebody is providing. You have a right to health care and I'm a doctor and what position does that put me as a doctor? I'm obliged government is going to force me to provide for your health care. What about my right to decide who I see and who I don't see? How much I charge my services? How much I don't charge? How much I don't do? What about my rights? What I don't think is different from you all? You care and the doctors, they all get together and they say wait a minute we've got rights too and these people come and say well but we've got rights and what do you get? What do you get? A doctor's lobby and a pharmaceutical lobby and all kinds of lobbies. Every little group out there comes up and says we've got rights too. And how do we decide our policy? Well, whoever manages to manipulate the political process best wins out wheels and cup people appease and everybody gets a little peace and politicians then vote on what they think will maximize their ability to get elected. But rights then turn into groups that all claim stand for individual rights, stand for what America was talking about want to help care the right to be adopted do what I think is right to be adopted the right of pharmaceuticals to make a profit but it's all rights and it's no standard. The standard is who has the most I mean you're thinking of democracy generally the standard is who has the most votes. But I hate those votes. I hate those votes. Why do you have to do those? Why do we need to? It's a little civil war. Every time you get something like health care, what you get is a little civil war going on behind the scenes where people are pushing fully through to get the best outcome for themselves. It is there a standard for what a right is. When we talk about the government's role in defending and protecting individual rights what does that actually mean and where does that actually come from? We go back to the founding documents of the United States in the Declaration of Independence and said we should have a right for life, liberty and absolute happiness and in any other way to those what does that actually mean? Now these these concepts are really important they shape the way we think about politics they shape the way we think about the world of government they shape the way we think about what governments should and shouldn't do so it's really important to me to say what rights are and how they've been converted and stored and corrupted and used in a way that the founding fathers of America would find improving and we should all find improving and we should all have the tools to be able to fight for them and I think that most commentators I'll take both on the left and the right have gotten these issues of rights wrong because they don't understand what the concept is and where it fundamentally comes from So what is a right? What do we mean when we talk about individual rights? And here I think I meant bills on the enlightenment thinkers of law on the founding fathers of the tradition but I think it brings their own unique views to this question Fine Rand writes a manifestation of that manifestation of morality through the application of morality to politics Fine Rand morality is primarily an individual responsibility primarily deals with how individuals can view with their own life with themselves not so much with the world out other people but with their world, with themselves their own moral responsibilities to themselves but we all live in a society we all live among other people rights are the rules in a sense the standards by which we interact with other people the application of a specific moral code a specific moral view to how we interact with other people and therefore to understand the corruption of rights you have to understand different views of ethics you have to understand the prevalent views of morality and culture and to understand the proper view of rights you have to understand a proper moral view rights about the individual individual rights a code that determines freedoms of an individual freedom of action rights fundamentally about actions we say the rights of life means that you have a right to pursue those actions necessary to sustain your own life it means that you have the right to do whatever is necessary to take care of yourself to be left free but think in any way that you view as beneficial to your life that's essentially what rights are and there is only one right fundamentally that's the right to life the right to property the right to free speech the right to liberty that's the derivatives of the one idea that we as individuals need to be left free left alone to pursue our life to pursue a life property of human beings so right people talk about a right to negative or a right to positive it's a whole big positive right to negative in a sense that right how positive in the sense that it says that you are free the negative in a sense that they tell your neighbors that while each one of them is free to pursue their own life the negative is they can't violate your right to pursue your life as long as you're not violating as long as you're not prohibiting the ability of others to pursue their right how does one violate rights how does one violate rights how does one violate rights the only way to violate somebody's right we're talking about freedom of action freedom to pursue your life so what is it that's going to interrupt your ability to pursue your life what is it that can stop doing the things that you actually believe are going to make your life the best life that it can there's really only one thing out there that other people do to you to prohibit you from pursuing your life and that is force there's violence and you know violence force can also be fraud but it's stepping in your way it's stopping it's putting a gun to your head it's deceiving you and that's what your neighbor does he recognizes the individual sovereignty to go out there his own life free of coercion free of force free of other people using force to dictate what they think you should be doing it's simple it's a lot of affair leave us alone that's what the doctrine of individual rights really stands for think about how can healthcare be a threat in a sense in Israel you have a radio in the set that you have the right to pursue healthcare the government should not stop from visiting your doctor the government should not interrupt your decision together with your physician to choose what treatment you should get or what treatment you shouldn't get the government should not use force to tell a doctor what medicines he can't prescribe to you and what medicines he cannot prescribe to you that's your right to healthcare your right to pursue healthcare free of anybody else's force upon you indeed the government's job is to if there's a fraudulent doctor or doctor with steels or cheese then the government's role is to come in and protect you from those kind of people who they used to force against you but other than that the government has no role and has no place to step in and how is the only way it can provide you with healthcare how can the government provide you with healthcare only by using force and taking it from somebody else whether it's taking money or whether it's forcing a doctor to do stuff he does not want to so when people talk about a right