 So I love it when people set expectations low. But I do, actually, this was all planned, because I also love having standing room only crowds. Loose my ego, so this is good. So for the last 250 years, the world has been running an experiment. And this is the experiment. We tried all kinds of social, political, economic systems. We tried as close as anybody's ever come to capitalism, to real freedom. We tried all the way over to communism. And we've tried everything in between. Some freedom, lots of statism, some statism, a lot of freedom, all the different variations in between. We've been trying this not just in a specific geographic area. We've been trying this globally. Try it in Europe, in America, South America, in Asia. It's an ongoing, seemingly, experiment. If you care about prosperity, if you care about the poor, if you care about the standard capitalism, works. It's by far the best system. Economically, it derives and creates the most wealth. It raises up people from poverty faster and to a greater height than any other system. It provides the extent to which people have economic freedom, economic success, the standard of living. And there's a strong correlation between the two. The more freedom, the more economic freedom, the more capitalism people have, to historically, to across all these various geographies. It's about human beings. It's not about the West or the East or the South or the North. It's about the nature of man. What will life as human beings and what systems work for us and what systems don't work for us? You can see this historically, and I'm gonna give you some quick examples. There's a core of my opinion. Today is not economically starting, but more. A quick example, 300 years ago, what percentage of the world's population was poor? 98%. Like 99%. Everybody was poor. A few aristocrats up here. And everybody was poor. Everywhere. There's a wonderful graph that shows income per capita, the whole world per capita. It doesn't really matter. To our human history. So it started, I don't know, minus $10,000 BC, it doesn't matter. And this is the graph. It goes like this. It's a little bit like Rome is a little bit up and then the Dark Ages is a little bit down. But generally it's flat and flat and flat and flat. And then it goes like that. I mean, like that. And then in Asia, it does something different. It continues to go flat. And then it goes like that. And what is the, what is that turning point? And that turning point is very recent. In Western Europe and America, what is the date in which wealth goes like that? Income per capita goes like that. Industrial revolution. Yeah, I like 1776. Two reasons. Actually two reasons, not just the one you think. One is the establishment of America, the first really free country established in the principles of freedom, even if not carried out consistently, but not principles with the principles of freedom. Which sets in motion the real flourishing of the industrial revolution and the flourishing of capitalism. But the second is, a book is published in 1776. Well done. Both The Nations by Adam Smith, the first book advocating for a market economy, if you will. In a semi-consistent way, not completely consistent, but not bad for 1776. Those two events. And then you see, it goes like that. Now in Asia, that didn't happen. Where does it happen in Asia? Yes, sometime in the 70s and early 80s. Suddenly, what did they do? They adopt market economics. And since over the last 30 years, based on UN numbers, not cooked by any right wing organization. 800 million, 800, look at this up, 800 million people have come out of poverty in Asia. 800 million people. Why? I mean, nobody doubts this, because of market economics adopted by the Chinese, except there, by India, which turned away from socialism in the early 1990s, by South Korea, by Taiwan, by all these things. So you get the same thing. So there's a pattern here. And then you can see this cross-sectionally. You can look at East Germany, West Germany before the world came down. You know, they built that wall. I have to sell students this, because they don't necessarily know. But they built the wall not to protect, right? Not to prevent West Germans from fleeing into East Germany. The difference when the wall came down between East Germany and West Germany, between East Europe and West Germany was unbelievable. Nobody realized how bad things were under communism, under statesism, under those kind of policies. Not only were they poor, it was filthy. It was the most dirty place on the planet. Why? Because you take care of your own property. With this private property, there's cleanliness. When everything's owned by the state, nobody takes care of it. Which communists approve. See, you got these cross-sectionals, you got these examples. One of my favorite is Hong Kong. I don't know how many people here have ever been to Hong Kong. Anybody been to Hong Kong? I always say, you gotta go once in your life. Because it's an astounding place. Hong Kong seven years ago was a fishing village. It was nothing there. It's a rock. There's no natural resources. There's nothing in Hong Kong. And yet, today, seven and a half million people live on that rock. The GDP per capita, which is a measure of wealth, is equal to that of the United States. People escaped from all over Asia in little rafts, in little boats, some of them swam, some of them jumped the fence over in China and risked their lives to get to Hong Kong. Why? What did Hong Kong offer them? No safety net, no socializing, no care, no social security, but it offered them freedom. It offered them the rule of law. It offered property rights protection. And that's it. And they made something of it. They started with literally nothing. Nothing, do it for them. And they built one of the most successful countries, cities, in human history, with freedom, with property rights, contract law. They couldn't even vote. Those are, that's the recipe, guys. That's capitalism, that's free market. It works wherever it's tried, whenever it's tried. It works. And yet, we're all