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Place where you can assume a certain level of rationality a certain agreement with your values Respite from the kind of world We live on a day-to-day basis out there, and it's a it's a world that's getting in many respects It's getting worse almost every day But it's really nothing new I mean I need a I think I need to remind you that I ran was talking about the disastrous culture and the trends in the culture 50 years ago Atlas shrug was not written in a period of some in some wonderful world And she was projecting some dark future It was written when things were pretty bad, and she could see the cultural trends and where they were heading to and they were they were going You know Obama is particularly bad, but let's not forget that Just nine ten years ago after 9 11 Many of us were horrified By the attitude of the bush administration and by the response of the bush administration To what happened in 9 11 and the pathetic nature of of the war that was fought or not fought Since then and yes, Obama's just made it worse, but he's made something really bad was Let's not forget all those years in the bush administration of Increasing spending and growth of the welfare state and new programs and you know just more and more of this Of the policies that ultimately led to the financial crisis were in and led to the election of Obama So this is a long-term trend Obama is a particularly nasty culmination or maybe it's hopefully culmination of the trend but and it gets better from now on but a Particularly nasty points on that trend and an accelerator of the trend towards statism And Obama's particularly I think ideological and his motivation is particularly evil in its you know It's an egalitarianism and it in his willing in his seeking out Equal outcomes out there But the battle is a long-term battle The battle started a long time ago with iron rand and will continue for quite a while, but things today are particularly bad The particularly bad and they're coming to our head So I want to urge you that there in a sense that there's one big battle and it's a long-term battle and it's a philosophical battle And it's a battle to establish Objectivism as the Secular philosophy the dominant secular philosophy in America and that is the goal that is the battle That's where we're that's what we're striving towards and it's a philosophical ideological battle But it's part of that battle there is a short-term battle that needs to happen as well and that is a battle to make the long-term possible To make sure that there is a long term so that we can win that long-term battle And that is a battle. I think I'll call it the battle for capitalism And I'd urge you all to join that battle for capitalism what I want to talk about today is What I think we can do as individuals when we're advocating for capitalism What are the things that we need to point out to the world out there? What are the things that we need? What are the points that we need to make in the culture out there? In this battle to Keep things from getting a lot worse to save The United States so that we can really save it in that long-term Educational philosophical battle that parts of which I described the other night in the in the the talk about a right Okay, so I want to talk about I'm gonna talk about a few points what I think Points that I think we need to convey out there and the first is what is capitalism? We need to be clear on that Yeah, we need to be clear on does capitalism work? We need to be clear on the morality of capitalism And we need to be clear on the conditions under which capitalism can exist Okay, so those are the four points. I want to talk to you this morning about So what is capitalism? one of the biggest problems we have I think when we go out there and Try to convince people that capitalism is a good thing and that they should be pro capitalism And this is a huge attack on capitalism going on right now that the Obama administration is just destroying capitalism is that nobody out There knows what the hell capitalism is They don't you know and You know our friends on the right our so-called friends on the right don't have a clue what capitalism is or they're afraid to say it I just read a book Called the battle. It's by Arthur Brooks. It's quite an influential book. It's doing very well in sales You know the blooms on the back are from people like Dick Cheney who calls it the playbook for the resurgence of free enterprise movement Newt Gingrich Bill Bennett and so on so this is like the conservative playbook now and it's kind of interesting because He talks about capitalism and then and then he says You know, I prefer not to use the term capitalism and why not and if you notice how conservatives talk They don't talk about capitalism. Let's talk about free enterprise You know, and he tells us exactly why because they did some polling and it turns out that 60% of Americans have a favorable attitude towards the term capitalism 70% of Americans have a favorable attitude towards the term free markets a free markets better than capitalism because it's Polls better, but the word that polls the best is free enterprise that polls 80% 80% favorable rating. So they use free enterprise because it polls well So then what does free enterprise mean? So so here's the definition and I give him credit for at least offering a definition or claiming to offer it if I just put it that way So he says let's start by defining it He says free enterprise is a system of values and laws the respects private property. It's okay encourages industry Celebrates liberty limits government and creates individual opportunity. What does that mean? So it respects Private property that's I guess that's a good thing What does respect exactly mean in this context it encourages industry? Who's industry which industry how much industry? What does encourage mean? How does the government encourage industry? Celebrates liberty so like yesterday on the 4th of July Limits government by what standard? What is the standard for limiting government and? Creates individual opportunity so They don't know or if they know they don't want to say what capitalism Really means what freedom really means what liberty really means And we need to be clear when we're talking about capitalism what we mean Because the culture out there believes that for example capitalism caused this financial crisis And we need to be clear what we mean when we say capitalism Now when I talk about capitalism I say capitalism means freedom it means Real free markets and what a free markets free from what? Free from government regulations government controls government intervention government incentives government Encouragement encouraging industry right? It means it means a separation of state from economics Capitalism means and that means that the government is not pro capitalist it's not pro Freedmen it's not pro von Mises. It's not pro keens. It's not pro Any of those economists it's just not in the business of economics Right government leaves us alone So the government doesn't have a position vis-a-vis economics anymore that has a position vis-a-vis religion or non-religion It just has no position vis-a-vis religion separation of church and state separation of economics and state That's what we mean by capitalism now I'll go back to the Official definition of capitalism at the towards the end of the talk, but we need to concretize it We need to explain it right It means no redistribution of wealth not some redistribution of wealth as author books would like It means no public education not equality of opportunity and therefore you have to have education whatever the hell that means Whatever, you know, what does equality of opportunity even mean, but that's what author books advocates for It means No government involvement in the economy and we take that seriously and we're willing to go out there and say We're willing to go out there and say They should be no federal reserve how many So-called advocates of free markets get really, you know How can you say that that's too provocative or that's too difficult? But you somebody has to say and we need to start defining What capitalism means we need to start setting the terms of the debate Because what happens today is the so-called pro-capitalist who don't define what capitalism will call it free enterprise the free enterprise guys are somewhere here in the middle and it's a bit debate between the guys over here, right a Little bit right of center to the guys over here a little bit left of center and they're debating about the details These guys still think we should redistribute some and Be distributed and have a fed reserve and everything else. We need to define What's way out here? We needed to find what's the principle of capitalism means and What we can achieve by doing that is start moving the debate in our direction We're not gonna convince everybody We're not gonna convince everybody there shouldn't be a fed but we can introduce that into the discussion when people talking about the Fed We're not gonna convince everybody that we should completely privatize all aspects of health care But we can start moving people into discussion about what it would mean to privatize aspects of health care Because right now the discussion is just between You know a little tinkering here and a little tinkering there. We need to start redefining and it's doable It really is doable and people find opposition interesting even in just these terms Now I remember being on when I used to be on Fox business on a regular basis Something came up about the Federal Reserve and I said something like this shouldn't be a Federal Reserve and It took the hosts by you know and they didn't know how to deal with it exactly and I kind of let it slide and they left it But then when I came back another time I said it again And this time a guy named Peter Schiff was on the television with me He said yeah, they shouldn't be a Federal Reserve and then we got into a whole discussion with the host about whether They should it shouldn't be a Federal Reserve and then I started noticing those same hosts asking other people whether they