to healthcare they're talking about violating some people's rights in order to give you something you have not the real right to healthcare it's just basically the individual right to be left free a need just because you need something does not give you the right to take it from others to steal it from others to demand it from others you can ask that individual rights that if you need something you have a right to go and do the best that you can do to steal it whether it's again healthcare or a job or wealth or ipod or an iphone you have a right to earn a living and buy these things so the essence of individual rights is to protect the individual free the whole revolution of individual rights is the revolution that says that we're not going to put state first and we are all slaves to that state in some form or another or collective or group or some of these need for us the whole revolution of individual rights is that we're going to put the individual first and make the state the individual's servant government is a servant of the people what does that mean it's a government plays a role one role and that is to allow people to stay free to leave people free so it takes away the cooks and the forge and it arbitrates disputes but otherwise it has no role now the left would like us to believe that rights are not based on anything in reality they're just the complete subjectivism they would like us to believe that rights are just infractive then indeed rights are gifts rights are gifts that government provides again rights are healthcare rights are minimum wage all those are gifts from the government and yes they say conflicts are inherent in human nature the fact that there's a conflict between the gift that I'm giving the doctors and the gift that I'm giving you know the patient the fact that there are conflicts there that's why we need politics forward that's why we need democracy we need to be able to vote on all these things and ultimately to them all this falls down to absolute democracy again democracy has been influenced in the background but we can forget the votes then it's the majority now anybody who really understands rights as individual freedoms that's incompatible with this notion of democracy democracy is anti-individual rights democracy is the tyranny of the majority that's not my statement that was what I thought it was what I could call it what happens didn't like what Socrates was doing in the streets of Athens he was corrupting the youth telling them that maybe those myths about the gods were true lots of back and forth it's a challenge in their religion so what did and this is pure democracy right well not everybody voted you had to be a landowner and you could only be male and so on but it was pretty close to real democracy everybody got into a big amphitheater in Athens and they all voted I don't know what the percentage was but it was more than 51% voted to shut him up and the most effective way to shut up Socrates was having to drink some poison and Socrates being a real staunch defender of democracy Plato comes to him and says there's one Socrates says no I believe in democracy, the people are spoken and he drinks the poison and that's democracy right if 51% of the people think they should we should build a tennis court on my house then that's what should be done individual rights say if I have a right to my own property then 99% 99.9% I'm assuming I'm voting against it 99% of the people come to build a tennis court on my property and they can't and it's Socrates everybody in Athens kind of hates Socrates and yet his right to speak is inalienable but it's not just his right to speak it's his right to use his property his right not to go see a doctor his right not to buy insurance his right to do whatever he thinks his good friend is inalienable it doesn't get decided by our vote you'll notice that Democrats or the left wants us to have big votes they want to have a big federal government where all the votes happen and Republicans and so the right in the US it's still okay but obviously they just want to have small votes they want to do it in a local level so they're not okay with the federal government stealing my home but they're okay with the local government stealing my home that's what you need in the tennis court state rights they call it or county rights or city rights or whatever they call but there is no such thing there's only one concept of rights and that is individual rights and the individual rights cannot be taken away should not be allowed to be taken away by any size but it doesn't matter if it's a local council it doesn't matter if it's a state it doesn't matter if it's a big federal government rights are inalienable democracy inherently is anti that concept of individual rights against the individual so pure democracy is a way in which the left and the right get around the concept of rights and rights lose their meaning as they have in the United States as a concept the right of course claims to people for the funny father's concept of individual rights they don't stand for what they view as rights but they never define it they never explain it and this whole outfit made in the United States nobody on the right has really emphasized that this is a massive violation of individual rights there's no real discussion because they have a problem because where do these rights come from well all they've got is they have no idea of a basis for where these rights come from what the Declaration of Independence have fortunately felt bad about and that is that they come from God they're just here they just arrived that's not a good idea anytime when you say I know this to be true because I've got a connection to you guys don't have it are you so I'll tell you how to live because I have that connection that's not a good policy in terms of convincing anybody an idea that's not a rational explanation it's not based on reason therefore it's not a rule to entice the concept of rights to our nature our nature as individuals our necessity to produce ourselves our necessity to live our lives the necessity of using reason and the fact that the obstacle to reason the primary obstacle to reason really ultimately the only obstacle to reason is individuals and the force has to be aware of it so that we as individuals can live the best life that we can that is the tie of rights to the nature of human beings the nature of us as individuals so the way in the left getting along is a consequence there's almost no discussion today about concepts like rights there's a complete perversion of what capitalism means capitalism is just some government intervention not too much, nobody can define what too much is and of course it's a consequence that continues to grow and the discussion is about my new show here whether they're about the principle it's a real principle and the principle is individuals leaving people alone letting them assume their own happiness, their own life in the way that they that they view as most rational the way that they view fits that so you don't have to look at the old health care debate you're not going to get into the whole of the details from beginning to end it involves violating individual rights as well and the Republicans they want to say that and sometimes they do and it was this article in