 All right. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me, but more importantly, thank you to the Berkeley Forum for Existing. I mean, the idea of having a forum at any university today that is basically for dialogue and debates and a wide variety of points of view is fantastic. I mean, I always thought universities were exactly that, but it turns out maybe universities have to overlay them with an entity that allows for real dialogue. So there's nothing more important in the world which we live in free speech. So anything that furthers a dialogue is good. So congratulations to students for that. So we're here to talk about the morality of capitalism. And to do that, we have to really talk about two things. We have to talk about morality and we have to talk about capitalism. And I think in both, in both regards, I'm going to have a relatively controversial radical point of view about what morality constitutes and even in terms of what capitalism constitutes. We all think we know what capitalism is, but like most of the terms it turns out we use in day-to-day life, it's where do we actually take the time to actually define them and think them through and figure out what do they really mean because people use terms all the time and we think we know what we're talking about and a lot of times we don't. So definition is really important. So first, what is moral? Because that is determined whether capitalism is moral or not. What is moral? What is good? What is what? What is just? And in my view, morality or the moral is that which enhances individual human life. That which is good for the individual. That which makes possible the thriving, the success, the happiness, the prosperity of individual human beings is the good. That which destroys human life. That which threatens ability to prosper, to succeed, to pursue our values, to be happy is evil, is bad. And what is it that makes it possible for human beings to be successful? What is it that human beings need to do in order to achieve their values? Well, we know that to even define what their values should be. What is it that makes us human? What is it that differentiates us from every other animal species out there? Because, you know, maybe the most important thing that differentiates us is other animals are programmed instantially, genetically in their DNA to know what's good for them. There's no morality for dogs. There's no morality for cows. They know what's right. They know what's good. It's pre-programmed. It's in their DNA. They don't have a choice about which path to pursue. They do what they're programmed to do. Human beings are different. We have choices. We're not pre-programmed to a particular direction. We have to decide what values to pursue, what kind of life to live. So what is it, if I'm going to make those choices, if I'm going to lead a successful life as a human being, what is it that makes us human? What is it that makes it possible for us to make those choices? I mean, basic choices like producing food. Now what does food come from? Don't say the supermarket. Excuse me, that's the answer. What does food come from? What does food come from? How do we get food? Anybody here have a gene for agriculture? You know, I mean, animals, they know exactly where to get their food. They go straight and they get it. Whether they have to hunt for it, whether they eat the leaves, they know exactly what's good for them. They do it. Where do we get our food from? What's that? From farmers. How do they know how to make the food? Because I still don't know. Yeah, they have to figure it out. Somebody has to figure it out. Right? Somebody has to discover. Discover that if you drop a seed into the ground and you water it, something will go down. We all know that from age three, because somebody told us. But that truth is something some genius probably 20,000 years ago discovered. We probably burned him at the stake. Because that's what we do to geniuses who discover new stuff that we're used to. And that wasn't enough because they have to turn that into agriculture. How do you turn that into agriculture? Well, now you need an entrepreneur who is going to turn that scientific knowledge into something that is actually useful for human beings, which is what entrepreneurs typically do. And discover agriculture. But all of that is a discovery. Even something simple like hunting is impossible for us. I mean, look at you. You're pathetic. You're weak. You're slow. You have no claws. You have no fangs. I mean, try running down a bison and biting into it. And yet I had a bison both before lunch. How do we do that? Well, we have to develop tools and weapons and strategies. And we hunt. But it's all a product of our mind. So it makes human beings unique. What makes it possible for human beings to survive and to thrive is the use of our mind. It's great to me. Now, from Silicon Valley, where you see that every single day. Any innovation, any progress, any success is a product of human reason. It's a product of human thinking. What is the enemy of reason and thinking? What is the thing that shuts down the human mind? Of course. Violence, coercion, force. But you can't think about that. Of a certain area in life. Because if you do, or if you at least express yourself about it, I'm going to shoot you, or I'm going to put you in jail, take Galileo, right? He comes up with this crazy idea, right, that the Earth acts as those around the Sun, and not the Sun around the Earth. And they put him in house arrest. What incentive does that provide all the other people looking to innovate, to discover new ideas, to think about new stuff? I don't want to go to jail. I don't want to be shut down. And Galileo was lucky. People before Galileo were put into the stake. That was the preferred method. Luckily, by the time Galileo came about, that wasn't in fashion anymore. The human mind needs freedom. Now, what is freedom? Freedom is another one of the words that we talk about a lot, but it's never really clearly defined. What's freedom? When we say freedom, what do we mean? The absence, how we define it is the absence of coercion, the absence of force, the absence of authority dictating to you what you should and shouldn't do. So freedom is the absence of coercion. What the mind needs, what human