 Thank you to the Judges Club and to the R&B Council for inviting me. Thank you all for being here. Thank you. Yeah, it's a little bit of, it's kind of cool. It's about 20 years since I graduated. Just as young as I was back then. So, shrugging, shrugging the stigma of success. This is a title I didn't come up with and, you know, we'll have to figure out if I actually deliver on the title. You'll have to tell me at the end. We're going to talk about success, particularly in the context. What I want to talk about is success in the context of business. When in business school, many of you hopefully are business students or some of you are business students. And yet, there is this issue that I think we face within society. We live. If you're an athlete and you sign a hundred million dollar contract, whether you live up to that contract or don't live up to that contract, everybody's going to cheer you when you sign the contract. And if you don't live up to it, everybody's going to shrug and say, well, they made a bad deal. Who cares? Tough. But it's never a big deal. It's never gets moral passions engaged. You know, I'm a Red Sox fan and the Red Sox signed this Japanese picture once, right? And they paid $50 million to Japanese club and they paid him $50 million. And they thought he was going to be a superstar. And he was okay, but he wasn't worth $100 million. There was no press about this. I mean, the sports writers wrote a little bit. But think what happens when a CEO gets paid $100 million. Particularly if it turns out after the fact that he didn't perform, that he wasn't that good. I mean, the world's in. Everybody's in a poor. Everybody is shocked. And how could this be? It's not their money, right? Any more than it's their money when a picture gets paid $100 million. Yet society somehow finds this offensive. Generally, we have a special attitude in our culture towards business and businessmen. And it goes something like this. We kind of admire them. We respect them. And we resent them and hate them at the same time. So take somebody like Bill Gates. I mean, everybody wants to be voted. Everybody admire what Bill Gates did when he did it. And yet, many people, many people, were kind of happy when the Justice Department went after him. They resent the amount of wealth that he had in house. When he was running Microsoft, what are people's general attitudes towards vocation? Positive, negative? I mean, again, positive in the sense that he succeeded in business, but as a human being, as a man, as a moral creature, in terms of morality, moral terms, what did we think of Bill Gates? Positive, negative? I mean, put him on a scale and who would you consider a culture considered as a moral human? Somebody who's noble and just and good, virtuous. Mother Teresa. Perfect. If you accepted, I would agree. So here's Mother Teresa. Where's Bill Gates? I mean, in terms of our moral thinking, in terms of the language that we think about, Bill Gates is way down here. If we think about him in moral terms at all, it's the best morally neutral because we don't think in terms of business as moral or immoral. Because it's negative, because he's got 70 billion dollars. How can that be right? Right? A lot of people don't have anything. So from the perspective of morality, we view it as negative. And yet, who did more to help other people? Bill Gates or Mother Teresa? Who impacted more lives? Positively impacted more lives. I mean, it's not even clear. Now, you guys, a lot of you are too young to remember when Microsoft dominated the world, right? But who on the planet has not been impacted by Microsoft? In one way or another, directly or indirectly. I'm not even talking about the world that was created, the jobs that were created. And they're not just jobs at Microsoft, jobs that all the suppliers, all the companies that use Microsoft products, all the people. I mean, it's endless number. But then, all of us use Microsoft products. It's changed our lives. And millions and billions of people use Microsoft products. So, he is a businessman who has impacted every human being on the planet, but gets zero moral credit for it. Or indeed, in many cases, negative moral credit. He's perceived negative. And he has a woman, you know, she helped some people. She prevented some people from dying of starvation in India. Well, she did, really. She just didn't do anything to help them rise up above their poverty. But she didn't prevent them from dying. She believed the Meeks will inherit the earth when they fall. You wanted Meek people around. And she didn't, you know, it's true. You read about how Christopher Haitians wrote a brilliant book on militarism. And, I mean, the whole philosophy there is poor people are virtuous by the very nature of the fact that they're poor. So, you want to have lots of poor people. So, you don't only encourage them to learn to work hard to rise up into the middle class because they haven't even got less virtuous. What you want is them to stay poor. So, she would help them not die, but she wouldn't help them go above that. But there is that she's considering on here. Now, why is she considering on here or invocation? Where did she get out of it? I mean, again, nothing. Or indeed, a perception is that she suffered. Right? And if you read, it should spoken again. Or if you read Mother Teresa's diary, she actually did. She hated what she was doing. She continuously believed that God had left her and that she wasn't sure that there was a God. I mean, she was a miserable human being. It turned out. But that suffering gives her mobility. It gives her actions of mobility in our common perception. Bill Gates, what did he get out of it? $70 billion. So, how can that be more? So, morality in the culture we live in is not about what somebody does for other people. It's about whether you get anything out of it or not. Whether you get anything out of it or not. And if you get a lot out of it, and the perception at least is that other people are not much better off, then it's negative. Now, why is this true of, what's the difference between Bill Gates and an athlete? An athlete gets $100 million, and we'll find with it that Bill Gates gets $100 million, and we're... What's the difference? They use other skills and attributes. Different skills, but why can we associate more with athletic skills and resources? Other people, yes. So, one is using other people in order to attain a goal, and one, it's his individual skill. You can see it. And I think the fundamental difference there is that one is perceptual. When an athlete is great, you can see it. Because it's you and him, and you can see him, and you shot a basketball, right? Everybody shot a basketball. We know how pathetic we are. And then we see Michael Jordan do it, or who's the guy today? Who's Michael Jordan anymore? These young people don't even know who Michael Jordan is. The bar team does it. You know, wow, I can't do that. And that's fun to watch, right? So you get a suit. Somebody else paid him $100 million, that's fine. I'm getting to enjoy this, right? This is fun. Bill Gates, how many of you have managed a large corporation? How many of you have managed a small one? Very few of you, right? What it takes to do is not something within most of our experience. We have no knowledge of what it takes to be a businessman. What it takes to create. What it takes to build wealth. And we also are somewhat removed from the benefit. And we're not taught. We're not taught the benefit that they get. Indeed, I think we're taught often the opposite. So when you buy a Microsoft product, are you better off fighting body? I mean, if you pay $100 for, I don't know, something, windows. Right. How much is it worth to you? $100. No. How much is it worth to you? If you paid $100, how much is it worth to you? More. More than $100. It was worth $100 you wouldn't bother, right? You wouldn't be different between the money in your pocket and the product over there. The reason you buy it is because it's worth more than $100 to you. But you go into the transaction assuming that the utility you get from the product is greater than $100. And how much is the product worth to Microsoft? Less than $100. They've made something of it, right? So all the parties have won the nature of a trade. The nature of a volatile trade is win-win. But most people don't think of it that way. Most people don't think of a, wow, my life is so much better off than Microsoft. We don't. Nobody talks about it. Nobody thinks in those terms. And indeed, perceptually, you know, most people, if they don't really think about it, the fact that state-build gates are $70 billion. What does that mean about me? I have $70 billion less. Or we have $70 billion less. So unless you understand the win-win nature of trade, unless you understand that it is we're both better off after the transaction, we're both better off after the transaction, then unless you understand that, then his worth is perceived by me to be at my expense. At our expense. At somebody's expense. And of course, I'll teach you this again. I'll teach you that this is the whole exploitation, Marx's theory of how the world works. Which is still in sneaky different ways in our curriculum and in our media and in the way people relate ideas about business to all of us. So, the athlete we see the benefit to us and we accept it. And most of us watching on television, we never act to you. We think we never pay for it. We pay for it in the the marketing costs and the goods and the products and I mean we pay for it, but it's so small we don't feel like we pay for it. Versus the businessman skill set is a skill set that's far into us. We don't understand it. We don't know it. I mean, anybody can do that job. I was on I'm going to take this off. It's hot in here. It's Austin. I was on Bill O'Reilly show in 2002. Do you remember all the scandals around Andron and Wilcox and all those stuff. And