 This is usually the program where Web Video meets the issues. Tonight, a special edition. A debate on the question, what is government's proper role in our lives? It is part of a series called First Principles, sponsored by the Ein Rand Institute, which works to acquaint young people with the ideas of rational self-interest, individual rights, and laissez-faire capitalism. Also, Demos is a co-sponsor. They are the Advocacy and Policy Research Institute, which publishes the liberal magazine, The American Prospect. WNYC's interactive political website, it'safreecountry.org, is co-sponsor as well. The First Principles series tries to focus not on the issues themselves as much as on the principles, the core beliefs behind our positions on issues, from health reform to war. In watching this, I urge you to be open to the good possibility that both sides in this debate care about people and society. The debate, which I was invited to moderate, took place on March 10th at the Skirball Center for the Performing Arts here in New York City. As you will hear, it drew a crowd with a range of views. We have edited a live program down to one hour. Please welcome our debaters to the stage. Come on out, guys. Miles Rappaport has been president of Demos since 2001. Prior to that, he spent 15 years in Connecticut politics. He served for 10 years in the legislature and was Connecticut Secretary of State from 95 to 98. In that office, he was an energetic advocate for a democracy with efforts for voter registration, campaign finance reform, and two unique reports on the state of democracy in Connecticut. Dr. Yaron Brooke is a prominent advocate for objectivism, the philosophy of Rand and president of the Rand Institute. His talk, Why Conservatives Are Anti-Business, challenges the common notion that conservatives are allies of business and capitalism. He was born and raised in Israel. In 1987, he moved to the United States, became an American citizen in 2003. In 98, he co-founded a financial advisory firm, BH Equity Research, at which he is presently managing director and chairman. And he is co-author of the book, Neo-Conservatism and Obituary for an Idea. The only book I know that has been reviewed positively by both Tom Hartman from Air America and Glenn Beck. Please again, welcome Miles and Yaron. So, we didn't toss a coin, but by consensus. So it's a good start. We decided that Miles Rappaport will go first, Miles. I also think this is a really important moment to be having this debate. I think we are entering a new period in modern American political history, dating back to World War II. I think between World War II and probably the mid-1970s, there was a kind of a liberal consensus that included support for expansion by corporations, a strong role for unions, an active role for government, and a belief that together, all those parts of society could really solve problems. I think since 1980, the ideas of Ronald Reagan have in general been the dominant ideas to reduce taxes, reduce the size and scope of government, more power, and give more power to the free market. From my point of view, those ideas applied in serious governance have driven the country into a ditch and almost off a cliff. But I think right now, we are entering a new period and the character of that period is not yet defined. We're at a moment where fundamental decisions about our country's direction need to be made, and at a moment like this, it's critically important for us to understand and articulate our first principles. At Demos, we're clear on what those first principles are. We want a society and an economy where economic growth is encouraged, where economic opportunity and the benefits of economic growth are widely shared, where the economic insecurity that so many people in the middle class are experiencing is lessened, and where economic inequality, now at its highest level since 1928 and perhaps since 1913, is reduced. We also want a democracy where everyone is encouraged to participate, where barriers to participation are lowered and we have high levels of registration and voting, high levels of civic and community engagement, and where all voices are heard and none are drowned out by the power of money. In order to have that kind of economy and that kind of democracy, we believe that we need a strong, robust public sector with the ability to solve problems, plan for the future, create and maintain the public structures and fair rules of the road that all of us, businesses, individuals, and communities need in order to succeed. At Demos, we believe in that, we're working toward it, and we're prepared to argue for it. It is possible, by the way, to have this debate at too high of a philosophical level, divorced from the real decisions and the real public debates. So I think we have to do both. I think we have to argue it based on our first principles and also as relevant to the public debates that we're having. I think our principles need to be grounded in the reality of how they're applied and in the historical and philosophical underpinnings. And for us, we believe ours do. Philosophically, Demos's views derive from the earliest writings on democratic society when the notion of a social contract was created. In order to have a community or a society, individuals voluntarily surrender some of their absolute ability to do whatever they please in return for a common entity that creates a common good and allows thereby each of them to live in a better and more fulfilling way. Jean Jacques Rousseau, one of the people who wrote most compellingly on this, says, finally, each man in giving to himself, in giving himself to all gives himself to nobody. And as there is not associate over whom he does not acquire the same rights as he yields others over himself, he gains an equivalent for everything he loses and an increase in force for the preservation of what he has. The passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces a very remarkable change in man by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct and giving his actions the morality they had formerly lacked. We fundamentally believe that the first thing that we need to do is envision the kind of society that we want to create together and for which we're willing to enter into a common purpose. Again, for Demos, some of the aspects of this society, the kind of society we wanna see are