the Wall Street Journal headed to a Republican party steal where he says, look we don't believe in government in our health care we're against government in our health care we think this is a really really bad idea but Medicare Medicare is a government on health care for the elderly in the United States that's good by what's said they can't have a principle there because they have nothing to do with that principle health care for the elderly is good because they need is greater so it's okay because they really really really need it it's okay to violate other people's rights if you only need it a little bit it's not okay to violate your rights that is not a winning argument so if we're going to fight a Catholic and when I say Catholicism I don't mean the system that exists in the United States I mean the system of free models of no other intervention in our lives if we're going to fight Catholicism then we have to fight for the concept of individual rights we have to fight for that idea of a proper definition of individual rights and if we're going to fight for a proper definition of individual rights then we have to fight for individualism we are solvent of our own life that nobody has a right that nobody should be able to tell us what we can and cannot do we're not sacrificial animals to the state we don't live for the sake of a group for the sake of our country we live for our own that is the central concept the central point is who does your life belong to if it belongs to you the government needs to get out of the way if it belongs to the state then we're on the road to circle that's the fundamental choice that we have to make and those are the fundamental ideas that we have to fight for thank you for me I don't have to go ahead and speak but in terms of libertarianism and these sort of free ideas we have on an intellectual level here I think everyone can listen to this and go this is a great speech we can understand what you're saying my main interest though is getting those people who have less of an interest in politics to understand our ideas and one of the key ideas I think we have a problem with is there is a mother west I think you mentioned it that what we have today when really it's just this sort of state backed corporatism I'd like to know your thoughts on how we muddle that and present a simple argument to people who have maybe a lesser of an interest in politics well let me first address the danger that I think exists in even in the terms you use state backed corporatism I think is a dangerous term and I think one that I would avoid although I know most libertarians use it quite extensively because state backed corporatism would suggest that the real villains here are the corporations now I'm not saying that the corporations are good guys but I don't think they're the villains they do things I don't like but everybody out there is doing stuff they don't like and they have huge influence sure but I don't think they're the villains so I think there are two issues here one who is the villain and I think that needs to be explained and second how do we describe the system that exists today now let me start with the second one because it's easy I think what we have today is it's a simple concept what we have today is a mixed economy we have a mixture yes there are elements of capitalism yes you can go to the mall and you're free to choose what you can buy nobody is forcing you to buy a particular product versus the Soviet Union where you were told this is what you buy and you only have one choice and that's it so there are elements of freedom out there there's no question about that because for example you're free to choose but the choices are limited by subsidies and regulations and controls and anything else that's going on where the government is has figures in your life and in the life of the manufacturers of the products that you're purchasing so we need to describe the system as what it really is it's a mixture of freedom and coercion and a mixture of capitalism and socialism with the elements of socialism at least in the United States in the U.K. is a little bit you've gone through more cycles but in the U.S. systematically the elements of socialism increase systematically for the last 100 years and then you need to link that to the economic consequences of that which are quite brutal these days and you can easily show that the economic consequences are not the results of the freedom elements within society but it's the result of the government regulations it's not that hard to do if you have somebody's attention and personal fears of their going for it and you have to appeal to people a lot of freedom because I think most people do want to be free most people do want to make their own choices about their own lives because you have to convince them it's okay to let other people make choices about their own lives everybody's happy with the choices they're making it's other people they don't trust and they want to go after so I think you have to explain the system as it is so banks in the United States I like to say 80% government 20% capitalism banks are the ones that collapse high tech is 80% free 20% government but you are not an accident and you can even show that so yes I agree with you we have to communicate better the notion that capitalism is not what we have today capitalism is not what failed capitalism indeed is not really even being tried we dabble in it a little bit in the 19th century but we didn't really do it all the way even in the 19th century and it's interesting even in the 19th century the areas we got downed in are the areas that railroads they didn't survive in the United States very well into the 20th century because of government banking and other areas like that land use so you can show government intervention with people staying living with the quality of people's lives not only is it helpful to go out to corporations although it's populist it has to be a PO and it seems to play as well fundamentally business small and large its fundamental activity is a huge value add to each one of our customers it is a huge contributor to our ability to live where we hate them for being businesses they don't hate them because they're big they hate them for making money they hate them for the profit model they hate them for their very existence they hate the idea of a corporation they hate the idea of a business you need to be very careful and to some extent the road does too particularly if they make too much money we need to be very careful not to play into that I see I don't know if you're familiar with Ron Paul he lay on the last wall street he goes after them and he plays right into the hand of the leftists who say you want to throw a paper shuffling they don't do anything that's BS that's just not true they do something incredibly productive and they do something incredibly productive in spite of all the regulations and yes when government is going to round up and regulate their industry as they go to do right now they're going to spend gazillions of dollars to make sure that they get as much benefits as they can from it and to help with everybody else but the problem is not them the problem is government the problem is the government has the power to regulate them to begin with the problem is