reason, what human rationale you need to know what to flourish, what to be successful is to be free from the authority whether the authority is the state, the church, whoever can wield power over you and dictate what you can and cannot think. That needs to be banned. That needs to be out. That's what freedom means, and that's what the human mind requires. So morality is that which is good for human life. Reason is what's necessary to succeed as a human being. Reason is good for reason to fully flourish, for reason to be fully efficacious. The mind must be free, free from coercion, free from force, free from authority. But when we come together with other people in a society, we're exposed to force. We're exposed to courage. We're exposed to people who want or pretend that they have authority over us who tell us what we can think and what we can't think, what we can do and what we can't do. We need a mechanism to protect us from those people. And to me that's what the role of government is. The role of government is to protect us from those who wield force, and coercion, and authority against us who would limit the scope of our ability to live, to think, and to act on our thoughts. And when you limit government to that, a government that does that better protects us from those who use force against us. That's capitalism. So capitalism is a system, a political, social, economic system that leaves individuals free, free of coercion to use their mind as they see fit to live their life, as they see fit to pursue their values that they believe are necessary for their own life. Capitalism is a system of inalienable rights. Rights, what do rights mean? Another one of those words. Rights are the, of freedoms, freedoms of action. Rights say you're not allowed to correspond to another. That's what rights say. So the right to life is the right to live your life as you see fit pursuing the values necessary for your survival without coercion. That's what the right to life means. Capitalism is a system of inalienable rights to write the right to life, liberty, property, and the preservatives. That's the essential characteristic of capitalism. It necessitates private property, and the role of the government is only to protect that private property and to protect our individual rights. In other words, our individual freedoms. Now, as you look at the history, the history of capitalism, what you see is, 250 years ago, how many people were, like, extremely poor? The U.N. and the United Nations defined extreme poverty. I think it's $3 a day or less. $3 a day or less. How many people in the world as a percentage do you think 250 years ago, before the declaration of independence, before we asserted this right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? How many people were poor, extremely poor? 99. And 98, somewhere between 95% to 98%. Almost everybody. Almost everybody lived up to $3 a day or less. Think about what that would mean to your life. Now, not only $3 a day or less. No electricity, no running water, and the most bizarre thing of all, no internet. That's what life was, right? $3 a day or less, you basically grew the food that you ate with no surplus. That was life. And it's been life for 100,000 years. And if you look at it, economists have looked, and estimated, you can't really do this accurately, but estimated, what was the income of a human being during the hunter-gatherer period and the early parts of agricultural civilization? It's basically somewhere between a dollar to $3 a day, and it stayed that way for 300,000, for 100,000 years. You were born with the same stuff you died with. Your children were born with the same stuff they died with. And they died young. What was life expectancy? In 1776, what was life expectancy in the West relatively advanced? What was life expectancy? Anybody? So, 35, probably 39 in the West, some places it was lower, but in the 30s, right, I'd be dead. You guys are middle-aged already. So, poor and short, that was human life. Up until about 1776 or there about. Up until this idea of human liberty and human freedom became popular. And when that idea became popular, when the government was relegated from kings and tribal leaders who dictated every aspect of our lives, when suddenly government was limited to just protecting our freedoms, protecting us from coercion. Now, granted, they didn't do a very consistent job at that, right? But to the extent that they did it, human well-being took off, exploded. We went from $3 a day to 100 times more today. Life expectancy, you guys are going to live well into your 90s. Maybe into triple digits. And it's not really 100 times more because if you think about the value of electricity, you can't. We don't have any way to measure that in dollar terms. Or the value of the internet. Or the value of running water. The value of sewage. So our lives are thousands of times better than they were before the capitalism. And indeed, I can't prove this because I'm going to go four minutes. But over the last, I'm sure some of this will come up, over the last 300 years, over the last 300 years, any society, no matter where, no matter who, that if practice capitalism just a little bit has done well, to the extent that you practice capitalism, to the extent that markets are free, to the extent that you leave people free to think and to act based on their thoughts, to that extent, wealth is created, people are prosperous, people are successful, life expectancy increases. And to the extent that you limit that, to the extent that you constrain people's ability to act and to think for themselves, to pursue their own values based on their own judgment, to that extent, people are poor, struggle, and often die. You've got a great illustration right now of what happens when you restrict people's freedoms in Venezuela where once again, as if we need more illustrations of this in history, when you collectivize something like farming and you abandon the idea of property rights, you abandon the idea of individual property rights, what happens? When you collectivize farming, people starve. That was true of Ukraine in the 1930s, it was true of China in the 1960s, and it's true of Venezuela in 2010. Collectives don't produce food. Without private property, there is no food production. So