turning our backs on it. We have been for 100 years. We reject the capitalist. We're rejecting it. Theoretically, we're rejecting it in practice. For 100 years, at least in the US and in Europe, we have eroded the level of economic freedom, dramatically, every decade. It doesn't matter if Republican, conservative, Democrat, middle of the road, they're all anti-capitalists, all of them. Every decade, you get more regulations, more controls, more taxes, more complex taxes. Complexity is great for statists. It allows them to control you. Because then it allows you to give some people loopholes and other people not, and play the pre-partisan game which politicians love to do. But every decade, it doesn't matter again. If you look at government spending, it grows. It doesn't matter if Ronald Reagan's in office. It doesn't matter if George Bush and either one of them is in office. They grow, right? Republicans may be cut taxes once and all, but they never cut regulations. And they never, ever, ever, ever cut government spending. Indeed, George Bush, the last George Bush, increased government spending more than any Democrat has since Lyndon Johnson, so-called cowboy budget. So what's going on? Why isn't it? And this is true, by the way, not just of the U.S. If you look at Europe, Europe has turned it back on capitalism in dramatic fashion, has been doing so, again, systematically since the teens, since World War I, since after World War I, and in dramatic fashion since the 1960s. So if I'm right, which granted, but some of you is still a if, that's okay, you know? I'll sort of nowadays afford the challenge beyond this. If I'm right, that capitalism, indeed, produces the goods, creates the wealth, makes it possible for people to be successful, increases the standard of living of the poor and of everybody, why don't we turn our backs on them? I mean, it doesn't make any sense, right? Because what we really care about is standard of living as well, is being prosperous, being successful. And yet, at every single opportunity, we turn our back on them. And of course I know, we're told that capitalism's unstable and creates all these crises and everything, like the recent one, right? The financial crisis, we said, the headlines, for what? Capitalism failed. And of course the headlines came out before anybody, anybody had studied any of the data. Nobody actually knew what happened, but we knew, we knew, because we know that every crisis is caused by whom? Capitalists, but who in particular are capitalists? Bankers, bankers are the devil. You know, always got new answers. We hate bankers more than anybody else, and I'll tell you at the end what. It's kind of funny to me that anybody would blame the financial crisis on free markets, because that assumes a mythology that says that in 2007, banking in the United States was a free market. In 2007, banking was the most regulated industry in the United States. Every decision a bank made had to be approved by a regulator. Every bank in the United States was regulated by at least five regulatory agencies. At least, today, it's seven because Dodd-Frank added two. That's the way to solve the problem, is to add more, not even add more power, to what regulator, just add more regulatory agencies. So, every regulator here is just fine, right? So, this isn't a free market. How is it? Mortgage industry, free, ready, many government entities control the mortgage markets. So, whatever you blame the financial crisis on, and I'm happy to discuss this with anybody, it can't be free markets because they won't take it. They haven't been free markets in banking or in mortgages on any of this stuff since the 1930s and really in banking since 1914, when the Federal Reserve was established. So, what's going on here? What is it that's so, so upsetting about capitalists, about free markets, that we can't tolerate, that we turn our backs to it, that we reject it time and time again, that every crisis we blame on those evil capitalists. What is evil about them? So, let's go to what capitalists are really about, right? So, what's capitalists really about? What, make it even simpler. But, what are markets about? Online. Free and voluntary. Okay, voluntary trade, but why do we trade? So, you know, some of you have seen this, right? It's an iPhone. Why does the, what? Billions. Why does Steve Jobs, that's my next example. I'll show you again. Why does Steve Jobs build these? To make money, right? He builds those to make money. That's not only about money, right? What else? Passion. Passion, he loves this stuff, right? He wants to see his vision created in reality. It's a beautiful creation, right? Who's passion? Steve Jobs. Who's money? Steve Jobs. So, who's this about? Steve. Steve made an iPhone for Steve. Who's partner, huh? Mm. Yeah. So, when we produce stuff, when we build stuff, when we create stuff, we're doing it in our own stuff. We're doing it for ourselves. And I like to say, you know, I bought my first iPhone in 2008 when it first came out, and the economy was spiraling out of control, and I went and I bought my iPhone because I wanted to help stimulate the U.S. economy. I know that's why all of you go shopping in the mall. You go shopping, you can care about your fellow man. You want to make sure they're jobs, and you want to make sure that they have an income, and after all, we're a consumer-driven economy, we are told, so you're just trying to do your shit. Right? I'm not going to ask how many of you actually do that, because there's always one, but anyway. No, why do you go shopping? It has to make your life better, because you want to be cool, because you want to be more productive, because you want to look nice, because whatever, it's about you. The marketplace is a place where producers and consumers meet in the pursuit of their own self-interest. The marketplace is about self-interest. It's not about maximizing social utility. It's not about making the world a better place. It's about the pursuit of self-interest. And this is not a new observation. Adam Smith wrote in The Wall of