 Welcome to the Michael Schirmer show. I'm your host Michael Schirmer. All right. My guest today is Yaron Brooke Who is an Israeli-American entrepreneur writer and activist? He's an objectivist and the current chairman of the board at the Einran Institute where he was executive director from 2000 to 2017 So I invited Yaron on because I had David Sloan Wilson on the podcast who wrote a novel called Atlas hug Which was something of a counter to Einran's massive tome and Considered to be her best novel Atlas shrugged And he was fairly critical of it. I pushed back a little bit But the Einran is to contact me and said hey about having somebody on that's pro Einran's okay I'll talk to anybody's why not and so we talk about pretty much all the great issues Israel in the Middle East and Sees from there and how objectivists would handle foreign conflicts like that And then that led us to talk about wars and to what extent we have a moral obligation to help people in other countries that that by bad luck are just born in these awful countries like Syria and Then we talk about taxes the size of government why conservatives are no more small government at all and and of course liberals the Big government and and what about the welfare state don't we have a moral obligation to help people that are say homeless and Or mentally ill colleagues and so forth What about luck the role that luck plays in how lives turn out? How does an objectivist talk about that and Anyway, so we cover, you know lots of the hot button issues the Black Lives Matter movement reparations What we owe each other we drill down right down to the foundation of morality He and I have a very different definition of morality Well, his is different than most ethicists as well But he defends that quite openly and and so it was really quite a stimulating two-hour conversation But please enjoy this conversation with Aaron Brooke and Atlas shrugged and Einran and Objectivism thanks for listening. You're on Brooke. Thanks for coming on the show. Nice to see you I've I don't know if we've met in person. I've seen you a couple times on Dave Rubin show and And maybe I've seen you at Freedom Fest or some of these other conferences Yeah, we've met at a couple of conferences I think we met at Freedom Fest once in Vegas and we met I think in Montpelerin. Were you in Canary Islands? Yes, that's right. Yes, that's where it was right. I remember. Yeah, very good Good good good. Well before we dive into just I have a whole boatload of questions I want to ask you just give our listeners a little bit of background of where you're from I know you were born in Israel and and you came to America you went to college here and and so forth and then you ended up At the head of the Einran Institute and and you have a bunch of other projects going on as well So just give us a little bit of unauthorized autobiography Sure. As you said born in Israel Lived in till I was got my swift in the military and in military intelligence then I got my undergraduate in civil engineering in in Israel and then I came to the US to get an MBA At the University of Texas in Austin stayed on it got a PhD in finance was a finance professor at Santa Clara University in California and And then took on the job of CEO of the Einran Institute in 2000 did that for 17 years I Was kicked upstairs to chairman of the board or keep myself upstairs the chairman of the board in 2017 and Since then I've been doing up my own podcast YouTube channel you run Brook show and At the same time in parallel in 1998. I founded a a hedge fund and I beside being a partner in a hedge fund for the last 20-something years so so that that consumes quite a bit of my time these days and I live of all places in Puerto Rico. So I think that's the that's the short version. Oh, wow, how did you end up there? I mean really it boiled down to Taxes getting fed up with the with the tax load and the regulatory load of California and Liking the lifestyle out here, but and the fact that I Was no longer CEO of the Einran Institute I didn't have to go in to work every day I could work from anywhere in the world and I looked around and said as much as I love California and I really do love California's Where would be the best place in the world to live and it turned out for an American citizen Certainly economically Puerto Rico is unmatched in terms of the economics That it provides even better than Texas No federal taxes. Oh, no federal taxes either at all nothing. Okay. Wow So you if you structure your life, right? There is you can you know, if you provide services from Puerto Rico to the US outside of Puerto Rico You can you can lower your tax rate to basically 4% How does Puerto Rico pay for their social programs without taxes? Well Puerto Ricans pay tax. Oh Okay, you new migrants if you will from the US who pay very low taxes, so Puerto Rico Taxes its citizens very harshly. I mean I've I've been on record saying I don't think it's fair That I pay such a low tax and they pay such a high tax I'd like to see everybody pay a low tax So I'd like the Puerto Rican tax authorities to lower everybody's taxes to a flat 10 percent and no federal taxes And they'd be a flood of people into Puerto Rico. It would be it would be it would boom like never before but Nobody listens to me. That's one of things I've learned in life, you know Certainly the authorities never listen Well, they don't listen to me either. So we're just having a fun conversation. Maybe but Well, so then I guess that the argument would be if everybody paid only 10% How would they pay for roads and you know public schools and you know the usual array of you know social institutions That we all pay into here Well, if right now the institutions that they have are not very good and You know part of that I think is the size of the influence and the influence of government about a third of all People employed in Puerto Rico were employed by the government And I would argue that yeah, I know Take Hong Kong Hong Kong 5% of the population is employed by the government. So it has a tiny government in comparison It sits on a very small geographic area It has more than double the population of Puerto Rico yet GDP per capita Is about three times what it is in Puerto Rico? Maybe four times what it is in Puerto Rico So how do they pay for it? They pay for it by a not providing a lot of social welfare not a lot of providing a lot of these services only providing those things that They deem as they necessary. I don't think even they are necessary I think you'd have even a smaller government in Hong Kong, but but you know Puerto Rico moving towards Hong Kong would be a huge improvement. So privatize the schools maybe have the government pay Do things like educating saving accounts? Maybe have them pay for the the education But not run the schools and therefore you'd have competition. You'd write down costs drive up quality Everybody would get an education because the government would be willing to backstop anybody who was poor And you couldn't get it that would be a transition phase towards total private education But there are lots of ways in which you could solve all these problems, you know You go into the DMV together your driver's license. You stand in line in Puerto Rico. The lines are longer. They're less efficient It's it's it's a cumbersome process. Why can't we sit in front of our computers? Fill out a form have the computer take a picture of us Upload all the information to the cloud have a blockchain process to verify the information and make sure that it's correct and Download a driver's license on top phone You don't need you need exactly zero government bureaucrats to make that happen You need some private company to design the software It would not be that complicated would not be that hard and you could do that to so many of the so-called Necessary government services you could you privatize them easily But you know as I said nobody actually listens now with that in places what you just described with that scale up to a country the size of the United States Absolutely, why not I mean Why do we have big and mortar? Facilities where you have to go in and somebody has to take a picture of you and submit forms fill them out by hand Why can't all of that be automated? Instantaneously, so there is only one country that she has automated all these processes And that's Estonia and Estonia is a much smaller country in the US But only scale is the problem. I mean look at the scale of Amazon or the scale of Google or the scale of Apple This is trivial in comparison This is a tiny little function and imagine if you actually introduce competition And if you actually made driver's license something that insurance companies required in order to give you insurance for your car Rather than as a government Government man, you know government entity provided you could privatize all of these so-called government functions the only fun appropriate function of government is The one thing that it is instituted to do and that is use force and so Government as a monopoly over the use of force it should have the monopoly over the use of retaliatory force Only in self-defense only to catch crooks and criminals That's what it's good at and then it needs some institutions in order to Figure out what are objective laws? What are the right kind of laws and and how do we protect property rights? What is violence? What is an accident? You know just the the which is not easy and not simple So you need a legal system and you need a legislature, but all they should discuss How to protect individual rights how to protect us from violence and fraud and leave us otherwise free The market can solve any other problem that arises So you're echoing Inran's ideas largely And there's different labels for these sorts of things. I mean already you've said we need a state So you're not on say an anarcho-capitalist that thinks even state functions like contracts police fire Military should be privatized Absolutely not. You know, you could argue about fire. You could argue about certain things But but absolutely not. I think anarcho-capitalism is a contradiction in terms I don't think you can have capitalism and the anarchy Anarchy is a state of chaos in which markets don't arise because markets need a rule of law They need to know that your customers not gonna pull out a gun and take your stuff There has to be some standard and that has to be Some system of objective laws that everybody understands that everybody knows and that that people follow And that if somebody does pull out a gun There is a mechanism to address that to take care of that person So I absolutely think capitalism cannot arise under anarchy. It needs a state but a State that is focused on one thing and one thing only and that is the protection of rights the protection of freedom Right that sounds relatively simple, but the details Mean that there's gonna be more and more bureaucrats hired and more agencies for different kinds of things that Come up in the complexity of human interactions and especially conflicts And so you get this almost inevitable growth of government agencies over time. How do you? You know put a stop to that or slow that growth down Well, I mean ideally you put a stop to it and and I think here a Constitution properly written and I think the founders in America came close But it's a flawed constitution. There's a lot of things that could be written better and could be done better We are after all we have 250 years of experience now to know what the flaws are and to know how bureaucracies grow And how government intervention increases. I mean, I would focus a Constitution on I mean, there's a lot of things you would have to do in a constitution a lot of them are already there But one of the things I would do is had four Fundamental separations in the Constitution. We already have a separation of church and state Really, it should be a separation of ideas of state that the state should not be involved in Advocating for any kind of ideas religious or non-religious But then I would have a separation of state from economics The state should not have economic policy. It should have no economic regulation. It should not get involved in Economic decision-making in business. It should stay out of business out of regulation out of Any aspect that relates to voluntary transactions between individuals that have an economic nature? I just because of the history I would add a separation I would separate the state from education the state should in Ultimately have no role in education. No role in setting curriculum. No role in setting standards certainly no role in actually supposedly educating our kids and and You know, in a sense in documenting them into what the state believes are the right ideas That's part of the separation of ideas from state and then finally maybe one that will appeal to you is A separation of state from science. I think the state involvement in science is Potentially and and in reality a corrupting influence. I think a lot of them the the What's out there into the way grants are given and the way what science is supporting what science is not it's being Politicized Democrats like certain science and others Republicans hate some science and government shouldn't be involved I mean it should be left to private individuals to fund science So if you had those four separations and they were clear cut and were articulated clearly I think at the very least you would buy time Hopefully you would actually create a situation where the government couldn't grow because it would have nothing to do There'd be no things for it to actually engage in and how do you solve collective action problems? Like we need a vaccine we need vaccines because of this, you know global pandemic and or we need an interstate system or You know the NASA that you know that you can't count on Jeff Bezos or or Elon Musk by himself You know creating an entire space program and so on well why not why not so but let's let's start with Was the first example vaccines. I mean I Think about what I what I what a world as I Objected would look like there would be insurance companies. They would be heavily motivated to keep their Insured healthy because if you're healthy, you don't you don't actually Acosta insurance company anything