to the extent that we limit freedom, to the extent that we limit capitalism, to the extent that we reduce people's ability to produce what they want with their own means, with their own abilities, we get death, starvation, and poverty. And yet, particularly for your generation, socialism, which is in many respects the opposite of capitalism, is super popular these days. It's like everybody wants to starve. It's not funny, it's true. Because that's what you get, every country, every place in the world that has tried collectivization of anything, that has tried socialism to any extent. You get one extreme, you get the closer you get to socialism, the closer you get to starvation, the closer you get to capitalism, the closer you get to prosperity, and somehow we all want to starve because we all want to move in that direction towards socialism. And I think the reason for that is that we all grow up with a model code that is consistent with socialism. We're all taught that morality is something different than the way I described it. We're all taught, taught, that the fundamentally morality ethics is about serving others. It's about sacrifice. It's about being selfless. And socialism, socialism is very selfless. Everybody's expected to serve the community and not think of themselves. Sacrifice, socialism is great with sacrifice. Sacrifice, they're able to the need that's the principle of socialism. Our model code is not based on what's good for the individual human being because the individual doesn't matter. What matters are others. We all grow up with the idea of altruism, otherism, the sanctity, the virtue of other people, not oneself. Indeed many philosophers have told us that to the extent that you think about yourself and the benefit you will get from helping others to that extent you are not being model. Now, Iron Man challenges that. Iron Man rejects that. And I would encourage you all to read Iron Man and to read her books to kind of expand your thinking when it comes to ethics among many things. But Iron Man's views of ethics is what I started with. Whereas model is what is good for you as an individual to flourish and succeed in life. The purpose of morality is to give you a toolkit, a guidebook to being successful in life, to flourishing and advancing your own life. And if we all just care about our own life making our lives the best that they could be without sacrificing other people but not expecting other people, not expecting demanding or wanting other people to sacrifice to you either but just living your life fully based on your reason, based on your mind. If we all believed that then we wouldn't want Mother Government telling us what we can eat and what we can drink and what we can do and what we can do, how much we pay our employees what businesses we can start, what businesses we can't start who should be bailed out or shouldn't be bailed out we wouldn't want to make those decisions for ourselves. That's what capitalism requires at the end of the day. It requires immorality of individualism. It requires a morality a pursuit of your own happiness instead of a morality of sacrifice and deprivation. So to me the challenge in the world today and the whole challenge between capitalism and socialism or whatever you want to characterize, to conceptualize the struggles that we face politically, economically, socially are not about politics they're not about economic knowledge I mean the capitalist side won the economic knowledge battle a long time ago they're about ethics they're about the purpose of life they're about what is right and what is wrong what is good and what is evil and if you get the answers to those questions wrong then everything else is wrong you can't have good politics, you can't have good economics you certainly can't have a good society so I encourage you to rethink the most important issue to rethink is morality is what is your life about what is the purpose of your life economics, politics social fear will flow not the other way around Thank you all Thank you Mr. Brooks for that address at this point in the evening I'd like to invite my first student Maier in the evening, Shana Zuber of the stage Thank you so much for joining us It's a pleasure to have you Thank you, thanks for doing this Yeah, of course it's what we're here for Good So I want to start where you left off which is this conflict between a morality system premised on the virtue of selfishness as opposed to one premise on the idea of the collective What philosophically do you think makes this sort of objectivist morality system preferable to the one that you think underlies other economic systems? Well I think you start with a very basic simple question those who advocate that you should live for other people need to answer one question which is why Why should I live for other people? Why are other people more important than me? I think philosophically what underlies a morality of self-interest and selfishness is the idea that we have one life the idea that we're here that each one of us is an individual we can't eat for you and I can't think for you and I can't live for you I can live for myself though I can eat for myself and I can think for myself so we are metaphysically individuals and therefore the fundamental question that an individual faces is not what should I do to other people that's a question that comes late in philosophy the fundamental question that an individual faces is how do I live? because there's an option to live what's that? death so the fundamental alternative that every one of us faces in every decision we make in life is the decision between survival or not survival life or death to be or not to be a Shakespeare always gets to the real crux of the matter life is about to be or not to be and once you decide to be once you decide to live then the big question is how? and to me and this goes back really to the way Aristotle thought of ethics ethics is about answering that question for us how should we live? what are the principles? what are the principles that lead to life? we know what death requires but some of us know that some of us don't know it and therefore we live in that direction unconsciously or not on purpose but what are the principles that actually lead to successive life? that actually lead