should It shouldn't be a Federal Reserve and they even asked Alan Greenspan whether they should it shouldn't be a Federal Reserve and Alan said Well, you know Between the Civil War and the establishment of Federal Reserve in 1913 things were pretty good That's it. And they all and it wasn't a Federal Reserve in that period and that's how we left it So never taking a position, but generally seeming to support it, right? Or you know, I was another time I think it was Fox business or CNBC and And it was a show relatively early in the day and we talked talking about health care And I said the real issue here is is health care a right and health care cannot be a right And so on and then for the whole and we had a whole discussion around that and other panelists chimed in and then for the whole day on That channel they asked everybody when health care came up whether they thought health care should be a right you change the terms of the debate and people start gravitating towards those ideas They become ideas that Talked out there. They become ideas. They're acceptable again. You're not turning them into objectivists You're just moving the debate in our direction. You make it more feasible for us to in to be in the debate to be participants In that debate so we have to be clear about what we mean And we have to be willing to be radical and commit to being radicals for capitalism not moderates for capitalism Not compromises for capitalism appeases for capitalism like most of our so-called friends on the right And so let's change the terms of the debate. Let's move people in that direction But the next question you get once you describe what you mean by capitalism is But we know it doesn't work People know they know Americans know Even those people who poll 60% favorable attitude towards capitalism they don't mean capitalism the way we mean it And when they think about capitalism They think it doesn't work and you know you get the standard questions when you when you talk about capitalism you get you know Financial crisis you get child labor in the 19th century All right, you get pollution You get a whole string of these It you know it just doesn't work and you have to be ready you have to be ready for that if you're gonna be defenders of capitalism You have to have answers To these things one of the reasons it's really valuable to specialize You know be really good in one thing and you can say I understand completely how free markets and capitalism work here you know and as they apply to You know environmental issues Right pollution clean water so on or as they apply to health care I really get that and but you have to know something about the rest as well because if that at least be able to guide them to the right place to read up and It's crucial That we help people get educated about how capitalism does work and Why all these objections? Not real you know in a great starting place as capitalism not an ideal a book That is filled with great Examples of this not to mention you know one of the greatest essays ever written What is capitalism which I recommend reading over and over and over again because every time I read it I discover new stuff there It's a it's a true It's a true masterpiece So we need to explain we need to be able to explain That Capitalism hasn't failed and actually that's relatively easy It's relatively easy to explain that at least capitalism hasn't failed because once you've defined what capitalism is It's pretty easy to say Whatever failed in this common financial crisis and and we can talk about all the different elements of health Whatever failed the one thing that couldn't have failed Is capitalism? Because there was no capitalism because we've just defined what it is right no government involvement No government intervention and you know within three minutes You could show that there's just a little bit of government intervention in banking just a smidgen, right? Most regulated business out there housing mortgages all of those heavily heavily regulated So then you can argue about the details of how it failed But at least you've established it wasn't capitalism you've changed the terms of the debate Was it bad behavior on Wall Street? Maybe you know I don't think so not fundamentally But you can talk about that was it Freddie Fanny the Federal Reserve all of that Yes, I think it was but you've changed the terms. It's clearly not capitalism now You're talking within a mixed economy. Okay. What are the elements that cause this to happen? And you've got to be ready with examples that where capitalism has worked, you know and the quick ones easy ones You know East Germany versus West Germany, you know when the Berlin Wall falls down Hong Kong Versus China versus anyway and millions of people moving to a rock With no natural resources and nothing there why because they have freedom Because there's the most capitalist country of its time, you know or close to it and No safety net Actually really to a large extent, you know no real Federal Reserve not in the sense of of the manipulations that that occur here And here's a little rock where people thrive And one of the things we need to be very careful on and again One of the things that I think differentiate us from our the conservatives and libertarians and the others is that what do we mean when we say capitalism works? We need to be careful not to be caught not to be trapped into collectivistic trap. This is not about the size of GDP This is not about you can just economic progress so that all of those are on our side as well But what it really means is the ability of individuals to thrive are the conditions such that Individuals are doing better. So if you take an East German and a West German and look at their lives Which one would you want to be? It's obvious. I think to our most Americans which one they would want to be But it's about those individual lives. That's what that's what capitalism boils down to it's individual freedom Individual prosperity individual happiness individual success. That's what we need to focus on the others just do you know? Utility maximizations, you know whose utility was greater or you know public Public goods or you know What society better off and we need to stay away from that that is you know? I know and talked enough about how wrong and how evil that whole perspective is of Looking at these things in terms of collectives. We need to be careful not to fall into that trap. It's always about Individual plus you know individual success individual happiness individual achievement where Where do individuals want to go? Do they want to go to Hong Kong in the 70s and 80s or do they want to go to communist China? Where are they going to be able to pursue their values? That's the sign of success You know the fact that immigrants come into this country want to come into this country millions and half for 200 years 200 plus years is a sign that people want to live here Why ask you know Americans know why to some level they understand what? It's about freedom. It's about opportunities. It's about the ability to pursue your values So what is capitalism we need to be clear on that? And then we need to be clear on that it works that it works for you and you and you and you that it works for each individual Even the people who claim to be opposed to it Wouldn't switch with the East German So we've established it works One could argue that's been established by others over and over and over again over the decades And we as objectivists know that the main argument against capitalism not that it doesn't work But that it's wrong that it's immoral That it's evil that there's something wrong about it and but what's interesting when you talk to people? Is that they don't really hold it that way, right? They don't nobody actually comes out and says I'm an altruist and kept when altruism is incompatible with capitalism, so I'm against capitalism Well, I like capitalism, but it really you know, it's really inconsistent with my moral views my ethical views and therefore You know people don't talk like that They don't unfortunately it would be cool if they thought like that we would have a lot more influence, but they don't think like that Right So how is the fact that deep down we all know that they think capitalism is? Wrong is the mall they don't hold it like that It's more that they have a sense of queasiness about going too far with capitalism It's why by the way they're more the they pole bet on free enterprise for enterprise is a lot less offensive Than then then capitalism because capitalism they have a sense is really this this real freedom, you know where they're Capitalist run out, you know capitalists out there pursuing their own self-interest. We're all pursuing all self-interest So how do they hold it? I think they hold it in two forms and you see it in the kind of questions you get the one form is they hold it as Look capitalism promotes self-interest Capitalism promotes selfishness and greed and selfishness and greed equals Bernie Madoff So they hold it as we don't want to be too far out here, even if it works Because we know something's wrong about selfishness something's not quite right about selfishness and selfishness in them is this package deal That includes Bernie made off in it It's about taking care of self and all that but it's also made off. It's that's one way in which they hold So that's the negative view of selfishness On that the other way in which they hold it is the question you always get when you talk about these things You always get it right whenever you talk about capitalism and freedom and you know how it works and everything somebody who raised their hand up and say Well, what about the poor? What about the poor and that's how they hold it they don't hold it at wait a minute. This is incompatible with myself sacrifice I want to self-sacrifice today and Because under capitalism you can if you want we don't actually stop you from doing that But they they feel guilty, right? There's a guilt that comes up immediately. Wait a minute. If everybody's pursuing them all self-interest If this system is if there's no redistribution of wealth if government is separated completely