 What motivates altruists like my favorite Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? She bragged about taking a victory for killing 40,000 Amazon jobs. Is nihilistic envy the primary force driving her? I mean, I mean, I'll take a shot at this. You know, I don't think so. I mean, there's suddenly, I think an element of nihilistic envy. But there is the issue of she believes she's doing good. She believes she's being moral. She believes she's being just. So it wasn't that she killed 40,000 Amazon jobs for the sake of killing 40,000 Amazon jobs. She has a whole rationalization around this. The evil of gentrification. The fact that poor people would be crowded out of those neighborhoods in the Bronx or in Brooklyn or whatever. Where Amazon was going to put its headquarters. The fact that there were no transportation solutions. The fact that this was polluting or whatever, whatever the excuse is, right? But there were rationalizations that all come together as I'm trying to help the poor. I'm trying to help. And you know what? We don't need more jobs in New York. We've got enough jobs in New York. There's no shortage of jobs in New York. And I am the central planner trying to guide the economy to be better, to be cleaner, to be more energy efficient and to help poor people. And that's how she holds it. She doesn't hold it as and, you know, I want to destroy. I want to kill. I want to, I hate Amazon. No, she holds it as I've been taught all my life and my responsibility is to help the needy. And the needy here is not Amazon. Amazon's rich. I don't need to help Amazon. And the needy is not the people who are going to work for Amazon because it was the headquarters. They were mostly white collar jobs. The needy are the poor people and they're going to be crowded out of the neighborhood. The real estate price is going to go up. And they're going to be traffic jams everywhere and they won't be able to get to their jobs, even if they have jobs. And it's just going to be a disaster for New York City. And plus all the tax breaks that Amazon got in order to get to 40,000 jobs, she would say, wait a minute, those taxes would go to much better causes within you. We could do something with the money. I mean, I don't want to give it to Amazon. So there are massive rationalizations that people do. And not everything is motivated by hate. It could be motivated by a wrong view of morality. That is, they get economics and they get morality wrong. And I'm not saying she's innocent because I don't think she's innocent. I think she bears moral blame for getting it all wrong because she's, she should be aware enough to see the disastrous consequences of her actions. But I don't think it's, I don't think you jump from, oh, this is anti-femal care and it looks like it's going to destroy stuff to therefore the nihilists. No, she's just an altruist. She's just, she's just a collectivist. She's just a central planner, like all of them. And the motivation is I want to do good. And good is defined in this way I describe. And almost nobody holds in their mind, I want to destroy. So that might be an emotional motivation, but very few are truly nihilistic. And I don't get the sense that what drives AOC is nihilism per se. I think she takes her altruism semi-seriously, as compared to other people who don't take it seriously at all. She takes it semi-seriously. And that's why nobody can argue against her because You don't see it as the sort of nihilistic, egalitarian strain in her. I mean, not yet. I mean, it could be that it is, it could be what drives her as envy, but I haven't seen a real envy, a real viciousness, a real... So Warren would be more that access or? I mean, again, I don't know because, you know, motivations are very hard to ascribe to people. One is I think a power luster. I think she's always been a power luster. I think she... So there's a certain nihilism there. In any power-lusting person, there's a certain nihilism because what's the power for? But I think she'd love to control people's lives. I think she enjoys being really, really smart and thinking that she can control things. No, I mean, I mean, there were certain aspects of Obama that were nihilistic, although I never thought he completely moved all the way. So this is the difference in Leonard Peacock's analysis of the D1s and the D2s. I still think most of these people are D1s. I mean, Bernie is a D2. Bernie just wants to see the world burn. I mean, that's my sense of him. And there are others that want to see the world burn. You know, they want Venezuela. Emotionally, that's really what's driving them, is seeing the world burn. But luckily, I still think that that's a minority. I don't think Silicon Valley leftists are nihilists. They're just altruists and postmodernists and they take this shit seriously. And they shouldn't. And I think it's evil for them to do so because they should know better. So they're evading, right? So there's moral blame to be had. Do you believe in... Equate them with nihilists. With AOC, do you believe in the conspiracy theory that there's someone behind her and she's just sort of a puppet in a certain way? So maybe she doesn't come across to you as nihilistic, but... There's somebody behind everybody, right? So behind Trump is Steve Bannon's lackey, who's still in the White House. I forget his name, who survived all the purges and is still there at the White House. You know, advising Trump and is one of his closest advisors. Behind, you know, behind