right as like, you know, if you go to hospital if you get COVID if you're not vaccinated It's very expensive for the insurance company So in a market where you actually had insurance companies that were free of all the burden of regulation free of all the state control of of State health care, which is, you know, well over 50% of all the dollars spent in the United States on health care spent by the government So imagine a really free economy Yeah, insurance companies would be going to biotech companies and saying hey There's this new disease. We need a vaccine We'll buy in advance X amount of doses the idea that only government can do that the idea that only government could care I think is is dramatically flawed and completely mistaken insurance companies hospitals Corporations, I mean imagine Amazon has 150,000 employees. They would like to get vaccines quickly They could have gone to Moderna and said hey, what buy the first hundred and fifty thousand vaccines We'll pay your premium Get it to us so we can vaccinate up our employees And then of course you've got a lot of people who will free right off of that or semi free right of that Amazon will spur Moderna to produce the vaccine the business Xen will be produced and then Moderna will distribute it to all of us So no, I think I think over this shown us How incompetent the government is when it comes to crises like over it think about the testing fiasco That would have never happened in a private market only government could create a fiasco on the scale of what they did with testing in the United States But even the vaccine distribution was a joke I mean there was the mechanisms by which they used the fact that in New York City They literally trashed vaccines because they couldn't you know, they couldn't get them fast enough into their arms of the eligible At least in Israel where they don't take rules too seriously at the end of the day if there were vaccines left They went out into the streets and said hey anybody want a vaccine and they vaccinated anybody would come in in New York They followed the rules because they were fines if you vaccinated an ineligible person, whatever the hell that means You you could you could be fine So no government is incompetent at doing these things these collective action issues are much better dealt with by collective action Under freedom where individuals participate in a group Whether it's health insurance or other some kind of other voluntary Corporation in order to solve a problem space, you know, Robert Henlein had a Wonderful story short story he wrote in the 1950s. This is before NASA and how we can get to the moon quickly and his idea was have a Basically Tell the world that whoever gets to the moon first whoever private individual gets the moon first Owns, you know, like a homesteading act you fence up any territory. It's yours Imagine if we've done that and provided an incentive for entrepreneurs You get all the mining rights. You get all the rights to go from from from the moon to Mars or Create competitive, you know juice up the competitive juices of of entrepreneurs and our Our business man, I think we would have got I think we would have gone to the moon more effectively We would have maybe stayed there instead of just coming and leaving We would have developed all these technologies wonderfully and again Jeff Bezos and and and Elon Musk could be much richer Because they wouldn't be paying such high taxes and they could be deploying that capital to get us to the Mars faster So no, I there's no doubt in my mind Private enterprise would get us the moon more effectively than any other way Yeah, there's a lot of thought experiments going on there, you know, elan for example is Held up as a model of the capitalist entrepreneur yet a lot of his money comes from the government I mean they they buy all I know believe me and his cars, you know tesla I have the tesla, but you know, it's subsidized the state of california gave me 2,500 bucks And the the federal government gave me 7,500 bucks that that's not capitalism I Agree completely I agree completely now paypal was capitalism. So you can't begrudge him all his wealth, but certainly tesla tesla's completely crony tesla loses money every every quarter if you take out the the credits the the carbon credits they get from the government And yes, you drive a subsidized car and and and for that matter you drive a coal car because The the the only way to get the electricity into your cars by burning coal or burning natural gas or burning fossil fuels So you're still burning fossil fuels wait. I thought the electricity came from the electricity ferry It's right there in my wall I just plug it in here. It's fear. It's free. It seems that's the way people think about it It's uh, it's very personal. So yeah, I mean we live in a mixed economy We live with entrepreneurs who at least some of their wealth that derive from Association with government, but to some extent you have to ask yourself What's the option in the world in which we live in today where the government has its hands In everything it regulates everything it has its hands in all of our pockets It's very hard to survive as a as somebody who does business Without having some kind of dealings with the government whether you like it or not So the counter is that you know without a regulatory state then people will You know cheat the system or they'll You know build subpar Housing structures that fall apart if somebody doesn't inspect them and lean on them to do the right thing So that in if they break the law we punish them or find them and and so on and or You know restaurants or stores will discriminate against People of color which has happened in the past and you know That's the government's job to get in there and say you know as a constitutional right To not be discriminated against and you know had uh, you know the you know the second round of civil rights activism followed by State enforcement of those You know, we'd still be here with Jim Crow laws Sure, but I think the key to Jim Crow laws and into redlining into Most of the kind of systematic racism that existed pre civil rights Was that the government was involved? I mean it was the government that drew up the lines It was the government that You know subsidized some mortgages, but wouldn't subsidize other mortgages because of racial preferences And banks and others just followed and I think that's true in the south as well Now there was a lot of racism not saying there wasn't racism independent of the government They was but the solution to racism is not to violate people's rights I absolutely have a right to discriminate Against people even irrationally stupidly immorally um In my business my business is mine. That's the that's the point of property rights So I think government intervention there is wrong It shouldn't be telling us that we can't discriminate in the workplace or can't discriminate in a restaurant Any more than it should Should be able to tell us that we can't discriminate in our home clearly we can clearly we do Uh discriminate based on I I don't invite communists to my house. I don't invite fascists to my house How do you know maybe some of your friends secretly are and they're afraid to tell you Maybe they're afraid to tell me and they should be afraid to tell me Okay, but you're instead of the restaurant only serving whites. Let's say it's it's a restaurant today only serve Serving non trans if you're trans you can't come in here You know, of course people would lose their minds and the government would step in until it would be horrible That would be horrible and I personally would boycott the restaurant and I wouldn't want to participate and wouldn't want to But people have a right to be rational. Otherwise rights don't mean anything Just like when you know, you have the right To free speech and yet a lot of the things that people say we don't like I find a lot of stuff that people say offensive Um, that doesn't allow me to silence them and any you know, a lot of business owners Do things I don't like and and maybe they discriminate in ways I don't like but that doesn't preclude them from doing it shouldn't preclude him from doing it and it doesn't preclude me from saying I'm boycotting you I'm not and I'm gonna Put a big sign in front of your thing and I'm gonna I'm gonna demonstrate or I'm gonna do something To let the world know that you're a rotten human being You know, so so again Collective action can be done this kind of idea that we can we can Together change something It can be done without government using force using a gun It can be done through a voluntary means and I think The more we rely on government the dumber we get the less The less personal responsibility we have the more we just assign stuff to the governor forget about it And don't take up causes for ourselves and fight for the things we believe in So, you know, I I think government Has the the opposite impact. I think the rise more recently of racism Both on the left on the right is is to some extent kind of a a counter to Years of perceived racism With affirmative action on the one side and of You know on the other side, uh You know the fact that there's inequality is perceived as by definition Caused by racism without even considering The the real causes or other possible causes of inequality Do you think slavery would have ended eventually on its own just fallen into disuse or economic reasons or Sometimes we need a war. We need the government to come in here your example. Sometimes we need a military You know, they had to just go on and say you or in the case of I think it was Um, it was at Eisenhower sent the troops in to desegregate the schools You know because the alabama governor said we're not desegregating the schools Segregate. What was it segregation now segregation tomorrow segregation forever? And so sometimes the government has to come in and say we we're going to stop what you're doing because this is wrong So here's some of my free market friends won't like my answer, but the answer is absolutely Sometimes you need to go to war And the civil war was a just war. It was a war to protect the individual rights of americans Black slaves were americans and their rights deserve to be protected And the fact that southern states did not protect those rights Was an abomination a violation of the at least the declaration of independence And I think the spirit of the constitution and Lincoln was absolutely right and one one should have gone to war to end that And I think Eisenhower sending in the troops when states refuse to protect the rights of Black americans is absolute or refused to abide by a decision of the supreme court is absolutely right sometimes You've got a I mean the job of government the only job governor is to protect the individual rights and if a state Violates the rights in egregious ways Then yes the federal government needs to enter the picture and enforce those rights enforce the protection of those rights Yeah, and I assume you would agree that the revolutionary war was a just war and probably world war two because of the rise of fascism hitler and musilini and Japanese and so on But then okay, yeah So to go from there one of the most just okay So the moment you set up a system like this Then couldn't you make the same argument for the korean war and the vietnam war? These are absolutely necessary the domino theory if we don't stop them at this small country They're gonna topple over like dominoes and pretty soon the entire world except for us will be communist And that's a just war they say I mean no I don't I don't justify any war And in even world war two I would only justify it because we were attacked and and ultimately germany declared war on us. I i'm sympathetic to those who didn't want to enter the war until It was inevitable until literally we were attacked at bill harbour No, the korean war was unnecessary Uh, it's none of our business if korea wants to is going to become communist if the communist overrun It's not our business to be the policeman or the arbiter of what is freedom around the world Uh, we should be Uh, a shining city on the hill in a sense of what freedom is can be And let people choose to mimic us or not And if they don't tough, you know, it's it's it's tough for them more than it is for us and You know iron rand had the perspective And I think I think this is the right perspective that Authoritarianism ultimately is a losing strategy It leads to poverty and it leads to the self-destruction And she she always thought that while the soviet union was clearly an evil empire It was never really a threat to the united states because it was not an ideology was suicidal And it was and and they would be destroyed if they Potentially went to war with us and second there were an ideology that had to fail Because they went against the very nature of reality the very nature of man and the very nature of reality And indeed ultimately they did fail they they collapsed Basically at their own inertia. We probably helped them Survive longer than they should have through detente and feeding them and giving them food So no, you don't have to go to war with every dictator in the world dictatorship doesn't spread like a virus dictatorship usually Collapses on itself without external supports and and without the sanction Of a country like the united states. I mean all we'd have to do To see dictatorship decline in the world is say we think dictatorships are evil We don't want to deal with you, but we're not gonna we're not gonna invade you We're just not gonna deal with you, but then we have to be consistent Then we have to treat the dictatorship in Saudi Arabia Just like we treat a communist dictatorship Just like we treat others and we don't we we don't have a foreign policy. It's it's it's completely wind based There's no reason There's no logic. There's no rationality To the various theories that are advocated today in terms of foreign policy It's it's just a mishmash of Whatever the emotions that are driving the people in state department at the time American interests so with Saudi Arabia, obviously oil north korea. We don't care. We don't get anything from them so we can Press economic sanctions on them all we want. Hopefully they won't use their nukes, but we can't