clear from early life where options for education and good health and college and a future that has possibilities in it for accessible and affordable healthcare, the opportunity to work and get fair wages, the need for safe communities and decent housing, the rule of law and physical security, and for old age, accessible, affordable healthcare, a secure retirement and freedom from destitution. In short, a society where each individual not only has the negative freedom from coercion but also a positive, affirmative freedom to truly achieve the pursuit of happiness with assistance from a supportive community. In pursuit of this kind of society, there are two different but very complementary roles that government needs to play. The first is to protect individuals as they pursue their lives and happiness. And I think in and around this area is probably where Eurone and I have the most areas of agreement and some of what was in the poll. But in addition, we don't want people mugging each other or stealing from each other and we all know that we need cops on the beat. On that we're agreed. But there are many other things that I would argue are interferences with the ability to pursue happiness. When a mortgage broker persuades an unsuspecting home buyer to take a mortgage he knows will fail and is paid on the basis of the spread between what that mortgage holder could get in a mortgage and what he was able to persuade them to buy, we need a government agency that's prepared to stop that. When you're taking my time, don't do that. When a company dumps toxic waste into a river or the ground behind a plant because it is cheaper to do that than to safely dispose of it, we need an EPA to stop that. When a company maintains unsafe factories or mines because worker protections are too costly and dozens of miners die unnecessarily, we need a government agency, an OSHA or a minerals management service with the strength and integrity to stop it. When workers are intimidated from organizing and speaking up on their own behalf in the workplace, we need an NLRB that works to ensure fair elections. When banks and credit card companies offer deceptive commons to trap consumers in predatory contracts with interest rates that can be as high as 30%, we sure as heck need a consumer financial protection bureau to stop it and thank God we're now gonna get one. Finally, I'll go one step further. When we have an economy that produces the chasm of inequality we have now with a tiny group of people on the top having huge jumps in their income over the last 20 years while the bottom 80% of the population have had an income that is stagnant or has declined, we need a government that will use its taxing power to even the scale just a little bit. The second critical role for government in addition to protecting people against those kinds of negative consequences of unrestrained capitalism, we need a second role for government which is an affirmative role, which is to create the conditions for people to have an improved quality of life, a chance for the real pursuit of happiness. Here a historical point. The crowning achievement of America in the post-World War II period was the creation of a growing, thriving, rising middle class. One can argue it was in fact the most potent reason for the fact that the United States won the Cold War persuading people around the world that our system could really produce for everyone. But this was not an accident and certainly not the result of an unfettered free market. There were enormous government investments and government policies that set out to create a middle class and they succeeded. There were major investments in computer technology. While Al Gore did not invent the internet, the government sure as heck did. The Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Defense Department created the internet and allowed all of the commercial development of it to emanate from that. There were massive investments in the American University System, including public universities that made the American University System the envy of the world. If we don't undermine it in the next few years by budgetary neglect. And there were investments in people directly. The GI Bill allowed millions of returning veterans to go to college and buy a home. Pell grants and loans, which used to cover 70% of a college education and now cover only 30%, made college education affordable to a whole generation of students who didn't come from wealthy backgrounds. Social security and Medicare, far from being welfare programs for the undeserved, made a base income in healthcare, a basic right for millions of elderly people whose lives would have been impossible otherwise. To a far greater degree than we do today, our nation adopted the idea of a real social contract. Productivity increased, incomes of working people increased along with them. Labor unions insured fair treatment of workers on the job. The middle class grew and inequality decreased all up through the mid 1970s. And it is inescapable that it was governed policy, governed investment, and a willingness not to be ruled by the private sector alone is what made that creation of a middle class possible. And for the last two years, 30 years, we have been going backwards and the middle class is truly an endangered species today. As a country today, we have a choice to make. In the name of lower taxes, limited government, and increased freedom for the free market, we are in danger of destroying the middle class and shredding the social contract that made us so successful. We risked becoming a country with a small sliver of highly successful people, the plutonomy, as Goldman Sachs describes it, and a substantial majority of people with low education, inadequate healthcare, insecure incomes, and unnervingly dim prospects for old age, and an income distribution that looks a lot like a poor third world country. The question I have is whether that is the future we want for ourselves, and if the answer is no, then we have to have a government as efficient, as honest, as thoughtfully structured as we can make it, but a government that has the power, the resources, and the public support it needs to do its job. That's the path that we at Demos want to argue for, and I believe in substance, the people of this country agree, so let's get on with it. And you're on, Brooke. As Brian mentioned, I