 It is live streaming, you're all on YouTube. Say hello to YouTube everybody. Welcome to the University of Amsterdam. My name is Kimasa. I'm the National Coordinator for Students for Liberty as well as Chairman for the U.S. Students for Liberty Association. I can see that we have a lot of new faces here and would like to address you with an excellent welcome this evening. It's a really nice, happy year. This event is hosted as a collaboration between Students for Liberty and U.S. U.S. Students Association. Students for Liberty is the largest pro-liberal student organization in the world. In terms of leaders, countries representative, and events. Producing in 2021 over 2,500 events with over 600,000 athletes. Students for Liberty is empowered, educate, and develop the future leaders of liberty and really give them the resources they need in order to become a special advocate of liberty in all aspects of life. And the U.S. Students Association, on the other hand, is based here in Uppsala and forms a part of the collaboration of Swedish conservatives and the girls students. Founded in 1942 and hence being the oldest non-partisan national student association in Sweden of its kind. And Gireska hosts events here every Tuesday. We organize everything between speaker nights, festivities like the one later this evening and debates to bring and moving together a wide range of politically and philosophically interested students. We have a big time approach and our members have a wide range of views and opinions. We want to contribute to expanding and sharpening the political and ideological debates in the city. And this is what we hope to do tonight. And if you enjoy it, you are very welcome back to other similar events in the future. So a bit of practical information for the next hour and a half. We will listen to Dr. Jarnberg and have time for some questions. After that, we will have a 30-minute break where you who are staying for the dinner will have to go outside for a minute and we will rearrange everything in here. 30 minutes after that, we will aim to start the dinner. So, enough with that. And on to who is really the star of the evening. We are very glad to have Dr. Jarnberg here to speak for us on the topic of the morality of capitalism. Dr. Jarnberg is the current chairman of the board at the Einrand Institute, which aims to spread Einrand's philosophy. And as you can see, we are very big fans of Einrand here. Dr. Borg has a PhD in finance from the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Borg was a columnist for FORPS and his articles have been featured in the Walter Journal and USA Today, among others. He is also a writer, a podcast host and an internationally renowned speaker. And tonight, he is here with us. Without further ado, let's welcome Dr. Jarnberg. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to Student Celebrity and the organization whose name I cannot pronounce for hosting me. I really, really appreciate that. It is a global warming has already arrived in Sweden, it appears. And it's really hot in here. All right. A couple of just announcements and then we'll get to the talk. I've got some flyers here. One flyer is for anybody who, any student who would like to read an Einrand book, whether you have read some or not, you can get a free book. So you just scan the barcode, put in some info and you get a menu of which book you want and you can choose the book and download it. If you want recommendations for which ones to download, ask me afterwards. And the second one is for those of you who may be read some Einrand and would like to join discussion groups of people all over Europe or all over the world, we're forming discussion groups around particular books. And again, scan the barcode, put in your information and they will contact you about what reading groups are available. And you can see if you'd like to join. All right. So I think those of us, and I assume we have a group here that's made up of generally pro-free market people, liberals, libertarians, conservatives, but who basically agree that free markets, capitalism is good. And it's good because it produces good results. That capitalism produces higher GDP, higher standard of living, higher quality of life. And I think all of us, all of those of us who think like that, who say, yeah, capitalism works. We really have to ask ourselves a really important question. And that question is, if it's so good, why are we failing? Why don't we have more of it? Why indeed is the world moving away from capitalism, away from free markets, away from liberty, at least in the economic realm, and towards greater and greater statism, whether it's a growing welfare state or whether it's a growing regulatory state. Or some kind of status quo, but there certainly is no movement anywhere in the world, even if there are periods in which we deregulate a little bit and lower the welfare state a little bit. There's no place in the world right now that is systematically moving towards greater free markets. There's just no movement like that. And places that used to be like that, Sweden has definitely gone a long way from when you were much more socialist 40 years ago to today, but it's halted. It's not a continuing path. And there's no momentum around that path. And the United States has for 100 years been moving away from kind of the freedom. Even China, which had just some freedom in the economic realm, not in any other realm, but in the economic realm is moving against that freedom. We're seeing greater statism, greater state informant. There really is no way I can think of in the world right now where the general trend is towards greater capitalism, greater free markets. And the question has to be why? Because capitalism is an amazing success. Every way that you allow for economic liberty and to the extent that you allow for economic liberty, you get wealth creation. You get higher standard of living, high quality of life. You get fewer poor people. You get rising standard of living. By every standard of human well-being, capitalism is a good thing. Materially. So why don't we embrace it? I mean there are lots of examples of this and I'll just give you highlights, but you can ask in the Q&A. I mean it's a China. Look at China over the last 40 years since the late 1970s. They liberalize their economy. They free people up. They give them what people think of property rights. They tell people go be entrepreneurs. We want it to be. Don't ask for permission. Go make money. And people go and do it. And they build and they create. And about a billion people have come out of poverty as a result of that. The greatest movement out of poverty in all of human history. You look at the periods where Sweden was most successful economically or the periods in which you were freest. Certainly true of the United States. And as we increase regulations and we increase control, everything kind of slows down. People say there's a limited growth now. Economies can't grow beyond a certain amount. Yeah, if you regulate them and control them, then there's a limit to growth. Growth requires limits on regulations and controls. That's what growth requires. But if you control, if you regulate, if you inhibit, if everybody has to ask for permission to do everything, then yes, there are limits to growth. Otherwise, there are no limits to growth. Isn't there a little limit of how fast an economy can grow? So what is going on? You know, one last example, maybe one of my favorite examples, although it's not going to last for very long, is I don't know how many of you have ever been in Hong Kong. You're young, so probably very few. If anybody, anybody been in Hong Kong? I used to say you've got to go once in your life, make an effort to go once at least to Hong Kong in your life. I don't say that anymore because the Chinese have taken it over and it's nowhere near as nice as a place as it used to be. And I don't want to support the Chinese. But here's a place that 75 years ago was a fishing village on a rock in the middle of nowhere, literally in the middle of nowhere. It has a decent port, no natural resources, zero. And there were, you know, maybe 10, 20,000 people in the whole area of Hong Kong. And today, there's 7.5 million people on this rock. More skyscrapers, tall buildings than Manhattan, the New York City. GDP per capita higher than the United States of America. And they did it in 70 years. And, you know, they got 7.5 million because people swam there. People got on little boats and dinghies and rode there and risked their lives to get there from all over Asia. Why? Because they offered them free healthcare? No. Because they offered them lots of regulations to make sure that businessmen didn't screw them? No. They offered them a robust Swedish-like welfare state? No. Every immigrant got 3,000, whatever, Euro? No. They offered them nothing except the rule of law, protection of property rights, protection of contracts, respect for contracts. That's it. And everybody came and prospered. Not everybody prospered, but you had the opportunity to prosper. And that's how they got to be richer than America and how they got to the skyscrapers and the wealth that Hong Kong represents. Sadly, even that is now going to be chipped away at under Chinese rule. And it's not that we don't understand why. We understand why capitalism produces the results that it produces. We've got great economists on the freedom side. They've even won Nobel Prizes. They were so good, you know, they couldn't be ignored. Whether it's Mises or Hayek or Friedman and lots of others, dozens and dozens of economists. And explain and we have a solid, real understanding of how economies work and why free markets work better than regulated controlled