do that to Saudi Arabia For obvious reasons if america interests with it if america interests with it first of all We can right now because the fact is we're quote self-sufficiency. That's right oil oil But not only that oil is a global market It's not like Saudi Arabia could exist if it didn't sell the oil If we stop if we said we're not dealing with Saudi Arabia Then they would sell all to europe and we would buy all for somebody else. I mean oil is a is I mean, it's fungible. It's it's it's not like we get our oil directly from Saudi Arabia by some path But beyond that if we were really about american interests, right america first our former president called it Then why didn't we ever let Saudi Arabia confiscate the oil that French, british and american oil companies discovered in unclaimed land and since when do we recognize The property rights of a king over his entire kingdom. Why does the king of Saudi Arabia own the oil? I mean, I don't own any oil in texas even though I lived in texas Right exxon and mobile they own the oil they they draw for it and maybe some landowners in texas own it So a property rights respecting government That was truly self-interested You know Would it recognize the the the idea that Saudi Arabia owns the oil The united states has no self-interested foreign policy. It wouldn't know what self-interest is if it hidden in the face I mean We could go on and on and on just with the contradictions the constant Not ending contradictions of american foreign policy. You would love a fleets Makes no sense. You would love john mueller's new book the stupidity of war. I had him on the podcast He thinks almost all the wars we've been involved in except for the three revolutionary wars civil war and world war two Just a complete waste of money I mean other a really dumb one was world war one, right? What was achieved tens of thousands of american kids died? And why did we make european more peaceful place? I mean we just set ourselves up for world war two So no, I I I agree almost all the wars americas afford with the exception of those three Uh are sacrificial wars kids our kids died for no reason You know, one of the things I I say when I talk about war is I never advocate for a war. You're not willing to look your son in the eye And expect him to volunteer for Right if if you're not willing to do that send your own kid into war and of course politicians Almost very rarely particularly this generation Know what war is and what was like I come from a country that is Constant war is in constant war and I grew up under conditions of constant warfare You want to avoid it and and and and you want to avoid it unless it's absolutely necessary And when it is absolutely necessary, you want to win it and you want to win it quickly and uh, you know, you you want it you want to Get on with living Because that should always be the focus. Yeah, well since uh, we're on that subject and it's in the front page of the news every day What's the libertarian or objectivist solution to the middle east crisis? Well, I mean, I think the libertarians will be the first ones to tell you that I do not speak for them Okay, and I certainly You know, so I'm an objectivist Which is different for a variety of reasons we can get into And one of them is foreign policy. We clearly disagree on foreign policy and we disagree with a lot of libertarians on on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Look, I mean my my view of that is That you've got two very different opposing cultures. You've got a culture which is Israel which has a lot of flaws Let me just say it outright. I mean now a huge critic of the state of israel It's it's For the same reason i'm a critic of the united states and of france and of germany of all these countries They're way too status. They're way too interventionist. They're way to Take away our privacy and all the reasons that we are critical of mixed economies and mixed states, but generally israel is In that category of states It's in the category of relatively historically speaking in the world today good states They generally protect the individual rights of their citizens broadly speaking Um, whether you're an Arab or Jew your rights are protected within israel It's a civilized country. It's a country that represents I think western civilization and some of the better elements of western civilization. It's a pro science country It's religious. It's in some ways more secular than the united states at least that's what I felt when I first came here Texas seemed much more religious than israel did Even though it has very religious people and they often are in the government Um, it's it's a it's a very secular place. It's a western country And it represents some of the best of what the west has to offer versus The palestinians who are why not right? They are they are tribal and collectivist In ways that israel is much more much more not quite as much as I'd like but much more individualistic They're anti freedom anti rights Uh, they they their political system is authoritarian whether it's in the gaza or the Palestinian authority they have a president now Who 14 years ago won an election and he was supposed to be there was supposed to be an election every four years And yet there hasn't been an election yet. He's still president We call that an authoritarian leader anywhere else It is a culture that is not particularly pro science that is uh has become more religious over the last 20 to 30 years Unfortunately with the rise of islamism um, and it's a culture Violence it's a cut, you know, the the joke goes but it's not a joke. It's a reality that if if um If the palestinians really wanted peace tomorrow They would lay down their arms And israel would sit down with them and they cut a deal. They would cut a deal You mean a two-state solution Maybe maybe it's a one-state solution. You know, I don't know I I am an advocate of a one-state solution that's rights respecting Uh, because I you know, I don't believe in a jewish state or an arab state So ultimately I think oh one and plus if you've ever been to israel, it's a tiny country Splitting that country too is a little ridiculous um But but they come to a solution they come to something if there was willingness on both sides They would come to them if israel lay down its arms tomorrow if they said, okay, we're giving up We're giving a force like some some libertarians would like we're becoming pacifists Our arms on the ground They'd be slaughtered the next day They'd be pushed into the sea and massacred And that's all you really need to know So at the end of the day israel is acting in self-defense against an enemy that once it destroyed I think israel has been weak in its response as I said, you need to win wars quickly Sometimes brutally but you have to win them quickly israel refuses to win the war It constantly Plays the stalemates And and to fight another day Is that because of is that because of social pressure from other nations in the u.n And and if they just did what countries did in the 19th century just go and finish it off be done with it And the last guy standing wins And that's not acceptable anymore. They should do that I don't think it's as bloody as it sounds if you do it if you do it properly They could they could reoccupy and take over the hamas leadership and and kill them and destroy The entire infrastructure and they could do that without You know massive civilian casualties, but I yes, I think it's international pressure. I think it's american pressure, but it's also pressure within israel You know, I think that all of this is driven by morality by ethics and we should talk about morality because You know, I think it's driven by morality and the moral code that we all hold I think the world holds and and and You know, particularly today more so than in the past Is more and more a kind of a a christian self-sacrificial moral code Standing up for your own values even for your own life Uh fighting a war of self-defense In a way that truly defends you and truly Ends it is unacceptable. Uh, if you read, you know, I've I've I've read a lot of just war theory People like waltz who who teaches at west point It's it's filled with a kind of a christian altruistic Anti-self-interest view of morality that I think cripples our ability to defend ourselves and cripples our ability to To live successfully and I think whenever applies to war It leads to what we have now in gaza where every five years will have a war every five years israel knocks down the buildings then israel Helps the united states fund building new buildings because the bite administration has already said they're gonna send money to the palace to to the gaza strip to build it and then five years from now they'll Knock down those buildings again And hamas over in the meantime the hamas leadership will pocket What the arab is called baksish, which is uh, you know a portion of whatever comes through the they'll pocket five percent or ten percent They'll continue to get rich the the hamas leadership They'll use some of that money to buy more missiles and they'll rebuild the buildings and Everything will start over again the whole cycle So no you you have to end it and you save more lives long run by ending it quickly Then by letting this go on forever, but that requires A proper conception of self-interest and a proper conception of self-interest in war And a proper conception of self-interest in foreign policy I've written about a proper conception of self-interest in war. I did a I did an article critiquing just war theory called uh, uh, just war theory versus, uh, american self-interest people can find it online and But it you know as I said people in power don't listen to me Well, um, so here's another way I can see of it, but maybe this is overly simplified You got you know two guys with a piece of paper That's the deed to the same piece of land And the title company is god or the holy book That says this is our land and there's no way to adjudicate that you can't go to the un or whatever because it's god that said This is our land But that would be ridiculous if that were the case that I'd agree with you then there's no solution to this But basically what you have and and you know we could get you know again We could spend hours just talking about the history Basically, you've got a people who came to a land and bought property Bought property from arab land owners from the ottoman empire And then found property that was not owned by anybody because ownership is not collective Arabs didn't own palestine individuals own pieces of land and some land wasn't owned by anybody And they dried swamps and they brought industry and they created a thriving agricultural communities And they built a civilization and a place that didn't have any it was ruled by the ottomans Then there was a war and the british took it from the ottomans and then the british had it It wasn't owned by the british. It wasn't owned by anybody and again There was land bought a lot of very wealthy jews from europe sent money to to what was then palestine under the british and they bought parcels of land and you know at some point the british were going to leave and The question was are these two people two peoples going to live in peace in this area or not And look the history is pretty clear the jews basically said We're willing to live in peace. We're not going to take anybody's land A one-state solution two-state solution when the un proposed a two-state solution In november of 1947 the jews went out into the streets and celebrated. They danced The next day Violence started with the arab starting to attack jewish settlements and then in may When the british left and said you guys handle it. We're out of here and and and ben gulion You know declared the independence of a jewish state in the un borders Israel was attacked by seven arab armies From seven different countries and defended itself. So Yes, it took land and self-defense. They're clear nobody has to go to god. Nobody has to go to the bible Nobody has to go two thousand years To arbitrate this dispute this is not a religious dispute. This is the dispute about of two cultures a culture that is Tribal and collectivist and claims rights over stuff that they don't have And and a culture that respects property rights and that for the most part bought property now I'm not here going to whitewash Certain things that israel did that are bad But in the context of what happened and in in comparison to what the other side did Yeah, they're the good guys on the other side of the bad guys Okay related to that don't we have a moral obligation to help people around the world who are being oppressed? No, we can't help everybody. We can't be the world's entire policemen but where there's downtrodden people Refugees trying to escape syria or in the case like in the 90s with the hutus and the two seas and clinton didn't act Quickly enough. We should have intervened 800,000 people are dead You know, don't don't we as you know, the richest most powerful country on earth Have some moral obligation to help people that just by pure bad luck They happen to be born in in these crappy countries The answer is no Not as a government now you might feel them all obligation to help them and I have nothing against it. I certainly Feel bad for people stuck in these war zones or who are born in unfree countries great Provide them charity or send them send them copies of john locks, uh, you know treaties or Uh, you know, I send them copies of iron man's books um You know bring them these ideas and then of course I am a supporter of of ultimately of open immigration of a much more open immigration system than we have today Um, and yeah, if refugees in syria, if if you decide that you want to help them come to the united states All the power to you. I don't object to that bring them to the united states We should have a much more open system and they can come here and hopefully thrive in a free country so But for the state To make those calls For the state to oblige me because i'm paying for it, right to oblige me in terms of what should be my obligations is wrong If you have a model if you think you have a model obligation to help somebody help them You know wonderful, but Don't force me. Let's say I don't I don't want to