immigrated to this country. I came here from Israel. Why? What is it that makes this country special? What is it that makes this country different? What is it that I identified as a reason to come to this country? Well, I think you have to go back to the source. You have to go back to the founding of this country, because the founding is not an accident. The founding is a real revolution. It's not just a revolution of arms, but the founding of this country is a fundamental, historical, moral, political revolution, and ideological revolution. The founders following from the work of John Locke and the Scottish and English Enlightenment, the founding fathers identified a principle. A principle that said, that asked, the question was, who does your life belong to? Who does the individual's life belong to? And the answer, historically, forever, really, had always been, your life belongs to the tribe, it belongs to the king, it belongs to the state, it belongs to the pope, it belongs to some group outside of the individual. And both the Enlightenment thinkers, culminating with the founders, said, no, that's not true. Your life belongs to you. It belongs to you morally, and it belongs to you politically. So they rejected the notion of collectivism. They rejected the notion that you as an individual, owe your primary duty to some entity external of you. And they said, you have a right to pursue your own life, to make the most of your life, to pursue your happiness, not maximize social utility, it's not in the declaration. It's not to sacrifice to your neighbor, but to live your life. And that is the revolution. That's what makes America different than any other country and any other society. It's just founded on a moral principle, the principle of individualism, the principle that says that your life is yours to be lived, to pursue the values that you think are good for you. Now, what does this apply for government? Well, if your life belongs to you, then what role does the government have? And again, I think the Enlightenment and Rand further develops this notion that the one thing, the one impediment to rational, to the rational individual, to the individual guided by reason, to pursue his own values, to pursue his own happiness, to pursue his own life, the one barrier to that is forces, the initiation of forces, the fist, is the gun, is the fraudsters, the crook, is the criminal. And government's role is to stop those people, to protect us from the initiation of force, to allow us to be free, to allow us to pursue those values necessary for our survival, for our existence, for our happiness, for our success. And the concept that identifies both these notions is the concept of individual rights. It's the idea that government is there to protect individual rights, to protect the right of individuals to pursue their life, to protect it from the use of force, from the use of force by his neighbor, from the use of force of other people within society. And that's it. It's to protect your moral right to live your life as you rationally see fit, to pursue your values. Now, we have to recognize here that government is force. Government is a gun, always has been. Everything government does, it doesn't seem government in a debate like this, the difference between government and a business, is that government has a gun. If you don't do what government says, you go to jail. Somebody shows up with a badge and a gun and drags you off to jail. That's the essential nature of government. And the founders understood that what we need to do with government is, yeah, it's about force, but that force should only be used because of the, if you will, the evil nature of the initiation of force, that the harmful effects of forcing people to do things they don't wanna do. Government should only use that force as a retaliator, as a protector, as a defender of rights. And never use that force in initiation. So government should have a police force that protects us from common criminals. It should have a military in order to protect us from foreign invasion. And it should have a judiciary to arbitrarily arbitrate disputes that might arise and to dish out justice as a follow-on to the police powers. But that's it. In, as an entity of retaliatory force, that's all it needs to do. And indeed, if it does anything else, then it is moving from using force as a retaliator to using force as an initiator of that force. And Miles gave us a long list of examples where government will use, he would advocate, for government to use force in order to provide the kind of services, the kind of products, the kind of goodies that he believes government should provide. So government will tell us what kind of mortgage contracts okay for us to engage in. We're not free to go in and negotiate whatever we think we might be mistaken, we might be right, we might be wrong. But assuming fraud is out of this, because I think we both agree that fraud is a violation of rights, fraud is a form of force. We are not, according to, according to the argument made, we're not free to negotiate whatever makes sense in terms of a mortgage. Government is gonna tell us what mortgage to have and what does it mean when government tells us what mortgage we're gonna have. It means government is gonna force us. And it means that if we don't do exactly what government's gonna say, we're gonna be dragged off to somewhere. The gun comes out, government is force. How are we gonna get this greater equality of wealth? Well, some people who produce wealth, somebody's gonna show up at their door with the equivalent of a gun and some of their wealth is gonna be taken from them by force and given to somebody else, force. And how do we justify all this use of force? And you can go healthcare and across, how do we justify this use of force? Well, we justify it by saying the majority wants it. 51% voted to take from this guy, take from Joe and give to Sam. So theft, we all agree, is bad. Unless, somehow magically, by voting, we make it okay. But I would argue that initiation of force and theft are bad. No matter if it's done by an individual, as Miles said, you're just taking up time. No matter whether it's done by the individual or whether it's done by the mafia or whether it's done by democratic vote. You know, we all, in this debate, is a testament to free speech and the idea of free speech and very, very