to survival survival as a human being and to me ethics as it should be is a science to discover the principles that lead to a good life and other people playing in that obviously it's important to be in a society and to engage with other people so why is there life not more important than mine? isn't the fundamental alternative that I face metaphysical alternative is my survival or not and I need to figure out how to survive and then how other people playing into my survival is an important issue but it's not the primary issue well one source that throughout the ages many people have turned to for meaning and for answering that question is religion and traditionally objective and takes a stare at against religion but some current streams see Justin that there might be a place for more spiritually oriented understandings of religion do you think there can be a place for faith within the tenets of objectiveism? no make that easy objectiveism is about reason objectiveism holds that the human means of survival the basic means of survival of human beings is reason faith is the opposite of reason faith is the negation of reason it says in this realm however you want to classify this realm in this realm facts don't matter evidence doesn't matter reality doesn't matter what matters is my feelings what somebody told me so I don't believe objectiveism doesn't believe any realm of human existence we should negate reason life is about figuring out the facts figuring out the truth and using one's reason to understand the world around us to the extent that one uses faith one is choosing to go against one's own survival so faith in my view is an anti is anti-human it's anti-life and it's bad for you it doesn't negate spirituality and I want to take that term away from the religion because I don't like the fact that they monopolize it the spirit is something that relates to consciousness and we're all conscious so it's non-material there are lots of things that are non-material emotions are non-material certainly when you listen to a beautiful piece of music that's a spiritual experience it's not a material experience so I don't think spirituality per se is an exclusive realm of religion or certainly not the exclusive realm of faith one can have spiritual values that are based on reason that are based on facts that are based on nature that don't relate to religion among the changes with respect to religion and some of these criticisms you made here you've also criticized the misuse of Iran's virtue of selfishness by people in Silicon Valley misunderstanding to be on what do you believe are the biggest misconceptions today about Iran's philosophy? well I think this is yourself she's going to spot me the biggest and most important one people think that when I'm talking about selfishness objectives and talk about selfishness it means do whatever you want whatever you feel like and it's the exact opposite Objectivism is about not doing what it feels like because often our feelings are not reality based are not fact based most of the time when you get into trouble and you think about it afterwards you realize you got into trouble because you acted on emotion not without thinking Objectivism holds that selfishness means using your mind in pursuit of your values thinking if you had to boil down Iran's ethics into one word it would be think think, think, think figure it out what should I do? my emotion tells me that cocaine is going to give me a really good hype but I know if I think about it I know the damage it can do I think everybody knows Bernie Madoff remember Bernie Madoff stole 63 billion dollars Bernie didn't sit down one day and say you know I want a lot of money so when I'm going to do it let me figure this out I want to live a good life, I want to be happy I want to live the best life that I can be as a human being so I'm going to steal money from my best friends that's how I'm going to do it right? crooks almost never do that they don't think it's part of the essence of criminals because they never think what did Bernie do? he sold piles of money and he felt I should have that and he took it he didn't think it through the consequences it would have on his life he didn't think through what kind of life he was going to lead as a consequence almost no crook ever does because if they did they'd discover what a miserable pathetic life they would have Bernie says today that he's happier in jail than he was before he was caught because just think about lying to your wife to your kids to all your friends to everybody and constantly having to worry about you got your life straight that you're not going to be caught not by the police because the police is so incompetent they never got Bernie made up but by your kids that's who ultimately got Bernie his son is the one who found out and schooled your life so the idea of selfishness guided by your mind to think it through I always tell people if you want to be selfish and I definitely encourage it it's hard work because it's hard work to figure out what's good for you what's really good for me over the span of a lifetime I don't know exactly what's going to happen tomorrow but I have to think what kind of principles should I follow that are going to make my life the best life that it can be for the next we're going to live 40 years for the next 40 years that's hard but that's the challenge of living it's figuring out what values you should pursue what principles should guide your life over a lifespan that's the challenge that's philosophy that's objectivism it's not about emotions I don't want to denigrate emotions but emotions are not tools of cognition these are making decisions emotions are the way we experience life they're fantastic I'm a passionate guy but I don't use my emotions to make decisions I always step back from them and think it through the example of Bernie Madoff I think is something that's prompted actually a lot of feelings that might be contrary to objectivism a lot of people have responded to those sorts of instances with a desire for regulation and in the past you've argued that regulation in things like the financial sector actually leads to cheating or more fraud what do you see as the mechanism by which increased regulation leads to cheating sure, well first let me say