help the hootsies and tootsies I want to help the north koreans My stick is the north koreans yours is the hootsies tootsies Why are you forcing me to participate in what you think is important rather than I can help north korea. You can help and and again, we'd be A lot freer and a lot richer. I guess the rebuttal would be I guess the rebuttal would be i'm just a little guy. What can I do? It takes a you know a government-sized agency to send the troops, you know the blue helmeted Soldiers in to to break up the conflict and do something about it But I don't I don't believe the blue soldiers should be sent in Uh, I mean, it's sad what the hootsies did to the tootsies or the other way around. I can't remember, but it's tragic It's a it's horrific. But uh, you know, it am I gonna send my son? I mean, this is again the question Am I gonna say your life should be forfeited so that the hootsies don't slaughter the tootsies? Sorry. No, I mean my life my son, you know, I'm glad Uh He was born in America or land is relatively free Uh, I don't see why that life should be sacrificed for their sake If you want to if you want to fund help if you want to if you want to provide them with better ideas They can ultimately reject violence as a means for settling disputes great, but Government sending my kid And always it should always be the perspective of my kid to fight for war That's not a war of self-defense to protect their families and and their rights I I think that's illegitimate. Now would something like what I just described Uh Have actually happened in 2015 when angle of merkel said, you know, we got to let these syrian refugees in Given our history. We kind of owe it to take care of people that are Uh, you know suppressed and and then look what happened and now so there's a lot of conservatives saying Yeah, look what happened clash of cultures and now you have a lot of these young muslim men, uh, you know attacking uh, western women and and you know conflicts like that And they don't buy into the constitution because they believe in sharia law or whatever. I'm exaggerating it a bit But you know, there is a problem there Sure, so this is a this is truly a complicated issue because it it revolves around The fact that there is right now In a sense a violent war between certain elements within the muslim world and the rest of us They know it's a war we we pretend there isn't one and of course 9 11 was a wake-up call to americans We've already gone back to sleep. We we we forgotten about that and and europe has been attacked So there is something going on here. That's more than just immigration. That's more than just refugees leaving a territory There's actually people who want to commit real offenses and I put aside the culture And let's get back to the cultural question because I think that's an important question that's separate From kind of the the war that's going on. There is a I won't call it a civilizational war because I don't think there's a civilization on the other side I don't I don't think there's you know, what what they do to each other in syria is not civilized And uh, and so I don't think the slumists represent civilization But I think that needs to be dealt with and I think again if america had Its own self-interest in mind then it would have engaged with this issue after 9 11 in a very different way And indeed if it had this issue in mind, maybe we would have never had a 9 11 Maybe we'd have dealt with the issue beforehand americans have been killed by slumists For a long time since I think he's 79 at least And we've done nothing and and we appease them and we tolerate them and This is also true about the culture. Look If if you open up the borders and you let them come in And they violate your laws and you say, oh, but there are different cultures So we don't care. We're gonna let them get away with it. Then yeah, they're not gonna simulate They're not gonna learn they're not gonna but if you if if I if I Arab I don't know assaults a woman and you put them in jail the way you would anybody else assaulting a woman And you say to them This behavior is unacceptable. Our culture does not accept it. You can keep your barbarism at home. This is barbaric. We don't we've You know, we have a civilization and you know what immigrants Western civilization and and you know, maybe we shouldn't call it western civilization is superior Anything else you guys have you want to come here great? You're gonna play by our rules and you need to assimilate and if you don't we're not gonna We're not gonna hand you checks, but the west is doing exactly as opposite. It's saying All civilizations are equal. There are no better civilizations and worse civilizations You know, if you want to treat your women harshly and you want to dress them up in clothes where they can't where they can't You know be seen. All right, you have you know, it's it's it's just the same as the way we treat our women That is a travesty And then culturally We don't defend what's good about our culture. We don't defend what's good about our civilization when we we don't defend reason Versus their faith. We don't defend science versus their mysticism We don't defend our ideas as right as correct Versus their ideas, which are not if we were confident If we asserted that our civilization was there was a good civilization Was the right, you know, we haven't implemented it perfectly We were you know, the flaws and everything but generally this is the right direction of history right and and uh Then if we were confident then a sort of in that They would assimilate. I mean one of the examples. I think one of the one of the interesting things that happened during covet Is uh is the the vaccine that came out of Pfizer Is actually a vaccine developed in Germany by a German company a German company that was founded by two scientists a husband and wife both of Turkish origin Whose parents and it was parents with I think one of them might have even been born in Turkey But certainly their parents emigrated from Turkey And who've assimilated and become western style scientists who actually developed mRNA technology and here they are you know saving the world right with the vaccine so um I don't buy this they can't assimilate. I don't buy it to the extent that they can't assimilate It's our fault because we teach them not to assimilate. We should be teaching them the value Of then values. Yeah here. You're hinting at this idea of cultural relativism Which people on the left more than the right embrace since postmodernism that You can't say that there is a right culture. You can't derive an ought from an is Who are we to say whether women should wear a burqa or not and and so forth? And and therefore You're imposing your western imperialist capitalist so on ideas upon other people So let's just get right into that. How do you know that that's the right culture? How do you derive? Let's say this idea is better than that idea freedoms better than slavery is the easiest one But you know scale up from there Well, I mean you have to have a standard Um, and and I think given that we human beings Our standards should be human well-being It should be uh individual human flourishing uh, what culture allows individual in what culture individuals successful at flourishing at achieving things at pursuing happiness and Clearly some cultures are good at that some cultures are terrible at it and the cultures that are terrible at it are Bad cultures the cultures that are good at it are good cultures cultures that promote human life Science is human life promoting. That's why it's good, right? Um, it's not good because hey, it's fun to play these games and to do math on the board and stuff It's good because it promotes human well-being because it achieves something it moves us forward um and cultures that that negate science that reject science for example you know modern islamic culture because you know historically the muslims were pretty good with science if you go back to to uh 1000 ad or 1100. I mean they turned their back on science at around 1200 But up until then science was happening there when it wasn't happening in the west. So it's um It's the respect for science is respect for reason a pro human life That's what makes those cultures good. That's the standard and and it's easy to measure because all you have to look at is Things like life expectancy quality of life and and the ability of people to express themselves in in a wide variety of different ways It's what made communism evil and fascism evil. Let's just push it Let's push it one step further. How do you know that that's what people want? You know, some people don't want it Some people don't want to be free, right? Some people don't want to be happy you don't measure um the the uh the goal Based on people's emotions you base it based on reason based on looking at human beings and saying, okay All right, so you're you're starting off with a moral foundational Starting point using reason what i'm what i'm saying is i think you can go further than that I think you can do it through empiricism. I think you can On average most people would prefer slave freedom over slavery And those that say they prefer to be slaves. They just don't they just don't know Let's say it was most people preferred slavery over speed and would you say then slavery is okay because of that? So I agree with you in terms of in terms of empiricism But the empiricism is not at the level what people desire because people desire bizarre things You know, uh, uh, you you can look back at the dark ages and say that was a really bad civilization Even though people might have desired it because all they knew was jesus and all they knew was god and all they knew Was mysticism and they desired that because they didn't have they didn't know anything different But no, but we know what is possible to human beings We know what is achievable to human beings We know that empirically because we can look around we can look at the dark ages We can look at the renaissance we can look at the at the enlightenment we can look at today And we can see a certain progression in terms of the quality of human life And we can say if people adopt certain ideas If people reject other ideas Then the quality the standard and the length of life increases That's good. If the standard is human life, that's good And so it has to start with a moral question And the fundamental what moral question has to be is individual human life a good thing And if the answers no Which maybe some environmentalists will answer no, right? And their standard is the is the spotted owl or some worm in in some lake and in in atlanta. Who knows? Then yeah, then Can't make any of these statements, but it's clear that the answer is yes individual human life Is good for the individual and that's the starting point for morality and it's a starting point for politics And it's a starting point for cultural evaluation All right, let me read to you from a minutia feaks book What we owe each other a new social contract very better society. I just had her on the podcast a few months ago She's head of the london school of economics professional economist she was work for the world bank and and uh the imf and so on she says uh When I refer to the social contract, I mean the partnership between individuals businesses civil society and the state to contribute to a system in which there are collective benefits you won't like that word but So then uh the welfare state when I refer to the welfare state I mean the mechanisms for pooling risks And investing in social benefits mediated through the political process and subsequent state action She referred to it as three quarters piggy bank and one quarter robin hood The insurer of last resort as it were is the welfare state And then here is her summary statement of the new social contract and then you can respond to it First that everyone should be guaranteed the minimum required to live a decent life This would be your human flourishing a well-being This minimum should include basic health care education benefits associated with work And a pension that protects against poverty and old age with the level depending on how much society can afford Second everyone should be expected to contribute as much as they can and be given the maximum opportunities To do so with training throughout life Later retirement ages and public support for child care so women can work And third the provision of minimum protections around some risks such as sickness unemployment and old age Are better shared by society rather than asking individuals Families or employers to carry them Okay Hi Where do I begin? Right is almost there's almost every sentence there is is is I think wrong morally and wrong economically um society affords Society doesn't own anything Society can't afford anything I can afford stuff You can afford stuff Somebody can come at a point of a gun and take our stuff from us and then they can afford stuff And maybe you call that person the government in their society But no there is no such thing as society affording anything Individuals can afford certain things Wealth is a product of individuals and it's a product of Individuals work and individuals creativity What is a decent life? Who's she to tell me what my decent life should be my decent life actually requires Six months of vacation in the Maldives And a top-of-the-line Mac computer and and an iPhone for me and every one of my kids Who's she to tell me that's not my decent life? I mean it's it's this is the problem. We've had for millennium Some intellectuals deciding that they Can organize society optimally That they know what's good for you and know what's good for me and they're gonna structure things to create this ideal It is morally offensive To take away choice from human beings to take away agency from human beings Not to let human beings decide what they can or cannot do with their life and how to do it with their life It's morally offensive To say to somebody who's created a fortune. Oh, no We you we need that money because we we have other priorities for it Even though you created it you made it you built it We're gonna we have other priorities for that money. We whoever the we is we philosopher kings Have other priorities for it It's it's morally offensive To talk