Bill O'Reilly, he's a populist. He's a typical put you figure out into the window test where the movement of the country is. Bill O'Reilly wanted to fire every CEO in America that day. Every CEO had to be fired. And I was there to defend CEOs. And his attitude was anybody can do their job. What do they do? It was a big deal. And there's a certain element that people sympathize with them. They they don't understand what a CEO does. They don't understand what it takes to be a CEO of the complexity the skill set, the need the and therefore $100 million or $70 billion in the case of Bill Gates. How can that ever be just where's the value at? Where do I get from? I don't see it. I don't understand it. And it all looks like it's you and some world that I be told that if somebody's making a lot of money, it's at my expense. And I hear it's obvious because I'm not getting any benefit or at least I can't see it. People in order to gain an appreciation for the CEO step one has to be they have to be conceptual they have to think which is a challenge everybody thinks. And they have to think about it right they have to be they have to understand the nature about business and it's our job as students of business of people who are out there as business leaders which I think they own too business may never go out and explain what it is that they do and defend themselves the nature of the business and the value that it's actually been created the value that it's actually been created to win way transactive business is what builds the world around us nothing. None of the stuff that we have in our modern society today would exist without profit seeking businesses. None of it. Any other businessmen proud of this? proud of their achievements? Well I attended I attended a awards dinner Charleston South Carolina she can't accuse us of being a bunch of liberals because it was Charleston South Carolina and they were giving people lifetime achievement awards business leaders in the community lifetime achievement awards they read these long biographies as as you would expect it's such a important event and of the ten minutes that they spent on the biographies they probably spent one and a half on their business achievements and eight and a half on their community service and charity same other terrains of the community service and charity yet even from the perspective of how many people you touch out with how many people you help will you touch more people in your community service charity or in your business clearly in your business clearly in your business and yet they're ashamed of it they're embarrassed by it not only don't they go out in their business themselves they actually were trenched they actually feel bad about it they actually feel guilty when they should feel immense proud of the values they create of the world that we have concrete that went into the walls of these things in their tiles I was a civil engineer once in the tiles of the ceiling all of this everything what is this plastic type of floor the tables, the iPhones I'm not even getting into all the technology that you guys are playing with while I speak but all of that is created by business by profit-seeking businesses and yet what they're proud of is a few hours they do a week in community charity or the checks they write up there's something very, very perverse and it's sad in terms of what these guys have actually made what these guys and gals have actually produced and yet they have a certain degree of guilt why? so part of it is that people don't understand that people don't get it because there's a certain complexity to what it is about business but what what else is it, what else is it about being profitable, being business that makes people feel ashamed that makes people feel guilty what is business about greed it's about greed and sex it's about what, it's about profit is it only about profit, it's about making money it's about selling stuff and making a profit on it is it only about making money, what else is it about it's about ambition but it's about it's about why it can't be about pride happiness, why do I have it well, it's about your whole activity it's about being engaged in something that's fulfilling something fun, something engaging I mean, Steve Jobs cared about profit when he made these, right because they had 60% profit margins if you cared about me, you would have sold a lot but it wasn't just about that I mean, he loved this stuff he loved the vision of it, the beauty of it he created something that seeded reality out there but all of it was about room Steve Jobs Steve Jobs' vision this beautiful stuff it's about Steve Jobs business is about the business owners and hopefully the employees but the business was self-fulfillment it's about him, it's about self it's about self-interest but I like to tell the jokes some of you might have heard it when I went to buy this 2008 economy spiling under control and I went to buy my first iPhone because I wanted to stimulate the US economy because I know that you guys go to the mall why do you go to the mall? to make sure people are jobs you're all good Keynesians and you believe that some should drive the economy so you go and consume because you want to have a little bit of a prosperous country right? anybody? now you go to the mall why? to pursue your self-interest but what do we know about self-interest? it's bad right? none of the reason wasn't self-interest at least that's not what we're told and the diaries seem to suggest that that was true right? self-interest is not morally good it's not morally noble it's not morally right it's actually the opposite every one of our philosophers every one of our religious leaders will tell us that the purpose of morality is sacrifice it's doing for others self-less self-lessness is the essence of the good of the moral of the noble self-lessness I mean my mother taught me good Jewish household think of yourself last think about this first now she didn't mean it nobody actually means this stuff not for your own kids but that's what we be taught to say that's what we believe morality is about even though we don't live it that's what happens when you believe something to be good, to be noble to be right, to be just but you live differently what does that create? guilt it's exactly what guilt is all about my mother taught me be selfless think of yourself last think of others first but then I think of myself first my mother taught me that that was good it's called giving back it's called giving back I mean they get so low about that their mother's a little happy they feel like but they know that doesn't matter and you see this all over the place you don't just see it you see the community service and the charity which they feel obliged to do and I'm not against community service I'm not against charity but it's the motivation the motivation is about peace the feeling of guilt that I'll get through in a minute I don't think it's own I don't own guilt so they do all this stuff to reduce the burden and of course you can never do enough because the fact is we also live our lives on a day-to-day basis pursuing stuff for us perceivably selfless and yet we live in this quantity we live in this world of guilt and you see it when you talk to businessmen you see how they vote guilt is a ask any Catholic or Jewish mother guilt is a terrific means to control people because you can get them to do stuff that they wouldn't otherwise it's not in their self so how do rich people vote everybody thinks that people vote based on their projects people vote will be good for their economy right so if I promise to raise your taxes you won't vote that's the typical theory of voting out and yet it's completely untrue so Obama ran this campaign promising to increase taxes on the rich and there was every reason to believe this promise he would increase taxes on the rich so how do you think the rich voted against Obama right 8 of the 10 richest counties in the United States voted 4 4 and you can't just say it's cronyism because Silicon Valley is not crony maybe the counties are DC they don't be crony this isn't cronyism they voted because it's guilt yeah I'm not giving enough I haven't given back enough so you raise my taxes in California we just raised taxes on rich people anybody owning more than $250,000 in California it's not that rich raised it by 30% from 10% to 13% big taxing how do the rich vote for working for them people don't vote their pocket people vote what they think is right and they think it's right for them to be taxed more the money they make so the whole moral code of the society in which we live is built around the idea that self-interest is negative because what does self-interest entail what have we taught for more than this big that self-interest entail when you call the kid in the playground you're selfish what did you mean he takes care of himself if he's got selfish literally means what did you mean he won't share he won't share but it's worse than that now that he won't share he's gonna take your toys the whole perception of selfish is that you'll exploit others you'll take advantage of others you'll steal, like, cheat you'll do whatever it takes to get away with stuff you'll get your way no matter so we're presented in ethics we're presented with two versions of ethics you can either be militarism sacrifice your life for the sake of others and do nothing for your own good or you're a life-stealing SOB that's it there's no other alternative in morality and yet there is and yet there is because being self-interested doesn't require life-stealing cheating and being an SOB the none of those characteristics are actually in your self-interest that life doesn't reward any of those activities it actually penalizes them and particularly in business so think about what it takes to build and run a successful business over the long term because being self-interested means