opposing points of view. But in democratic Athens, right, when Socrates did to confront the youth of Athens with ideas that were challenging, democracy, the elders of Athens got together and voted. And 51, 52, who knows what percent. But a majority, a clear majority, decided to silence Socrates by killing him. That's what majority rule, that's what happens when you allow force. When you allow the initiation of force by the group over the individual, then a case like Socrates is going to happen. And indeed, not, maybe not so much in free speech today in America, but it's certainly in terms of property, certainly in terms of most of our liberties that is exactly what's happening today. So we do, I agree with Miles, we do face a crossroads. I disagree with the historical analysis leading to the crossroads, but we certainly seem to be facing a crossroads today. And the question I think is, do we want a government that is coercive, or do we want a government that is protective of our rights? Thank you. So, Yaron, to follow up on what you were just saying about the force of majority rule, would you say that as a matter of first principles for you, individual sovereignty trumps democracy? Is democracy a first principle for you in some way? No, but let me define, let me clear what I mean by democracy. If what we mean by democracy is majority rule, then no, and indeed I think here, I agree with Madison and Jefferson who very much opposed democracy and wrote extensively on its dangers. I believe in a strong constitution, a republic with a constitution where the rights, each individual's rights cannot be violated no matter what the majority says. So you write to property, you should be able to do whatever you want with the property, no matter what your neighbors think, no matter how much they vote. The same would be true of speech, the same would be true of all individual rights. So yes, those individual rights supersede democracy. I think that was the basis on which this country was founded. This was not founded as a democracy, this was founded as a constitution-based, rights-respecting republic. And I agree with the founders on that. Miles, go ahead and respond. I'll have to respond. I'm a little loathe to try to make arguments that stand or fall on whether some piece of what the founders have written is to your liking because the founders had many, many disagreements. The Declaration of Independence was originally supposed to be life, liberty, and property, but it ended up as life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. I would argue that the distinction between those two things is an indicator that there is a more affirmative approach to the idea of government that was present among the founders as well. The preambulant constitution, just to take a document at random, said that government's purpose, I want you to compare this to what your own just said was government's purpose. Government's purpose is to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. Now, that sounds like a pretty big job to me if you're really gonna try to do it all. And I think the founders understood that there was a lot more to making a country work and to making a society work and to allow people to pursue happiness than simply protecting them from individualized force against each other. And to bring it to the modern day, I guess I wanna go back a little bit to the point I made before. The imagery that the only thing that one ought to be prevented from doing is doing physical harm or fraud harm, which is a very broad term to other people, it's a very narrow view. I think there are many, many other elements in our culture, in our society, in our economy that do harm to people. And therefore it is the responsibility of government, whether that harm is poverty, whether that harm is sickness, whether that harm is unequal access to education, it is the responsibility of government in creating a more perfect union, in promoting the general welfare to do something about that and not to sit back and say, well, that's how the free market has distributed happiness. So we're just gonna allow that to happen. I think it's the government role to make sure that people have a genuine ability to pursue happiness, and that means everybody, not just the people on the top. Your Honor, I just wanna follow up on your notion that democracy is not a first principle, because for a lot of people, they're gonna think you went off the rails completely already. Democracy is not a first principle. I mean, I know what you said about individuals, but how do we get to a society in the modern day with broad satisfaction, without democracy, and how can we not care about democracy? Well, I think quite the contrary. I think the broad dissatisfaction that we have today is to a large extent the consequence of democracy and the notions that the majority can force the minority, in this case, the only real minority, which is the individual, to do what he does not want to do, to live a life that is not by his choosing. So I would question the idea that satisfaction comes from giving up your life to some anonymous group of voters, I think quite the contrary. I think that we would have a much happier, a much more successful, a much more prosperous, a much better, a much healthier, better savings for retirement, all the stuff that Miles really wants. I mean, in terms of outcomes, all of that, with maybe the exception of equality, would result to a much greater extent with freedom and individualism. But let me go back to the fundamental point here. The fundamental question is, does your life belong to you? Or does the your life belong to a group? And then if it belongs to the group, then it's a technicality. Is that group represented by a king? Or is that group represented by a council? Is the council voted? It's not yours. And I argue, I'm arguing, that my life is mine. My moral responsibility is to have my life, every one of our moral responsibilities is to live our lives the best that we can for ourselves. And then giving that up is abdication of our most sacred responsibility. Before we move on to some other points, Miles, do you want to advocate for democracy? Yes, I think I would. I'll accept the premise that Iran just said that fundamentally one's life is one's own, one's own responsibility, et cetera. However, I do think that no man and no woman is an island. Individuals