about people as collectives or not as individuals as if we all share the same standards the same values the same the same things and that brute force literally brute force Can be used in order to achieve her vision for society I mean one of the beauties of my vision for society even though I know if you agree with it Is that there's no brute force You you know, you want to start a commune in my world? You can go with your friends and From each according to ability to each according to his needs And you can live a miserable pathetic life, which I know you will but you know, you can experience it yourself empiricism, right? You can teach yourself and you can do it. I won't stop you But what if I say to her I don't agree with you about what a decent life is and I'm not willing to contribute to this project What happens? Well a gun comes out I either contribute or I go to jail That's Wrong, but it's it's not just that it's her trying to dictate to poor people what a decent life is Instead of an an assuming also that Hang on one second yarn I think a lot of listeners will will not understand that the links between those two statements If you don't pay your taxes you'll get a letter from the irs and and then you still don't pay then you get Another letter and then a call and then pretty soon you you you're drug into court Or or you're going to jail for tax fraud And so on and you say i'm not going to jail. I'm not leaving my house At some point they'll send somebody to police or somebody with a gun And they'll say you're coming out if you say i'm not coming out Then then there's I'll shoot you yeah Government is force Everything the government says has to happen and you don't do it They will use force against you to collect you you don't pay your speeding fine You'll go to court. You don't abide by what the court decision somebody will come and put you in jail They will literally physically assault you That is that's the essence of government and i'm pro right. I'm for government I'm not answer. I'm not an anarchist and yet most of what governments I don't believe in coercion. I don't believe in government initiating force on human beings So I don't believe in taxes so Look, it's her model for human existence That she wants to impose on people And she assumes by way and this is this goes directly to theme of atlas shrug She assumes That production just happens Stuff just shows up And the producers will always produce no matter what her vision is that iPhones is to produced Vaccines is to produce bio engineering still happens Even if you take the incentives away, even if you take the freedoms away from people from doing it Where will the jobs come from? I mean Today we believe in mmt right modern monetary theories I guess the government just prints money in highest people But we all know that that's at the end of the day voodoo economics. That's that's nonsense Somebody has to produce something But if they stop producing then you can't afford anything Uh, and that's what happens in atlas shrug, right? That's the story and and and one of the models of atlas shrug If the if the few people who actually produce the well stop producing it What do you redistribute so no the morality is completely upset. And by the way, I'll just say this I think Poor people Everybody seems very concerned about a far far far far better off under a society that has no welfare Under welfare from the state under society that doesn't regulate under society that leaves business alone and leaves us alone Uh, I think they're far better off not because of welfare But not because of sorry not because of charity, but because I think they'll have jobs And I think they'll do well and those people those few people who truly can't work Who truly cannot take care of themselves? They'll be taken care of by family members by friends And by charity and they'll be taken care of more affected more effectively and better than anything that the state provides today Now one of the comebacks to that is that's what communists say they say well in a in a true communist society None of these bad things that happened the soviet union would happen because And then they wave their hands a lot much like what you were just doing. Well, this is the way it would be Sure, this is the difference though The closer I get to socialism I'll grant their premises never been a perfect socialist state right the closer you get to socialism the more death destruction and starvation you have Not every social socialist country at the beginning has death and destruction But it has the more socialist it is the poorer it is It just you can you can trace this over all of his feet everywhere the closer you get to capitalism the richer you become So hong kong You know, singapore, you know, we could argue about what singapore is united states in the 19th century uk in the 19th century None of them. I will say none of them are perfect capitalism But the closer you get the better human life is so what would you rather have? What would you what do you think The ideal is more likely to manifest itself in a system that the closer you get to it people die And people starve and people are poor or a system where the closer you get to it people are better often by the way You know it the 19th century in america particularly the second half of the 19th century So maybe the largest migration of people in As a percentage of the population ever in human history There was no safety net There was no welfare There was none of what she argued And yet who came from europe and from other parts of the world the poorest people The most oppressed people. I mean literally our ancestors. I mean i'm a first generation american But my cousins right jews from europe they came from little stettles little villages in eastern europe They knew nothing. They were ignorant. They they were not competent They were they were not noble prize winners in physics. These were farmers from little villages in eastern europe They came to america. They nobody promised them anything nobody gave them anything And so did the irish and so did the italians and so did the scots and so did the english and so the germans and mass And they came here and they worked hard and they made a living for themselves and they did very very very well So this would be your response to it seems like Things have gotten worse under the welfare state not better So this would be a rebuttal to people that say well the mexicans and people from central america are coming here Just to get their free welfare checks and free social security system safety net That in fact in the 19th century they came here without any of that Yes, and and i would say I don't believe that of the mexicans and the latin americans I don't think they're coming here just for that if you talk to them. They're coming here for opportunities They're suddenly coming here for economics, but they're coming here for economic opportunities They're coming for a better life for themselves and their kids I mean i The idea that conservatives resent people who want their kids to grow up into freedom Is a travesty in my view I mean we should we should hail the mothers who cross the real grande pregnant To have a child born in the united states because that child could be born under in freedom. I mean that is An act of unbelievable heroism not an act of So But then why yaron since you've been pounding on the left. Let's go to the right in conservatives Why is it conservatives that are trying to stop everybody from coming here? Why are they still anti immigration? Because the conservatives are collectivists They they tend to be tribalists. They they tend to be there's a there's a significant xenophobic element on the right um They tend to be nationalist But nationalism is often just a disguise of xenophobia um And they tend to be ignorant of economics and they tend to be ignorant of capitalism the idea that the right Particularly is reflected in conservatism and in the republican party is pro-free markets is absurd They uh, they like to regulate. They like to control Historically they prefer to control the bedroom and leave the board room free But even that's not true anymore. They they want to I mean if you look at george busch and if you look at trump Certainly, they want to control business just as much as they want to control our bedrooms The left typically has left our bedrooms open free and have wanted to control our board rooms But that's not true in the more of the left either. They now want to control our speech They want to control now. They want almost to force us into relationship. We don't you know of sexual nature We don't want to have um and certainly they want us to to to uh To not say certain things that they find offensive So I think both political parties now have abandoned all All pretense of advocating for freedom. Uh, and that's true in the left and on the right unfortunately All right, let's talk about iron ran and atlas shrugged this 10 little volume here that anybody could just plow right through in an afternoon Uh, why don't liberals and progressives and and feminists like iron ran? I mean, she's a woman She's an immigrant from an oppressed minority jews She created strong independent women that that ran major corporations in the united states Uh, and had successful, uh, you know professional careers And it and it almost seems like all those things are trumped by Her politics or her I guess laissez-faire economics and politics Well, suddenly all of it is trumped by the politics But I think more fundamentally it's trumped by her views of ethics of views of morality Um, I mean, I think that's where iron ran is most revolutionary I I think it's where she upsets the status quo the most Uh, and I and I think it's where she uh, she offends both left and right And she offends the academics So I think she offends everybody across the board in her view of Of what what she called selfishness, you know, you could call rational long-term self-interest If you wanted a better explanatory version of it, but Uh, I think that's offensive to Movements that are dominated by collectivism by viewing the group as the primary and not the individual By viewing uh sacrifice and self-lessness As as your ethical, uh moral duty And and the essence of morality So I think that's what offends both critics on the left and the right of course She's an advocate of reason and science I'd say both on the left and right reason and science are not particularly popular these days She she's antagonistic towards religion, which is of course offends people on the right But she was also antagonistic towards a certain secular religions like What she called the ecology movement and what what we know today as the environmentalist movement The placing of the well-being of some mother nature mother earth above the well-being of human beings um, so she was a she was While she portrayed strong women, they were strong individual women They were women that didn't fight for an individual Women's cause they fought for their own happiness and their own success and their own prosperity. Um So I think I think both left and right have many many reasons to Dislike iron rand and they found all those reasons But yes, the the politics the economics and the ethics are at the core And you could even go deeper to their epistemology with the left and the right rejection of reason Yeah, you mentioned earlier about, you know, you built this corporation You made that wealth and then the state wants to take it away from you then so how do you counter the argument? Well, you didn't really do that. Uh, you know Luck has a big chance. You know, you you you were lucky You had two parents instead of one parent or two parents that were educated and sent you to a nice school Read a lot of books to you or you grew up in a in in america rather than syria or even the the genetics for Wanting to work hard that is being, you know, high in conscientiousness high in need of achievement Not everybody's born with that all the way down to the stuff obama talked about with his you you didn't build that You know the public roads you drove to the university to get your public education on public roads Google and apple both benefit from all of that state Including the internet itself, which is created by the state So if you're walking around with your copy of atlas shrug going I made my own life It seems to me a reasonable argument to say well Not really you had a lot of help along the way No, really, um, and you know, so there's a lot to unpack there So, you know, it's an insult To somebody like steve jobs who I think came from a single family mother Whose father was a was a syrian from syria. So maybe was born unlucky, but managed to Produce the steve jobs who dropped out of college who was not particularly Stood out as a young man Uh in any kind of way did not I don't know how much his mother read to him or didn't read to him And and it doesn't matter because I know under a lot of really really bad people Who were born to two parents who read to them who sent them to good schools And yet they turned out to be scumbags, you know and and uh and horrible people so What you know, there's the big there's the big discussion out there in in psychology, I guess Nature versus nurture, right Is it our genes or is it our environment and what results and you know, the the real Revolutionaries think it's a bit of both, you know, it's it's a mixture of the two And and it seems like the one element that's most important shaping who you are is Is is is does not exist in psychology Psychology has just eliminated it from reference and that is you The choices you make um The the the choices you make to think or not to think to focus your mind or not to focus your mind to do Accent to do why to take this road or to take that road The way you use your mind do you use your mind? You apply reason you apply your rational mind to the problems you face So do you just go by emotions and just write it out and see what happens? um Those are decisions choices you make and those choices shape who you become And if you don't make the choices then you're shaped by your environment Yes, and you're shaped by your genes, but that's a default That's the people who don't succeed at anything. They truly don't make anything They are just products of whatever