taking care of yourself now, does taking care of myself mean just tomorrow from dedicating my life to taking care of myself does that mean just tomorrow I mean I live a certain life you have 40 years I've stopped that, maybe 40, right it doesn't just mean tomorrow I mean it's only one of these years there's no point in my doing something tomorrow then five years from now it's just going to collapse I got you tomorrow more than I value 40 years from now, why is that it's basically finance, right because tomorrow probability of me being actually alive tomorrow is high probability of me being alive in 40 years lower there's a lot of certainty about what's going to happen in 40 years from now I know about that but I still value myself if I'm going to live 40 years that's what we save or some people say, we're used to saving we won't incentivize not to because I do care about 40 years from now so somebody self-interested cares about his life his whole life not just about tomorrow so, if you're in business if you're trying to build a business does it pay to lie long term does it pay in the moment sometimes in a sense that you might get stuff that you wouldn't otherwise does it pay long term not in the cause of your reputation yeah, I mean if you're in business and you're known as a liar nobody does business with you nobody deals with you if you lie enough, you land up in jail if you lie to your employees who's going to want to work for you people are not going to want to work for you you know, liars don't succeed in business a great example of this is when you know what you might have for this permit scheme never know you know Bernie is in jail right, he was caught and he's recently been interviewed and he said he's happier in jail than he was before he was caught and I believe it because Bernie made up a lie to everybody his best friends, his family, the people around he said he was terrified constantly, I mean caught not by the police by his wife, by his kids he's scared his sons and one of his sons committed suicide a year after he turned him in I mean this is devastating even for somebody as corrupt and horrible like Bernie made up mine doesn't work if you care about yourself if you care about your own life long term, cheating, stealing none of those strategies in business work, I mean again they might work for instant gratification but in a moment they don't work, no successful businessman in a free market granted if it's regulated and controlled but in a free market it's successful at a lifetime of lying and stealing it's not a strategy for success in business it's like the contrary when somebody's done phenomenally well in business what can you say about it what's that successful but what can you say about the attributes that led to this if you look at any book if you look at any of these business success books they're all basically boiled down to the same kind of stuff in terms of successful business describing what led them to be successful and I don't know any business book that presents the way to make money is to be a lying cheating thief means to be an SOB nobody writes that because it's not true the guys who are actually successful are not any of them they're being self-interested but self-interested requires them to do what what are some of the characteristics of a successful businessman they solve the problem yeah, be problem solved be rational and be rational means deal with facts deal with reality don't deal with lies lies distort this is a tool this is a crucial tool for your survival in business and in life this is what it's all about your ability to reason your ability to think lies is a corrupting mechanism you know what I'm saying in computers, garbage in, garbage out whoa, that's the same thing in here you put in garbage in here you'll get garbage in business, you put in bad facts you'll be a lousy business person in life, general this is true how many of you have lied? even in your personal life it's a lousy strategy you often get caught if you don't get caught you have to lie many times it complicates your relationships it complicates your life it's hard work reality is so much easier at my age and barely remember what happened last week what actually happened this is true now if I lie about it I have to remember two things the fact and the lie but actually it's more than two things because after I remember the fact and the lie and who I told the fact to who I told the lie to but it's more than that even because I have to remember why I told them the lie it's way too much work for me it's so much easier just to tell you and if you forget you told somebody that it's not a problem because the only thing you tell people is the one thing that actually happened so it's easy am I lying to this person this week? I'm not that's hard and that's true again business, life, it's all the same same basic principle so they had to be problem solvers grasp what else would come out of these books in terms of business success discipline and persistence yeah they had to be hard working disciplined productive they had to be incredibly focused on the end result these people were incredibly hard if you read about Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or any of these successes but in any industry they don't reach that top they stay incredibly hard working and productive you know they're focused, simple mind to be focused on being successful in this and they love it they love it, if you meet a successful businessman they almost always love what it is that they're doing enjoy it unless again, they will be guilty about it they're integrity they do what they say they're going to do they live up to their own standards that they set they live and that's important for their employees it's important for their suppliers what else they're rational they're productive they're integrity yeah they're long range thinkers which is related to being rational right they think long range they're not just in the moment they're not just about getting away with stuff and the ones who are about getting away with stuff are the ones who commit to fraud who have problems who go to jail if you go back to WorldCom and some of those a lot of what happened was not that it's not that they sat down one day and said how could I cheat my shareholders and customers out of millions of dollars in buying my pockets WorldCom is a good example it's not what happened, what happened was they had earnings below its market expectation they said I don't feel like reporting below it and next quarter will be much better I'll just this time one time it wasn't even going into their pockets I'll just fake the number this one time in the next month it's down but it's even worse and now they have to fake a lot more and soon you're faking billions and billions of dollars or the guy in Singapore who brought down Bering's bank the same thing he made an investment in the Nikkei and it went south and he lost $100 billion and instead of reporting that he lost $100 million they would have been pissed off at him and that's how he doubled up he said you know it doesn't go down two days in a row and of course he didn't lost again and doubled up soon enough that he was $2 or $3 billion and he landed up in JL in Singapore not a pleasant thing pretty sure JL in Singapore not good canyons canyons for chewing gum imagine what they do for losing $3 billion so you want to be a long term thinker but the short term thinking gets you in trouble you don't get you in trouble and just think of the technology world right now think about what happens if you don't think long term and the technology world we live in today when things are changing so quickly and if you latch on just on the short term thing and you forget the long term I mean you're likely to lose in the technology game today anyway even if you're really really good to really be successful you have to have a vision Steve Jobs was working on projects years and years into the future I mean he had a vision for the product line it wasn't just something tomorrow it said something that it seems to respond to anything else so it's more a responsive thing but they've of course been incredibly successful they do it very very well when they do it they know who to come that's a skill set as well there's still a company out there trying to copy Blackburn so you have to be rational you have to have integrity you have to be productive you have to be honest we talked about honesty anything else you just mentioned it actually they have to believe very strongly you have to believe in what you're doing you have to have a passion about it you have to love what you do and you have to be doing it for whom you have to be doing it for yourself I mean that's you know business is about self interest and I don't know businessmen who go out there I want to maximize social utility I mean there's no nobody gets motivated I mean they might have an illusion that they're doing it that way but they want to do it because they love it because it makes them feel good it has to be internal it has to be self motivated to be selfish it really deep sense to be incredibly successful again because they work incredibly hard this is not easy stuff there's enough fun at games if you read Steve Jobs' biography you know this I mean these were difficult decisions to make difficult challenges failure, often failure learn from their failure rise up to the challenge this is hard hard work better love what you do better love what you do how do you treat employees be a good business all your customers all your suppliers how do you treat employees you know I used to when I used to teach I used to do this little exercise with my students and we used to this idea of stakeholder capitalism where you're the CEO you really care about all the stakeholders equally you care about all stakeholders you care about all stakeholders I used to make a list of all the stakeholders and