let me answer a slightly different question and I'll get back to this increased regulations makes it very difficult to catch cooks increased regulations increased regulation makes it very difficult to catch cooks for example Bernie Madoff so Bernie Madoff was doing this for a long time the SEC never caught it the regulators never caught it why? why did the SEC get it? indeed twice the SEC got a big report from a hedge fund manager who basically detailed exactly what Bernie Madoff was doing and why was fraud and why this was bad the SEC looked at it and investigated a little bit and ignored it in the end couldn't catch it why? because the SEC is so busy with people who are not cooks I mean there's so many regulations in finance there's so many things for the SEC to do who has time for cooks I mean I have to it's part of what I do I have a hedge fund I have to file 13Ds and I have compliance and the SEC will once in a while will ask for all of my emails and come into my office and check my filing system and I have investors who are 100 times smarter than any person at the SEC but somehow these investors need protection from me by these bureaucrats so the bureaucrats come in and they do all the stuff that's already done much better than the SEC ever could and they replicate it and they're busy looking at me and checking that I'm following the letter of the law rather than looking for Bernie Madoff I don't steal money Bernie Madoff did so leave me alone so regulations make governments so busy with the innocence that they never have a chance I mean one of the problems with regulations is that to some extent they make us all cooks so most regulations are written in such bizarre language most regulations are written in such a way that it's almost impossible to figure out exactly what they mean indeed regulatory agencies often distribute explanations like to have the regulations and then not have explanations and even administration might explain the regulations a little differently and after time you don't know if you're in accordance with the regulations or if you're not in accordance with the regulations but what the regulations do is they encourage people who know how to manipulate the system to enter the system they encourage the people who can get who can figure out how to take advantage of the regulations to enter those regulations again I'll give you this example I don't know you're too young S&L crisis, saving and loans crisis I think about the financial crisis 2008 I mean yeah you're too young for that as well I know but it's a wonderful reason so think about it this way if someone comes to a bunch of bankers and says the regulation is such that when you make money you get to keep it when you lose money will value up it literally is the regulation too big to fail which is government policy since 1984 so on the upside it's all yours on the downside will value up do you think what kind of person likes that what kind of person is attracted to an environment in which they can win on the upside and they guarantee you don't adopt it it's a certain mentality it's a certain type of person like Silicon Valley kids a lot of entrepreneurs you know failure is part of life it's not a bad thing and you don't want that guarantee you want to be living on the edge you want to have that thrill of it could go either way you want to benefit on the upside but you also want realistically you want to have reality judge you on the downside but there are certain people who like that government guarantee cronies schmoozes high risk takers sometimes crooks they used SNL prices because SNL prices gave people the same kind of incentive and you got a bunch of crooks that did the industry a bunch of new people came into the industry as soon as these incentives were put in place and they came and exploited this advantage they took on huge amounts of risk tried to pocket as much money in their pocket as quickly as possible and it all collapsed they walked away and the government bailed everybody out and to some extent that happened during the financial crisis if you were running a big bank on the upside everything was fine on the downside you could just walk away all the CEOs of the big banks walked away failed banks so regulations create bad incentives they create a motivation for particular types of people to enter the industry who can take advantage of these regulations and they make it almost impossible to capture anybody because there's so many regulations it's impossible to figure out who's the cook and who's the good guy and I'd say there are other regulations that are just in place to give politicians and bureaucrats power over us because we're always in violation of them I mean how many people in this room well I don't know you're too young for this but how many people in this room who file their own taxes actually know the tax code and my accountant doesn't really know the tax code I mean I'm sure I'm in violation of some provision of the tax code I'm sure all of you are it's so complex it's such a mess but it's a proper salary because they could always audit you and they'll always find something and they'll always go after you in the church right they want you to sin because then they can use guilt against you like if you go to the church and say I don't sin, I'm perfect then they have nothing on you they can't control you they need you to sin this is why original sin is such an important doctrine because original sin you don't even have to sin now you're sinful by your very existence so I got you you're guilty and you need me I told you they want you to violate the laws they want you to violate the regulations because if you do, they can control you so for the sake of time this is going to be my last question before we turn it over to the audience I want to go a little bit to foreign policy actually you previously criticized the doctrine of neoconservatism as failing to appropriately uphold the interests of American citizens given these perceived failures of neoconservatism what do you believe the underlying principles of American foreign policy should be well America first but please don't confuse that with Donald Trump because he's awful and he wouldn't know what America is and he certainly doesn't know what a place he is first would be it