from the economy Then you know, what about these people, you know, what does this group that needs our help? How do we take care of them and they mine immediately goes to that Okay, so we need to be able to address those two aspects You know, what is selfishness and why bony made off is not selfish and What about the poor? So let's start with let's start with greed selfishness and Packaging that package deal and again There's plenty of objective is literature that explains this and and we you guys all I think know what self-interest means and what selfishness Means and why bony made off cannot be selfish and If explained right people get it or people can get it at least at some level again and Everything I'm giving you today is an outline, right? I mean there's a lot each one of these things There's a lot to be thought about and chewed and written about each one of these aspects It's just an outline form people kind of get if explained you know, so Bernie made up for selfish right he was self-interested he pursued his own values, you know his own happiness. That was his goal Well is bony made of happy and And you know it was he you know and you can actually quote Bernie made up It's wonderful example because he actually tells you how miserable he was and how pathetic his life was and how he couldn't ever Go to sleep at night and it wasn't just about getting caught by the government It was about being caught by his best friends and his family The people he interacted with every day that he was lying to every single day and you ask people You know most Americans understand that if they spend their entire day lying to their best friends and their family They're not gonna be happy they get that you don't have to do big psychology tests to figure that out That there's some relationship between being dishonest and unhappiness particularly on that kind of scale and And then you can bring it down to a law scale and show them that you know dishonesty just doesn't work, but Bernie made us not self-interested And it's quite easy to show that he's self-destructive and that that kind of behavior is self-destructive and then under Capitalism that kind of behavior is even more self-destructive than it is in a mixed economy In a mixed economy you might be able to you know lobby Congress to make your particular form of dishonesty legal Right, you might be able to get away with it Or you might just be able to get away with an SEC that is so busy with the thousands of minutiae that they have to do They the thousands of little ways in which they violate our rights every single day that they will miss the big Bernie made of you could get away with it and capitalism you couldn't Markets are much more efficient at getting crooks under freedom than they are under statism Lot fewer places to hide So it's important to explain to them what self-interest is and Why what motivates? Wall Street is a good thing is a positive is a virtue That self-interest is you know what we know it is it's the rational pursuit of one's own values It's about reason it's about thinking and That these people who negate or evade who ignore reality who don't think who don't use reason are not What we talk about when we talk about selfishness are not the products of capitalism Then not the products of a freedom Okay So we need a resurrect and again, I encourage you all to read the objectivist ethics and you know What selfishness fully means but we got to get that word out there? we got to explain what self-interest really is in The defense of capitalism at whatever level that we can and again, we're not gonna get everybody there We're not gonna get everybody convinced. There's a whole philosophy here, right? But we can impact that we can move them at least don't associate capitalism with Bernie Madoff The two are not At least don't associate selfishness with Bernie Madoff. That would be a huge advance. We can just make that break Okay, so defining self-interest explaining Concretizing giving them a sense of what self-interest really is and then what about the poor What do we do with the poor? Well, I mean, I think the point the important point to make here is in what sense does somebody else's poverty place a claim on your life Yes, the poor. Okay Why is that your problem? at least let them face They'm all code at least force them to face their own guilt Challenge it ask the question that they don't want to hear which is why Why? by what standard And then you know because what do the conservatives say when you say what about the poor? What's the first response that they have and and many libertarians do this as well? Charity charity to take care of all of it That's not our answer. Yes, maybe it will maybe it won't but maybe it won't and if it doesn't it doesn't and whose problem is that there's Not mine not yours And we have to be willing to say that we have to have the you know the backbone To say they don't have a claim on my life and that means something That means something and yes, we think the charity will work and will take care of it True, but that's not the essential. That's not the first line You know our first line has to be It's my life And they don't have a claim on my life and I think an important claim to make an important point to make Again that comes out of our ethics that I think is somewhat unique is that we're not doing the poor any favors by putting them on welfare The people don't gain happiness people are not successful When they become dependent on the state quite the contrary They're worse off that happiness human happiness human success Requires the pursuit and achievement of values it requires self-esteem Happiness just doesn't just come because you want to be happy it doesn't come because somebody else hands you a check Unless that check is earned Unless you've achieved something you've done something and then you get the self-esteem that makes happiness possible and The victims the victims of the welfare state are the poor I mean we're all victims of the welfare state, but the poor victims too may be the worst victims and I know and said the biggest victims of socialism and statism of the ambitious poor They're the worst victims And you're born poor and you want to be successful and you want to rise up and the state just hold you down Institutionalizes you into poverty So the people you respect on the poor those who are ambitious Thrive under capitalism they thrive under freedom the best thing you could do for them It's free him up. It's bring about this capitalism that we're talking about Okay, so You know take that issue away from them make them force them to confront their altruism and then challenge their altruism In the best way I think possible, which is why? And yes, they'll have religious explanation and everything, but there's something that works in our favor on this issue There's something that works in our favor that underlies I think and and this is this is uniquely American because I don't think this works anywhere else Americans have a fundamental sense of individualism There's something in the culture and this is what the iron man called the American sense of life There's a sense in which they get it at an emotional level and you're seeing that a little bit in the in American response To what's going on with Obama right now. There's a certain sense in which they want to be left alone There's a certain sense in which they want to pursue their own happiness after all they have a founding document And this is to me the origin of the American sense of life. They have a founding document that says That they have an inalienable way to not to Maximize social utility To benefit the public good to like they do in a sense in Europe, you know They found documents all about the public good and and social utility We have a founding document. It's about the inalienable way to your own life your own liberty and in the most selfish political statement in human history Every one of us has an inalienable right to own happiness That's still out there that sense that they have you know that they want to pursue their happiness that they want to pursue Values that they want to pursue their own success that it's about me. It's about them It's about each individual is still out there and we have to latch on to that and in my view That's what these polls are picking up When sixty percent they have a general positive sense of capitalism or eighty percent said they have general positive sense What that picks up is that sense of life? And if that sense of life still exists among sixty to eighty percent of Americans We have a shot and we need a leverage on that and we need to play into that That's our opening the founding fathers are our opening Americans still love the founding fathers and the founding fathers on our side So let's use it Let's use that Okay, so It's small capitalism is good again just an outline there's a lot more to be said on how you make that argument But you got to address the package deal of selfishness and you got to address the issue of altruism as expressed by them And you got to hook into that's American sense of life and again moving the debate We're not turning anybody into an objectivist yet, right? And what are the conditions then What are the conditions that that political conditions moral conditions that make possible in a society? freedom capitalism What are the ideas that we need to have prevalent in the culture and certainly? respected in politics For capitalism to be made to be possible and this is where and again This is where we hook up to the to the founding of this country This is the key concept here is the idea of individual rights and what they mean And again moving the debate away from the discussion and notice by the way the conservatives never use the term individual rights They never use it and these are the people who supposedly you know the founding fathers are There's right they own the funny fathers the conservative tell us and they never talk about individual rights Because they don't want to they don't understand what they are. They don't know where they come from They don't understand what they are and they would rather just You know and they would rather just