there are a lot of them and then you have a decision move a plan to make it going out of the room is it good for the stakeholders or not good for the stakeholders and you get a board with lots of pluses and lots of minuses okay make a decision and what does that fall down to how do you make a decision at the end of the day if you're trying to do that it's all about politics whoever's got the biggest voice who's got the biggest stake he's the one who's going to get his way on the other hand companies only naturally shareholder all they care about are shareholders they don't care about anybody else so when it comes to then we go with the stakeholders for example when it comes to the employees they change them to the machines and they work a few times a day because they don't care about their employees they don't want them to be productive so we have to treat them well why? because we don't want to match our shareholders but we need to treat employees well, we need to treat our customers well so how do we treat them? what's another word for well in this context? justice we need to treat them with justice we need to treat them based on what they deserve which means what? how much they work to us how productive they are what's their value to the enterprise and that's true of our employees but that's true of our customers you want to be guided by justice by a sense of what's just, what's right you're not there to exploit because we talked about these all hopefully win-win relationships you want them to produce this is a cooperative activity business so you treat them with justice what they deserve so again the mythology of business short term particularly American business it's a short term we're the only country that invests in biotech and yet we're short term biotech is like a 15 year investment horizon to see any return more R&D in this country than anyone else in the world we're short term we exploit treat people badly all of this stuff what business is actually available it's being rational which means being long term it's being just it's being honest, it's having integrity it's caring with the passion about what the product you do and what you care for and lastly I'll just mention it's about being proud this is the caring it's being proud about what you want to do by wanting to be really good at by wanting to attain excellence by striving to be the best that you can be successful business and that's what it's about so if you think about business the picture that is painted in the culture about business is so distorted and this is why we have this negative attitude towards them it's why we treat them so badly you know over half the murders of TV and movies are committed by businessmen over half you know how many murders in real life are committed by businessmen very few who commits most of the murders in real life well yes most importantly if you hit the buzz that people in your family or your group that's true and this is a professional criminal tend to be but that doesn't make good TV but have a rich guy do it that makes great TV because again we associate all these negative attributes and yet none of those negative attributes are real in terms of what it really takes to be a successful business so being self-interested being self-interested in the promises is about those attributes to be a success in business to be truly self-interested for our businessmen means to have those attributes those are not about line TV stealing but they're not about self-sacrifice and ranch argument is that is what the real self-interest is what selfishness really means is it means being rational being just being honest being productive having integrity, having pride that's what real self-interest that's my term for that self-destructive because I think all of those behaviors are self-destructive in business and in life but the real alternative to living for other people being self-less and so on nobody wants and you only live once why would you live for other people they're like better than yours more important than yours why how did that come about the real alternative and that alternative is you know this morality of selfishness which I think powers, achievers powers of success but they don't know it they don't know that there be more because nobody talks about morality in those terms when we talk about morality again we talk about it in terms of self-listening they feel guilty even though they're rational and successful and productive and honest and having integrity and all these things they don't associate any of those terms with morality what they associate with morality is self-lessness they're not bad and to me that guilt is what is causing our drift away from capitalism to me that guilt is what is moving our society away from free markets and what causes these businessmen to take pride in their community service and not in their business achievement I like to tell them you know, America was founded in 1776 third-grade colony, the British barely cared about us they didn't really fight that's why we won, right? by 1914 the United States was the strongest economic power on the face of the earth I mean, we entered World War I until we ended so militarily was economically the most powerful 130, 40 years, right? and we achieved that because of community service and character no, we achieved that because of profit-seeking businessmen because people went out there and built stuff and created stuff and that's why we created a middle class and poor goes up and established a life so how many people are poor in 1700 as a percentage basically all 95%, 99% of the population was poor, right? and then there were some other secrets if you look, there's a famous chart called the World Per Capita World Per Capita in Human History and I'll go in there 10,000 years ago over here, okay so this is World Per Capita in Human History and this is where it goes like this and then it goes like this and when does it turn? I like to say 1776 and two things happened in 1776 founding of America was the second one all the nations is Polish so whether it's 1776 or not it's symbolically 1776 that's what happens and that's business that's capitalism, that's freedom that's free market that's what generates that and yet we're rejecting them in my view because of this dual model this full small code that we uphold which is destroying the perception of business and free markets and capitalism so if we want capitalism to be self-fulfilled as business leaders which those of you business students hopefully do you want to be successful you want to feel good about yourself being successful then what you need to reject is the morality of selflessness and adopt this morality Inman's moral code a morality of self-interest a morality of egoism but not the false self-interest a false egoism of that a philosopher teaches that exists of lying, stealing, cheating but a morality of production of rationality, of integrity pride, dependence that moral and that will lead to success business and life and will lead to a sense of front aid about your real achievements not the pseudo-achievements thank you we're going to read your answer one of the things that I think will take some pride in is the fact that American society is incredibly charitable there's a lot of charitable giving and I don't know if it's a conclusion that we're doing it because we're guilty or because we're good people so my sense is that a lot of it is done out of a sense of guilt I believe if you look back into the 19th century where we were free there was very little taxation government spending during the 19th century total government spending, state, local, federal was maxed out at like 7% so federal spending was about 4% and the rest was about 3% today we're over 40% to give you a sense of the world of government and the level of taxation which would result as a consequence people are far more charitable far more generous during the 19th century some of that was motivated by guilt but I think a lot of that was motivated by benevolence by just a benevolence towards other people and I think that a freer world an egoistic world a world in which we didn't feel this guilt would be a charitable world now it wouldn't be indiscriminate of the charity some people don't deserve charity it would be a discriminated charity but I don't believe that people who value their own life who want to live a successful prosperous happy life you don't want there to be segments of the population of truly suffering now I also think that those segments are small the fact is you don't need much charity because the way in which you help most people is by giving them a job and that's not helping to trade so if you create enough jobs think about 19th century America it started out with a very small population in America and it absorbed millions and millions of immigrants and they all found jobs unemployment rates in the 19th century were very low and they absorbed these immigrants and jobs were created because the economy was free unemployment in my view is a consequence of stateism it's not a consequence of market so in capitalism the way in which you're helping to poor the way in which you're helping most people is the fact that they are jobs available to them so the number of people who need help is small and charity is plentiful so I think there's a two elements to writing charity benevolence which I think is a positive element which I think is a good element I have respect for the human being unless it proves otherwise but everybody is a potential trader this way more people in the planet are better the more people on the planet the more women relationships I have the better off we all are so I don't buy this all we can't go over 11 billion or 6 billion or whatever no, the more the better we'll figure out what to do with them as they come so there's a certain benevolence towards any human being think about how we take care of our