basically would be a foreign policy that's said that we do not intervene in other countries unless there's clearly an American interest at stake but it has to be a real interest because there's a whole school of foreign policy called the realists who define interests in such broad terms that they basically are just as interventionist as the neoconservatists so I don't believe the United States so again I believe that the goal of the American government so let's go with the fundamental the goal of the American government is to protect the lives and property of American citizens it should protect you individually foreign policy is that as with regard to other nations with regard to agents that are outside the United States so the foreign policy of the United States should be focused only on the protection of the lives and property of Americans vis-a-vis other countries vis-a-vis terrorists vis-a-vis people who are outside of the United States so our job is not to be the policeman of the world our job is not to solve every problem in the world, not to negotiate every peace treaty in the world, not to protect Europe not to protect South Korea not to protect Japan but to protect the lives and property of American citizens when the lives and property of American citizens are threatened then we need to protect them whether it's through diplomacy or whether it's through the use of our military but that's it I don't believe we should be a NATO because I don't think NATO protects the lives and property of Americans now, would any one of you volunteer to go and risk your life for the sake of Estonia but you're bound to maybe not you, maybe your kids, but somebody because if Russia invades Estonia tomorrow the United States is officially in war with Russia now, I like Estonia Estonia is great and I can't stand Russia Russia is terrible okay but would I send my kid to die in a war for the liberation of Estonia and my answer is no and if you can't look your son in the eye or daughter in the eye and say this is a war you should go fight then how did you send somebody else's child to go fight in the war so it has to be a real interest but if they're invading the United States they're flying airplanes into American buildings they're killing Americans and American soldiers all of the seas then there is a reason for American interval but short of that short of actually threatening the lives and property of Americans America should stay home we now have troops that are thinking 120 different countries there's no American interest that dictates 120 different countries self interest self interest what's good for us as Americans as individual Americans and again think about the world government it's to protect us that's it it's not to protect Israelis it's not to protect anybody it's to protect Americans if there was there was a big enemy out there like in World War II there were alliances to go and fight that big enemy because there's a threat to you but there is no enemy of that proportion in the world today that America America has the mightiest military force in human history in all of human history we don't have to protect the Europeans because then the Europeans can protect us we can protect ourselves we don't need allies to protect ourselves I think we waste huge amounts of resources of money, effort, time and human life in order to fight wars that are not in our self interest starting with Korea to Vietnam to pretty almost everywhere we fought since World War II there's been a war that was not fundamentally essentially in America's self interest thank you so much for answering my questions I now like to open it up to the audience if you have a question please raise your hand to all call on you how did altruism become so dominant in so many cultures and was it always so prevalent so how did altruism become so dominant in so many cultures it's a great question let me start with it hasn't always been dominant I think it has been pretty dominant in human history I think the one exception in terms of a culture that has since out anti altruism and didn't have altruism at all was Greece, ancient Greece ancient Greece is basically driven by a morality of individual human flourishing and figuring out what does it take to live the good life whether it's Plato or Aristotle or Socrates they're trying to figure it out they don't always get their answers white in my view or my man's view but that's the struggle it's always about how to take the individual and allow the individual to live the best life they can live and you could argue that Rome wasn't particularly altruistic but with those exceptions certainly since the rise of Christianity but let's go before Christianity why is altruism so dominant for Christianity I think it's dominant because there are political interests in altruism so we're in a tribe the last thing a tribal leader wants is for each individual to think for themselves and to act for themselves and to pursue their own values because then they might discover they don't need a leader they might discover that they can cope themselves and maybe they can choose their own leader rather than having a leader imposed on them so the tribal leader always has an incentive to tell you and this is true of every tribal leader every dictator, every authoritarian human history as an incentive to tell you don't live for yourself it's wrong to live for yourself and we'll get how we get away with that in a second don't live for yourself you must live for the tribe or you must live for the parliamentarian or you must live for the Aryan race or you must live for God but don't live for yourself and how do we know what the parliamentarian needs how do we know what the Aryan race needs how do we know what the tribe needs I'll tell you I, the tribe leader, will tell you that's what you need, because I'm the one who channels the spirit of the tribe, the spirit of the polytheism, the spirit of all your people, the spirit of God, and I will tell you what it needs. And therefore, just do what I tell you, be prepared to sacrifice for the tribe, and by the way, if you don't believe me, here's the witch doctor, and the witch doctor will tell you that I speak for the spirit world. I speak for the gods, and your job in life is to sacrifice. Your job is life is to live