every one of these, behind Bernie Sanders, there are all the intellectuals at the universities who hold these leftist ideas. Are there people behind AOC that are helping her out and providing... Of course, of course. Stephen Miller is the guy, Steve Miller is the guy in the Trump administration. But of course there's somebody behind AOC in a sense of some intellectual guru, some financial people within the Democratic Party that are helping her to the system. I mean, that's true of any politician. These politicians are not self-contained, right? They don't just rise up with all the knowledge. They have intellectual influences. They have people who advise them. They have financial influences. But I don't think it's a conspiracy theory. I think, you know, big deal. They're influenced by other people. And so I don't think there's some ominous thing. Now are some of the intellectuals who feed people this stuff nihilist? Yeah, probably. Suddenly, I'd say the nihilism in AOC is much more around, and this is generally... Okay, so yeah. So there is a nihilistic streak. But I think the nihilistic streak is much more around identity politics, much more around the race, gender, those areas I think are much more vicious and much more nasty than some of the economic issues, which I think are just plain vanilla, left of center. I mean, she says, Europe has universal healthcare. Why shouldn't we? I mean, is that nihilistic to say? Is Europe crumbling? Is Europe burning? Is the stories we're getting from Europe? Never mind. Deeper analysis. People dying in the streets? No, they're not dying in the streets. The healthcare system seems to work. And all the stories are, it's fine. It's actually supposedly... I mean, this is a mythology, but supposedly better and cheaper than ours. So she's just advocating what everybody on the left is advocating for. She just does it in a more colorful, and I think in an more effective way than everybody else. So the nihilists are more the professors at the universities. The nihilists are more the Norm Chomsky's, the... Well, they're more self-conscious, certainly, right? And then... I don't know if they have agendas more fundamentally destructive. They want to centralize control of everything because what does identity politics mean? They want to redistribute wealth in all kinds of sophisticated ways. They want to be able to monitor and control everything that you do. They're the real authoritarian threat behind it all. AOC is one more incremental step in that direction. And she's dangerous because she's leading in that direction. I think she's effective at leading in that direction. But I don't think she is. And just like Trump is, I don't think he's an all-out authoritarian, even though he's moving the country in that direction. I don't think AOC is an all-out authoritarian, nihilist who's moving us, but she is moving us in that direction. Yeah. Because if you're not for freedom, you're for more control. And therefore you're going to go in that direction because controls breed further control. I want to make sure I understand you, Ms. Rand. Why is it so... I'm still not quite sure why you're so harsh on those who would sacrifice for other people. Because I look at them. Just look at them. Because they are... They don't hesitate to sacrifice whole nations. Look at Russia. Communism is based on altruism. Look at Nazi Germany. The Nazis were more explicit than even the Russians in preaching self-sacrifice and altruism. And self-sacrifice for the state, for the folk, the people. Every dictatorship is based on altruism. Now you can't fight it by mirroring saying, it's a difference of opinion. It's a difference of life and death. So your view is that if we all became more comfortable, with our natural tendencies, that is to say selfishness, there would be less horror, less war, less Hitler. There wouldn't be any. So with the more selfish we are, the more tranquil and peaceful the world in which we live? And more benevolent toward other people, if we're rationally selfish. By that I mean a selfishness which can justify once every action rationally, not the kind of win-worship, as I call it, which consists of just indulging your own desires and urges of the moment, and there is no innate natural idea, you know. There isn't, huh? No. Well, I have a lot of innate tendencies. You think they're innate. You know what I would say? Check your premises. Check my premises? Yeah. Check the basic ideas behind any feelings that you might feel at the moment, and you'll see that your feeling comes from your premises. Good or bad, but they're held subconsciously, and they will direct your feelings, and you will think it's innate, but it isn't. How do you avoid? Let's take your thesis then and accept it. Now I'm going to be selfish. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to be real talented and charismatic, and I'm going to develop a lot of wealth, and I'm going to have a lot of money and a lot of banks, and pretty soon nobody's going to be able to compete with me because I've already purchased all my competitors. And now I have dictatorial power over people, and I can name the price of bacon or price of oil or whatever it is, the commodity I'm selling. You know, I agree with you that you're very talented and you could accomplish a great deal and already have, but you're talking about the impossible. In a free society, nobody can become a monopolist or a dictator. The system itself, the free market, will destroy you.