markets from an economic perspective. All of that has been done and has been spoken about and we've educated people about it and we've put the word out there and everybody knows. And yet they all ignore it. Nobody cares. So, you know, in America, I'm sure maybe in Sweden, you don't have a minimal wage, do you? No, but in America we do. You guys are smarter than we are. So we have a minimal wage. Now every economist in the world knows, every economist in the world who still is an economist rather than a political hack or an ideological, you know, imbecile. I was looking for the right word. I'm not showing imbeciles the right word, but something like that. Knows that minimal wage creates unemployment, unemployment among the least able, right? The least educated, the poorest, the youngest. They're the ones who are going to be unemployed because of minimal wage. It's basic economics, supply and demand. And yet it doesn't matter to anybody. We keep voting, raising it. Let's raise it. It doesn't register. Rent control. There's one thing all economists, even crazy economists, crazy leftist economists, agree on. Rent control is bad. You know where the state determines what the rate can be and how much you can increase it for month to month. It's bad because buildings don't get maintained and the quality of the building deteriorates and there's no incentive to build new buildings. Lots of reasons. Does that stop anybody from rent control? No. It has lots of advocates. So something is going on here that's not about economics. Something is going on here that allows people, in a sense, to evade the success of capitalism. Now let me be clear in terms of what I think capitalism is. So I think capitalism is something we've never really had. We've gotten close, but we've never really had. I think capitalism is where all property is privately owned. I think capitalism is where the government is separate from the economy, where there's a separation of states from economics, where you have no regulations, where you have, you know, minimal taxes, where the state does police, military, judiciary and leaves us alone, basically. That's capitalism. We've never had that. But, you know, and the communists say they never had communism, right? They never had it purely. But this is the difference. The difference is that the closer you get to socialism, the closer you get to death and destruction. The more people die of starvation. The poorer people get. Every experiment is socialism moves in that direction generally, whether people literally starve or they just get poorer. And even moderate forms of socialism move us in that direction to some extent or another. Exact opposite happens with capitalism. The more we move towards freedom, towards free markets, towards less regulations and less controls and less redistribution, the richer we get. And the richer almost everybody, at least everybody is willing to work, gets. So we never had capitalism. We've been closer. We've been further away. We've moved in that spectrum and you can see the results. So why is capitalism hated? Why are most of the students I assume in Uppsala University socialist or at least on the left of center? I assume that's true. Otherwise you'd be the only university I know of anywhere in the universe. What is it about capitalism we hate and despise? Well, what is capitalism about fundamentally? What's the fundamental activity that we engage in in a free market? Indeed, why do we go into the marketplace? What are marketplaces for? What's the purpose of a marketplace? So why does Steve Jobs make the iPhone? Yes, I use my iPhone. I use it in every talk I ever do. I find ways to use my iPhone even when I give a talk on the war in Russia or something. Why do you make an iPhone? Why does Steve Jobs make an iPhone? You can say it. Why does he make an iPhone? What's that? To become rich. To become rich. Right? To make money. Why does it take so long to say to make money? Because it's a little uncomfortable. But is it only to make money? Yes. Steve Jobs woke up every money. Ah, one more money. No. There's no way. And I hope none of you ever get a job where it's only about money. Money's important. But only about money? No. Even I who run a hedge fund, I don't only do it for the money. Why else do you do it? Why else would you go to work? He likes what he does. He likes it. He's having fun. And he wants to create something beautiful. He gets pleasure and satisfaction from building these things and from succeeding with them. And hopefully when you go to work, you won't only go to get a wage or to get money, but also because you love what you're doing. In other words, who does Steve Jobs make the iPhone 4 at the end of the day? For himself. So I remember buying my first iPhone. It was 2008. And the US economy is going into recession. And I'd studied my economics and I knew that in order to prevent a recession, we needed to consume in order to stimulate the economy. So I went to buy my iPhone so I could help my fellow man prevent a recession and stimulate the economy. Because that's why you guys go shopping, right? That's why you buy nice suits and buy shoes and everything. It's because you want to make sure people have jobs. Of course. Why do you go shopping? Something. Yeah, why do you want it? For what reason do you want it? Because it'll make what? Because you think it'll make your life better in some way or another, right? Because it serves some personal purpose. Whether you've thought about it deeply and you've decided this is really something I need or whether it's an impossible buy, whatever it is you're buying, you're buying because you believe it's good for you. So what is an marketplace? The producer and the consumer meet in order to do what? To pursue what? To pursue the purpose of what? Realizing what's your benefit? I don't really care about the benefit Apple gets when I buy an iPhone. What do I care about? My benefit. What does Apple care about? Apple's benefit. So the marketplace is a place where we go and pursue our self-interest. We all go into the marketplace thinking about ourselves. Not about society, not about the world, not about the economy, not about the person we're trading with. I'm not worried about the company that sold me the shirt. I'm worried about getting the shirt. For me, a shirt I like, not the shirt they want to sell, but the shirt I want to buy. And they want to sell me something, right? Because they're making money off of it because hopefully they enjoy their jobs. So markets are places where we go in order to pursue our self-interest. It's the one place in life where it's pretty naked. You can't really hide behind some socially responsible, beautiful thing, right? What do we think about self-interest from an ethical perspective? Morality. What does morality have to say about self-interest? What did your mother tell you? Selfish. Don't be selfish. Don't be selfish. Be what? Be kind. Generous. Generous, but, you know, those are, what does that mean? Yeah, altruistic. Be altruistic, which doesn't mean kind of self, kind and generous, it means what? What does altruism mean? Yeah, it's sacrifice to others. Sacrifice your interest to others. And the ideal, the moral ideal, is that we be self-less. But we don't take into account our own interests at all. I mean, Augustine Comte, the French philosopher and Comte, the German philosopher, would say, if you help somebody else, if you kind to somebody else, you're generous towards somebody else, but you get pleasure out of it, you get satisfaction out of it, doesn't count as morality, doesn't count as moral. To be truly moral, it has to be truly selfless. It has to be a situation where you don't get anything from it. Read Comte. Literally says that. Even Comte literally says that. Don't trust happy people because they're probably selfish. Because the only way to attain happiness is how? By pursuing your self-interest. So be careful. Watch out. Self-interest is the enemy. And note that capitalism is about self-interest. Capitalism is about pursuit of self-interest. And Ed Amarro, Comte says self-interest is bad, evil, immoral. You're supposed to sacrifice. How many businessmen sacrifice? Not in their day job. So we've got the suspicion of capitalism immediately off the bat. And what does selfish mean? What are we taught that being selfish means? What kind of behavior is selfish behavior? Putting yourself first. But what does that mean? Because I could put myself first and... Hurting others, lying, stealing. Yeah, it means hurting others. Exploiting others, taking advantage of others, lying, stealing, cheating. You know, stabbing people in the back. Just doing whatever it takes. Exploiting other people to get you away. That's the image of being selfish. Of being self-interested. The culture has. Capitalism is a system of selfishness. Capitalism is a system in which people lie, steal, cheat, stab people in the back and exploit everybody else. Easy, right? So I don't care how well capitalism does. It's the system of evil, bad people. Why would I support it? And that I think is the challenge we face. And the altruism that they teach us. It's interesting because at the end of the day it's not really about helping other people. It's more about, as we said, the self-lessness. It's more about the sacrifice. I'll give you an example. How did... I don't know. You know, post-COVID, I used to use Bill Gates as an example. I mean, do you guys hate Bill Gates now post-COVID? I don't know. You have to be careful these days because I think he wasn't injecting chips into the vaccines or something. Buying all the farmland in the United States to control our food supply. It's pretty amazing. But there's a reason why they have conspiracy theories about Bill Gates. Because