the government has the ability to choose when as it loses if the government is going to choose when as it loses and you're a big company who are you going to try to what power are you going to try to be you're going to try to be in the power of the winners I mean you'd be stupid I'll give you an easy example Microsoft used to spend zero dollars on lobbying in Washington zero not they just that was Washington, not a debt business they created all this wealth all these opportunities with no lobbying of government at all and then the Justice Department went after them for antitrust and here in the US and then the Europeans went after them Microsoft today spends hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying in Washington that's high tech and the ability to choose between winners or losers is Microsoft going to spend a fortune to try to make sure that they're in the winners' power absolutely and if you're CEO of Microsoft and you don't do that you're violating the fiduciary duty towards your shareholders so the problem is not Microsoft or Goldman Sachs it's the politicians have the power to be quite as it loses the problem is the politicians introduce bills that are going to help some benefit others the problem is the wealth allows all of this to exist this is an intellectual philosophical debate this isn't about let's get away from what I described earlier this pressure group versus that pressure group now what ideas are driving the very existence of these pressure groups that business is into the hands of the wrong people and yes, it gets a populist appeal but I think it's short-lived and it's non-last business nature is good, yes they are bad businessmen who prefer it and use Washington to gain advantage and we need to attack them business called business or big business called big business attack Jeff emails because he goes to Washington to beg for handouts attack it wasn't even GM that asked for bailout they were bailed out whether they wanted to or not government forced it down their throat attack city bank for forgetting another lobby business attack the particulars the particular instances where they are only after attack a particular businessman who are the Leslie Mouches or the Warren Boyles if you've read out the shrug the particulars are not as a group because I think we do them we do ourselves in this service when we attack business we've got a great example a negative example of an objective who is captured by the system and that is for those of you who know that is Alan Beachman who I think is proof that power corrupts and that absolute power which we certainly have as federal chairman corrupts absolutely I think Alan Beachman was corrupted by the system he was corrupted by power you know he cared more about the kind of people he mingled with in the parties and people's attitudes towards him than about the truth and I think that completely corrupted this movie so I guess it depends if you're an Alan Beachman don't go to politics you only give us a bad name if you have integrity you know what the gallon does if you're a person of integrity I don't think you have to be corrupted by the system the question really is what can you do what is the best way to change the world and I think we're going to need politicians whether it's now down the road they're going to have to be objective politicians they're going to have to be people who stand up in principle and oppose things on principle and are not willing to cut deals but you have to realize that if you go into politics under that guy first of all it's going to be tough to get elected second you know you're going to make a lot of it if you're not going to be a popular guy people are not going to like you you have to be able to have the backbone to stand up to them because if you believe in principles then it's not just about the less of two evils it's not just about getting the best compromise you can it's about no we're not going to support this even if it's better than optimal yes in order to try to reign in government some of us on the right of Britain have actually argued that far from abandoning the faith of democracy we should be using radical direct democracy to try to make the statement much more immediately accountable to the people and therefore to try to curtail it and in fact do the job that if we had a functioning legislature it would actually be doing itself and that is to reign in the ambitions of the politicians and to shrink what is defined as public policy YouTube suggests that actually democracy is more radical direct democracy is actually not the way forward I'll be using your thoughts yeah I think it is a strategy that will backfire because principle behind it is I think wrong government is not about direct democracy of the people government is about protecting people you know from voting away the minorities rights for the sake of the majority and any group that you have you know you're always going to be able to call about a majority that's going to screw the minority and what is the ultimate minority the ultimate minority is the individual the whole idea of government is to prevent that is to prevent any gang or group of going after the individual it's the individual rights and therefore shrinking it I don't think so and I don't think that there's evidence to suggest at least by experience in the US and it might be different in the UK any evidence to suggest that it actually currently works to shrink the older government so for example in the US there's as much what's violation going on every day at city councils in deciding whether I can what I should be allowed or not allowed to do on my land or on my property whether I can open a school where I can open a school I was involved in you know being a school or something in our county California and the amount of lobbying and taking out city council members the lunches the corruption just becomes more intimate but you know are people going to be upset about the corruption now because the next time they want something they'll use the same tools so I think it's inherently corrupting in size just makes that corruption more intimate but it doesn't really change the nature of the corruption and I think it I think you give up a huge amount you give up the principle you're giving up the principle of individualism giving up the principle of individualism you're accepting the notion that what matters is the majority the size of the majority the size of the voting you know shouldn't matter what's important is the individual what's important is are his rights being protected or are they not being protected can he use his land anyway he chooses to or not I think that the size of the group that is violating his rights is irrelevant and plays into the hands of you know the socialists who can also organize on the local level and probably get as much influence on local politics because I think in our culture they have them all high ground because our culture has adopted their ethics and they have much more influence on people Do you think the United States and the UK have the right to invade Afghanistan? What gives any political entity a country a right to exist in a sense as a political entity and I'd say what gives it is the extent to which it defends the right to the citizens that is it's only legitimate