pets how we take care of plants we know that plants just die these are human beings they're much more valuable than a pet or a plant but then I think a lot of it is driven by guilt and therefore it's misguided often so a lot of people give to charities let's take Bill Gates for example Bill Gates lives in Seattle his kids go to school in that area he can go up in that area yet when he gives, he's giving an effort now my view is the reason he gives to Africa is to distance the giving as much as possible for himself and himself it's a perception type of thing there's a lot of work to be done in Seattle I don't know if you've ever seen the show The Killing it's pretty brutal but it's filmed in Seattle in this last season's episodes we're all about these kids who live in the streets of Seattle and the horrific conditions under which they live these are kids of one way from home because they've got abuse of parents or something and they live in these houses Bill Gates has money, he could help these kids they don't have shelters he puts his money in Africa because he wants to be perceived as moral, as virtuous he has to distance himself from the results as much as possible I like to say people still don't trust Bill Gates because he seems to be having fun giving his money away so he needs to become a saint for his stuff it's true but to be perceived as like Mother Teresa what would he have to do? he'd have to give up all his money move into a tent and if he could bleed a little bit then we'd say wow, nobody would want to be here but everybody would say wow now there's somebody committed to his values and his virtues so we have this false view of how we do our charity I think our charity would be more effective would be more focused would be focused on what we care about rather than dispersed I just think if people brought the same self-interest that they bring to their business into their charity work it would be more successful and there is a movement right now what's it called? entrepreneurial social entrepreneurs or something like that where people are trying to approach charity like a business I don't think it's all motivated by good things but it's a more of an approach to charity that is focused on real values versus appeasing no, I don't like that so it is from the perspective of a business I remember when I was in elementary you know the whole business being selfish and I really thought work was great and then now many years after college and this is our APR in business we have a few employees that work closely with us who are starting to see our success because they work basically from our home office so they can see maybe some material things you may acquire or vacations so they can see things but they haven't been with us for years they come and go they might have just worked for a few months or a year but based on speaking with them from a career perspective as a 27 year old with college degrees with parents they're middle class students I'm kind of afraid of how they think because they're the next generation and they really do buy what they're hearing from media and what they've been taught in school which is that anyone who has money is kind of like bad or taking from them taking their productivity and achieving success on their backs and this is an old story I think this generation is more infractic with the previous just because it keeps intensifying but my mother told me seriously when I was growing up that anybody who's a millionaire is a crook you can't make a million dollars and let you cheat like that's the only way to make it it took me a while to figure out that it's the reverse it's very hard to make a million dollars if you're a lie cheating and stealing but yes we're growing up in an age I'm very called the age of envy and there's definitely an age of envy but think about this small code because think about a small code that says that a person's small responsibility is to serve others to live for others to give to others and you're poor and you're young you're the other you're expecting people to give to you because you're this other you don't have anything to give and here's your boss and he's not giving you as much so there's a real conflict there there's envy envy is a product of this morality it necessitates envy so I hate you I resent you because you're more on responsibility you're more on duty and when I have a lot it would be my power of responsibility to help somebody else but that's a whole setup and once you present your setup anybody who doesn't have stuff and there's always somebody who doesn't have relative to wealthy people is going to resent the wealthy the more status we become the more selfless we become the more altruistic we become the more envy of resentment and hatred of the rich you are and you see this a lot more in Europe than you do in America because America is still a land of individualism it's still you make yourself you build it, you create it although you don't build it anymore so we're becoming like Europe in Europe some rich people they won't drive fancy cars because people so resent it are so antagonistic towards wealth the wealthy are very fearful and it's Canadian countries and it's why they're willing to accept higher taxes and more of an equalization because they literally fear other people because it's at such a level and in a social life if somebody has led, you know you're tired of showing off your wealth or for being too ostentatious there's a little bit of that here in the US but less than in Europe I can't prove this and I don't know if this is going to be I don't know if you know Stephen Cohen the hedge fund guy in New York one of the big billionaires who just forced to close because of supposedly psychotrading it's a very broad definition of psychotrading they have these days Stephen Cohen is known for being extravagant ostentatious, he'd be criticized in the media, he'd be criticized by people all over the place for being that type of person his practices are not that different than many other hedge funds but he's the one they chose to go after these things drive so what's the next hedge fund guy going to do he's going to hide it he's not going to buy the $500 million dollar painting or whatever it was that he did because they're fearful and that's a sad state of the world when you fear the product of your own achievement it's very sad what would your advice be to someone like Michael Milking who had to talk about it and say he'd defend himself unwisely talking about how much he gave to charity how should these people defend themselves Michael Milking personally Michael Milking was one of my heroes I think he was an amazing, amazing financier if you study the history of American business in the 70s and 80s I think he had a crucial role in restructuring American business and making it a lot more productive than it had been and really changing the face of both finance but really a business and then if you look at the companies he financed I don't know how many of you know Michael Milking but every early technology in a telecommunication stage was financed by Drexel Goodman who's his company through the use of what they called junk bonds but what cellular companies was cable company all the telecommunication industry was funded originally with these bonds that they became called junk bonds and really to a better way it's a huge market today people don't really call it kind of bonds today but it knows that he went to jail he was there was an effort to go after this guy and to destroy him and it was a constant effort it was led by Giuliani Giuliani built his political career after going after Michael Milking and in the end they kind of deal with them where he pleaded guilty to 10 10 things if it were anybody else they would have got a slap on the wrist and they would have been a little fine and sent home he got in front of the judge and he gave his whole spiel about how much he gives to this research and that charity and this charity and that charity and then the judge said we're going to make an example 10 years in jail 10 years in jail for trivial stuff what I would have done is not cut a deal and the reason by the way you cut a deal supposedly is they were going after his family they were going after everybody these are mafia tactics when they go after businessmen they were using in the 80s they started using RICO RICO was passed basically the legislation passed to go after organized crime and the idea with RICO is you freeze the assets because with organized crime if you don't freeze the assets and you go after them they move the assets out of your eat today they use RICO on anything they freeze assets there was just court case recently where the judge threw it out because the judge did not froze assets they accused that I can't remember what they accused them of they used this on finances more than anybody else on business the same tactics they used on organized crime I would not cut a deal I would have stood up and argued the merits of the case I would have gone to trial I think he would have won I don't think he did anything wrong he did the things that he admitted to I don't think he did and I would have been incredibly proud of his achievements it's hard to place yourself in 1989 and look back on the 10-15 years of his career and how much that guy achieved how much he changed the world for the better in real deep significant ways and he was banned from the financial industry for life he was still young he was still I think in his early 40s so he had a whole career in front of him he was banned can I supplement something that you just said it's often forgot I don't know how old you are but I was of an age when Milken was being run out of town on the rail I was here at UT finishing my MBA it's often forgotten that Milken started out in a scholarly way you might know this but he started out with a scholarly analysis of the historical performance