Bill Gates is what? Rich. Rich. Successful. How did he become rich? How did Bill Gates become rich? By exporting others. That's an interesting interpretation. But no, reality. How did he become rich? What was the company he started? Microsoft. Microsoft made an enormous amount of money. Gazillions of dollars, right? And Bill Gates became, at the time, the richest man in the world because he owned Microsoft. What effect did Microsoft have on the world? Innovation. Yeah, it innovated. We all bought Microsoft products. Probably still do. Why do we buy Microsoft products? They're the best. And we believe that they make our lives better, right? So when you spend 100 euro on a piece of software from Microsoft, why are you spending 100 euro for the piece of software? Yeah, because you believe that this $100 piece of software is going to return to you much more. That you're going to benefit a lot more than 100 euro from this piece of software. That's why you will need to spend 100 dollars. And you spend 100 euro over and over and over again over the years, because you know that keeping up with this is part of the business, and your business or your personal life requires this in order to get better. So you are better off for buying Microsoft. So how do you become a billionaire? You become a billionaire by creating a product that millions and millions and millions, maybe hundreds of millions of people want, are willing to pay you for more than it costs you to produce it. Why are they willing to pay you for it? Because it makes their lives better. So you could say there's only way to become a billionaire in a market economy is by making people's lives better. But not a few people. It has to be hundreds of millions of people, maybe billions of people. I would argue Microsoft has made pretty much every human being on the planet better off. You know, even people in Africa who get aid, who have never used a Microsoft product, how does the aid get there? Somebody on a computer figuring out the supply chain and the quickest route and the cheapest route, right? There's no way Microsoft product hasn't touched the food between when it was produced until it got to whoever is consuming it down the road. Everything has been touched. And indeed, that's true of most billionaires. Billionaires are billionaires because they've made the world a better place to live. Because they've made other people better off. That's why people keep buying from them. I know, you see, you know, what's his name? Bezos has made my life significantly better. Amazon is now, it makes so much sense to buy from Amazon. Particularly, I live in Puerto Rico, so I live on an island. It's very difficult to buy stuff on the island. Everything is shipped in. And getting stuff from Amazon, particularly during COVID, was a life saver. My life's better off because Jeff Bezos created Amazon. He became a billionaire because it's not just me. There are billions of people like me. Okay, so Bill Gates became a billionaire because he made the world a better place. Because hundreds of millions of people's lives were better. How much moral credit, not economic, moral credit did he get for that? Do we build highways, name them after Bill Gates, and statues all over the place, and the Pope was thinking of making him a saint because he's helped more people than anybody in all of human history, maybe? No. No. I mean, we hate the guy. As a culture, we hate the guy. Why? He helped so many people. So why do we hate him? Part of it's envy. Part of it's ignorance. People have a zero-sum mentality, and they don't get that he helped all these people, but the reality is he did. So beyond envy, what is it that makes us hate him? Yeah, he benefited from it. You're not supposed to benefit from helping other people. And how do we know that? Because when we look at other people that we do admire morally, they don't benefit from it. Like, who do we admire morally, ethically? Who's kind of the ideal? I have to make a disclaimer. I hope I don't offend anybody, although I don't think you're in trouble by offending Christianity, right? Yeah, Jesus! And why Jesus? Why Jesus is this moral hero? What did he do that makes him a moral hero? He sacrificed himself for what? Everyone. For everyone. He sacrificed himself for other people's sins. We sinned, he got punished. Has there ever been a bigger injustice? He didn't sin, right? He wasn't penalized for his sins. I can understand that, right? Do something bad, you get penalized. No, no! I did something bad, he goes on the cross. How's that right? That's like the definition of injustice. But that's exactly the point. The whole point of altruism is he died, he sacrificed, he suffered the worst kind of death, right? Unbelievably painful for other people. The ultimate self-sacrifice. He didn't benefit one iota from it. Oh well, he became a god, but you know, put that aside. Didn't benefit one iota from it. And that's the point. And look, in the West, that's our symbol of morality. We have it everywhere, little crosses that we all wear, right? Of a human being being tortured to death on a cross. Can't think of a more horrific image than a cross. And yet we worship it. That's our moral code. Our moral code is a moral code of self-sacrifice. Of blood and suffering and death. It's bleak, it really is. What's another example? Example that's often used, I don't know, is Mother Teresa, right? Mother Teresa gave up kind of a middle-class living, went off to Africa, helped poor people not die. She made a point of never helping poor people achieve anything because she believed the meek shall inherit the earth so she wanted a lot of meek people. She didn't want them dying, so she prevented them from dying. Helped them prevent them from dying. Helped thousands of people. She didn't help as many people as Bill Gates, even when it comes to preventing from dying, I bet you. But she's a saint, and he's not, because she never benefited from it. She was never rich. She never lived in a nice home. And indeed, the contrary, if you actually read her diary, she was miserable. And I think that's what makes her a saint, that she was miserable. She didn't enjoy what she was doing. She hated it, it caused her to doubt her faith, caused her to do a lot of soul-searching, right? But she was always in angst. She was never happy. Wow, that's a saint. Well, take Bill Gates himself. He's a bad guy when he's making money. Making money is creating a product. He's making the world a better place. He's employing hundreds of thousands, not millions of people. A whole industry comes about because of him. And we don't like him. But he leaves Microsoft, leaves all of that. And starts being a philanthropist. And starts giving his money away. Now we kind of like him. Why do we like him? Because philanthropy, which doesn't change the world, the world is never changed by philanthropy. Again, helps a few thousand people, maybe hundreds of thousands of people. But it doesn't have the impact that a Microsoft has. But philanthropy is better than Microsoft because he does not benefit from it. He's just giving away. He's not getting anything in return. So we kind of like him. Not completely. Why do we not completely like him? What's the problem with Bill Gates still? Rich. Yeah, he's still rich. It's a real problem. And not only is he rich, but if you actually watch interviews with Bill Gates and stuff, he seems like he's kind of having fun. He's like enjoying giving money away. He's enjoying investing. He's enjoying his life. That's not acceptable. If you're going to be a saint, if you're going to be morally good, how do we make him a saint? What would you have to do? Give it all away, move into a tent, maybe bleed a little bit for us, you know? A few nails and some strategic locations in his body would help. And then all of us would say, we don't want to be him. We don't envy him anymore. But, wow, wow, now we're going to build sculptures. And now we've got names and parks and stuff over his name. There's something really sick about that. To produce, to build, to create, to benefit humanity through trade, through win-win transactions, to make the modern world, eh, no big deal. But to suffer by giving money, stuff away, that's cool. That's good. That's morality. That's the morality of the modern world. That maybe nobody actually says it, like I say it. Nobody actually says it explicitly, although some philosophers do. That's implicit in all of us. It's how our mothers raised us. It's how our preachers preach. It's how our philosophers teach us. Subtle ways in which that dichotomy between production and giving it away, between self-sacrifice and self-benefit, that is everywhere in our culture. We don't always, it doesn't always come up explicitly, but it's in every transaction and it's every time we hate on a successful human being. That's the philosophy that's bubbling up. And it's a philosophy that's clearly incompatible with capitalism. It cannot live in the same world. And in a conflict between economics and morality, in a conflict between economics and morality, morality will always win. You can make all the economic arguments you want, but if people think it's bad, it's wrong, it's unjust, they won't do it. They'll vote for what they think is good. They want to feel like they're good people. They want to feel like they're moral people. So morality is what the world ultimately uses as its guide. We don't live the morality of self-sacrifice. It's not how we live our lives, particularly not successful entrepreneurs and rich people. They don't live this kind of morality. And what happens when you live one life in your moral code, even if it's not completely identified, it's just in the back of your mind. It's just kind of in your