exist in a family, they exist in a neighborhood, they exist in a community, and the decisions that people make affect other people. Almost all the time. It's almost an impossibility to say, I can do exactly what I want on my property as long as I don't bother anybody else. But whether it's burning leaves on your lawn that pollute the entire neighborhood or dumping toxic waste in your backyard or making so much noise that nobody on your block can sleep, there are ways in which people affect other people and that needs to be taken into account. I would say just on the democracy question. So I just think it's an absolute statement that doesn't really correspond to reality in an interdependent community and an interdependent world. I would say in terms of democracy, it is completely true that total and unimpeded majority rule can have negative consequences. And so we have in our society a constitution, a bill of rights. There are certain rights that are protected and cannot be dismantled by majority vote. But fundamentally, in terms of the greatest, the best decisions over a period of time, having those decisions made by a democratic sentiment, by democratic elections, by the will of the people has got to be better than any other. It's the worst form of government except for any other form that's been invented. And I would argue that the problems that we are having come when democracy is distorted, whether by money, whether by the fact that some people are prevented from voting, those kinds of things. I think the more democracy we have, the more full democracy we have of people, of individuals, the better off we'll be. You Ron, I don't wanna go around in circles so just take 30 seconds if you want to follow up. Yeah, just about this interconnectedness. Yeah, I mean, we're better off living in a society. We benefit enormously from the productive ability of other people. And the mechanism by which we should relate to those people is through the voluntary mechanism of trade. Trade is a win-win. Both parties benefit. It's voluntary. And all the things about pollution and so on. Again, you can't dump garbage in my backyard. I mean, I think we agree on that. That's a violation of rights, and that's what the government is indeed there to protect from. So, Miles said in his opening statement that a first principle is to achieve a nation with some shared values, some common purpose. Is that not a first principle for you? No. Well, the common purpose is life limiting the pursuit of happiness. That would be this notion that reason is gonna guide our life, that we're gonna guide our own life and we're not gonna violate other people's rights and other people not gonna violate our own. All right. Now, Miles, you're on set a minute ago. We agree on some things except equality. You wrote in your blog post leading up to the event on It's a Free Country that America's signal achievement is a broadly shared prosperity and a middle-class society. Is having that as a goal a first principle for you? Yes, it is a first principle. I think that fundamentally there needs to be the ability for all of the citizens, all of the people in the society to have a real, genuine, fair chance to succeed. The market distributes goods very efficiently under certain circumstances, but completely inefficiently under other circumstances. And the circumstances are when wealth is so badly distributed that, therefore, Joe Smith's billionaires desire for a seventh Mercedes is stronger in the marketplace than Mrs. Jones's ability to feed their children because she doesn't have money. You cannot say that that is a rational set of outcomes. We ought to be comfortable about it. And that's not people relating by trade. Trade is an interesting term that connotes two equal partners, but in our society, in commerce, in the marketplace, we don't have equal partners. Sometimes we do, many times we don't. It is government's role to make sure that those partnerships are somewhat equalized. I think that's a fundamental first principle. Our society risks going down the path of a third world country if we reject that, and don't think it's important. Miles, take me just a little bit further. Some shoring up at the bottom, Iran might even disagree with that, but how much further do you go? How much equality? Because you said, you wrote, broadly shared prosperity and a middle-class society. How much equality is necessary for a successful society? Well, in the first 30 years after World War II, the gap, however you wanna measure it, the Gini coefficient, the percent of wealth taken by the top 1% was narrowing, and the middle class was growing. People were doing better. Incomes were rising. People had the expectation that their children would have a better life than they do. That is evaporating. Most people, most people that I know, most people that in polling think their children's lives will now be worse off than theirs. It's the first time that that's happened in a very long time, and the places, the times when our society moved towards equality, moved towards more broadly shared prosperity is when we've had an active government willing to intervene, willing to do things, willing to tax, willing to trust bust, willing to have environmental protections, and when we reject those, we sink back into a situation where the widening will guarantee to occur. What exactly is the number? What exactly should the Gini? We can argue that, but I certainly would argue that I think everyone would agree that a situation in which we have a tiny sliver of people who are doing fabulously well, whether they be hedge fund managers or the titans of industry that Ayn Rand wrote about, but other people are having more and more insecurity, less and less sense of confidence about their future is an unacceptable situation, and we ought to fight really hard to change it. So, Ayn Rand, I know you'll disagree on how we get there, but I'm curious if you agree as a matter of first goals and first principles that, as Miles put it, America's signal achievement is or should be a broadly shared prosperity and a middle class society. I think that as a first principle, what you want is the freedom for anybody to achieve anything within their ability. And that means the opportunity for poor people to rise up and make a fortune. So, I do agree on this issue. I'll agree that what we have today is unsustainable, that