of bonds and he looked and he saw that bonds that had a high risk premium actually wound up with a better total return so he's on completely good factual grounds nobody remembers that he actually had an academic background he did and he was hired because of the paper and he wrote about that and he created and he made money and they kept giving him more and more money and he turned Drexel Burnham which was a third way small investor bank when it went bankrupt Drexel Burnham was the biggest investor bank on Washington bigger than at the time there were Lynch and Solomon Brothers and Goldman Sachs and you can tell the whole story of why they went bankrupt but the point is he should have been proud he should have stood up and he should have defended himself on the facts and on his record and his record in business not his record in the channel so you started your talk with sort of drawing a distinction between what an athlete does sort of on a conceptual level like what a businessman, CEO does which is sort of more conceptual and I think that's true but I think with some reflection folks can see that alright I really couldn't be Bill Gates and I think with some of the marketing software it's running this huge multinational corporation you look at sort of some of the more recent anti-capitalist movements for example like Occamite Wall Street and when they were on the street they weren't saying down with Microsoft down with, well sometimes but down with General Motors people that make values that are like obviously out there in the world everything it's the bankers in secondary security markets and things like that can you address how those kind of financial services companies are do create value and are I'm not allowed to play Wall Street no no, it's a good question and it's absolutely I think it reinforces my point so the most perceptual level is the athlete and you get that at the next step there's Microsoft, right? I use a Microsoft product, okay I get that then there's the banker who I would argue makes it possible for Microsoft to exist makes it possible for Microsoft to make the product that you benefit from but it's in the background, it's in the shadow I would even argue makes it possible for the bond chains to make $50 million they wouldn't be a building, they wouldn't be any of that stuff without the banker in the background funding it, providing the capital and so on so the more perceptual the easier it is for people to comprehend the more abstract finance being the most abstract of all of these the more difficult it is for them to comprehend the value of it but my view is and this is not this is not based on the fact that my PhD is in finance but I think that I'm not by accident that is also the levels of the value added the bank adds the most value because if you think about what the role of financial markets and institutions is the role of financial markets and institutions is to allocate capital on an economy-wide on a region-wide basis it's not just one company it's the fact that I'm choosing Microsoft over you know what was the previous you know the I'm choosing GM over the Buggies because think about it it's not the customers that chose the GM over the Buggies initiative it was somebody had a finance forward in order to build the automobiles because they believed in automobiles and by doing that usually in the same time defunding the Bucky industry not letting them expand and then the customers get it so at a macro level nobody does more to allocate resources allocate resources than the bank industry they make brokerage possible and that's true of venture but also when he grows he takes bank loans he goes public he needs Goldman Sachs to underwrite it he needs to control his risk so he needs derivatives swaps whatever the type of derivatives that he might engage in for these businesses to grow and expand but think about a bank saying because you know when they're good right they have this kind of he'll top view it saying I'm not going to invest in this industry think about the stock market right stock's going down, what does that represent bad future prospects this industry good future prospects the bond market does the same thing bankers do the same thing the decision and that's at an an individual level JP Morgan used to say when he was in front of congress they brought him to heckle him and to abuse him just like they do today and this is 1913 and he was asked the financial statements and all the stuff that he needs to decide along because they were trying to show his growth and he said I don't look at financial statements there's only one criteria by which I decide who did the loan money to and the congressman asked him what is that he said character I lend to people with character and I don't lend to people without character and that you can't capture in a balance so the decision of which business meant to support which business meant to support I'm sure there were other people trying to do a brokerage that didn't get the money to do it didn't get the venture calendar the guy would get Apple the first check Steve Jobs stunk he had long years didn't believe in showering he didn't believe in showering and yet somebody believed him and this is not an exit because the same guy gave Steve Jobs his first check turned out it's the same guy gave Cisco their first money and Yala their first money and Google their first money these are small guys they know what they're doing and they're evaluating something that we mere mortals don't do can't do so they explained it right and it's harder because it's more abstract not only I look at Steve Jobs I don't know how to do what he does but then I look at the bank and I say I really don't know what he does the problem with banking today and this is why the Occupy movement had some elements of legitimacy some little fraction is that government and banking are so into one today it's so much cronyism banking today it's the most crony of all industry well I mean when you see chairman of Goldman Sachs at the chairman of Goldman Sachs at the chairman of Goldman Sachs becoming treasury department secretary of the treasury and then you see leaving going bust but AIG being bailed out and the counterparty in AIG is all Goldman Sachs and you say were they bailing out AIG to save Goldman Sachs whether you believe that or not I don't know what exactly the numbers would have been but it looks like Goldman Sachs being bailed out the competitor Lehman is being allowed to go that all this is being manipulated that all these guys are in each other's pockets when Lubin was chairman of Goldman Sachs and he goes and becomes treasury secretary then he's chairman of city bank it's all this cabal looks like that is upsetting and that's legitimately upsetting and then you have to ask the question of where does cronyism come from argument is cronyism comes from government right government says we want to regulate X and what are the businessmen going to do say okay fine do whatever you want no they're going to say no don't regulate us and if you do regulate us he has some better ways to do it versus worse ways to do it oh by the way now that you're regulating us could you regulate those other guys as well that's how it happens before the Justice Department went after Microsoft in the early 1990s how much money did Microsoft spend on lobbying exactly zero dollars nothing they were brought in front of Congress Senator Arne Hatch the Republican brought them in front of Congress and they were lambled actually for not lobbying you need to give us all you know all of them guess what the justice one goes after them and by the way one of the things that they were accused of you don't have a significant facility in DC oh you don't need one yes you do now they spend tens of millions of dollars a year lobbying they have a beautiful building in DC I've spoken in the Microsoft building in DC beautiful facilities wonderful place they lobby extensively because they learned the lesson and do they sometimes lobby to stop Googles from doing something once you get into that game it gets distorted it gets perverted and you do ugly things but the game gets initiated with the guy with the gun so the way to stop croneers is to get government out of the economy is to prevent government from intervening in the economy that's how you get rid of it don't blame businessmen for lobbying blame the government for regulating the business to begin with go ahead my question is actually more about I guess the future I guess the general trend of what you're talking about given I guess the I mean not even recent but just the general trend toward especially in the United States at what point does it stop being profitable or even worth it for the businessmen to undergo I guess the struggle that you're talking about at what point is it worth it really if I can draw into it's good to strike yeah pretty much at what point is it worth it for someone like you know to stop being a group I mean it's a every businessman makes that decision for itself but I found it interesting for the first time I think in American history maybe this happened earlier in 2009-10 in 8-9-10 you heard a lot of stories about people retiring early slowing down stopping to work as hard and not because they couldn't because they felt oppressed and there's a whole term that was out there going gold you know named that out of the show so the idea of I'm going gold which means I'm withdrawing I'm not going to work as hard you want to tax me fine but I'm just not going to work as hard so the whole attitude of I'm withdrawing from society was present now you know I don't think that's that prevalent if it keeps getting worse and you go to Europe and there are lots of businessmen working really hard so I don't think that's what's going to bring everything down businessmen are going to disappear like they do in Atlas you know I think we're already experiencing much