subconscious. What happens when you live one kind of life but your moral code says you should live a different kind of life? What does that create? What emotion do you get? Do you think? Yeah, guilt. You get guilt. Young people don't get much of it. As you go older, it creeps in. It starts creeping in. I'm supposed to be doing that, but I'm doing this. I enjoy doing this, but wait a minute, that's bad and I'm supposed to be doing this. And when you see wealthy people, older wealthy people almost always, they are riddled with guilt. And that guilt is exploited. So the state comes to guilty people and says, look, you're not doing enough to help the poor. It's just not. Look, they're still poor people. And you're still rich. So how about we raise your taxes just a little bit and help those poor people? And the rich people go, yeah, yeah, okay, that sounds good. And they all vote for it. And of course, every few years, we go back to the rich people and ask them if we can tax them even more. And it only goes up. And the welfare state is basically a form of that. It's a form of guilting part of society about the fate of another part of society and therefore encouraging them to vote to have their taxes increased in order to benefit somebody else. Why? Because it's your duty. Why? Because you should be a good person. What does a good person mean? You should be sacrificed. But I don't in my private life, so force me. And the state is happy to force you to sacrifice. And that's the welfare state. But even the regulatory state, why do we have a regulatory state? Why is it that I don't know about Sweden, but every time in America I go into an elevator, right, there's a little diploma on the wall and it says this elevator was inspected by a government inspector and it won't fall. Basically, that's what it says. Why? Because those selfish businessmen, because we associate selfish, self-interested with lying, stealing, cheating, those selfish businessmen. If they had the opportunity, we'd build elevators that killed you because that's how we make money in business. That's what self-interest requires, killing our customers. If there weren't food inspectors, we'd all be poisoned at the restaurants. If there weren't elevator inspectors, the elevators would fall. If we don't have government, your self-interested motivation would kill us, all of us. So we need, because we know businessmen are bad people, we need a little government agent sitting on their shoulder just checking to see what they're doing, making sure they don't overstep, signing off on what's okay and what's not. And they're not self-interested because what do we know about government officials? They don't have self-interest. What motivates government officials? What motivates the bureaucrats? Duty. What's that? Duty. A duty, but duty to what? Common interest. To the common good, yeah, the public interest. Common good and the public interest. They're not about money. They don't get a bonus. They don't have shares. Their wealth doesn't increase. They're in it for the public good and the common interest. And they know what the public good is and they know what the common interest is because they have superpowers. Because I don't know, none of us know what the common good of the public interest is. Are you guys in communication with the public? Where is the public? I see a bunch of individuals here. We can call this a group, but we don't have a group consciousness and we don't have a group interest. Even if we vote, that doesn't reflect an interest. It reflects an interest in the majority, not the interest of the group. But they know. They know what's good for everybody and therefore they are going to supervise and we trust that when somebody says, I'm here for the public interest. I'm in it for the public interest. Everybody calms down. That's good. If I say I'm here for profit, ooh, we don't trust that because we don't trust self-interest and we trust the altruist. You see it in banking. Why do we have central bankers? You guys have central bankers, right? Why do you have a central bank? Because those greedy private banks, we don't trust them. One banker got a lot of power, J.P. Morgan. Got a lot of power. I mean, Congress got together and said, oh, one individual, one private individual should not have that much power. So instead of that one individual, J.P. Morgan, we're going to get power to a different individual, much more power, like 100 times more power, but it's okay because he's not a businessman. We'll call him the Chairman of the Federal Reserve and he's a public servant and he's only there for the public good. So, you know, it's your own power right now. Everybody listens to him and everybody trusts him. Why? Because he's not doing it for profit. He doesn't make a bonus. He gets a decent salary but nothing exceptional. The guy J.P. Morgan Chase, he makes a lot of money. Don't trust him. So all of our attitudes are ultimately guided by this code, this implicit morality that is in there constantly. And what Rand is challenging us to do is to say really, to ask one simple question which is why? Why should I sacrifice to other people? Why other people's lives are more important than mine? Why should I live for others? Why should I be selfless? Wait a minute. It's my life. Why shouldn't I think about myself? Why shouldn't I make my life better? Why shouldn't I live the best damn life I can live? I only got one life. It's pretty short as you get older, you'll realize that. It's pretty short. Every second I never get back, why not live the best life you can live for you? It's you after all. It's not them. So Rand proposes not only that the right morality is a morality of self-interest, a moral code to actually guide us towards achieving our self-interest. Because how do we know it's good for us? It's hard to figure out. You know, animals, other animals, we're also an animal, but other animals, they know what's good for them, right? How do they know? They're like chat GPT, right? It's coded. They just know. It's just there. Chat GPT doesn't think about it. It just spits out what's in there, what it's accumulated. An animal has DNA that codes its behavior in every aspect of life. It doesn't have to figure out, huh, what food is good for me? Should I eat a salad today? No animal thinks should I eat a salad today. It eats what it's programmed to eat. And it hunts. Does it vary its hunting techniques? No, it hunts the way it's programmed to hunt. We don't have that programming. You know, you go outside out there, and nothing in your coding will give you an indication of what to do in order to survive. How do we survive out there in the cold, in Sweden, or in the heat of the Amazon? How do we survive? What's the one thing we have to do in order to survive? Yeah, but how do we adapt? And by the way, we don't adapt. Like, we adapt our environment to us. We have to think about it. What's that? Yeah, we have to think about it. We have to figure it out. So the way we survive is by figuring stuff out. We get to the prairie. There are lots of big animals. We try chasing them. Doesn't work. We're too slow. Jump on the back of a bison and bite into it. Doesn't work. We don't have fangs. We don't have claws. You're just not going to be successful. Right? There's just no way for us human beings to have physical strength to survive. It's not the way in which we survive. What do we have to do? We have to think. We have to figure stuff out. We build weapons. We build traps. We get together in groups and have strategy, hunting strategies. Right? We have to use our rational mind in order to survive everything. Agriculture does not come naturally to human beings. Some genius had to figure out that you drop a seed and you water it. A plant grows. And then 10,000 years later some entrepreneur said, ah, I can make an industry out of this. Probably burnt the both at the stake. We don't like people with new ideas. But our survival depends on our ability to reason, our ability to think, our ability to use our mind. So if our survival depends on that, shouldn't that be a primary value? Shouldn't that be the most important thing to us? The thing that we want to be is rational beings. Exercise that rationality. Because the other thing about human beings is we don't have to be rational. As you probably know and we'll discover later tonight. Right? Yeah, she promised me. We don't have to be rational. Rationality is a choice for us. I'm a believer in free will and we have to will it. You actually have to engage. You have to focus. You have to use your mind. It requires energy. It doesn't just come automatically. So for Rand, fine Rand, morality is about pursuing your self interest. Which means learning how to survive and to thrive and to flourish in the world. And the only way to do that is to be rational. And indeed lying, cheating, stealing, backstabbing. All bad strategies. All failures to achieve success at living. If you don't believe me, spend a day lying. See what happens. Things will not go well. They never do. So if we care about our quality of life, our standard of living, we care about freedom, we care about capitalism. Yes, we need to engage in a political debate and an economic debate and all of that. But I think much more fundamental, much more important is we need to engage in a debate about morality. We need to have an alternative to the moral code that is prevalent in our culture. We need to have an alternative to the altruism, self-sacrificial morality that exists today. And the only alternative I know of is Rand's alternative. I mean she follows Aristotle. Aristotle also has a self-interested egoistic morality. Slightly different than Rand's, but in the same direction. But that's the kind of morality. That's the kind of