to the group, and this is how I control you. It goes back to what I said about religion. Religion is about control. It's about giving you some basic principles to live by, but also to control you. So there's always been a sense of, and particularly, people have always been ignorant of how to live, right? They've always been, we've always needed principles. And before the discovery of logic, before the discovery of reason, before the discovery of what it is that we do as human beings, we did it without knowing what it was. And the real discovery of all these things is ancient Greece. It's the first Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, basically an old Greek philosophy. But before that, we still needed principles. We still needed ideas on how to live. We looked to authorities to tell us what they were. And that's why religion was so prevalent. That's why tribal leaders and kings and queens were so relevant. And then Greece comes about and challenges all that. Unfortunately, that doesn't survive for very long, and I don't know the historical reasons why Greece doesn't survive. But then you see a rise of the kind of universalist religion, which is based on from its foundation early on. It's based on the idea of sacrifice. Jesus on a cross, dying not for sins he committed, dying for your sins and ultimate sacrifice, dying a horrible, painful death because you sinned. So you're guilty. He's pure. That's the model in Jordan Peterson's term. He's the superhero. And you must live up to that. And now I have you. I have control over you. And it's no accident that Christianity really becomes a dominant religion when. When does Christianity really coalesce around one doctrine and around a clear methodology and then becomes a dominant religion in the world? Under the Romans with Constantine. He gets committee. He says, we need one doctrine. We can't have all these little Christian sects fighting over what's true and what's not. I want one doctrine. And they come back with one doctrine. They kill off all the sects that don't believe in this one doctrine. And then onward we march because what the Romans realized at that point in the decline of their civilization is that they needed the witch doctor in order to rule. And Christianity served as the witch doctor. And altruism is the mechanism of the witch doctor to control our spirits, to control our behavior. And they do it through guilt. They do it through the fact that they can tell us what the truth is. They, particularly Catholicism, they get reveal truth. And that gets conveyed to us through a pope or through a philosopher king. And it's no accident that Christianity is very neoplatonic. So Catholicism originally was very neoplatonic. I think there's a little talk for one more question. I think so. Oh, I thought we were going to talk about it. So really, what do you think you should talk more about? It seems like academic philosophers are often pretty critical to activism. And what do you think their merits of their attitudes are, like, what is wrong with them? I think there's a little question. I mean, academic philosophers are, to the extent that they even interact or to the extent that they even acknowledge objectivism are very critical of objectivism, I think, for a number of reasons. The reason number one is, objectivism is not in their language. Academic philosophy has a particular way of looking at the world, of engaging in the world, particularly analytical philosophy and modern philosophy. I mean, when you hear a philosopher's actually taught philosophy, it's like a foreign language almost, because they use terms in very different ways. And I mean that, of course, conveyed her philosophy in very, you know, in terms that anybody could understand. You read the virtue of selfishness. And you really understand it. I think you have to read it a few times. But it's not because the words are difficult. It's not because she's using content in a difficult way. It's just because the ideas are hard, and you have to integrate them. So first, it's a different language, and they have to bridge. They have to figure out, what is she actually talking about? And sometimes, for example, today in philosophy, there's something called virtue ethics. And the virtue ethicists, ethicists, are starting to look at, I read, and take a little seriously, because some of them are trying to bridge that language gap, and they see her maybe as a virtue ethicist in some ways. So I think that's one big challenge. The second is that she challenges everything. She doesn't just challenge the literature. She doesn't say, oh, well, I've got this idea in ethics. Maybe you can look at it. No, she's a system builder. She has a unique metaphysics, a unique epistemology, a unique ethics, a unique politics, and a unique aesthetic. And she integrates them all into all in one system. And in many respects, they've only been two or three other, maybe three other system builders in all the philosophical history, Plato, Aristotle, and Immanuel Kant. I mean, almost all of the philosophers kind of were specialistic in a particular area, didn't do much in any other area. And it's hard for them to grasp that, and particularly given that she's challenging them on every single one of those ideas. So I think it's just too challenging, too fast, too new, and it overturns too much. And the fact is that almost all philosophers today are really from one tradition, which is the continental French-German tradition of doing philosophy in a particular way. I mean, it's not like there are a lot of philosophers out there today who are like, I would like to make philosophers. Like Locke and Hume, or they think. I mean, there are a few, but they're not many. Most of them are, you know, Kant, Hegel Schruppen, how Nietzsche, Marx, whatever, that kind of line of philosophers. And it may be the French, you know, the postmodernist or whatever, that's not being philosophy. But, you know, that line of thinking, and that line of thinking in every respect, on every issue, is the opposite of I'm there. And it's just, they don't want to deal with it, they can't deal with it, they don't have the tools for it. It's really going to require a rethinking of the profession, you know, and I think it's starting. So I think the retroethesis, for