slow economic growth than we have historically there's no reason to think that's going to change it could get a lot worse in the future I think we're more likely to just shrink out of inertia because businessmen stop because I don't think they committed to your life in their deep sense to cause them to stop plus business is fun they enjoy it they really live it so we need six CEOs of tech companies that are successful have dropped out of college or drop out of grad school and there's this American that you need a degree to be successful so there's this big bubble in education and I'm curious about the source of that if it's government subsidies or so you're curious about the source of the idea or the source of the bubble the idea is actually empirically true so the fact if you look at income over the last 20, 30 years and you look at people with a college degree independent what their degree is in and without a college degree if you don't have a college degree average this is on average there's six certainly above average income is stagnant for people without a college degree and income is rising for people with a college degree over the last 30 years so there seems to be an educational premium in the marketplace so now whether that's self-selection people who go to college would have succeeded in any way because they selected to go to college there's a lot of things you can say about the study but empirically on its face it looks like getting a degree page and not getting a degree doesn't the six you mentioned and people like that would have been successful no matter what they would have done I mean they're just extraordinary human beings the problem I think with this is once you break it out by type of degree it makes a big difference what you get a degree in if you're getting a degree in the humanities your income rises but a much slower rate than if you get a degree in engineering or even in business so the most skill oriented now that wasn't the case historically historically humanities pay off because Wall Street hired humanities graduates and others but it's changing it seems to be changing we don't know this but it seems to be changing the skills you're learning in humanities but I think it has to do with what they're teaching over there and the quality of the teaching the quality of the research and the quality of the thinking of the humanities departments that's what's causing this but now the bubble the two bubbles one is the number of people going to college and the second is the cost of college now the cost of college to me the bubble is called by government whenever the government gets into something and subsidizes it dramatically you get a bubble you've got a bubble in health care costs to go through the loop people say why health care costs going up it's because of technology in every other industry when you introduce technology costs go up right LASIK the government doesn't pay for LASIK Medicare Medicaid doesn't cover LASIK guess what the cost of LASIK has been so 51 cents of every dollar spent in American health care is paid for by government Medicare Medicaid primarily but other programs as well the money they spend on it the higher the cost of health care is going to be with the public care it's just going to go up even faster not slow so education is being subsidized heavily and therefore it's going up and of course this is all just like with health care in some sense the left doesn't care because this is all leading to what what's the way to solve the education bubble free education absolutely there's no bubble in the UK in education there's no bubble in Europe in education because the state pays for it all right so you don't see the price you just pay the 2000 participation and the state covers the rest and you never see it there's no rising health care costs in Europe because once you socialize it all once you nationalize all of it you hide the real cost you hide it you can see the costs going up in the private sector of health care in the United States what about Medicare are the costs going up in Medicare yeah but it's hidden because nobody has to write a check right you go and get your head replaced you're 80 years old and you get your head replaced and the government wrote the check you didn't write a check nobody sees the rising cost of health care so it's all leading to some kind of nationalization whether it's free education or free health care I mean free there's no free but you know so that's the bubble now whether you know Peter Thiel I don't know if you know Peter Thiel one of the founders of Paypal who's very active in the world out there he pays kids not to go to college if you've got an idea to start a business and you commit not to going to college you'll give you $100,000 to start that business you know and he's on this anti go to college bit of course he lectures at Stanford all the time they ask him sometimes why he does that so there's there's definitely this idea that college is more and more of a waste of time and what you'll see I think the big challenge for colleges is going to be a day to day because it's not the degree that's going to count in the future what's going to count in the future what counts the day at the end of the day is your skill set and if you can attain those skills via online education versus going to a school and paying tuition schools are going to have to and then realizing that and you're seeing trying to get into that adaptation but the whole education field is going to be shaken up quite a bit in the next 20 to 30 years because technology is going to disrupt it just like it disrupts everything else hopefully I answer that question I just wanted to continue on that I guess what I always thought of in terms of the education field is that not so much because they always say like the stuff you learn in class is going to prepare you the job doesn't exist what is the saying sorry it's not going to be a particular job it's going to give you the skills to take any job the skills that you learn today in class are for jobs that aren't going to exist that haven't been created yet and so what I thought what I felt in education was that you're proving that you have the ability to learn as opposed to like learning a skill set that you're going to use because the things that you're learning in school right now might not be applicable when you get out and so the process of going to school and learning is proving that you can learn and acquire these skills and then weed out the people who can I think there's a lot of true daddy employers view it that way they look at you and say and if you could get accepted to UT you must be smart B, if you did well at UT you might be smart to learn and you can adapt and you can do all these things so therefore you're qualified the question is what happens if they find other tools to measure the same thing and you're seeing that more and more in Silicon Valley today having a college degree has become less and less and less important for hybrid not just for the entrepreneurs who start the company but even for hybrid decisions I know people at Apple will say but today they're getting reservations from 18, 19 year olds who've already built a website, started a little business done this, done that and they've proven their ability already so it's less the question is this and how the question is would Stanford only give A's and B's have you proven that you can learn? because at Stanford it's very hard to get a C at the University I don't know if I can do T but when I was teaching failing was a huge deal and you had to really work hard to justify failing somebody in a class students would get very upset they would go and the other faculty this wasn't politically correct to fail but the better the score the more weight inflation there is at least that's what I see that Stanford is normal but almost everybody gets A's so what are you actually measuring if what you're studying in the humanities is garbage which I taught in the humanities wrong history wrong philosophy but not just wrong but not giving you tools to think because what the humanities was a great training ground for thinking for giving you a broad knowledge of the world know about history you know about society you know about human behavior and the tools about how to think about it but if the humanities don't believe in thinking but don't believe in thinking is rationality is a good thing or whatever then you start questioning whether those degrees are worth of really doing the filtering that you taught about so and I think the world is trying to come to grips with these figure that out and you're seeing a restructuring in the education field and you see these bubbles give you an example of a I mean law schools went through a bubble and that's why law schools are now shrinking all over the country you see law schools to one of the few universities where they're finding tenured professors in some places because they just don't have enough they're not admitting enough students because they can't find their graduate's job so law schools are actually shrinking and that might happen in elsewhere how bad will the economy get before it gets better well I mean there's a false assumption you're assuming it gets better no I mean people always tell me things look so bad everybody will wake up and they realize this is so bad what does this talk about I mean talk about really bad when things get really bad what do people usually want some leader will tell them how to behave what to do and how to some authoritarian figure human history is full of examples of economies collapsing and authoritarianism on their rise and I think I don't think America is ready for authoritarianism but it's inching in that direction central government has more and more power we saw it a little bit with Bush after 9-11 we were willing to treat him as if he could do it no wrong and with Obama they say just