to the extent that it protects the sovereignty of its individuals governments don't have, countries don't have sovereignty only individuals have sovereignty but to the extent that you grant your government legitimacy is to the extent that it's legitimate if it's any dictatorship in mind it's eligible any country that systematically violates the rights of its citizen what does it mean to say Saddam Hussein has sovereignty over Iraq? I mean that's bizarre it is a murderous thug who killed his own people in mass who didn't allow individual rights in any respect in anybody in his country yet he has sovereignty over Iraq now he's completely legitimate anybody could invade it in the country if they want to be completely legitimate now the question is should you invade to get rid of Saddam Hussein is completely a question of you know your own interests that is why is it in America so invading Iraq in my view the answer ultimately is no why is it in America self-interest to invade Afghanistan probably but not the way they did so it really is a question of self-defense so what is it self-interest ultimately both that is isn't crucial for American self-defense to invade Iraq if the answer is yes then you invade it if the answer is no then you nominate it it's unanimacy the sovereignty of Iraq is irrelevant now if you talk about France then there is a question of sovereignty because it is a legitimate government it is right to respect it at least to an extent just as Britain is and just as America they're all mixed they're not pure but they're all mixed but look I can see by your face between disagreements if you think that France that the UK are France on the same scale of rights violation as Iraq is you're completely detached from reality what are the line in my view the line is the four characteristics of a state let me see if I can remember all four but the four characteristics of a state that is illegitimate completely that is basically a dictatorship but to have a telecommunication is very valuable the most important one in my view is whether you have censorship or not freedom of speech and to the extent to which it is implied whether you have any kind of elected government you know okay so those but the key is in my view some kind of run party war which denies any kind of election and freedom of speech as long as you have freedom of speech in a country there's some freedom to elect in that country there's some way to use reason and thought and argument and discussion in order to change the world in which you live when freedom of speech is gone you're basically living in dictatorship in which your only means of dealing with change is through violence through evolution bringing up taking arms and revolting against the government so a country that rejects which clearly France and Britain and America don't there's freedom of speech I'm here right I'm not a very popular guy I was just in Israel, there's freedom of speech in Israel I could speak in France, I spoke in most of Europe you know there's basically freedom of speech in the West in much of Asia you know China is an interesting excuse there's clearly less freedom of speech in China there's one part of ruling China you know China is not you know China is probably the one the most borderline you're going to get clearly Europe the US, Japan the Koreas fundamentally three countries are not as free as we'd like but they're fundamentally free clearly North Korea, Iraq Afghanistan, Syria and I can think about a bunch of others I'm not free in a fundamental sense there's a difference between the two and all you'd have to do is go visit those places not for very long notice that there is a stark, stark difference now is the US and England what we want them to be no, absolutely not they're nowhere near as free as they should be but they are much freer than these guys and therefore they're much more moral and much more, and therefore legitimate regimes versus these that are not legitimate regimes North Korean regime is not a legitimate regime something once they don't get rid of the guy all the power to you I wouldn't do it because my life's not worth for the sake of their North Koreans but if you want to do it that's your business yes I think if you imagine a lot of happiness to imagine people's sweet that definition is completely corrupted and they don't think it's free they think of people who are concerned about their family about their thing fat cats, selfish people I think to some extent we have a package deal that people have to do so they can capital the best they can for example selfishness I think capitalism is selfish it stands for making lots of money sure it does and what we need to do with people is to post things to good things instead of people pursuing their own self-interest people living their lives the best of their ability making the most out of their lives is a good thing that's pretty selfish people that grasp our self-interest is good each one of them the bad about capitalism is not about ethics it's all about ethics if we lose the bad about ethics we lose the fight for capitalism if we win it, we want it easy if we can convince not our wife to live their life any way that they choose as long as they're not fighting somebody else's wife and that life is worth living and worth making the best and most out of your life capitalism is easy you don't want to do that we convince people that they are not their brother's king they are not morally responsible for the group and their neighbor and their community and their race and their ethnic group or whatever the latest they had it we convince them that they are not morally responsible thank you for caring what they want to you know they're free they're not their friends but they're not morally obligated because they are to live for the sake of other people their moral obligation is to live for themselves make that the most out of their life that's why if you want to live the best life that you can live then the question is what kind of political system or you want a political system that allows you to do that to pursue what you think is right you know if you think communism is the best thing you want to live in a commune capitalism allows you to do that the whole notion is that forces are being used if you want to voluntarily go and live some ridiculous setup then that's your business so the notion is that everybody everybody is willing to think it's willing to work if they're off they're off but it's not telling them what they shouldn't should do and I think that's the real forward because if you just talk to economics and it's confusing and it's difficult and there's so many things going on you have to make it real to the people that it's about their choices it's about their lies it's about other people telling them what they shouldn't do nobody likes them and that's why my man is so appealing to teenagers because that's the age so we don't like being told what to do and we've even suddenly this book legitimizes people work and to give you a whole idea of what that means and how to do that it's appealing to that telling them how that's what we're challenging when you have two equally legitimate books how do you work out that to people in the scene sorry there's a promise to you two people on a boat in the scene of the