example, of returning to Aristotle, which I give in ethics, rather than a Kantian, Hegelian view of ethics, right? So they're going back to Aristotle. I think you're seeing even a little bit in some discussions in epistemology where they're rediscovering reason. But it's really hard to rediscover reason when so many philosophers today don't believe in free world. And if you don't have free world, what are we reasoning about? I mean, what? So there are a lot of problems in humanity broadly. I think IBM provides a solution to, but they're closed off to it because it's so radical. It's so different. And then I think the politics alienates them as well. So philosophers tend to be of a political, tend to be of a leftist political bench. The ones that are on the right tend to be religious. The ones on the left tend to be leftist. And therefore, the radicalism of capitalism is rejected by those on the left. And the advocacy, or atheism is rejected by those who tend to be conservative or religious. So it's hard to find a constituency that's open to all ideas. I'm in the back room. So we'll make these the last two questions. So like that. Yeah. Are there any ways for any people because you know these thoughts? But then if the whole purpose of morality is to have the best life that you want to have, then what is the point of your treatment system? To teach you how to do it. To teach you, right? Well, why aren't the people teaching them? What's that? Why aren't the teachers teaching them? Why am I? Okay, so because we love teaching. I mean, I don't do it, I don't do it because I care that much about you. I mean, I do, but I do because you're a human being because you produce values and I benefit from the values you produce. And if I lived in a world where everybody was that egoist, then my life would be a thousand times better. But I also do it because I love the process of teaching, the process of explaining, the process of coming up with new ways in which to explain ideas. That is an amazing thing, but I don't do it out of sacrifice. Do I look like I'm suffering up here? I mean, so the fact that somebody's teaching doesn't make them an altruist. I'm a trader, so I teach because I think I'm gonna get something back, right? Whether it's your, I see a light go on, like, oh, that was interesting. I never heard that in one of my students. That makes my day. When I see somebody go, huh, that's it. Because what I'm trying to do is get you to think. I know I'm not convincing anybody of everything because that would be ridiculous. You can't convince anybody of anything. They have to think it through. But if I created a little bit of cognitive dissonance, if I intrigued any of you to go look at these ideas a little further, if I challenged the belief that you've had and you just said to yourself, huh, I never thought of it that way, let me think about this some more, then I've done my job. That's the reward that I get, right? That's my reward in doing that. And that's the fun. I mean, why does Steve Jobs go and create an iPhone? Does he do it because he cares about me? No, I mean, he did it because he loves doing stuff like this. He loves the process, he loves the challenge. He loves, and then when somebody uses it and enjoys it, he goes, yeah, I did that, right? And if somebody changes their mind, I go, yeah, I did that. That's cool. So people teach because they love teaching. And the teachers who don't love teaching, give me up, the teachers who don't love teaching, keep them away from my kids, right? Keep them away from your kids. So it's a profession like any others. Some people play music, why do they play music? Because they care about the listeners, not because they love playing music. Yeah, the listeners, the sponsors of the listeners is part of that level of playing music, but it's not. Other people that is driving them, it's their own passion and their own love. So I think everybody should pursue their own self-interest, teachers, students, and everybody, and people need to learn how to pursue their self-interest. I have a strong incentive to try to teach that because I want you to be as good as you can be. Because if you're as good as you can be, you'll produce values that I would benefit from. The world does not a zero-sum game. The world is an additive. It's a wing-wing. It's full, and this is the thing about your generation is so pessimistic, that the world's gonna end and everything's crummy and you're being exploited and bad stuff's happening. No, the world is this additive. Every time somebody produces something, my life is a little better off. Every company out there that produces a profit, my life is better off. Because they can only produce a profit if they're making stuff that benefits people. So it's additive. So if you live a better life, it adds to my life. First of all, where are you at that time? I think you was at the end. Okay, cool. First of all, thank you for coming to speak. It's been a pleasure listening to you. I'm just curious to hear what you would think. I've heard veterans and obviously other politicians talking about foreign policy as far as we go there so they don't come here. I'd just like to hear your thoughts on that. I'm also doing that if it worked and if they knew what they were doing. So, but you have to be careful what does that mean? So first you have to understand why they're coming. And so first you have to understand motivation. And then if you have to go over there to destroy their motivation, then yeah, if you do that but you don't go over there to bring democracy to the Iraqi people. I mean, how did that work out? Not for the Iraqis and not for us. I think in the long run. And history will be the judge of the long run here. But I don't want to get into a long discussion of foreign policy, but the essence is yeah, if I know that there's a training camp of terrorists in Saudi Arabia or Yemen or wherever and they are planning and attacking the United States, then you go there and you destroy it before they attack you. You don't have to bring democracy to the world in order to prevent people from attacking you. All you have to make them is scared enough of your response if they do attack you, for example. And they won't attack you anymore. Thank you so much for answering your question. Sure, no.