but I think most of us at least most people who are successful in life Did something They did something Uh, they contributed because I know people who are a lot smarter than me. I don't have I don't think I have a particularly You know extraordinarily high IQ um You know, I know a lot of people are smarter than me less successful I know a lot of people are smarter than me more successful, you know, but but what determines that What determines that is the what you do with the material you are given I can't control what parents you have. I just can't I can't control what genes you have not yet. Maybe one day we will right, but But At the end of the day you get this material and what do you do with it? Some people make something I know a lot of people in low IQs who had horrible upbringing Who've made a life for themselves now. They're never going to be Steve Jobs But whatever they you know, maybe they were a bricklayer. Maybe they were an electrician But they were good electric And they make an effort and they go to work every day And they take responsibility for their own lives and they feed their families And I know other people in the same circumstances the same genes who don't so I I don't buy that now. Let me let me address some of the other issues, right? So But but this way so you're talking here about volition So you see what volition volition. Yeah, so there's no volition. Why are we even having a discussion? Let's go. I mean there's no point because I because because you know I love it when sam harris says there's no such thing as volition. There's no free will But you should make the right choices and hear some choices you should make who and then he says By the way, there's no you There's no me We're all just conscious, you know, we're all just one but wait a minute Wait, what does it mean to choose if there's no me to choose? And what does it mean to choose if I don't have volition? It's it's it's we're just spinning wheels if that's the case and it's all just a waste of time I'm having too much too much fun to believe it's a It's it's a waste of time and that I that I don't actually make choices and I know I make choices It's not really a question Yeah, I think of it this way I think all the things I described are true, uh, you know that I was given a lot of Benefits growing up in a middle-class family in california And so on and so forth and yet if I don't get up tomorrow And write my next book or my next article. I'm not getting paid And at some point, you know, and I make this choice every day Well, I can go ride my bike or play with my kid and just take the day off or I can Split the time and do some work. Well, I guess I'm gonna make a choice at some point You do make a choice and there's nobody giving you anything at that point no matter how many benefits you've had in the past, how does that would an objectivist respond today to um, the you know the anti-racism the black lives matter We're owed reparations 400 years of slavery and jim crow you whites had all these benefits You know in generational wealth that gets passed down and so on and so forth Uh, how would you respond to that current movement? First of all, I don't know who all you were whites had all these benefits Who they're referring to because my white skinned Grandparents and great grandparents if not for luck would have been wiped out in a holocaust I don't know what the luck, you know, what these great benefits that at least jews have had that it so Again grouping everybody as whites is meaningless. What about whites who immigrated here in the last 10 years? What about what about you know People that even within europe were pressed Relatively to other whites because northern europeans hated southern europeans. I mean The whole collectivist approach is bogus. Look here's here facts Slavery is horrific. It's one of the great evils in the world and it and You know, it's wonderful that it was eradicated. It's it's unfortunate that it ever existed. It's sad. It's horrific that it ever existed The fact is that it was eradicated in the west by rights respecting countries in capitalist countries capitalism eradicated slavery Jim crow is horrible was horrible and evil and wrong and there's no question that slavery and jim crow Have something to do with the fact that blacks have accumulated less capital financially Over generations because they couldn't own property They couldn't start businesses in some cases. They were clearly oppressed And and you know, there was an argument to be made right after the civil war to give blacks reparations Or to give them land or to do something like that That was the time to do it But you know what it's 150 years since then Yes, there was a disadvantage The only way I know how to deal with a disadvantage is to work hard And and to and I think what we do instead in America is we crippled the black community We crippled them in two ways one Since the war on poverty was started. We've institutionalized them into poverty We hand them a check and we tell them they don't have to worry. We we're taking care of them as if we're you know We've got this paternalistic system going on and their their children They can't take care of themselves and we treat them as children and we treat them as inferior Do the welfare state and this is true of all poor people, but it's particularly true of the black community and then We have leaders who keep telling them that they're victims That that they're being treated horribly that they need reparations because otherwise they can't succeed in life I imagine if the black community had leaders who told them Go bootstrap yourself Get an education You know get a's in your tests, you know now in some schools in black communities to be a good student is considered to be white That's a cultural problem within their communities that they need to solve now There is racism in america. I'm I'm not a denier of it at all. I've seen it. It exists and it's horrible There is police brutality in america There's no question. There's some argument about whether there's police racism whether they if there is let's eradicate it Let's deal with it. Absolutely But the problems in the black community Are problems that have to do with the welfare state and their own culture And until they're willing to face their own culture And until we're willing to face the problems that the welfare state creates None of this is going to go away. Would a model be What the jews have gone through for 4 000 years of oppression and anti-semitism They're excluded from school. So they said, all right, we'll build our own schools And so forth we build our schools and and and jews jews Of which I guess i'm an honor to remember because i'm i'm uh, you know, obviously abandoned the religion completely But you're secular value education. It's it's in the culture, right? It's in the culture and therefore In whatever context and whatever opportunities they got they went and they they studied so those Those people from the stettles in eastern europe didn't were not educated But they came to america and they made a little money now They could send their kids to school their kids got an education and they valued it and you see that today With asian communities. This is not racism. This is about culture And of course they're being discriminated against they can't get into harvard They can't get into certain schools because they value education spent a lot of time a lot of effort studying One could argue maybe they study too much for the test rather than actually studying but The culture is a pro education culture if black americans had a pro education culture if that was the essence of their culture Then the the whole nature of the back black community today in america would be completely different now That is not to deny 100 years 100 plus years of slavery and jim crow laws and the fact that they were set back Significantly as individual, but that's just to say That just means you have to work harder just like Jews who came from from from a horrific background side to work harder just like for example Caribbean blacks coming from the Caribbean who are just as poor Um, you know work hard and and and raise themselves up on nigerian blacks who are it turns out the nigerians are the most educated nationality in the united states What a rational argument to reparations be? Uh cross generational or trans generational guilt is an irrational idea. I didn't do it to you You weren't a victim We're talking, you know Several generations ago the moment you go down that path if you accept that then don't we owe reparations to the native americans? don't Don't the british owe half the world reparations for colonialism I see You'd have to you'd have to balance the count right the british also brought a lot of good to the rest of the world So it's it's harder. What is the balance? But that's not a debate worth engaging in I mean, do I do I go to the egyptian government and ask for reparations? I guess my people built the pyramids at least that's what You know, that's what the bible says so Uh, no, I mean it it makes no sense. It goes back to the israeli palestinian question You can't base claims on ancient history You've got to deal with reality on the ground and the reality on the ground today is the generation that enslaved you is not alive and uh You know, you don't punish the grandchildren for the grandparents of sin in this case great great grandparents So it's wrong again morally it would not help and look the other point is this and again This is not easy to say and and a lot of people will be offended by this But the fact is the just giving money Just pouring money into what an unhealthy culture Is not going to solve the problem The the black community needs new leadership new intellectual leadership and i'm glad to see certain uh Intellectual leaders, you know thomas sol obviously You know from way back, but uh, who's who's been around for a long time, but but they're a bunch of young um Black intellectuals who are advocating for a changed culture and that's what they need Their leadership has betrayed them. I would argue the same about the palestinians palestinian leadership has betrayed them They haven't provided them with the guidance to lead them towards a flourishing life towards a successful life towards Towards the good sometimes you hear the um Parallel argument well the germany's paying reparations for the holocaust to israel Uh and the victims of the holocaust the families Uh and there but but those people are actually alive. I mean, it's you know, this is these are current generations But barely alive, but now I see that angela merkel is paying It should stop. Yeah It's just uh, well now I see that they're they're they're they're sending reparations to one of their African colonies. I forget the name of it now For a century for a century ago abuses. Yeah the moment you open that door I mean, how many colonies did germany have what about belgium in french and and british colonies? This is the evil of collectivism. Yeah You're treating germans today as if they're morally responsible for the sins of germans 100 years ago It's not the same people and just because they happen to be born in the same nationality doesn't make them morally culpable But something somebody else did and reparations mean money out of my pocket goes to somebody that I did not do anything bad to You know, I'm not responsible for it. So This is The evil of collectivism and of altruism that einrand keeps warning us of in her books. Yeah on that front I think you you have a pr problem with the word greed. I mean people think einrand They think gordon gecko greed is good where you should just be a selfish bastard and let everybody fend for themselves Uh, and you know, that's kind of what people hear when they hear atlas shrugged einrand I think unfortunately, that's true and and unfortunately A lot of people reinforce that by not explaining what I meant people who I think should know better Not explaining what einrand meant by self-interest and meant by selfish. She clearly didn't mean She clearly didn't mean exploiting other people That's very clear in atlas shrug. She clearly didn't mean doing whatever you feel like doing She clearly didn't mean kind of a subjectivist approach a morally subjectivist approach to ethics She meant doing those things which can scientifically be verified Enhance your life enhance Your flourishing your enhance your ultimately your happiness and that her moral absolutism here is not an absolutism of You must do this. You must do that. Don't do that. Don't do that. It's about the principles That we empirically discover in the world that lead to success at living And those are the things you should do as principles That then you as an individual are responsible to applying to certain concretes So evolutionary theorists, uh, evolutionary theorists Attack a problem called the problem of altruism. That is why do Some or sometimes organisms sacrifice their reproductive success For somebody else now if it's their genetic relations that makes sense because they are getting their genes in the next generation By helping two of their siblings, let's say or four of their step half siblings and and so forth or maybe I help my fellow group mates because I want to have a reputation of being a good team player so that when times are hard for me Uh, you'll remember that I helped you when times were hard for you. So you get reciprocal altruism Uh, and then from there you build out to a society. So, uh, I wonder how a rand would deal with that kind of evolutionary problem So I I don't know because I don't think these kind of evolutionary psychological issues were brought up in her time cell Just give you my yeah. Yeah, please. Yeah, please. Yeah. I mean first I'd say that look To extrapolate from ants to human beings is a stretch Even to extrapolate from chimpanzees to human beings. I think is a stretch ants don't have memories So I don't you know, they can't remember social relations that that doesn't their program to do a certain things in a certain way I'll leave that to science There's nothing moral and there's nothing we can learn about ethics from ants Or from chimpanzees Because what makes human beings different is volition. We return to volition And the fact that we do not have programmed