what we have today, we've institutionalized the poor and it's growing, that there's enormous economic uncertainty and a vast majority of Americans are suffering under this burden, that wealth creation, wealth creation across the board is stagnating dramatically, that the poor used to get richer faster than they are today. All of that is true, but I blame it all on government and I think the solution is to get government out of the way. So, if you look, it's interesting, I wrote down the idea that the middle class came about because of government policies, which I find bizarre. No, the middle class is a product of the industrial revolution. The middle class is a creation of capitalism. So, before the industrial revolution, there were two classes of people. There were aristocrats who, by the use of force, primarily in Europe, gained certain amounts of wealth and there were poor subsistence farmers and that was it and life expectancy was well below 40 and life was miserable, very, very miserable. What the industrial revolution did is it tripled the population of Europe within 100 years. What it did was bring all those subsistence farmers into the cities where they could earn, where they could become middle class, where they could ultimately start sending their kids to school because they could afford to, where they could ultimately start cleaning up the world in which they live, in which they could start accumulating actual wealth and actual material possessions. It is the industrial revolution, it's that freedom that the industrial revolution created, the wealth that it created that made the middle class possible and it took, it got rid of the kind of poverty that you don't find in the United States today, but if you travel to Cambodia and if you travel to Africa, that's how everybody lived once upon a time. What got us out of that and what's getting them out of it today to the extent that it's allowed is freedom, is capitalism, is leaving people alone to pursue their values and to build that kind of wealth. And all that's happened since the early part of the 19th century is that government has gotten in the way, it's gotten in the way of that wealth creation machine, that wealth creation energy that is inspired by freedom. And let's, I just want one fact, one thing to remember about the 19th century America. Not only was this economy growing at the fastest rate in human history and it was the freest, I mean there's never been a free country like I would like to see it, but it was the closest we've seen. Not only was it growing the fastest rate in human history, but it was absorbing the largest percentage immigration ever and maybe since. We were absorbing the poor, the miserable, the incompetent, according to the papers of the day, the stupid of Europe, right? And they were coming in and there were jobs. There were jobs, there was so much wealth, there was so much freedom, there was so much creativity and within two generations we know that those people succeeded very well not because of government but because of their own hard work and ingenuity because of the freedoms that they had. It's an interesting history but it leaves out a huge portion of it. I don't quarrel with the notion that the industrial revolution and the development of machinery and the development of manufacturing created great wealth. It also created great misery. If you read any of the histories of England in the 1830s and the 1840s, an urban proletariat was created as opposed to a rural surf population. That was miserable, that was sick, that had short, that had very short life spans, that had all kinds of social dysfunction and it was only when the dynamism of capitalism was harnessed and managed and restrained, whether it was by labor unions or by child labor laws. I have an interesting quote that I found from the President of the American Bar Association in the early 1900s denounced child labor laws as a communistic effort to nationalize children. I suppose you could take the Iran's argument and say since everyone is in control of their life, if a seven-year-old child wants to go to work in a factory and work 16 hours and be paid pennies, that's his or her right to do. No, I don't believe it. That's exploitation and it is the responsibility of government and other people to intervene so it doesn't happen. By the way, I'm just talking about the 1830s. In 1960, over one-third of the elderly people in the United States lived in poverty. That's before the flowering of social security, before Medicare, before all of the programs that Iran thinks are so unnecessary. Now it's under 10% of the elderly population. If you think that 35% of the elderly population being poor, going down to 10% is not an important thing and is not based on the policies that government do, I think you're not looking at history. So I accept and I share that there's tremendous dynamism under capitalism, growth occurs, but the sharing of that prosperity, the ability of everyone to enjoy it, not just the tiny few that didn't create it by themselves, by the way. Wealth is created by a combination of capital and labor and everybody knows it. They can't appropriate all that. They should not be allowed to. Yeah, just for the fun of it, I'd like to take the child labor on. There's this mythology that capital isn't created child labor, that in the Industrial Revolution suddenly children started working. Now how many of you have ever lived on a farm? What do children do on a farm, even to this day? They work and in subsistence farming, they worked and died at an unbelievable rate. So whatever happened when they moved to cities, and I'm not saying it was pleasant, suddenly the early years of capitalism were unpleasant years, was an enormous improvement over what they had in the farms. The reason child labor went away, the reason child labor, just go to Indonesia and ask them today, they'd rather work in a factory for one buck a day than work in the farm because life in the farm is so horrible that they'd rather work in what we would consider unthinkable conditions in a factory. But why did child labor go away? Again, look at the facts. The facts are, the empirical evidence is, that child labor went away for two reasons. One, parents accumulated enough wealth to be able to send their kids to school. Very few parents want to send their kids to work when they have another option. Second, how