what they're doing it's what we're not upset about it's like okay so they're listening to everything I say okay you should be care it's not really business they shouldn't be listening to right I've always assumed it because I've always assumed they were listening to it but that's because I'm a cynic but it's I think America's the mentality of American is becoming more and more acceptable to authoritarianism but we're still far away from reaching it good economic theory doesn't come to you because things have been sometimes it does you had the Thatcher you had the 70s and there was a real correction after the 70s people got it and you got Thatcher and there was a real global correction and things got much better I don't see a regular Thatcher of and I don't see the I don't see the momentum building towards a real shift we'll see I hope I'm wrong but we'll see how much you know the economy could get always I think we're distorting the economy right now quite dramatically with what the Fed is doing I think spending is out of control I think we haven't started feeling the truth people talk about we're running $17 trillion deficit but the real deficit is the unfunded liabilities of Medicare and Medicaid Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid donning that Social Security is small but the unfunded liability depending on who you read is anywhere from $70 to $210 trillion $200 trillion is by far more than the GDP of the entire world and that's present value of future level net so you need to cut you're going to have to dramatically cut the health care costs in the future to people who retire and the baby boom generation is going to get lousy health care as they get older or something's going to have to give or the economy's going to have to grow over 10% of the GDP growth which is on hold up so in the next 20 years there's a reckoning right you're going to have to do something different to fix what's what's going on and it's on your guys back right it's young people back right it's you know if you're time is a good right you're getting the best health care in the world and it costs you none and for every dollar you put into Medicare it makes you feel good because you put dollars in they were spent a lot of time ago but you put it in for every dollar you put into Medicare you'll spend four four so that means your kids and grandkids need to be taxed at four times greater than what you were taxed to be able to afford you your health care there's no money so they'll benefit from it but it's the young people I mean you guys should be unbelievably resentful you should be you know in the 1960s young people went into the streets right they rioted they demonstrated they occupied buildings on they info you know they went overboard but the cars were basically good cars a stupid war that we were fighting and a draft that forced them to go and die in some godforsaken part of the world that they had no interest in and America in my view had no interest in it should not that was not a war America should have been fighting and they went and they did something about you had much worse shape much worse shape I mean you're enhancing an economy that is barely growing you guys have a very hard time finding jobs when you get those jobs real income growth is very moderate compared to past generations where income growth was dramatically increasing and you and each I can't remember the debt levels that you've each won just by being born or inherited and think about this the greatest generation the one with two generations the baby boom generation these two generations have left you with $200 trillion of debt you they don't work anymore they could try a little bit of good luck you guys are going to have to pay off the $200 trillion and you won't be able to and your standard living has to go down if you're paying off the debts of people who spent it in the past so you should be out there in the streets down the street you should be upset you should be mad because this is worse than a draft I mean a draft would have been bad but this is worse than a draft you're basically being your future being enslaved paying off the debts of your parents and grandparents debts you didn't choose to take up I knew that but I'm at the tail end of the baby boomers I'm going to so are you just saying enslaved by the taxes that we'll see yeah well either taxes go up or you have inflation or you just have slow economic growth but no the way you look at it this debt has to be paid somehow or through taxes either way you're screwed so if they make changes now you can salvage everything somehow 20 years from now it becomes much more difficult the longer you wait the more difficult it becomes so and the more you'll have to pay off that vote so you want change now so instead of occupying the streets complaining about cronies on Wall Street, no real problem what you should be occupying the streets is over entitlements over the debt over the lousy economy the economies could be fixed you know I'm arrogant but I think it's easy I think the economy could boom all you have to do is a few basic things you know deregulate low taxes you know low taxes but mainly regulation weird of all the good and some regulations at a place in the business and business with some investing you'd see a boom this time this is not hard this is what we're doing this is what that should be we've got history on our side this is not hard stuff we're doing the opposite the whole world is in there at least Europe and the whole western world is in the opposite somebody hasn't asked Dr. Burke you've described two moral systems one is darkness where there's shame there's not being alive there's not being proud of your team and there's life where you are proud of your life society how do we get from one to the other short of everybody buying out education education it's all about education there's no quick fixes there's no magic bullet this is an age old battle there's a new book out but it really is a theme that Imran talked about we basically there's a battle going on in the world right now between two philosophers and there's always been this battle going on between the same two philosophers since they wrote and that's Plato and Aristotle and we keep alternating and we get the good stuff when Aristotle wins so we get the bad stuff when Plato wins what's the name anybody know what the name of the book is the cave in the light the cave in the light the cave is Plato the light is Aristotle now I think I know where the book which is based on the reviews there I think I'm going to disagree on a lot of what he concludes but the fact that he's setting up all the history is the battle between these two guys is pretty amazing and again a theme that Imran talked about years and years ago but it is it's this real struggle of ideas and there's no easy way to bridge that gap it's about education education it's about ideas and it's about changing people's minds the only way to change people's minds we believe in reason the only way to change people's minds is through a reason and the earlier you start the younger the kids are the better that's why this is a very long term struggle it's not the average and the average and never focus on the exceptional and help those exceptional people to win because the thinking is well we need to help the people who are down here but the thing is the exceptional are the ones who are going to solve the problems and help everybody so I guess I am going to scare but I see the education answer as not going to happen the public school so now you are going to the press no you are absolutely right this is a lot of work and you have to start a public school so there are good things happening there's an objective is to own some schools and it's going national with the schools and they are opening up branches all over the country hopefully they are opening up their first branch in San Francisco in New York next year they've got five schools in Orange County in Southern California and they want to have 100 schools one day so those are the kind of things that need to be happening people need to be starting schools people need to be investing in those kind of ventures because you have to start young and look everybody is against us this is why you should be getting huge amounts of money to the Ironman Institute because it's an enormous battle and everybody everybody is against us and we are talking about how much the schools get how much universities get we are talking about trillions and trillions of dollars and we have a few millions to play with we are way outnumbered and outgunned and outspent but again I wish I had a shortcut if I had a shortcut I would have done it already but there's nothing I mean it's up to you guys particularly if you are young you need to fight for your life go out into the streets arguing for your life something about it's your right to pursue happiness it's me taking away from you you don't have a right to pursue happiness anymore in this country you have a right to pay off your parents debt talk about the morality of altruism they expect you to sacrifice your life to your parents and grandparents now that's evil that's out and out evil and you should speak up and you should argue against it and you should talk about it and you should make your voices heard and that's the only way anything changes is people rise up and they challenge you go become professors and teach the arts that's it it's going to take a generation or two or three to change the world but you got to fight now and we might fail if you ask me what the odds are if you ask me what the odds are the economy collapses they are much bigger than 50% that we don't succeed in winning in the within the next few decades in the next 50 years when we have a when we turn the tide I don't know 10% 20% but even if it's only 10% what do you do, just give up and pretend you're dead you got to keep fighting