orientation towards self interest, towards flourishing, towards success that we need to have. We need to be able to defend capitalism not only on the basis of economics, on the basis of wealth, on the basis of flourishing. But we need to explain why flourishing is good. And that individual flourishing is good and individuals pursuing their flourishing is what nobility is. What virtue constitutes. And for that we need a new moral code. So what capitalism really needs is for us to achieve freedom what we really need is we need a moral revolution. And a moral revolution is much harder to attain than an economic one. It's much harder to question people's morality than to question their politics. Politics is superficial at the end of the day. It's driven by something deeper. And morality is that deeper thing. And until we're willing as if you will a liberty movement, a freedom movement to question people's moral code to actually propose an alternative. An alternative based I think on human nature, on us being a rational animal. An alternative based on people pursuing their own values using their own mind without hurting other people. But to attain their own happiness and their own flourishing then we can be successful. So if you want a revolution then it has to be a moral revolution. It has to be a philosophical revolution. A revolution for a morality of self-interest. Thank you. All right, questions? Most important works of art that have influenced people to become more anti-capitalist. Anti-capitalist? Yes. Wow. Yeah, I mean, so first I think a lot of the religious art is very oriented towards the elevation of sacrifice and something noble and beautiful. If you go to a museum and you look at paintings of saints they've all got arrows sticking into them or they're all dying in some horrible way but they're beautifully depicted. It's great art. It's not just gory violence like in the movies. It's beautiful and that's supposed to give you a certain emotion about the sacrifice. Sacrifice is beautiful. Sacrifice is good. They're going to another world. I think religious art has a lot to do with it. What are the arts? You know, probably the movie I hate the most. Yeah, I mean the movie I hate the most of all movies I think. I can't think right now of a is Avatar. I think Avatar is a perfect example. Human beings are self-interested. Self-interest means destruction from an economics perspective progress is zero sum it's about destroying others even other sentient beings and indeed the first Avatar I haven't seen the second one never will but the first one doesn't he end by joining the other species because being human is so despicable and disgusting that you can't tolerate it so it has to become something else it's probably the most anti-human movie and I think you know depict civilization as inevitably destruction and wiping everybody out and for what for no real gain. Not to say that civilization has done horrible things but this is a whole new scale I think even of the horrible things that have been done in the past for civilization. What are the works of art? I mean look I think Dostoevsky right? Dostoevsky is probably maybe the most powerful of all of them right? John Peterson loves Dostoevsky right? and John Peterson because John Peterson is a purveyor of this morality the morality of sacrifice he's all about this morality of sacrifice and duty and he calls it responsibilities but responsibilities not just to you responsibilities to others and he believes that without God there's no morality and that comes from Dostoevsky right? So if there's no commandments if you're not commanded what to do by a God or by a state or by somebody what will happen? What does Dostoevsky tell us? We'll all become murderers right? There is no morality without something right? External to us not inside us external to us dictating us to what we should and of course when you're searching for meaning in life where should you search inside you? God forbid out there that's where you're supposed to find meaning but what is out there? Meaning for you it has to be inside you it has to be what you value what you want what you what the kind of person you want to be it's not meaning over there you know and so so I think Dostoevsky very powerful literary figure that presents kind of this trying to defend Christian morality morality of sacrifice I'd say I'd say you know think of Superman you guys see Superman? Why does Superman do what he does? Does he like it? No he doesn't enjoy saving the world and usually the world slaps him around and doesn't like him he doesn't do it because he likes it he doesn't have a sense of duty he's you know does he ever get to go? Can he ever get to go? That's not going to get Lois Lane right? He's always going to be alone he's always going to be miserable he's the ultimate sacrifice for what? For the world is the world worth it? Not the way it's depicted in Superman one of the things I liked about the Batman trilogy the Christopher Nolan trilogy is it's like you live through three episodes of him saving humanity and humanity spitting on him and hating him and everything and the nice thing is that the third episode ends with him doing what? Have you read Atlas Shrugged? Who's read Atlas Shrugged? Yeah with him shrugging right? Where is he at the end of the third episode? He's in a coffee shop in Paris and he's not going back he's going to live his life he's had it with saving the world good for him because sometimes the world's not worth saving and he's only enjoying it he's not getting any benefit from it he hates the people around him because they deserve his hatred so he goes off with the goal and they're in Paris but only Christopher Nolan has the guts to do that no other version of Batman of Batman ends like that so almost all of our movies in one way or another present that have you ever seen a movie where the rich where the rich entrepreneur is a good guy Iron Man is the closest and then what is he, what do we make him because we can't have a real hero how do we undermine him he's a cynic and a skeptic and he's constantly moaning and complaining I mean he's not a hero not in the full sense of it I mean we don't have I used to give my students this assignment I thought finance I thought morality and finance of course morality and finance which a lot of people told me immediately that's a two minute class there is no such thing as morality and finance but that's the cynicism of our culture and I used to give them an assignment find a movie in which a successful financier is a good guy and there's maybe two or three in the history of cinema and the same with businessmen if you ever seen a movie called Mr. Black maybe and one of my favorite finance movies anybody interested in finance my favorite finance movie is Other People's Money with Danny DeVito and Gregory Peck it's a must see it's really really well done and Danny DeVito is excellent in it anyway, so most artwork yeah in the back yeah, thanks for the talk I need two talks not really clear about it so I hope you can help me so the first one is related to sacrifice so Steve Jobs had to sacrifice a lot of stuff in order to make that film no no, so let's talk about sacrifice I mean because it's a confusing issue in Jordan Peterson if you listen to Jordan Peterson confuses it even more so people use sacrifice in a bunch of different ways so for example if I say you know I'm not buying ice cream this year I'm gonna stop buying ice cream for the year and I'm gonna take all that money and invest it and save it up and hopefully in two years of not eating ice cream I use that money to buy to start a business and you would say well you're sacrificing the ice cream for your business but that's perverse because sacrifice is losing with the expectation of getting one in return nothing or something less important but what you're actually doing is investing you're actually investing yes you're giving up an ice cream there's a tradeoff everything you do in life there's a tradeoff I'm here I could be somewhere else that's a tradeoff did I sacrifice that other thing in order to be here no that's ridiculous I wanted to be here that's why I'm here I gave up the other thing because it was less important to me than this so I'm constantly you're constantly in life trading things off gave up a lot of things in order to produce the iPhone for example he didn't produce other things or he spent less time with his family but he did it because the thing producing iPhone was the higher value for him but the question is more important to whom more important to their life yes more important in some grand scheme a mystical scheme of the world and I'm saying that's a false way of thinking about the world so for example why would I somebody asked me the other day why do I do these talks travel around the world it's exhausting speak in front of a group of people and I'm going to change three people's minds maybe and the door is not going to change in my lifetime and I'm never going to see capitalism in my life I could be at the beach right now my wife is at the beach I live in Puerto Rico 365 days a year pretty much so why do I do this and there are really two reasons it's not that I view freedom as some more important thing in my life I view freedom for me as important so even if I manage to make the world just a tiny bit free or a tiny bit less authoritarian because there will be a few people who vote left or less right these days then I'm better off because I live in a world that's marginally a little bit free there will be more people who agree with me that makes me feel good more people I can communicate with more people writing books so I get the benefits of that freedom not because freedom is a higher value than me no