let them go I actually met with a couple of congressmen and we talked about the importance I talked about the importance of individual rights and their response these are two Republican congressmen who claim to be free-market guys and Huge fans of Atlas shrugged and the response was No, no the left has already won that debate You know individual rights, then you have a right to health care in here We don't want to talk about rights because there's right to health care I write the food and a right to this and a right to that and well no wonder you don't want to talk about it If you believe if you accept that we need to get that concept back From the perversions it's undergone by the left and the right by the idea that there is such a thing or that can be such a Thing as a right to health care You know and again people at some level get it when you say well if somebody has a right to health care Then that means the doctor has to provide him with health care. What does that make the doctor? Well, there's servant a slave at what about the rights of the doctor something and people get that there's something wrong there But it needs to be defined You know it needs to be defined in terms of freedom rights of freedoms There are not things that you get we need to define what they are When you talk about Individual rights and their proper meaning and their proper sense and bring the debate back to that health care is not a right You don't have a right to a home. You don't have a right to a low mortgage. You don't have a right None of those things are right But when he Frank would like them Bonnie Frank would like them to be right and He's winning the debate He's winning the debate because his opposition doesn't want to talk about rights anymore. We need to talk about rights You know we need to talk about rights in a sense of what they really mean and of course Capitalism is you know the social system that recognizes individual rights, right? Individual property rights in way all private property all property is privately owned So that's crucial to our definition of capitalism. So if we go back to the beginning in terms of what is capitalism? Well, capitalism is that social system and social system is you know the legal political model Norms laws Accepted views in the culture. That's the social system, right? That recognizes individual rights. It's all about these freedoms. That's what capitalism is about about leaving us free to pursue our life to pursue liberty to pursue happiness and again, there is a real link here with the spirit of Americans with the with the sense of life So we need a political system a political system focused on individual rights and we need to talk about it because nobody else will I mean truly objectivist to it when it comes to individual rights And you we need to take it we need to take it to wherever we can In the debate in the discussion It's the key concept that is That can help save this country It's the key idea that can help save this country and move us towards more capitalism or more freedom so that we can By time so that we can actually sustain a real intellectual philosophical revolution to the point where you know Objectivism is the dominant philosophy and then capitalism will just happen right True capitalism as we would like to see it so We need to work on establishing what those political principles really look like you know and again Concretize individual rights to plenty of examples out there of what is and what isn't what's right and what's wrong Okay, and then where do individual rights come from well, I mean we can he cook it up to Self-interest that we just talked about we can hook it up to the requirements of human survival of human existence Of what it takes for human beings to be successful to pursue values to achieve happiness What do they need for that? Well, they need to exercise their mind. They need Reason they need to be rational. They need to Have the freedom to do that And what is the one thing What is the one thing that can restrict their ability to pursue their values to pursue their happiness to pursue their goals To use reason to be rational Well, it's force and Forces a destroyer of reason they for forces is destroyer of human life and they for forces what we need to extract so individual rights Recognize two things They recognize the idea that you are sovereign over your own life that you in a sense own your life. It's yours It's nobody else's it's the anti-collectivist principle, right and it recognizes that force Needs to be extracted that What it means for you to own your own life means that other people can't come and take it They can't come and force you to do things you don't want to do and That force needs to be extracted now again forces a difficult concept for people out there to get they don't get it quite Right, they get that stealing is bad Pickpocketing is bad murder is wrong right But taxes that's okay, right? Now I like to use this a small example with I have used it several times some of you probably heard it with health care They kind of tries to concordize force for them So and it tries to concordize this whole debate about health care and I say look if your neighbor's sick and Doesn't have what it takes to get cured. So there's an operation. It's too expensive He doesn't have the money to do the operation. He only has in reality He only has two options He can come and ask you for your help And you can either help him or not Or he can come and steal your money from you And get the operation, but that's it now if he has the mafia to steal the money from you Is that any different? Well, no everybody gets that right But if he gets The neighbors together and 51% of the neighbors say they should steal your money Then it's okay How did it suddenly become okay because 51% of the people voted and people get that there's something wrong here They don't get it fully, but they get that they you know and the transition is pretty smooth, right? You went from theft Mafia that's still theft now the mafia has grown to the whole neighborhood and it makes it okay And if we don't do then they already do we do the whole nation a 51% of the whole nation wants to take your Money to give it to him That's what taxes are. That's what redistribution of wealth is that's what the whole health care debate is about Just in simple concrete terms in a way that most Americans at least Causes them to stop and think it's not convincing. It's not all the argument It's not enough, but it causes them to stop and think about what's going on That's the kind of moments we need that's the kind of impact we need to have You know then send them to eat out was shrugged. That's great But we got to get in we got to find these entry points Okay, so we know what capitalism is We're gonna define it we're gonna fight for that definition the system of really individual rights And that's the that's the kind of culture we need to establish We know that it works. I think most of us know intuitively to the works I'm here to encourage you to get a full understanding of that Do not you know at least in one area get an understanding of that it really works and again Maybe very important is that what we had was in capitalism said it hasn't failed And you know one of the one of the one of the questions I always get is And I find this fascinating the people that come up with these things they say well, is it ever existed and Ego, no Right because it never has existed and they say well as if they've won the argument right You know and I my response to that and I'm sure each one of you would have a different respond my response was Did the United States as the founding fathers conceived it exist before it existed before 1776 was a country that respected individual rights that was free No, there wasn't and yet here it is It was created So the fact that something never existed doesn't mean it can't Shouldn't won't exist But people somehow have this idea that they need a concrete they need the concrete reality You know and I I used to the most frustrating thing When I was when I was a teacher was that I didn't have this parallel universe over here where everything was purely capitalist and I could show them what happens Although you have a feeling even if you showed them what happens they wouldn't get it right because it's not enough It's not enough Right because hong kong existed american the 19th century existed He got so many examples that are so close that you'd think the mind could extrapolate just a little bit to get it But they won't because they're ultimately guided by their ideas by their philosophy By their morality and that's again we have to challenge their morality and we have to explain why capitalism is a mall system Why it is the only system that allows us to pursue our happiness and therefore is the only system that is mall so We live in a um in difficult times Very difficult times I think and the future Without objectivism is quite bleak and and you know Macroeconomic predictions any kind of predictions about the future are very much. I think a fool's game, but hasn't never stopped me from doing it Anyway, um It's difficult. It's really hard A lot of factors go into it You can tell general trends, but it's really hard to put a time frame on things I'm sure that in if you lived in the 70s In america things looked really really really bad and you couldn't imagine the 80s and 90s Whatever happened, you know in terms of economic growth and in terms of technology in terms of possibilities of individual success In spite of all that I still think that we are facing a pretty bleak future in this country And you just run the numbers and I just don't see I don't maybe maybe there's a way out But I just don't see how you get out of those numbers You know and and you know this country is basically bankrupt We just don't report the numbers right so that we could see it Right because the the federal government has a balance sheet that if any corporation had that balance sheet they would go to jail Right, uh, they don't report. They run funded liabilities. They don't report what they what they promise to pay in the future So security medicare medicare healthcare A