 My name is Iran Brooke, I'm the Chairman of the Board of the Einren Institute. I've been a passionate advocate for Einren's ideas for decades now and for the last at least 10 years I've been travelling around the world speaking about her ideas and trying to expose primarily young people but general audiences, the ideas of rational self-interest, the ideas of capitalism, the ideas of freedom. And I'm here in Singapore at the invitation of Philosophy for Life that have invited me to do a couple of events. We did one event, we're doing two events this trip, one on the morality of capitalism and one on a debate about inequality. So for the first time really there is now a source of information about Einren's ideas about objectivism here in Singapore so I encourage people to get in touch with the guy, Philosophy for Life. And this is your first time in Singapore, we're well known for chewing gum bands, what's your impression as the police got on your door yet? Police have not knocked on my door yet but maybe after they hear me speak tomorrow it's hard to tell. No Singapore impression is pretty amazing, it's obviously a beautiful city, the development here, the beautiful buildings, the extent of the wealth that has been created in Singapore is a real tribute to the degree of freedom that exists here. It's not an accident Singapore is ranked number two in the Economic Freedom Index and it is that freedom, that economic freedom that creates a prosperity that I think you see all around Singapore. I mentioned today that I look at the college driving and there's a very high percentage of Mercedes, BMWs and Audi's probably higher than maybe any other place I've seen in the world. And that is again, more evidence of the wealth that markets have created in Singapore so the Singaporean experiment in freedom to the extent that freedom is practiced is to that extent we're seeing success. Lovely. I'm going to talk a little bit about income inequality, first maybe could you help us, our readers to understand why is the world concerned with it objectively speaking, is it an actual problem that attracts people in poverty or is the problem a little bit more emotional, something about the divide between the haves and the have nots? So first of all, there is no problem, there is no problem of inequality, nobody should care inequality is irrelevant to anything, it's not an economic issue, there is no economic theory, no economic theory that connects inequality to any economic problems, it doesn't connect to the lack of mobility among the poor, it doesn't connect to slow economic growth, it doesn't connect to anything, it is just a way to rile people up to feed off of envy and jealousy of the wealthy and actually to hurt the economy, to do things that actually bring about negative results for everybody, particularly the poor, the poor are the ones who suffer the most from policies aimed at reducing inequality, so inequality is not an economic issue, but it's also not a moral issue, so it's not an issue of fairness, people talk about oh it's unfair, in a free market, and again for the most part Singapore is a free market, certainly relative to a lot of other places in the world, Singapore is a free market, in a free market, the only way to create wealth is to produce something, is to create something, is to provide a service that people want, then enhances the lives of the people who consume the product in the service, the only way to become rich is to make the world a better place, it's to sell me a product, and the reason I'm willing to buy the product is because that product is going to make me better, it's going to enhance my life in some way, you know I buy an iPhone for a thousand dollars, why do I buy an iPhone for a thousand dollars, because it's worth more than a thousand dollars to me, so yes Apple is making a profit, but I'm better off as well, nobody got hurt, my favorite example of this is actually your viewers have probably read, actually I don't know, in Singapore you read Harry Potter, yeah everybody reads Harry Potter right, I mean think about Harry Potter, we all buy the books, costs us I don't know in the United States the hardback copy when they first came out they cost 30 bucks a piece, I had about two, every time they came out because both my sons wanted one each, they'd read them all night, right, I spent about 3,000 American dollars on Harry Potter, J.K. Rawlings the author she became a billionaire, so Harry Potter increased income inequality, she became a billionaire, I got poorer by $3,000, but did I really get poorer by $3,000, no, I got richer spiritually, I got to enjoy the books, I got to enjoy the fact that my kids enjoyed the books, my boys were happy, how much is that worth to you, much more than $3,000, so in that trade I won, J.K. Rawlings won, and yes, the way economists measure it, income inequality grew, she got very rich, I got a little poorer materially, but really is that a problem, I mean thank you J.K. Rawlings for writing these wonderful books because I had a lot of fun reading them and they were worth a lot more than the $30 it cost me to buy one, win-win, trade is win-win, nobody loses