latest book neither in the boat nor in the boat it's not such a thing but reality is not about life books reality is about day-to-day living really happens in real life on a life of all of a tectanic emergency situation whatever happens you know you throw the air over and you jump over and you say both choices are horrible they're really really bad that's not what life is about in an emergency you know what it takes but life is not an emergency 99.99999999% of life is not an emergency but 10 ethics in intellectual pursuits and politics and philosophy is not about zero zero zero zero zero zero one percent are both fraud situations they're just not interested they're boring because that means that for every person who is so poor people are poor people are poor not in an emergency situation people are poor can go and work people are poor can go and beg people are poor can go to a charity and ask for charity there are thousands of opportunities for people who are poor to gain the things that they need on the side it's not an emergency it's not a lifeboat situation which is truly the only situation in life life is zero something but life is not about zero something life is about win-win situations all around us all the time the essence of human interaction is when we're it's not lose-lose which is what a lifeboat is no winners you're screwed you have lots of jobs you can have capitalism and more jobs and you can fill up your capital it's lower than the minimum wage the zero and you'll see how many jobs are created we can't even say that those people who just can't reduce up to the level of a population is to see it they're not worth it we need to start talking about war you already announced stage 3 when you start talking about war now you're writing stage 3 can any of you look down before you ask the question no history is one This states rights in the context of the U.S. as states and the government. The government doesn't have any rights, governments don't have rights. But government has a responsibility, one function and one function only. And that function is to defend the individual rights of its citizens. That's it. Doesn't have any other responsibility. You have to provide healthcare and not to provide for the poor, not to provide for anything except to protect the individual. So if somebody comes jumping out with a machine gun, trying to shoot me, it's the government's job to jump in and shoot them before they get to me. And sometimes when they're shooting the bad guys, some innocent bystanders might get shot and kill them. And that's sad, and that's unfortunate. But whose responsibility is that? It's the guy who is wielding the machine gun to begin with and try to kill me. It's his responsibility. So when I talk about going to war, I'm talking about going to war as my representative to defend my rights when somebody is trying to violate them. Somebody is running at me with a nuke or a machine gun or whatever happens to me. And then it's my government's job to go up and kill them and do whatever is necessary to prevent them from ever coming at me again with a machine gun. And that is not an issue of government rights, it's an issue of individuals, 300 million Americans, individuals should have demanded and didn't do it, but should have demanded that the American government do whatever was necessary to stop al-Qaeda in my view, Islam and totalitarianism from ever striking America again. The American government, now, then you get into questions, should we have been in Iraq or in defending my rights? Should we go after Iraq, Afghanistan, or Saudi Arabia, or Iraq? That was a technical military question. Those are questions of what it's anymore now. It's a question of protecting my rights. Who do we bomb? Ideas and who should be bombed? It wasn't and what should be done and wasn't. But it's not an issue of the state having rights, it's an issue of me having rights as an American. To me, that doesn't seem right because you need the state to protect you. So it's not under the state and stuff. Protect you or you. You can have whatever ideas you want. Know those ideas away from you. What the state is affecting is the physical manifestation of those ideas. The actual product, the consequence of those ideas. And that is a physical thing. That is, if you have an idea and it's an exclusive privilege, it's an exclusive privilege to produce that something. The fact that you have an idea doesn't give you an order to make something. It's making that something. What about if somebody else is producing that thing based on that idea? You need to hold that idea in your head and we can go in and zap it away. The reaction is, now, the rights of somebody else. It is bizarre to me that most important creation that we're all engaged in, which is ideas. Every product out there ultimately started as an idea. Everything out there is about ultimately ideas. I believe very much that the only power of creation is reason. Ideas, by the way. That somehow we don't protect that under public rights. That is the one thing that we truly do create. And if somebody else got to the pocket plate before you and made stuff, it's his. That patent. That idea that he listed is his. And therefore it's the government to protect that manifestation of that idea. I think it's a real mistake for libertarians to reject that. Because if you reject that, I think all property goes. Because all property ultimately is intellectual. The idea is you're speaking about the results of the stable. I think capitalism was the result of the state of them. The idea is you're missing the results of the state of them. Yes. You have to have a multi-party system. And it doesn't exist anywhere now. Yes. I mean, note that the essence, the essence is not the multi-party system. The essence is, because for example, the 45ers of the US didn't believe there should be any parties. They thought everybody should run as an individual. And there should be, in that sense, no parties. And that could be the outcome. I don't know what the outcome ultimately would be. It didn't succeed. They reported the parties very, very quickly after. Yes. But I think if you define government clue, the role of government clue, you define what it's supposed to be. You put the boundaries on it very clearly and unambiguously. And of course, in the American Constitution, there's a lot of ambiguity in it, so I'm not in a meeting on it. For debate, let's discuss it. For example, how do we apply ideas of property rights to the internet? Not our views, right? Not just something that we could legitimately disagree about these issues. But the principle is applying the concept of individual rights to the internet. And the principle is not an initiation of force. And now we can have a robust political debate about how we can do that and what's the right approach and so on, under those parameters. Now, will politics be a big deal? I don't think so. I don't think politicians will be that interested in a profession or that important of a profession because they think that the government will do very little. You know, maybe it only needs to be, you know, Congress only needs to meet three months a year. Probably doesn't need 12 months because what do they do? There's not that much to do. I think to this day, the legislature in Texas only meets