gazillion different things and those are well in excess of a hundred trillion dollars Hundred trillion and that doesn't include the ongoing deficits that we're running today. That's just medicare medicare And so security doesn't include obama care They're coming socialized madison and everything else You could tax everybody at 80 percent. You're not going to get to that number. There's just no way out of it There is no We've reached a level of of regulations and we're reaching a level of regulations here We're the incentive to actually start a business and and work and and produce and increase productivity Which is what saved us in the 80s and 90s We deregulate a little bit and there was a huge boom of productivity. We're going in the exact opposite direction right now We're crushing productivity. We're crushing innovation. We're crushing venture capital markets and You know technology markets are still relatively unregulated, but the guys who give them capital have just seen their taxes double Double just last week when the house voted on this financial bill What incentive now is there to be in that business to make possible the huge technology advancements that are still relatively free Although it's questionable how free they are when the largest venture capital fund in the world today is the energy department right So the government's in this business crowding out the real venture capitalists And you see all these economic numbers and it just is bleak It you know, I don't see an obvious way out and the republicans can win in november. What are they going to do? You know, what solutions have we seen from them that are actually not just slow this down, but actually turn it around They might slow it down They probably will slow it down I mean, that's my hope at least and maybe on some issues. They'll turn it around a little bit But what about these long-term structural problems that this country faces from purely economic perspective not to talk about The cultural deterioration and the schools and you know And and people can't read and the tension plan spans a zero and all of that But that all plays into ultimately kind of an economic phenomena where we can't achieve our values. We can't Become more prosperous So we're facing We're facing a real threat Now I some of you have heard this analogy, but I like it. So I keep using it if you've heard it before that's fine It's like on a raft on a river Heading towards a waterfall And a 300 million people on this raft And all 300 million people have little rows and they're all rowing towards the waterfall And maybe you could argue the democrats have big oars. So when they row it has more impact And the republicans have holes in their oars. So when they row it has less of an impact, but that's questionable But everybody is rowing in the direction of the waterfall and the waterfall is out there It's always been out there. I mean iron man knew it was out there when she wrote out the shrug She knew we were heading in when that waterfall happens. We keep one thing. I'm sure we keep getting closer to it Now I happen to think it's 20 years 25 years something like that Maybe that's because that's the length of my career still in the future. Maybe I hope you know But that's the sense I have just from the numbers as an as a finance guy I guess That's what it seems to me So we've got a finite time because once the waterfall hits we don't want to be there It's going to be hard to climb up that waterfall We need to turn it around before we hit the waterfall and start rowing in another direction And it's hard because we'll still have the current of the river Ideally you'd shift the current in the other direction Metaphysically impossible, but with objectivism anything is possible, right? I mean ideally you have a motor at the end of that raft that pushes you upstream and that's objective But it's going to take a while before we get that motor in place and running And in the meantime, we need to slow it down and turn this thing around slowly And there's not a lot of time and we need to get moving And we need to get active and we need to speak out and we need to go out there and fight. This is a battle I mean, it's actually not a battle. I mean, this is this is a bad title His ears is the title of battle. This is war This is world war This is world war and the stakes are the stakes of a world war The stakes of the future of western civilization You know, yes, objective is who rise up again, but who cares a thousand years from now? I don't the stakes Are our lives our children's lives our grandchildren's lives the stakes Are everything that we love about the world that we have around us And we are the only ones who can fight this battle We really are we these guys Our so-called allies go listen to them speak The conservatives and libertarians, they're not going to win this for us They can help on certain issues. They can help here and there They can they write great economics papers, but nobody can integrate it. Nobody can pull it together Nobody can present the case for freedom like we can And if we don't nobody will And it's great that atlas shrugged is being read by millions of people. That's not enough If it was we'd have won by now We need to concretize atlas shrugged in the world today We need to bring it to people in the world today. We need to bring these ideas Every day all the time every way and you need to do it all of us need to do it The alternative is horrific And the primary way to do it is by living the best life that you can live by being successful by Being happy to the extent that you can in the world that we live in by pursuing your values That is the most important thing nothing can replace that But beyond that it's time to stand up and go fight It really is Because I don't know if we get a second chance yesterday Was uh, you know independence day 4th of july And of course it's the 224th anniversary Um and the founding fathers signed The declaration of independence And they gave their life on Possessions They put them at stake they put them forward They put everything on the line To battle what was then the mightiest military force known to mankind The probability of success if you were looking at it as an alien from outer space would very close to zero And our chance of success. I mean the fact is is very low That we can actually succeed in the next 25 years. It's not huge I don't know that it's worse than the founding fathers They were willing to put it all on the line I'm willing to put it all on the line I hope you are too Thank you all You mentioned that the ambitious poor are held down by the welfare state Can you give some examples of how that's the case? Yeah, I mean it's at a lot of different levels so I think it starts you know when they're very young And uh and the fact that the parents are receiving welfare and the kind of environment that kind of creates the the lack of ambition The the the the the culture around them, which is just accepting of their position And and it almost becomes metaphysical and they battle as children and teenagers to come out of that It is so much tougher But it but it continues with with the fact that if you if you're a young entrepreneur you want to start a business It's becoming more and more difficult And uh, and you know and you're expected particularly if you're a minority You're expected to go for minority loans now that already already puts you into a box and again A form of welfare and a form of privilege that that I think Eats away at your self-esteem and this is the most important aspect of Redistribution it eats away at their self-esteem. They can't really gain self-esteem When they're not really gaining values and and when the society around them telling them They shouldn't be gaining values because they deserve it because the color of their skin or because they're poor or whatever But think of the massive regulations things are the fact that that bankers right now You know, you remember the old jp Morgan Stories about how jp Morgan used to give loans it was based on the character of the person who sat in front of him If you are banker today and you say I'm going to give a loan based on a character of the person who sits in front of you The regulator is going to put you Out to pasture. There's no way you will stay a banker. You've got to show them the models Prove to me You know the good models what kovia used right right john I mean It has to be statistically proven that this was a good loan You can't look at somebody who's ambitious who's good who's got a good idea and just based on that Give a loan like jp Morgan did and like I think bankers used to do Good bankers used to do based on based on who the person was Today it has to be you have to document everything If they'll even let you give a loan right now, they're not letting anybody get a loan So there are thousand little ways in which government regulations restrict and prohibits and make difficult the ability of of of entrepreneurs and and particularly You know think of your rich entrepreneur right you come from rich family. You can probably get friends and family I mean, I know a lot of people in silicon valley when they first start their business they get money from friends and family But if you're a poor kid, you don't have any friends and family with money so And and now your other avenues are blocked So again, there are thousand ways in which but the more free you are the more opportunities you the the more Society is the more opportunities there are for everyone Certainly for for for that poor ambitious person Each of us has limited time and effort To promote capitalism What would you suggest as to the kind of people we should engage or avoid? And also, uh, what context we can most productively do this Well, I think the people we should primarily engage of that, you know Other people brooks poles as having a positive view generally of capitalism is unamerica. I really think It's very difficult to convince people who hate this country Uh and hate capitalism of of the virtue. They have to have the american sense of life So find people that have an american sense of life that respect individualism as poorly understood as