freedom is a utility to me freedom is a means not an end why is freedom good? what's the value of freedom? freedom is a condition a social condition in which I can use my mind to pursue my happiness that's it the reason freedom is good is because it helps my life if it didn't help my life I wouldn't be poor freedom and then of course the second thing is I like what I'm doing I know people don't like this don't do it you shouldn't sacrifice so yes I can always rationalize to myself a reason why I'm doing what I'm doing but the question is is in reality what you're doing justified in terms of your life or is in reality what you're doing you're just creating a story in order to rationalize it for you so a good story is an afterlife a good story is God told me and God is the greatest thing you know ever I have to do what God tells me but those are stories because afterlife doesn't exist, God doesn't exist and the story is just a story so it's a question of in this world right now what is my interest or choir it's still your story you're working with your story and you can see feedback from your story and when you notice that this feedback doesn't work but that's not the case mother Teresa kept getting feedback saying there was horrible and she kept doing it because there was a duty to do it so the point is that again standard is not their happiness their own standard is not their war being their own standard is not success in life their own standard is misery I consider that an evil standard and that's sacrifice, sacrifice is when your standard is I'm doing this because I'll be miserable that's not a good standard so that's a sacrifice you're losing from it objectively losing from it that's what a sacrifice is by an objective standard you're worse off doing it and people repeat it I mean I don't know how many of you know people who repeatedly do things that they know are bad for them and they do it over and over again knowing full well that they're bad for them there are lots of reasons to do that but part of them are moral reasons I don't think that's a good strategy in life if you know something is bad for you stop doing it only do things that are good for you and think about it, that's the other thing most people don't think about it so to really be good for you requires being rational most people avoid the effort of rationality and I say most people and I mean most people most people in the world avoid the effort of rationality and that is harmful to themselves but that also makes them susceptible to these stories and to this kind of sacrifice yeah I have a question about well this new morality of self-interest so in the same way that animals are like programmed to do what they do one could argue that humans are programmed similarly to do or to follow natural instincts or that our morality of sacrifice is a way to sort of curb those impulses to not act immorally to not exploit other people and that if we were to promote a morality of self-interest that can easily degenerate into they say, Wolf of Wall Street scenario where you try to win by exploiting others where we have elevated entrepreneurs and businessmen who have made wealth for themselves I know you said that it's not long-term successful strategy but I would say maybe for some people it could be and it's difficult if you combine a short-term successful strategy with a morality that you should do so how do we prevent that and how is this morality of self-interest different to that or is it different at all? so there are a lot of things to say about that one is it's not like the morality of altruism has prevented us from killing one another and slaughtering one another in the name of that morality right socialism is based on a morality of altruism a morality of rejection of self-interest and what has it resulted in death and starvation and eagerness to kill often right you know what do the fascists do it for what do they claim at least how do they motivate people to go kill all the fill in the blank yeah it's a greater good it's a good of others oh no I'm not benefiting from it this is for the army and race or for the again fill in the blank so all the evils of the world are justified by altruism by the common good by the public interest I hear the common good I run for the hills it's the thing I distrust the most is other people claiming they know what the common good is and I should behave in a particular way to achieve a common good so A altruism has been an unbelievably failed strategy at preventing us from exploiting one another right altruists defended slavery altruistic grounds they defended every atrocity that human beings are created on that grounds and religion is as guilty of that as any other theory of altruism so A I don't think we have much to lose by dumping altruism it doesn't seem to we don't seem to respond particularly well to it but you do have to make an argument for a morality an actual morality that is geared towards individual happiness and if I was going to flesh out any time a morality here which I'm not going to do but I encourage you to read Rand's essay on the virtue of selfishness and she's got and others have written about this so there's a lot of literature about a morality of self-interest that morality of self-interest would have to show that doing these things in a short run is self-destructive not only you lose you lose pretty quickly doesn't take very long and you suffer and that it doesn't enhance your well-being that is being a lying, steady, chilling and I can give you examples of people you know Bernie Madoff do you know who Bernie Madoff was a large pyramid scheme in human history got caught who caught him do you know who caught him his sons his sons turned him into the police the police couldn't catch him they tried a number of times they couldn't find the fraud children actually called him in so he was sent to jail for a long long time he died recently in jail he said that in jail he was happier than before he was caught wow that's weird he's in jail he has no freedom he's happier than when he was free and rich he had 50 billion dollars that he'd stolen for his clients why was he happy in jail? because he wasn't living a lie because he couldn't look at his family in the eye he couldn't look at his friends in there everything he was constantly anxious constantly conflicted constantly in panic mode because he knew he was going to get caught and if you're not caught by the police caught by his sons which is even worse than being caught by your police so it doesn't work you know there's a great photograph I should make a big poster of this there's a great photograph of Vladimir Putin this last Christmas Orthodox Christmas he's in a church they're doing the ceremony he didn't want other people there there's a ceremony going on and there's a series of photos actually there's a video of him and in these photos I have never seen photos of a more miserable pathetic depressed human being in my life it was shocking I mean look it up Christmas, Putin 2020 and you won't believe his whole face is droopy he looks like he's going to die of sadness right there on the spot which he deserves so I was all cheering about it but I'm sure if you'd seen pictures of Stalin he would have looked the same and generally how many of you have met a happy politician which doesn't exist because their profession is to lie this is the only profession in the world where lying actually gets you ahead every other profession you get penalized for lying and in politics you get rewarded for lying they're not happy people they're not successful people they're not alive in the full sense of the world and I think that's true of all of these things now it's true I need to prove that you have to go through and you have to present people with a morality, not just live for yourself what does that entail be rational, be productive, be honest have integrity independence, justice pride those are in Rand's 7 virtues but each one needs articulation and sub-virtues so you need a whole theory just like Christianity has a whole theory the difference is that the origins of Rand's theory are I think in human nature and in nature generally and the relationship between human beings in nature and most of them are codes imposed you know come from thin air yeah Alex Epstein, he's recent success he's hopeful that he defends human flourishing yeah I met some of the people that feel guilty having to use a car or things like that do you guys know who Alex Epstein is? he's written a book called Fossil Future yeah Fossil Future and before that he had a book called The Mawr case for Fossil Fuels so he's kind of defending defending civilization with this idea that we can solve the problem by shutting down fossil fuels he's not denying climate change he's just saying you can't solve anything by stopping fossil fuels because that remedy is worse than the disease climate change as bad as it's going to get is not going to be as bad as if we stop using fossil fuels tomorrow but anyway he's had a lot of success in the US and yes to some extent I think that if you make a rational case on a particular field you can have a lot of influence on different people but has he really moved the needle culturally is the world shifting yet to his position I mean Greta who hasn't written a book is a million times more popular and more influential than Alex Epstein has so I think he's shown a way to have influence you know Alex worked for me for eight years at Alengren Institute and then he spun off to do one thing to become an expert on energy I'd love to see a thousand of Alex's and when I have a thousand people like that in different areas defending rational ideas in different worlds on the basis of human flourishing then I will be optimistic