many of you manage people? How many of you like to manage seven-year-olds? It's just not efficient to manage kids. The laws came as they usually do. The laws came after the phenomena was already disappeared. And again, it's just not productive. Would you repeal the child labor laws and let it exist around the edges in American workplaces? Yes, I would. I would repeal child labor laws and let it exist around the edges. And by the way, I think it does. Again, go to any farm. Families are not condemned for working their kids in a farm environment. Indeed, they're often, you know, it's considered a wonderful thing. We have three people with microphones, I believe, working the aisles. So raise your hand if you want to ask a question. Let me ask you again to please keep it brief and ideally have it wind up with a question. And forgive me for going like this, but the lights are right in my eyes when it comes to seeing people out there. So, all right. So somebody right in the back there. I'm going to give some free reign to people with the microphones to choose folks. So I guess we have somebody right there, yes? For miles, should first principles apply to all mankind? So equality, for example, should the American government work towards equality for all mankind? Any country, some woman trying to feed her children in Kansas, would be treated any differently than a woman in Somalia? I do believe that we live in an interdependent world, that there is some responsibility for the United States and other wealthy nations to care about the issues of world poverty, as do many of the top philanthropists in the country. So, yes, I think that the interests of, in a global sense, reducing world poverty, increasing world health, increasing the ability for those societies to generate a middle class of their own is something that the United States ought to take seriously. I won't go as far as to argue that, you know, absolutely everything that the United States does for people in the United States, they said, all should do for the people in Somalia. But the basic fundamental principle of lifting up living standards all around the world I think is the first principle and should be. I do think we should care about people in Somalia and to the extent that we care. We should wish upon them the freedoms and the liberty and the capitalism and the wealth creation that has benefited those countries that have freed up their populations, respecting the rights of property, respecting individual rights. That's how they will rise up from poverty and will benefit from it, because then they'll be better trading partners and our standard of living will go up with them. All right, somebody on this side. This question is directed to the president of Demos. One of your final comments was that the corporations like to use government power to enrich themselves. And my question is, why don't you see that the government power to be doing that kind of regulation is the very problem that we need to get rid of rather than that corporations will try to use the power once it exists? Well, I guess it's a good question, but I guess I think that in the absence of government regulation or other democratic, with a small d, countervailing forces, corporations, businesses, individuals left entirely to their own devices without rules of the road will end us up with bad outcomes in which some people, a small group of people do extremely well, many other people are left by the side of the road. So I think that what needs to happen is that government does have to have the authority, the ability to do those kinds of rules but needs to exercise it extremely carefully, extremely thoughtfully and independently of the companies that they're trying to regulate. You have seen example after example after example where that has not happened, but we sure as hell ought to try. Yeah, I mean, obviously I would argue the opposite, and I think the empirical evidence suggests that it is those regulations, it is those controls that create the problems, that create the messes, and that when people are left free, when corporations are divorced from government, when government in a sense is divorced from the economy, when it separates itself from the economy, the outcomes are far better, the prosperity and the wealth creation far exceed anybody's wildest imagination and people prosper under those kinds of systems. All right. Where's the microphone on this side? Right down here. Yes, right on the aisle over here. This is for Yaron. You said you would repeal child labor laws despite the, I think the word you said was unpleasant aspect that that had at the beginning of the 19th century. I wonder if you'd also repeal the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments despite the unpleasant character of slavery because in fact I can think of no government action that reached deeper into the free market, twisted and turned around that marketplace, abolished plantation slavery, and actually forced a number of states to be members of the union. I would think consistently you might also then want to say that government has no role in abolishing slavery. After all, slaves were property. Well, of course not. Let's think this through, right? I said my founding principle here, the first principle is individual rights. Individuals doesn't matter. If they're green, yellow, blue, black, white, red, they have individual rights. I said that the government cannot use force coercively, and that nobody is allowed to use force coercively. I can't use force against you. Indeed, I would flip this over on you. I would say that once you allow government to use force in the name of democracy, on the name of the majority, on the name of anything, then if majority decides to enslave, as they did, to enslave Jews, to enslave yellow people, to enslave blacks or whatever, is that okay since majorities are white? I stand for the individual no matter what his color is, and against the use of force against him. To root some of these things into the real world of today's politics. Your bio says that your talk, why conservatives are anti-business, challenges the common notion that conservatives are allies of business and capitalism. We've been through some things tonight that I think most of the country would consider settled law and settled belief, child labor laws, civil rights laws, public education, even