that concept is As as as Misconceived as their perception of individualism is there has to be a spirit about them that once You know their life to be good their life to be better You know, there has to be something in them that is self interested even again If it's not fully expressed if it's not fully understood if it's not fully practiced So so find those people with that american sense of life and you know, I hope That it's still a majority of americans But you know again within your worlds. I'm sure you'll find You know the people you you should avoid are the nihilists And the nihilists on the right and the nihilists on the left the people who just want to destroy who hate values Much of the radical left is that way, but a lot of the libertarian, you know, radical libertarian You know segment is that way and and a lot of the real You know the real evangelical right, I think is that way So you want to find those people who don't those are groups to avoid And find I think where the bulk of americans are Which is still have that positive sense of life still want to do the right thing still believe in some In values and again find them young if you can because you've got better shot at them when they're young than not Do you believe the tragedy of the commons is valid? If not, why if so, how can a capitalist society protect against that without infringing on individual rights? Okay, so do I believe the tragedy of the commons is valid? I don't believe the commons is valid So I don't believe there is such a thing under capitalism as the commons I certainly think that when you create commons, which means property that's not owned by anybody Then you have a tragedy But when people don't own something they don't take care of it And and the way to solve all the issues relating to pollution the way to surreal pollution the way to solve the real issues that involved in Man's environment that that are really harmful to a man's environment And by the way, one of the one of the things I try to do when talking about in the environment is always ask who's Who's environment and and because man's environment is never ever ever being better than it is right now Ever and in terms of any any way you want to measure it almost so You know in terms of the real problems that might affect man's environment Property rights are the solution Properly defined property rights the elimination of the commons in a sense And and you can see that I think with the oil spill now the solution to how to deal with damages and who owns what to whom Is imagine there were real property rights there imagine those marshes belong to somebody Imagine the fishing rights belong to and how you do that. I'm not sure but imagine that we figured all that out That is the solution to how you read this how that redistribution happens because BP is liable Now it's a question of to whom and for how much? Right now it's pressure group politics And but you need to define in a in a properly defined property right world I think those would be dealt with so I think that I think we have to challenge the idea that they need to be commons Hey again iron man's definition of capitalism all property is privately owned Yes individual rights is a very high level concept after Decades of what can best be described as very poor education educational methods. Are you concerned that? Too few people have the intellectual capacity even to Understand it. I mean we talk in terms of evidence and try to convince people via logic But for people who have been brought up under you know, I I believe this is so because I was taught it because the personal authority said so Can that make a difference? Look if if that is truly the state of people then what's the hope right if individual rates is too hard Then all the concepts that we have to deal with are too hard and then we might as well give up We have to make inroads where we can I I do think You know enough people are still able to think enough if explained to them properly that they get again elements of it And again, I'm not saying that this particular battle. There's a big battle But this particular battle in this big war Is is going to lead everybody to be an objectivist, but can we make people understand that health care is not a right? I think we can't I think we can't and I think if we concretize enough if we walk them step by step and again Personalize it everything you do in these examples try to personalize it Ask them how they think about it what they feel about this or that You know where they make sense to them what they would like if they were a doctor, you know How would this play out and I think again some people you're not going to convince maybe most people I hope I'm wrong, but but we need to convince the ones that we can't convince And hopefully you know again And and this is why the bigger battle is an educational battle because we we have to save our schools and we have to save our universities And we have to we have to get people thinking again, and we're not going to get people to You know change philosophically fully until they actually can think better and that's a much longer term battle. Yeah I think I'm sorry. I think there's an exciting possible trend Uh heard on the activist list in colorado There was a reading group with the patriots Group there and they started reading various different things including capitalism unleashed And it seems like I might be able to get the new york tea party patriots to do that too And i'm just wondering I felt like that book might be An easier and very good introduction and then later we could do capitalism. We unknown ideal So i'm wondering what you feel about that You know I have to admit I haven't read it yet, but you know if you think it's appropriate and it's at the right level Which which I expect it is. Yeah, I mean use the tools that you have and and You know, I think I think if it covers those principles of individual rights and and what is capitalism and it Then yeah, anyway, you can get into these groups and and get to larger and larger audiences I encourage you to go out and do it and I think that uh, I think you know I'm surprised nobody's asked me yet But you know, I think generally the tea party movement is a it's not really a movement But the tea party phenomena if you will is a positive phenomena. It's the american sense of life saying enough is enough They don't know what they want, but they know what they're getting is not what they want, right? This is bad. This is too much Where do we go from here? They have no clue and you know, they're tempted by a serapilin for some bizarre reason Which is which is I think really really tragic and unfortunate, but They have that sense of life that we need to capitalize on They have that You know spirit that we need to help guide So I encourage you. I mean, I know there's some nutty Tea party groups and I would stay away from them if they're dominating even either by the the the really, you know Religious elements or if they're guided by conspiracy theories also stay away from them But I think most of the groups are not the ones I've encountered are not really dominated by those elements They need our help This is an opportunity. There's a moment in history and I don't know how long it Where there's an opening where people are thinking where people are challenging where they want to know what the limits of government are They talk about small government and limited government, but limited by what small how small by what standard small Let's give them answers. Let's go in there and talk to them about these things and then give them some options You know, it's it's it's a shot. I think we have to take right now To promote my new flower shop I had one place print my business cards another print my brochures and a third my signs Now my roses aren't red my violets aren't blue my geraniums look dead And I don't know what to do staples can help your business stand out with signs banners and brochures That are a true reflection of your company and now with staples spend $50 or more on print and marketing services And get $5 off your next in-store purchase now my business is blossoming and i'm spending less green exclusions apply in store only end 6 23 18 My question is in the category of being able to answer questions of objections to capitalism uh Almost everyone says that there would have been real disaster had the government not stepped in with all the bailouts and the Stimules and everything. What's the real answer? What would what the government should have done at that point? Well, I mean, I think the real answer is we don't know Uh, it's complicated enough that we can say that if they want the bailouts And if the government hadn't stepped in with something as a fed hadn't done anything You know, we don't know and in a sense The fed at least had to do something right it's its job. It's you know, we have a fed We don't want to fed but we have it once we have it it's got to act It can't just say okay now. I'm not acting acted before I screwed things up And I'm not I'm going to pretend nothing happened So it's got to do something and I think generally The fact that it lowered interest rate was the right thing where they kept them this low for too long I think yes, but again There is no real right answer ultimately because the fed shouldn't exist and therefore anything it does is is wrong I have I think that the answer has to be that the government Shouldn't have done all the bailouts and all the other interventions putting aside the fed Yes, it would have been bad. It would have been really bad. There's no question. It would have been bad, but We would have caught of it And we would have come out of it. I think in some sense stronger Because we would have boost the bubble of too big to fail expectations We would have in a sense implicitly deregulated the economy Even without any act of congress just by the fact of the government sitting aside and not intervening Not doing top not bailing out gm. They would have established a new You know set of assumptions and you and and that would have been healthy long term for the u.s economy What we've done is a disaster long term. I mean wall street is going