but until then my optimism reaches way into the future not into the what do you think it will take to establish a rational base in education and reverse the effects of John Dewey John Dewey Do you have John Dewey in Sweden? A bit Look, I think the best thing to do in education is to privatize it that is to get the government out of it I think the worst thing that happens in education is that it's state controlled therefore it's one size fit all there's no competition, there's no innovation there's no different schools trying and parents deciding which school to send their kids based on the match between their philosophy or their kids' inclinations and the school itself so I would like to see movements that actually work to find ways to privatize education in Sweden here you have some form of voucher system but but the curriculum is all state for modernized standards is all set from the state that's ridiculous what you really want is all the schools if you're going to have a voucher system if you're going to have the state pay for education in the world in which we live that's not a bad idea so the state pays for education it gives you a voucher as a parent but it leaves the schools alone all schools can do whatever they want and they compete and then you get real educational change and that's the only way as long as the state runs education in terms of the content it's going to be a disaster and it's only going to get worse it won't get better Well considering if moral selflessness is just to be more leads to better results why has moral selflessness developed and been sustained so why has moral selflessness been developed and been sustained I think because moral selflessness is compatible with authoritarianism and I think that it is an invention of really authoritarianism that we have managed to control the idea that the masses are educated that the masses have choices is brand new forever we lived in tribes and we had a tribal leader and usually a tribal leader had a witch doctor and the tribal leader said what live your own lives achieve your happiness please pursue your own values no he said listen to me do what I tell you and people would look at him skeptically and say I don't know if I trust this guy and then the witch doctor would come in and say oh no no no I commune with the spirits and listen this guy knows what he's talking about you better do what he tells you to do and by the way here's a moral code in a sense the spirits tell me that you need to do what he tells you so you see how they work together the one gives the other philosophical moral religious justification for what he does she has an essay which talks about Attila and the witch doctor so the Attila is the Lord and we evolved you know we didn't know anything 100,000 years ago human beings, homo sapiens we didn't know anything everything we had to learn and we started with nothing we didn't have agriculture, we didn't have tools we didn't have weapons so we are learning slowly and we're at a certain level of knowledge today where I think we can a lot of the assumptions and a lot of the the habits that we got into but if you go back 2000 years I mean if you think about Christianity why is Christianity a religion the way it is to a large extent it's a kind of religion that is a result of lacking political power so it was so it's the religion of the poor this is the religion of the people who felt oppressed by the Roman Empire the religions of taking over the Roman Empire they thought Jesus would come back before that happened so it's a religion that's built in this idea of sacrifice, the mixture of the earth you know don't be too ambitious in this life this life is not that big of a deal because it wasn't because you were poor and you were suffering so it was a religion to justify your poverty and your suffering Islam on the other hand is a religion of warriors conquering the world who were traders who were rich Islam compared to Christianity Islam is a religion of self-confidence they're much more self-confident than Christians are why? because the Quran is a book written by winners the New Testament is a book written by losers in the political game at the time so Christianity won in the end but the book was written way back then so they couldn't change books but the Quran is Muhammad is a trader Muhammad is a warrior I don't know how many wives and how much sex he has and Islam reflects that Jesus has none of that he wanders around he's pretty poor, he doesn't have much and he dies on a cross and the nature of the religion reflects that Jews are just beaten down constantly that's the thing about Jews constantly God chose us to be beaten down constantly you read the Old Testament so these ideas come out of that more primitive state in which we are in and a result of the political structures that we kind of adopted when we were pretty primitive and uneducated are you familiar with the effective altruism movement? yes, effective altruism very familiar with effective altruism how can you not be after FTX? yes they of course say that they are having a rational ground for altruism what do you think about that? so I don't think they say they have a rational ground for altruism what they say is they have a rational way of applying altruism so they accept altruism without really questioning it and then they say ok if we accept altruism how do we go about the altruism in the most rational scientific method that we can and so how do we think about it so SB Sam SBF is his name so supposedly the way he was thinking was McCaskill who writes books about effective altruism the way he taught SBF to think about it is ok you are really really smart you could do a lot of different things you could become an artist and stay poor or you could for example really hate you don't like but you can make a lot of money and then you can take that money making a lot of money is not great that's not good at all but once you make a lot of money you can give it away and that's really really cool and that's really really good and then what we teach you as effective altruism is how to do that really really well so indeed effective altruism takes the altruism seriously they say don't follow your dreams don't do what you are passionate about based on what will bring you the most joy choose a profession that will make the world a better place whether it's because you make a lot of money and if you can make a lot of money and then give it away as much of it away and in SBF's case give away other people's money as well without asking them because that's exactly what he did his philanthropy was bigger than his bank account but yes they are really really smart people I mean I met a lot of they're young, they're typically your age they're almost all in the tech world and Silicon Valley's effective altruists super smart have no clue about life completely detached from reality yeah my elevator pitch I mean it's easier for capitalism is capitalism is the only social political system economic system that allows the individual to be free to use his own judgment in pursuit of his own values in the achievement of his own happiness that's why it's moral because it's the only system that leaves you free to pursue happiness so that would be my elevator pitch for capitalism from reality of self interest I would say something like all you have is your own life self interest is what we have and what we need is to take it seriously what we need is to figure out what self interest actually means and how to apply self interest we need to discover the values and virtues that make human life possible and successful to live a full wholesome life now if you ask me the question why should you live a good life then you have to kind of go deeper into the philosophical grounding of it but at the end of the day you should live a whole life because there's nothing else all there is is your life there's nothing exists in a sense for you other than your life when you're dead the world is gone for you yeah what should you all I don't know look it's easy to be pessimistic because the world seems to governments have a lot of debts and people are generally pretty ignorant they seem to be pretty educational systems and it's very easy to focus on all the negatives in the world out there and yet every time you focus on all the negatives out there things get better and Ayn Rand was writing in the 1970s and she thought the world was going to end soon because there was high inflation and the economy was stagnating there was no innovation going on it was really a horrible time and yet it turned around and it got better and every 10 years people think the end of the world is here right now and it gets better so I've come to the conclusion that we live things are going to get better over time they're not going to get better as fast and as much better as I think they can, which is tragic because every time we don't grow as fast as we can or don't achieve as much as we can we lose but I don't think we're heading towards some cliff that we fall off and we go into the dark ages I just don't see it I don't think in a modern world the dark ages is around the corner it's way out there I don't think we'll ever reach it I think we'll somehow survive all the mayhem that we are creating and look, politically we're not in a good place right now I think the war in Russia is not an accident that's happening right now I think it's very ominous for the west I think it's very ominous generally the war in Russia but I don't think it's that things are going to get dramatically dramatically worse so though I fight with this because it's hard to be optimistic but I tend to be optimistic because I see them out of talent in spite of the stupidity I see so much talent the other