into us How to survive We don't have the means to survive Agriculture is not programmed into us Even hunting is not programmed into us We need to discover how to build tools. We need to discover how to do agriculture We need to discover how to build an iPhone Those achievements of reason They're not achievements of our genetic code our genetic codes just gives us the capacity not the content so When you deal with ethics, you're dealing with something that's uniquely human altruism in ethics, which is a term coined by augustine compt the the french philosopher the 19th century is an ethic that says You shouldn't care about yourself in acting ethical ethics is about being self less completely If you if you help somebody and you and you have the thought oh, I'll feel good by helping them Not ethical because you are motivated by some form now You know to me that is the essence of evil So you mean my life is not important but some stranger's life is how did that come about my life is mine Isn't that the most important thing to me? Now what does that mean in terms of me treating other people? Does that mean that I should rob cheat lie steal or maybe it should mean I just should ignore them, right? The isolated individualist who goes out on a desert island. No, of course not human beings are the one the greatest source Of joy that I can get Whether it's because human beings produce things like iPhones So that I benefit from so I admire the human beings that built this and made this and I can then trade with them and get one of them And I say whoa Thank you apple for for making it possible for me to have an to spend a thousand bucks to do this that is worth Many many times a thousand dollars to my life Whether it's a joy of being able to trade and consume products that other people make Whether it's the fact that I can go and and see Michelangelo's David And be awestruck and have a spiritual That is unmatched for me at least by experiencing such greatness as a great sculpture Or whether it's sex or whether it's friendship or whether it's all the varieties of love that one can imagine um other people an massive source of value to me And therefore why would I be why would I treat other people badly if there's so much of a potential source to me now? If somebody's bad if I know somebody's going to hurt me Then I am going to stay away from them. I see your kids or somebody. Yes. Yes my my son's at the door He wants he wants to play I think of it this way that um Genuine morality, of course, I reject the divine command theory because I too am an atheist but A genuine morality can be explained evolutionary that it's not enough for me to Pretend that I'm a good person Uh and want to be a uh, uh, you know a predictable loyal uh group mate and family member whatever I actually have to feel it because if I if I was Machiavellian Psycho psychopathic and narcissistic, you know the so-called dark triad traits Um, which most people are not my fellow group mates would catch on to that So I need to actually feel good about helping you Uh because that's a good thing and then you feel good about helping me and we have a kind of Reciprocity, so this is the evolutionary explanation with the basis of friendships and relationships and so on that Yeah, you you actually have to care about other people But I think you have a completely wrong conception of morality. I'm sorry to say Uh morality is not about how you treat other people Well, but if you're alone on a desert island, where's the morality if you're by your morality morality exists on a desert island Individual rights don't exist on a desert island, but morality does Because morality is your responsibility to yourself to your own life And your own capacity to live that life. You're alone on the desert island. You have a fundamental choice I can sit around and do nothing Or I can actually work To survive The moral choice is to work to survive to use your mind to figure out how to survive now A relationship with other people is an aspect of reality of morality because it's an aspect of taking care of yourself It's an aspect of living Dealing with other people. So you have to have certain principles By which you deal with other people You know, I in Rand called that the virtue of justice You have a virtue that relates to how to deal with other people. You deal with other people based on You know what they deserve But this idea that morality is defined as your relationship with other people is You know completely accepting kind of a an almost Christian view of morality, which I think is wrong It you know, think of Aristotle Aristotle doesn't think of morality in those terms Aristotle thinks of morality as How brave should I be? Not in terms of what it will appear to other people But how what does it do for my life for my you domineo for my ability to be happy? That's the essential. So morality is a code Coder values that by which you make the important decisions in your life Decisions about everything important not just about your relationship with other people Okay, I was just looking at the couple of uh, yeah I think unfortunately this that the the the the secular You and and harris and others have accepted a far too narrow view of morality Uh, that that I think I think limits What you can say about about human behavior from a moral perspective I when I see somebody treating people really really nice But being bad to themselves. Here's a question of morality that comes up in the fountain. It I'm Rand's the fountain it Should you pursue a career? That you love that you're passionate about that you think you'll be good at or should you do what your mother tells you That's a moral Yeah, yeah, okay Yeah, so you're defining morality much You want to live That's what morality deals with what kind of life do you want to live not just with other people but with yourself And what kind of career you want to have all of that is your questions of morality But humans were never isolated individuals. We're always members of a group. No, I don't want to be isolated Nobody wants to be isolated. We want to live in a society but We want to live in a society where everybody Treats everybody as an end in themselves as an individual who is life is sacred to themselves And who is living in pursuit of their own happiness and their own Fulfillment for their own flourishing and who trade with one another both spiritually and materially And who then benefit because what is a trade a trade is a win-win relationship So benefit from one another ever expanding The the the the good that exists in the world around them the good two individuals but You know, it's you can't the fact that we live in a society the fact that we've always been in a society Doesn't mean that that is the only thing that matters It's not you make decisions about your own life every day And those are the important ones are moral decisions. That's what morality means. That's what it's meant from the beginning of philosophy But if it's not but if I want to convince you Of a certain moral principle that I embrace I can't appeal to my self-interests Over yours. There's nothing special about the spot. I'm standing on because I happen to be standing on it I have to appeal to you that Uh, you know that I would want to treat you the way you I want you to treat me And that's kind of a reciprocity Yeah, but again, and that's that's the base of morality Not just about how we treat other people if I want to convince you of a moral principle Then what I need to convince you of is that if you if you Internalize this principle if you use this principle in your life Your life will be better You will have a greater chance of achieving happiness and achieving success in your life That's what I need to convince you of not now It turns out that one of those principles is you should treat people You don't well because people are generally a value to you But I I'm not saying cheat me well because I'll treat you well Reciprocity is out right because some people treat me pretty badly So should I treat them badly preemptively? The the key is why is it in your self-interest? to treat Generally people who you don't know anything bad about well because human beings are valued to you and I can show you that empirically Here's the way pinker puts it if I appeal to you to do anything that affects me to get off my foot or tell me the time Or not run me over with your car Then I can't do it in a way that privileges my interests over yours Say retaining my right to run you over with my car If I want you to take me seriously unless i'm a galactic overlord I have to state my case in a way that would force me to treat you in kind I can't act as if my interests are special just because i'm me and you're not Any more than I can persuade you that the spot i'm standing on is a special place in the universe Just because I happen to be standing on it and then he and then goes from there to so That like That is a minor point in an ethics. That's not the core of morality All that's saying is that this they are universal principles And they are you I agree that they are universal principles and ethics There's certain principles that apply just as much to you as to me no matter where we stand in the in in in the world Uh that morality is indeed absolute. It's not Whatever I feel like because look I might have a big gun and you might have a small gun And I might say I can step on your foot, but you can't step on mine because I'll shoot you if you do But we have to get beyond that To what leads to a good life. What leads individuals to live a successful Well, you mean individually, but not socially like what makes for a better society If we expand the sphere of moral rights to incorporate everybody There is no society outside of the of the individuals in it When individuals are free And respect the freedom of others which is called individual rights when they respect the individual rights of others And they trade with them and that is the principle then everybody in that society is better off And the society is better off even even if you want to say Even if you want to say the word society is a metaphor For our collective action and maybe we don't use that word collective But but it's still something that we all benefit if we If we adopt something like and here i'm continuing Spinoza's viewpoint of eternity the social contract of hobs rousseau and loch Kant's categorical imperative rals's veil of ignorance Peter singers theory of the expanding circle the optimistic proposal that our moral sense Though shaped by evolution to overvalue self kin and clan Can propel us on a path of moral progress as our reasoning forces us to generalize it to larger and larger circles of sentient beings I love steven pinker, but it's it's nonsense. I'm sorry It's just not it's just not It's it's just not that's not the basis for a moral code in which people are free What you need to convince people are in terms of social relationship because it he gives an example They he gives peter singers an example peter singer wants to stand on my foot Stick his hand in my pocket take my wealth and redistribute it amass He wants to use violence which pinker is against right pinker Is is anti-violence except when the state engages in violence and then pinker's fine with state violence As long as it's only monetary in the form of taxation because pinker tends to be on the left economically No, I'm sorry. This is You have to have a principle and the principle is that in a social environment I cannot infringe on your right to act In your pursuit of your values That's the social principle that binds the society. That's what capitalism is. That's what freedom means Morality is something else. This is li this is a principle that is derived from a particular moral code But first you need a moral code of individualism first You need a moral code that says individuals pursuing their happiness is a good thing That happiness is the goal of morality that we need principles in order to attain Uh, uh, happiness and therefore individuals must be left free so that they can attain their moral purpose in life Which is their happiness and that's where all of you Need i'm ran. I mean you really do because she actually solved this problem of linking is an art in a scientific way And presented a morality of individualism that is consistent with freedom And it's sad that There's so much resistance To this idea of self-interest as articulated by iron man because I think it's the key to solving many of our problems Yes, I do start off with the uh Let's see. Where do I have it here? Uh as the the individual as the moral unit With which we must begin And here's what I here's what I write in the moral arc It is the individual who's the primary moral target not the group tribe race gender state nation empire society Or any other collective because it is the individual who survives and flourishes or who suffers and dies It is in the individual sentient beings who perceive emote respond love feel and suffer Not populations races genders groups or nations Historically Immoral abuses have been most rampant and body counts have run the highest when the individual is sacrificed for the good of the group It happens when people are judged by the color of their skin or by their x y chromosomes or by who they Prefer to sleep with or by what accent they speak with or by which political or religious group They belong to and so on and so forth So and I say the rights revolutions of the past three century have focused almost entirely on the freedom And autonomy of individuals not collectives on the rights of persons Not groups individuals vote not races and genders and so on I agree completely with all that We agree completely on that and now we need to take it one level deeper and say okay morality is about A a a set of principles to help an individual guide his life It's a map to help him guide his life towards success towards flourishing towards lack of pain towards happiness That's what morality is about and one aspect of that Is his relationship with other people and that relationship with other people should be mutually beneficial Uh, you you should get off my toe because it's good for you to get off my toe variety of reasons which I can Okay, all right. I uh, I sent you that essay I wrote way back in the