to be more You know worse than it was in the past because of these new regulations But also because of the assumption that they can do no wrong now If you actually look at the financial crisis and you look at the time sequence It could have been things done in the beginning or not done in the beginning There I think would have mitigated a lot of what ultimately happened So i'll just give you a quick example in march of 2008. Yes march of 2008 bare stones Basically went bankrupt and was bailed out the federal reserve arranged a marriage right arrange a ticket, but it was a bailout The guys are leman Who were very similar in terms of their situation of bare stones looked at that and said cool Don't worry be happy right and you can read the transcripts of some of the conversations that we're having then and what was going on in the head of the ceo and Basically, okay life goes on nothing happened Imagine if bare stones are being allowed to fail And the market would have snapped out of it in march of 2008 and And say wait a minute some things going on here and the government's not stepping in to bail us out Somebody you know the ceo of leman is no idiot. He would have sat down and say wait a minute Do I look like bare stones? What's going on if i'm gonna fail? I don't want to fail Can I do stuff in the meantime to fix myself? I think the whole evolution of what happened on wall street post that would have changed And I don't know that leman would have gone bankrupt Maybe it would have been it would have been prepared one of the things people take leman when bankrupt and financial markets fell apart and True But why to a large extent because leman didn't believe it would ever go bankrupt Till the last hour they didn't believe they would go bankrupt They thought the fed would bail them out So they never prepared for bankruptcy and if anybody knows anything about bankruptcy Law and stuff this is something you prepare for you organize for the lawyer You know the the court is set up and you know you start negotiating with your creditors and there's a process That process never happened at leman They just went bankrupt and everybody whoa and then of course the next day ag is bailed out and everybody said We don't know what's going on here. We have no clue what the government's doing So the biggest thing that the government did is create uncertainty And then one thing again as a finance guy I can tell you that finance guys don't like is uncertainty We see uncertainty. We panic we go we we sell everything and we we go into cash And that's what happened and who created that uncertainty the government did not the markets Bernanke as late as as as early summer of 2008 was saying everything's fine No problems Paulson was doing the same thing and then two months later the world is going to end Unless you give me seven hundred billion dollars and I can do whatever I want with it That was the condition for top right How could they miss it so big well the market assumed that something horrific. I mean Nobody could have handled this crisis worse. I cannot imagine A group of people handling this crisis worse Then benanke and polson did I really cannot and they are heroes today Benanke got reappointed and polson's writing books and making millions But they could not if you actually look at the transcripts of what they said during that six months Nobody is you know, you just I mean maybe Hoover during the Great Depression did it worse, but it's very close In terms of and and nobody points this out. Nobody talks about it Wall Street and and most of us in finance respond to a large extent to what these guys do because they have so much impact On the world of finance and when they have no clue A completely clueless and panicking and giving mixed signals Surprise surprise financial market locked up, you know, that was the natural response So I believe that this could have been handled a thousand times better by somebody who understood markets But of course we never get it would have got into this mess of people understood markets Were at the top these people had no clue and they are the real they're real villains benanke and polson are real villains These are not just neutral guys and bush, of course to save capitalism had to destroy it. He said those are his words, right? He had a fight fight against capitalism in order to save it and takes a huge amount of ignorance and and and You know more than ignorance, but something why I'm not sure exactly what to say something like that. Yeah, so That was very inspiring your own very good One thing that really hit at home was when you talk about europe the difference between us and european You know, I mean me understand why I can't really discuss politics with my sister or any of my italian friends To them is completely foreign the idea that the government is there to defend individual rights And my fear here is that it's almost becoming foreign to us When you talk to people and it's like there is really an urgency to really remind them to And of course, you know the books will teach the kids But but what can you it seems like something has to be done really to remind the politician Immediately about this and I don't know what anything can be done I think you're absolutely right the different street americans and europeans as europeans accept collectivism Implicitly they accept the role of the state implicitly. They have no concept of individual rights And no concept of individualism quote culture. I mean certainly individuals are different But quote culture there's just none of that is there and therefore they They have no problem just just being guided down this road and it's no accident The 20th century is full of totalitarian regimes in europe because they just went with it You know, it was just it was just another you know the continuation of their trend towards collectivism And yes, americans don't have that But we're losing it and I think that one of the Real goals of obama and the real goals of the democrats And the intellectual left if you will put aside democrats intellectual left is the europe You turn us into europe they admire europe. They worship europe. They think europe is cool They think everything good happens in europe and they want to turn us into europe And one of the ways to do that is to destroy the idea of individualism and to destroy the idea of individual rights And again We need to fight that and again. We're the only ones that can't fight it because I mean They won't they uh the people on the right just won't they won't deal in those terms Because the conservators ultimately are not individualists intellectually ideologically They think they're individualists. They like the notion of individualism emotionally. They might be individualists But intellectually they're not intellectually that they're collectivists It's they they the conservatives are more split than the liberals the liberals are consistent That's why everything drift left the conservatives are split between a sense of life that's individualistic and pro freedom And an ideology that's anti individual rights and freedom and they are they combat that But yes, it's urgent I have no silver bullet so yes In terms, I've got a question about meta activism essentially so In terms of helping other people motivating them informing them Motivating an objectivist to engage in more activism How is it that that those of us who are outside of ari can do that more effectively what tools are people lacking? What is it that people are not doing that they could be doing? How do we how do we encourage people everybody who stood up here today to to up their game to the next level? So that we don't hit that 25 year mark and crash and burn. Well, you can stop by scaring them It's true that whether the consequences are not upping they game, you know, and I think that they're dire I think you know, I think that these activities ultimately people have to see a value in the activity itself not just in because the outcome is long term the outcome is abstract and and very The fact is very unlikely. It's it's pretty unlikely. We'll win in the next 20 25 years Good positive probability, but it's less than 50 percent. So it's hard to fight like that So they have to enjoy the process and giving them tools to help them enjoy the process and giving them Motivation to enjoy the process and giving them intellectual tools that make that process easier is crucial. So You know, I know the you guys have organized Help editing stuff and I think that's that's great You know where you help people because people find writing so difficult I think again getting involved in things like I think a lot of people find it cool to go to tea party Demonstrations and put up signs of alasrug. It's relatively easy. It's it can be fun The responses you get are actually really positive all the people who've read alasrug and tell you I mean find ways that that you can enjoy and and challenge the other thing is to Encourage people to challenge themselves going to something a little new And you know, I don't know Learning new stuff is a value. I think in objectivism, right expanding one's mind Reading about new things new knowledge. This is an opportunity to do that, right? There's a new area. I don't know You know, I think I think we've got people doing healthcare We've got people doing global warming financial regulation I think it's interesting stuff to read about the financial history of america. What's involved What's going on, you know Learning new field And and and become an expert and at least at least somewhat so find ways in which It personalized there are personal values to be achieved in the process that it's not just fighting for some abstract future but it becomes personalized and and and You know, I I'm not kidding about the scary part because I think that is that is a motivator You know things are bad and I think we need to recognize that they're bad and we need to recognize The intellectual environment within and one of the things that I think is really crucial is to understand that our allies are so weak That they really need our help You know and and that we have an opportunity to help people who are You know and the