every other year. They don't even meet all the time. You know, Texas is probably the threeest of the states, among the threeest of the states in the United States. So you get part-time politicians, but working men who do this in addition to their real job. You get robust debates about male issues, about applying the concept of individual rights. You probably get some multi-party system. Maybe not, maybe without the individuals. I don't know how to all play out. The essence of stability is two things. Getting a constitution right and ambiguous and right. And second, having a culture in which that constitution, that people believe in that constitution. So you can have the best constitution in the world and people don't believe in it too well. The United States is a pretty good constitution, probably the best in the world. Not perfect, but really, really good. But people stop believing in it a hundred years ago. So our schools stopped educating about it a few years ago. The ethics that are prevalent in the culture is anti-theatrics of the constitution. So what's happened? The constitution is slowly being chipped away and eroded at. And the Supreme Court keeps ruling against what the nature of the constitution is because they don't understand it. Because they lost the intellectual power back to what the constitution really meant. So you need, philosophically, a culture that believes, continues to believe, that that constitution that's in the governing is right. In order for it to sustain. I mean the right to use it in the media. He's out in the House. He's out in your views on individual rights. And who try to kill me? Don't have to violate something else's rights. You lose your own. I should be able to. I'm stealing it out of the government. There's a smile on the wrist in a couple of days in jail, maybe, or whatever. But if you're trying to kill people, this is my belief, and I don't want to get into a lot of discussion. I know those of you who are Scottish libertarians, and there's a difference between Japanese and libertarians. Those of you who are Scottish libertarians who are really upset about my foreign policy views. Without you, it really is a good foreign policy. The people who are telling you, we're trying to kill Americans. Guns in the hands. Trying to shoot Americans. Mistakingly, to build a network, first they have guns and guns and slipper. They're freedom. And these people shooting at them. That's how freedom-loving these guys are. I don't view that as a human rights violation. All the responsibility of a government going to war and assuming it's a just war. That is, it's a war self-defense. The only justice of all is to defend yourself. When you go to defend yourself, you do whatever is necessary to win. Only consideration you should have. You know, and when the West had that approach to fighting wars, well, it involved killing and not embarrassed to say that. Innocent people are going to die. Many innocent people. Just ask the children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki that don't question how innocent they really were. But the children clearly were innocent. They had nothing to do with this war. But they died. It's sad. And it's the fault of the Japanese. It's not the fault of Truman. It's the fault of the Japanese. They should have started a war. Many children driving a Dresden. Sad bombing of Dresden. They need children and Truman on wars. And minimizing the casualties of their own people. And also in Japan of the Japanese themselves. But certainly of American troops. They are heroes to do what was necessary to win. We today don't have that all back on. And therefore we fight unwinnable wars. Endless wars. Wars with no people that's still going to die in the war we are fighting. Because we're not willing to win this. We're not willing to do what's necessary to win. Not far-fossed questions. We have time off yet to go. Through voluntary taxation. Away from being 60 plus percent of money. Maybe close to 70 percent. It also reduces my standard of living dramatically through all the regulations and everything else going on in the world. Imagine you would be, I think the US could grow it. 89 percent GDP growth a year. I don't think there are any boundaries to economic growth. I mean imagine the technologies and the advancement and the quality of life and the standard of living and life and living and everything like that. Would I be willing to take a percentage of my pay and voluntarily pay for military and police? Absolutely. I'd be happy to do it. Who am I protecting me and my values and my property and my goods? Would most people be willing? Yes. Is there going to be a small minority who's not? Sure. Do we call them economics free-writers? Yes. Do I care? Goods. That they are the right beneficiaries of. Even if. 19th century mega. People built. They didn't charge a living for using them. People of your youth. Point A to point B. And they got enormous economic benefits from getting from point A to point B. We've got smaller economic benefits from getting from point A to point B. What did they care? There's very little cost to maintaining that road. And yet the benefits are huge. So look. There are every single day, all of us, benefit enormously for positive externalities. People like to talk about negative externalities. How many more positive externalities in the world we live in than negative externalities? How many of you actually pay the true value to you of all the products that you use? I mean, think about what your computer really, really needs to you. All of the benefits that you get throughout an entire lifetime of having a computer. Not just you having the computer, but that the computers exist and that society is all computerized. I mean, is it worth $1,000 a year? No, it's worth millions of dollars a year. It's worth to you as a cumulative of its impact on the whole society. Yet you pay $1,000, but the fact that the computer industry exists is an enormous positive externality on it. What's the pain that a true cost would really help? That means a lot of markets are all about positive externalities. Not to mention the little ones. You know, we all talk about these negatives, but the negatives are true of yours compared to ours. Now, the free market problem is not a problem. So there are free markets. All these forces there that protect me. I need the wallpaper of my neighbor's world, but I want to pay the good guys in the protecting me. And I value my life. If we want to do that, if we ever reach a point where we actually have a free society, most people will be ready for the services that they actually get. It's the reason you don't steal when you're going to a store. It's the only reason you don't steal because you'll get caught. Store because it's the great thing to do. You've got a service, and you want to compensate the other side for the service. I hope most of you. Stealing, would you do it? No. So why wouldn't you pay for police if you're getting that service? You use right now. And the result has been, actually, what you're doing with the police was actually involving better police than police then. And it resulted in beating up certain parking lots leaving those alone. We should not see this as a possible problem. I don't believe in private police forces. I'm not an