day The unlikeliest cult in history. So and you can respond to this I'm sure it's a softball question for you But here's what I wrote the fallacy and objective is the belief that absolute knowledge and final truths Are attainable through reason and therefore there can be absolute right and wrong knowledge And absolute moral and immoral thought and action For objectivists once a principle is discovered through reason to be true with a capital T That's the end of the discussion if you disagree with the principle then your reasoning is flawed If your reasoning is flawed it can be corrected But if it's not you remain flawed and do not belong in the group X communication is the final step for such unreformed heretics Nathaniel brandon rands chosen intellectual air Where he listed the central tenets to which the followers were to adhere Including quote iron ran is the greatest human being who's ever lived Atlas shrugged is the greatest human achievement in the history of the world Iron ran by virtue of her philosophical genius Is the supreme arbiter in any issue pertaining to what is rational moral or appropriate to man's life on earth No one could be a good objectivist who does not admire iron rand Admires and condemn what iron ran condemns No one could be a fully consistent individualist who disagrees with iron ran on any fundamental issue now to be fair Uh, you know brandon was you know heavily involved in that whole Uh group emotionally. So, you know, uh, but how do you respond? Because that's a common You know theme you hear. Oh objectivism is a cult. It's like a religion. It's like christianity I consider I consider that ridiculous. I mean look, um I mean the biggest problem I have with your essay with regard to this is that it it relies on two sources Both of women of whom broke with iron ran both of whom dedicated their lives to smear her into Presenting her in a in a in an ugly manner. So, yeah, I mean Those books are not objective. They're nothing about it. I've been in this movement, right? Uh, you know, I read iron ran when I was 16 I didn't know there was anybody else on planet earth who'd read her because I was in israel at the time and Uh, there was no internet. There was there was nothing, right? So it took me I got every every book of hers. It took me three years before I discovered another person who liked iron ran, right? I was the CEO of the iron ran institute Um, I've been in the movement forever Now I didn't meet iron ran and I wasn't part of that circle None of that Is true of my experience within the objectives movement. There's no eight commandments Nobody signed a secret when I became CEO They didn't sit the board didn't seat me down and say do you now think that iron ran is the greatest human being who's ever lived? I mean that is absurd if you know None of that ever happened none of them happens now I don't know what nathaniel brandon did nathaniel brandon Strikes me as a cultish figure um, so and and reading his book About iron ran and about those years My takeaway was He was a bad dude and he did some bad things back then both iron ran, but to the movement as well And I think he did a lot of damage to the movement and part of that damage was that he Treated iron ran like a cult leader and encouraged people around him to do so, but I I You know, I don't believe it was a cult then It's certainly not a cult today now with regards to excommunication You know every intellectual movement under the sun has done this. Yeah People disagree and because we're intellectuals we care about ideas And if you disagree with me about an idea Then we're not allies anymore in some circumstances, right? It's a certain disagreements like it reminds me the libertarians always make fun of objectives You guys have schisms all the time. Well, what are libertarians do all the time? They constantly have schisms, right? I know whole think tanks that don't talk to each other Yeah, you know the two guys who founded public choice theory Spent 40 years not speaking to one another even though they founded the theory together, right? And they were good friends from the beginning. So no, don't give me this This is a This is part of being an intellectual we take ideas seriously and then there are people in the movement who do Bad things that you know, maybe they like Stephen chill and then they're kicked out Is that you know, shouldn't we kick them out? You'd fire them from a corporation The people in the movement who spin off because we have disagreements about what the philosophy means So it's not like we shoot them. We say we disagree We're going to do our thing at the island institute You go do your thing over there and we're going to say you're wrong and you're going to say we're wrong. Okay I mean intellectual disagreements exist so it's I you know It's as if we're objective as I held to a standard that nobody else has held up to But believe me, I mean, we've had campus clubs. We have thousands of kids all over the world today. We have we some of our most active participants are in latin america and eastern european all over the world And we don't have some rigorous dogma that they have to sign off of now all that said iron rand There's a particular philosophy that she wrote She made it very specific that she said my philosophy the stuff I wrote. I call it objective People will develop it. People might even find Disagreements with it. People might try flaws in it and correct those flaws All I ask is that you don't call that objective Objectivism is what I created. I wanted to maintain that You call it something else call it ran, you know, I think at the end of it We called random or something like that, you know, based on ran But just keep what I created as a whole because she saw that in the past People's writings were distorted by their followers were perverted were And she wanted who writings to have that name to have that That's the only sense in which it's a closed system truth With a capital t or lower t doesn't matter. It's not a closed system Truth is an open system and and I tell people I don't care if you're an objectivist or not What I care is are you a truth seeker? I want truth seekers. I think if you're a truth seeker You'll find truth in objectivism In much of it and all of it because I think it is a system that kind of stands together But what important to me is that we're focused on reality and on discovering the truth and That is what it's about. That's not an attitude of a cult Right. So I was trained by the iron man institute, right? I took courses there. I took graduate seminars there Never did I sign an oath of alliance? Allegiance because I tested about whether I like Beethoven or not. I mean, that's the other ridiculous thing, right? Iron man threw people out because they disagreed with her about Beethoven No, that's just not true. You know, I'm friends with lennon peakoff who was her student Leonard likes Beethoven iron man didn't And lennon was closer for 30 years lennon. I've even been to an opera by Wagner with lennon, right? um If you read other people's accounts of iron man, not the brandon's Mary and sewers as an account There's a book that we put out called 100 voices where we just interviewed 100 people about stories about iron man You get a completely different view of iron and and how she lived and what she was like And the fact that she disagreed about movies and you quote in the article. I thought that was interesting Somebody who liked Richard Strauss and then when he left iron man said now I understand why I can never be a soulmate with that person I mean to me that's a completely reasonable thing Our response to odd does reflect something about deep about who we are and what we are. She didn't say excommunicate him She didn't say he's no good. He's not a good thinker. He's irrational. He's immoral. She said We just don't connect at some level We're never going to connect to somebody because there's something about his sense of life and my sense of life That doesn't match that is a super reasonable thing to say And and an honest thing to say Now if she condemned him morally for liking Richard Strauss, then you know, you would have a point, but Well, that's true. We all do that. I mean there's certain people that I don't know I had I grew up with I went to college with a friend It was a pretty hardcore born again evangelical christian, which I was for a while But then when I became an atheist then that's all he wanted to talk about and it's like well You know just gets burdensome for a while because it's not my thing anymore You know, so I understand and I and I think we're on the same page on the on the truth seeking That's the tribe you want to belong to the collective is the the group that seeks the truth regardless of You know where it leads. So Let's just as individuals and let me just and let me just say they are objectivists who are obnoxious There are people who call themselves objectivists who are obnoxious to other people who are who treat Objectivism as a religion or who don't understand parts of it and yet pound the pavement on it And I was probably obnoxious when I was 20 21 22 25. I hope I've outgrown it And but you know, but that don't judge I ran and don't judge ideas Based on the worst advocates for those ideas based on their worst representatives Judge the ideas for yourself read out the shrug read the virtue of selfishness Read capitalism not known ideal and judge the ideas for what they represent or what they stand for and You know my I think that if more people expose to her as a philosopher as a not just as a novelist But as somebody who who wrote Important about important ideas that can affect individuals lives and affect society You know, I think I think the world will be a better place The more people read her and the more people consider her and the more she is Parts of the debate and the discussion out You know, you hear this meme that you know People read atlas shrugged in their late teens early 20s and and they get highly energized about it But no one in their 30s 40s and 50s, you know, because they're mature They've moved past this. Is that even true? Is there any date or people who just just spitballing ideas there? Sure. No, there's truth to that. I mean, I think I think she's particularly popular Uh in in the teenage early 20s and then people drift away from it and and my view is That she you know people respond to the idealism in iron man Right the projection of an ideal man an ideal society And when we're young we're idealistic, right the hormones kick in. This is where evolution plays a role, right? We're looking for our own the truth We're not we're not gonna accept what our parents tell us. We're not gonna accept the teachers We don't listen to priests. We're out there searching and I ran appeals It appeals to those people now some of them Hold on to that idealism. I'm certainly one of those people. I hold on to those ideals. I never gave them up Others to come to society. I think there are many pressures in society to conform To think like everybody else To come to shabbat dinner and pretend that you're religious or adopt religion Uh and to give up on your individuality. I mean, this is the core morality in my view Can you hold on to what makes you you? Can you hold on to your unique values or do you conform with everybody's? That's an essential question in morality and I think most people give up most people Uh immoral in that sense they they conform they give up their own ideals. They walk away and in that sense Yes, I think a lot of people walk away Uh for mind ran not because they grow out of it But because they grow out of idealism They grow out of of of of ambition Maybe they're still ambitious for money. Maybe it's still ambitious for career But they grew up grow out of ambition for Building their own soul and for making this soul the best that it can be Because that's what I think I ran inspires a person to do is to be the best that you can be not just materially But primarily spiritually in in the secular sense of spiritually That is be the best human being you can be for you You know, and that's what her morality teaches. It teaches you to focus on Being a good person, which means engaging with the truth and being focused on the truth. That's Well, you're on we've been going almost we'll be going over two hours now I this came about because you know, I had David Sloan Wilson on he wrote that novel atlas hugged And the iron man is to contact me and said hey, you should have somebody on that You know that that presents a proposition, but I have to say when I read David the following passage from atlas shrugged his response was oh my god. I totally am inspired by that This is from john galt's speech In the name of the best within you do not sacrifice this world to those who are its worst In the name of the values that keep you alive Do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly the cowardly the mindless in those who have never achieved his title Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture And in transigent mind in a step that travels unlimited roads Do not let your fire go out spark by irreplaceable spark In the whole hopeless swamps of the approximate the not quite the not yet the not at all Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved But have never been able to reach check your road and the nature of your battle The world you desired can be one it exists. It is real. It is possible. It is yours That is inspirational who would not like that beautiful and so many levels and it's it's truly inspirational um And you know, i'm not surprised he was inspired when you read it because I you know given his what i've read from his book He didn't read atlas shrugged. So Um, I don't know how he wrote some of what he wrote if you if he actually read atlas shrugged So well you're on thanks for so much for coming on and and uh enlightening us on Objectivism and inrand and atlas shrugged and so forth great conversation to be continued because I didn't ask you Half the issues that are hot button today Uh, so we'll cover that in another episode Good Are you gonna be in grand rapids in uh in south dakota? Oh, yes. I'm going there. Yes. Yes to uh for freedom fest this summer Y'all be there. So I'll see you there I'll see you there. Absolutely. That'll be fun Thanks