thing you know what's really special about the world as we live it right now the thing that makes the world right now special is the fact that we actually have 8 billion people engaged 10 years ago you didn't have that you had 100 million, you had countries you had regions now all connected 8 billion people are connected around the world 8 billion people have an opportunity to add to the productive ability of mankind 8 billion people can innovate, can invent can come up with new ideas so just the pool of resources we have today is so much larger than it was in the past and that's productive energy just think about all the people in Asia who have come out of poverty and are creating stuff and building stuff think of all the scientists today in China and hopefully China doesn't deteriorate but they're pursuing all kinds of avenues in science that are going to enhance our lives that weren't doing that 20 years ago because they didn't exist so when Rome fell when Rome fell but Rome at its peak had over a million people in the city of Rome not that long after, a few hundred years after the population of Rome, the city was 10,000 so Rome went way up and then crashed and 10,000 and then no more roads, it meant no more buildings, more than one story it meant no more running water, I mean a million things just disappeared and the population of hundreds of years under the Greeks and the Romans disappeared in a relatively short period of time when the barbarians took over and I don't think that can happen again because knowledge is so dispersed throughout the world so many people know so many things all the knowledge in the world was in Rome and when Rome fell the knowledge disappeared, you went to a few libraries it was gone and today I don't think that can happen in this room and there's just one room in Sweden and there are thousands of rooms like this all over the world where engineers in all kinds of places in the world know stuff that nobody knew a few hundred years ago so I'm optimistic because I see the talent and potential in human beings and it's going to take a lot to destroy that completely and I think Ukraine will beat the Russians in Sweden in Swedish politics Objectivism is kind of regarded as a joke unfortunately and Rome is sort of seen as an evil witch so how do we achieve this moral revolution in practice oh we just give up on Sweden Sweden is unique I mean Iron Man is considered strange and what do you call it an evil witch in the world, I don't think Sweden is unique and certainly politics Iron Man has no representation in politics anyway and when she is used by some American politicians it's usually pretty badly that is Donald Trump will say something or Ted Cruz will say something about Iron Man but that doesn't help our cause because these are not exactly champions of liberty and freedom you know there's no shortcuts in terms of changing the culture is what we're trying to do and the only way to get people to change their minds is talk, talk, talk, right educate, educate, educate there's just no other way and that's true in politics it's not going to be we're not going to get political change unless we get moral change, unless we get philosophical change that takes a long time that takes a lot of people to not change their minds about Iron Man there's no magic thing I can say and change people's minds these processes take time they take decades, they might take centuries I don't know but you gotta fight for what's right and what makes sense and what will enhance your own personal freedom and so yes we're at a huge deficit because people don't like Iron Man otherwise, I don't see any alternative, I can't force them to love Iron Man I can only encourage them and debate them and discuss it with them yeah I had a question about the armed forces in the military so even in a minimalist capitalist state people would actually prepare to sacrifice their lives and yeah could you just elaborate on that so first of all I don't view serving in the military as willing to sacrifice my life or whatever I'm willing to fight for my values and one of those values is living in this place because it has certain positive attributes so Sweden is freer than many other places in the world certainly freer than Russia Russia amasses an army that's what are you going to do you're not going to fight because you want to die you're going to fight because you don't want to live under Putin you're not willing to be a slave so the reason Ukrainians are fighting right now is not for some mythology that is Ukraine that's what Russians are fighting for the mythology of Russia what you're fighting for is your own life what you're fighting for is the ability to make your own decisions and yes that will entail taking risk and yes that will entail sometimes dying but it's you're not going into it to die you're not going into it to sacrifice you're going into it to pursue something that's really really really really important to you and if it's not run don't go fight now some soldiers do sacrifice which is sad I don't think they should so some soldiers will I mean I grew up in Israel I was an army and served during a war so I know about being a soldier and it's not like there are soldiers for example in Israel when I was 16 when I was growing up I was like this who will do anything for the state the state is their shining star it's not their life they don't care about their life that's what they're willing to sacrifice they really are I mean when I grew up I grew up in Israel with this constant theme of you owe your life to every Jew who ever died to preserve Judaism you owe your life to every Israeli soldier who ever died your responsibility is to jump on the grenade as soon as it is thrown you must die for the country you must die for the state and I used to get emotional and get tears every time I'd hear a story about a soldier who died in a battle and flag goes up I would get all teary-eyed I bought into it because it was very hard to resist I mean every song in Israel every story tried to inculcate into you this state Israel your life doesn't matter that's what matters and it's very hard to overcome that so I read I ran it took me a long time even after I read I ran to get over the teary-eyed flag I was waiting for grenades I could jump and that sacrifice that's stupid that's anti my life that's clearly disastrous to me and I eliminated that for my psyche as quickly as I could it wasn't easy but I did I'm not jumping on grenades anytime soon but I was ready I volunteered for the Navy SEALs I was going to be a super soldier ready to die for the state of Israel that's not what rational soldiers would do they would consider if they want to go into the army do they like it their activity and then is the country they're fighting for worth it not every country is and third you know is it worth it to them what they're fighting for their families and if you ask soldiers on the battlefield in America American soldiers on the battlefield why are you in Iraq why are you in whatever and put aside why they really were there but why were they as individuals there and they would say I'm fighting for my family I don't want my family to have another 9-11 I don't want the family to do XYZ so it was always about some selfish self-interested reason that you could connect to their life that they were actually fighting very few said I'm fighting for the flag I'm fighting for America they would say I'm fighting for my family I'm fighting for my friends so it's personal to them it's their personal values and that is what I think a military would be motivated by in a rational society and look there's a reason why the Ukrainians are doing as well as they're doing in the battlefield relative to size and relative to the amount of equipment relative to Russian so they're motivated because what are the Ukrainians fighting for what's that freedom well in a sense freedom but more concretely I don't know that they even conceptualize freedom you want to live yeah they're fighting for their houses for their families for the ability to live for the ability to raise their kids they're fighting for their ability to live their lives and it's very self-interested what are the Russians fighting for most of them don't know and the ones that do know think that they're rushing for what Putin has told them some greater cause some greater empire the Russian empire and the future legacy of Vladimir Putin almost none of them so they're not motivated so that's a big part of why Ukraine is being more successful alright she's standing which is a sign thank you thank you Geron we on behalf of Yerechka and Students for Liberty Sweden we would like to give you this book it's the selected works of Erika Stavyeye a student organization it's named after dangerous yes and you can briefly describe him as Burke Adam Smith and Edgar Allan Poe very famous so you wrote poetry he did so we hope you enjoy a Schumann in English yes this one is in English we made sure we had it in Swedish excellent thank you books are great gifts indeed are my pleasure just some brief practical information thank you to the ones that are not joining us for the rest of the night we have some SFL swag in the back it's for free shirts and books and also a small reminder about the flyers that are over here that Geron so can actually explain to you what they are all about we will gather here for the ones that are staying in half an hour so at 8 we would like you back here in the meanwhile feel free to go outside we need some space in here to rearrange there is a great place that I know of that's called Palermo in between shots if you like and I'll see you here in half an hour thank you so much excuse me let me turn the livestream off oh my pleasure thank you