anarchist. I don't believe in private police forces. The state should control the police forces and control the military. I don't believe in private contractors who are doing police work and doing military work. That's the job of the state. It's the only job of the state. They have only one job. They buy a police force right and run a military right, and they should do it. And South Africa, those kind of examples are great examples of the fact that private police forces don't work. They corrupt, they're corrupting, and they ultimately result in gang warfare. My gang versus your gang, my police force versus your gang. The emphasis on rationality, would you consider an individual who doesn't confront on other people's rights that is irrational? Would you consider him to be immoral or just stupid? Well, I mean, by the very nature of saying he's irrational, you're saying that he's not necessarily stupid. I know a lot of very, very smart people. Would you rational in some aspects of their life, or maybe in most of the aspects of life? I would consider him immoral. Rally, fundamentally, in according to my grant, is about using your reason. It's about using rational thought in order to pursue your values, in order to pursue your life, make your life the best life it can be. The primary value is a reason for your self-esteem. So, if you're not swimming apart, you've got to live in your honestly, you know, not ball. So, rationality is an issue of morality. It's not an issue of ability. You can be, have a fairly low IQ and be rational. You can have a very high IQ and be completely utterly few rational society. So, I think that whether you're applying your mind or not, in other words, whether you think rational or not, this is the gauge your mind with reality and soul quality. And that's what rationality is. It's engaging your mind with reality, soul quality, identify, figure stuff out. That's the essence of morality. And I know that's a very different way of looking at morality than what is common. That's provoked. Because she's an individual. She's about morality. It's about making the most out of your life the values that are necessary for us to pursue our life from the rest of thought. If you don't engage your rest of thought, you can't pursue the values that are required for you. Therefore, you are not engaged in morality. And those who are helping us, an objectivist society, handling cases, a small family, the parents who killed them, those children, perhaps don't have any other relatives. What's to be done? How would you, how would you fund their care? The children and their course. We've got to tell them that. Yes. We'll do it with single-minded. If they were poor, they could be helpful to us. These are children. Yes. No. Look, children, parents in a sense, children don't have embodied formal rights because they're not fully rational in that sense. They're not capable of dealing with the world. And parents, that's their responsibility. Responsibility is to help them get to the point where they are, where they're adults and they take care of themselves. In a case like that, in an objectivist society, I'm not doubt that a charitable entity would come in and help those kids and take care of them. I think it would ultimately be up to private charities to take care of the poor, of the helpless. You know, you could imagine somebody born at 5 or 3 years. You know, just can't take care of them. Then it's their family that'll take care of them or it'll be charity that'll take care of them. What isn't legitimate, what isn't legitimate is that I be forced to take care of them. I can be approached and, you know, I can be reasoned with. I can be, you know, people can ask me to help them, but they have no right to pull out a gun, of course, you know. And as soon as you have government doing that, then you're basically the only role of the government is to defend it. If your parents are using it, then government has a role to step in and stop their youth, because the right to be violent and trust the parents are holding is being violent. But it's apparent that if the kids run away from home, or if there's a poor, that is an issue for charity. It's not anything. And supposing you had somebody who'd support themselves because of some harm. They couldn't get charity and nobody would help them. Then they would die. The other is, in American history, which is the situation, or even in the history of, you know, other places that have approached freedom. Everybody's just approached it, they've never attained it. You know, even in a place like Hong Kong, as brutal of a place it is, as poor of a place it was, at least for some people. But three, people were dying in the streets. People taking care of it. They were charities, even in the poorest of places. There was no welfare state in Hong Kong for many, many years. People, by the millions, by the hundreds of thousands, and we put it in. People were escaping to get the welfare of other countries. People were coming in. I mean, that's, to me, it should indicate something within every free country in addition to the extent that they are free, people want to move it. People are not climbing. I mean, some people want to come into the welfare state. But people certainly are not climbing. We're climbing to go to the Soviet Union. People are climbing to go to North Korea. They won't ever go into U.S. I mean, that's, there's an indication of a legitimate country and it's illiterate. It's just a proxy. The degree to which people want to move it. People want to go to Japan even though the Japanese won't let them in. People want to go to South Korea. These won't let them in. People want to come to America. They want to come to the UK. They don't want to go to North Korea. They don't want to go to Iraq. Arabs want to come to Israel. They don't want to go to the West Bank. They don't want to go to Jordan. But if Israel opened up its job, its Arabs from all over the Middle East, it could attract millions and millions of Arabs to come and work in Israel. Because if Arabs in Israel are free out, then they are in any other country in the Middle East. And indeed, and this has nothing to do with that topic today, but indeed, I don't know about that. Between 1890 and 1948 when the State of Israel was established, the Palestinian, so-called Palestinian Arab population of Israel grew dramatically. Not because of wealth rates, but because of in-migration from Syria, from Lebanon, from Jordan, from Egypt, from Iraq and from everywhere. Why? Because those nasty Jews were building industries. They were building businesses. They were building roads. They were creating civilization. They were creating activity. And all these Arabs wanted jobs. So the whole Palestinian problem, the so-called Palestinian problem that exists today, is all the fault of the Jews for building up a 73 countries to begin with. Because those Palestinians could have been slaves in Syria and, you know, Jordan and anywhere else today. And they wouldn't be so-called refugees in Palestine. But capitalism, freedom, individuals creates prosperity. And so prosperity, again, is a proxy for freedom. And when people are good poor, I can guarantee you, they're also unfree. And it's a recognition. Go travel a little bit around the world that you can see. You done? Thank you.