including vouchers, whether democracy is the first principle. When you say conservatives are anti-business, is it because they just don't go far enough toward where the Rand Institute is, or why is that? So first of all I'd like to say you knew I was a radical before we started, so there shouldn't be too much of a surprise. I think the problem is much deeper than that, unfortunately, and the essay I think really elaborates on that. I believe, and I think you see this in Washington right now, I don't think there's that much difference between many of the fundamental first principle assumptions of conservatives and liberals. I think the difference between those two groups on us is dramatic. That is, I think, that most conservatives would share much of what Miles has said here today, but would argue about where to put the line, how much is going to be provided. So I think that with many conservatives, not all, but many conservatives, the differences between us and them are differences of first principle. I'd love to have another podium here with a mainstream conservative. And a lot of it has to do with, again, these ethical first principles. So I believe that conservatives approach politics from a very similar place that liberals do, in the sense that the individual, his life, pursuing his happiness, pursuing his rational values is not the purpose of morality. Morality is about sacrifice to the group or to some cause. It's about selflessness. It's about, you know, it's about otherism. It's about selflessness and sacrifice. I think liberals and Republicans share that, and I think where Rand is a real challenge. She's a real challenge to conservatives. She's a real challenge to liberals, because she says no. The purpose of morality is different. The purpose of morality is to guide you in living the best life you as an individual can live. And that dictates a whole different set of political principles that are different than the political principles that are wise from morality. It says no. Your primary responsibility is to the group. In your opinion, is the Tea Party coming your way? I think the Tea Party represents a certain spirit that exists in America, that exists in America, thankfully, that I think finds its origin in the founding and through the 19th century, this American sense of life, this notion that we want to be free. Enough is enough. We don't want people telling us how to live. I think the Tea Party represents that on an emotional level. I think what the Tea Party lacks is the intellectual foundation to make that emotion real. So they're good at, enough's enough, but then ask them what are you going to cut? What are the first principles? They fall apart. And they fall apart because the emotional response is detached from any kind of intellectual foundations. They just don't have an intellectual foundation. So in my view, it's a wonderful opportunity to educate and to help guide that movement. But it's, you know, I don't think they, I would like them to be, obviously. Lots. I guess I want to go back a little bit to the point. I guess I don't want to allow the dividing line between objectivism and liberalism to be concerned for the individual or the individual can be submerged in the collective. I believe that the best kind of liberalism progressivism, that which Demos is engaged in, honors deeply the ability of a single individual to fulfill themselves, to have a life with possibility, to achieve the pursuit of happiness, and to be all that they can be. We want to make sure that every single person in our society has those opportunities, not just a small group. We want to recognize, I think, the real constraints on the pursuit of happiness that exist, not just from government, but from the operations of the marketplace. And I think we want to have government and community and family play a constructive, supportive, assistive, affirmative role in allowing each individual to achieve the very best that they can achieve. I think what the consequence of the proposals that Iran is making is that some individuals who will survive as the fittest or the cleverest or the ruthlessest, I'm not sure, but some individuals will survive just fine. Many, many people will be left behind. I think that's unacceptable. I believe that the progressivism that I support has everything to do with the individual and the ability for that individual to succeed in life and to live to the fullest. So who has changed your mind or evolved your position through this debate this evening on anything in particular? I think Iran has actually changed my view on the Civil War. I'm a states rights kind of guy. I think you actually, I guess I'm more of a libertarian, but I think I kind of agree with you about the Civil War now that I'm from the South. I'm glad we settled that. Thank you. Who would have expected? Someone else? I see that both of you gentlemen are clearly humanists, and I think both of you are looking for a better outcome. My question is that I see during the course of my lifetime incredible incompetence in government. And whether or not philosophically government should be involved or not really is not completely satisfying to me in terms of the debate. But what I do see is that governments don't know how to do what they even say they know how to do. I'm 86 years old, and I've seen a war on drugs all of my life. I could still buy any drug I want on Columbus Circle 24-7. One word answer, you're on war on drugs, yes or no? One drugs, any one inanimate object is not going to go well. Let me just say. No, war on drugs, yes or no? Just war on drugs. Unwinnable. Thank you all very much. Please thank our debaters. You have been watching a special edition of BrianLara.tv, a debate about the proper role of government in our lives. On the left, you saw Miles Rappaport, president of Demos. On the right, your own Brooke, president of the Ein Rad Institute. The debate, which took place March 10th, was cosponsored by the organizations, and WNYC's It's a Free Country.org, the politics website. You can find this and all of our programs archived on the web at cuny.tv. We are here with a new program every Wednesday at 7.30 p.m. and I invite you to tune into my daily radio show on WNYC, where, as a matter of principle, we try to find the common ground between the left and the right side of the American landscape. I'm Brian Lara. Thanks for watching.