other thing is that we got to have a benevolent kind of a benevolent attitude towards Other americans who are not objectivists if you start out by resenting them and thinking that they're just too You know, they're just too stupid to get it or uneducated or or Immoral or just evil for holding the ideas that they have you're not going to get anywhere You're not going to be motivated. You're not You got to have a certain belief which I have that Many of the people most of the people out there In some fundamental sense are good people and that you can reach them There's a level it again a level at which you can reach them and you have to be satisfied And this is a challenge, but you have to be satisfied with not turning everyone into an objectivist You're not going to ever Even an objectivist paradise. It ain't happening. Not everybody will get every aspect of objectivism What we need to do is make them better Make them better human beings. They will benefit from it. You will benefit from it They don't have to be perfect But make them better And do it in a friendly benevolent way because if you do it in an unfriendly way, you're not going to be successful And they deserve better. I mean, they're not bad people So You know move them along that spectrum move them towards opposition. That is a huge that's a huge thing You don't have to make them objectivists And I know we all want to go in then give them the metaphysics and give them an epistemology And slam their religion and It's not going to work. We're not going to get anywhere if we do that You know, yes, there is an educational process in which we need to teach them About the metaphysics and epistemology and and and you know get them to see that religion is Silly at best and evil it was but you know that it just it's just wrong. But but there's a process but We can achieve things Before we get to that process we can still move them in in in our direction And I think that is important the one thing that I do think we can crush Because I think it's so anti-american that americans don't really Are not really bought in completely the two things that I think we can really crush Altruism and collectivism Don't hold back Those ideas ideas that I think the american people are willing To let go of if we give them a legitimate alternative, which is rational self-interest. They don't have a legitimate alternative right now Right in their minds. They have altruism Which means being nice and giving to charity and and sacrifice is good But their version of sacrifice is pretty interesting when you ask them what they consider a sacrifice And what they're really willing to do on a day-to-day basis That's one thing they have another thing they have is Bernie Madoff that's self-interest And they have no way to go with that. They're stuck give them give them an alternative and explain to them the full implication of the Of their of their altruism like whatever extent they have it and then collectivism I think is Is even more far into americans in many respects, although it's it's rising in influence. I think that answers your question Thank you for your talk It seems like there's something important where people think that something isn't possible until it happens And then that's taken as metaphysically given as if we're always there Like you know the constants of the universe or death and taxes used to be just death now it's taxes too Um and you know the iphone like if you had described all these things that exist now They if someone would say what what are you talking about this not possible? And today they view it as things that one can't live without and have always been here and will always continue to be here So i'm just curious if you could comment on that like that trend How that we can use it or not Yeah, I don't know if it's a trend or not, but it's a phenomenon out there It definitely is and it goes back to this example I gave of we've never had capitalism therefore it's impossible, you know And and it's it's a certain very concrete bond mentality that has that and you have to break it You have to break away and from that and give them lots of examples of lots of stuff that didn't exist before they were created And established and how good they are iphone's a good example You know or cell phones, you know, it's not that long ago. They just weren't cell phones All right, you remember pay phones and using a dial you know But but even in their own politics there was never united states before there was united states And it's something unique about the united states. You have to make that point that wasn't before Right and nowhere. I mean the fronty father surveyed and they couldn't find anything that fit and they created something new So something new can't exist and work Um There was no I I like to point out to people they would this is Alan greece transport, right? There was no fed before 1914 And as far as I know the economy of the us from the civil war to 1914 grew at the fastest race in human history Right for at least for that period of until modern times, right? So it workable Show them examples of things that they believe are metaphysical didn't exist before and It was fine things worked actually better in in the case of the fed than they do after okay I'm a product designer and design engineer and uh, um, I I look at, uh, the uh Uh Level of technology in the 1960s right and and the the in comparison to sort of world technology, right? I mean We went to the moon and We had one of the best car industries and we had all these really great awesome industries, right and Uh from then to you know government motors um I I don't see uh that the uh tech industry is Almost any free, right? Uh, um, I I see epa regulations closing in FCC stuff Nonsense like, uh Question the it took quite because other people and we already have limited. Okay. Okay. Um, I was wondering how how you how people define Tech right or how you define tech as as being 80 free or or or yeah Mostly free even I you know, you're right. I mean it the the government intervention in the tech industry is growing dramatically I think the turning point was the justice department case against microsoft I think since then it's been downhill in terms of freedom Uh in technology But when I look when I you know when I go to silicon valley and talk to venture capitalists and talk to the kind of Companies that they are starting when I look at a lot of those a lot of the companies. Yes. They have regulations but you know if you when you when you um You know when you're in a bank in the united states and and and uh when you hold a board meeting in the bank You you often have visited there by the by the various regulators to regulate you and any given bank Can have five different regulators some of them even more Uh than five different regulators right and and and they can come into your board meeting And they can dictate who can be a director and who can't and they can fire a ceo And I'm not talking about obama kind of firing the ceo of gm. I'm talking about kind of legitimately kind of so-called Legitimately within the rule of law the regulators have the power to tell you how to run your business right they're telling bankers right now don't lend They're not quite there yet with the tech industry right for the most part tech board meetings don't have regulators in them Yes, there's some epa restrictions. Yes You know the taxes are going up in venture capital is yes There's antitrust issues, but that's nowhere near if you if you know The scales of regulation that's not nowhere near the way in which financial institutions are being regulated So I still think the tech industry computers software So on is mostly free and you know if you want to tell me no it's 48% only free fine But it's much more free than the banking industry is much much much more And banking probably went from 80 before the crisis to 95 government run today So, you know, there's there's very little room for freedom if you're a banker right now Yeah I'd like to underscore a couple things you said Past year and a half. I've gotten been enjoyed getting involved in local politics And uh sat in on a meeting with the state Republican chairman we really have to be fast because I've got okay, and There were about 70 people there. We all got to speak our views and I said We talked about reducing the size of government But nobody's talking about what to dismantle and mention some things to dismantle By the time the other half of the room had spoken Two other people had picked up on that word dismantle as well. Look, we can't change the terms of debate I have no question about that people Have no ideas out there There there's a vacuum. There's an intellectual vacuum other than in the radical You know the the the nutty rights and the nutty left in the big middle There is a vacuum of ideas. It's a mishmash. They pick up a little bit from here and a little bit from there There's no coherent when you come and with confidence present a principled position people listen People want to know more and people start picking up on on on your ideas And you can really move the debate by doing so it really is you know the world It really is ultimately Ours to win so I encourage you all to get out there and start fighting Thank you all All material in this program is protected by copyright and may not be reproduced in any form or manner Nor played before a live audience Without the express written permission of the producer the iron rand Institute For further information or to order other products, please visit estor.ironrand.org Or call 1-800-729-6149 To promote my new flower shop, I had one place print my business cards another print my brochures And a third my signs now my roses aren't red my violets aren't blue my geraniums look dead And I don't know what to do staples can help your business stand out with sign spanners and brochures That are a true reflection of your company and now with staples spend $50 or more on print and marketing services And get $5 off your next in-store purchase now my business is blossoming and i'm spending less green exclusions apply in store only and 623 18 623 18 623 18 623 18 623 18 623 18 623 18 623 18 623 18 623