Nations, he says, he says that Baker doesn't bake the bread because he cares about you. You know, they didn't have iPhones there, so he had to eat bread. He bakes the bread because he's trying to make a living for himself. He's making the bread for himself, to feed himself and his family and people who live with him that he really loves. He's not doing it out of his sense for you. And that grocer doesn't sell you the bread because he cares about you. He's selling the bread because he's trying to make a living. And these things, you know what the profit margin in this stuff is? I mean, if Steve cared about me, would that be a lot cheaper? So the marketplace is a place where we pursue our self-interest. But what are we taught from when we're this big about self-interest? Oh, bad, bad. I mean, I grew up in a good Jewish household, right? My mother was a good Jewish mother. And she taught me, you're on, think of yourself last. Think of others first. Be self-less. Now, granted, she didn't mean any of that. No mother ever does. That's part of the trick. We have a moral code that we advocate for even though we don't live it. We don't want to be every successful like every mother does and, you know, to be successful, guess who you have to place first? Yourself. At least the son is there, right? But we are brought up with a morality that says self-lessness is good. Self-less nest is butchery. Sacrifice is noble. And let's just be clear about what sacrifice means. Because it's good to define something. When I buy an iPhone for 400 bucks, am I sacrificing $400 for the iPhone? No. No, what am I doing? I'm trading. I'm giving $400 and getting an iPhone. And how much is the iPhone worth to me if I'm willing to give up $400? Oh, you guys are studying economics. It's usually at your $400. That's a lot. It's more than $400. You wouldn't bother to exchange the $400. It goes with the same. The reason you do this for you is with more. And I have to tell you, my iPhone is worth a lot more than $400. And, you know, think about the products you buy. Some are, some aren't. But you don't buy them unless you intend for that product to be more valuable to you than the money you've given up. So trade, voluntary trade, is win-win. I won, because I got an iPhone instead of $400. So we're putting a hole in our pocket, right? And Apple won because they made a profit. So trade is win-win. Now, what's sacrifice? Sacrifice is giving and expecting one at a time. Not thinking of something that's valuable. See, this is getting a little uncomfortable, right? We're talking about more value. Sacrifice is giving and expecting. Nothing in return of expecting something of less value in return. Because if you expect something of more value in return, it's trading. So we've been taught from when we're this big that morality to be good is to sacrifice, not to trade. It's to sacrifice. It's to not think of yourself. It's to think of others first. And we can think of example when you think in your mind of great moral heroes from people who are noble, who are morally good, Steve Jobs' name doesn't pop up. Or even worse, Bill Gates' name doesn't pop up. And you have to think about Bill Gates. Bill Gates built a company called Microsoft. He sold us all products. I don't know, 100 bucks a pop or whatever. How much of those products would to us if we paid 100? More than 100. So our lives better or worse off having built Microsoft? Better. Better. So he made all of our lives better. Indeed, I would argue that he touched almost every human being on the planet. Who hasn't been touched by Microsoft? We standardized. The internet would not be the internet today without Microsoft. Bill Gates changed the world. He helped millions and millions, actually billions of people. He made the world a better place in a profound, deep sense. How much more credit does he get for any of that? Zero. Why is he so negative? Why? Because he dared the bastard to make money at the same time. At a lot of them. I mean, if he made just a little bit, we'd forgive him. But he made like 70 billion dollars for himself. 70 billion dollars. Now, how much wealth did he create out there? Trillions. That he made for him. He improved the lives of most of humanity. That he made for the fuckers. So that doesn't count. When does Bill Gates become a good guy in our minds? Who starts the foundation? Not only does he start a foundation, he leaves Microsoft. So God forbid he's not doing anything self-interested anymore. He's not producing wealth. He's not employing people. He's not creating value. Now he just does the foundation. He's giving back. As if he took it. I hate giving back. Because give back assumes that you took. What did you take? You created it. Businesses create it. They don't redistribute it. They create it. The wealth that Bill Gates has didn't exist before in some hidden corner that he sold. He created it. It didn't exist before. So now he's become a good guy, right? He's giving his money away. And notice that we can't have Bill Gates giving his money away in Seattle. The way he might benefit from it. That might be too self-interested. He has to go all the way to Africa to give his money away. As if there are no problems in Seattle. I don't know if you've ever watched the TV series The Killing. It's pretty dark. But there are a lot of problems except in Seattle. A lot of problems in Seattle. He could have invested the day. He has to go all the way to Africa. I'm sure what he's doing will benefit a lot of people. But you know what? It will benefit a fraction. A fraction of the people that Microsoft helped by making the 50 billion. He changed the world in far more profound ways than Microsoft. than he ever will do through his philanthropy. Yet in Microsoft he gets zero to negative credit. In philanthropy, oh, he's okay. Now he's not a saint yet, right? We don't think of him as a model hero for being a philanthropy. Be quiet. Well, there are two reasons. One, it seems like he's enjoying himself. Think about all the people in the U.S. associated with moral heroism. The whole point of our heroism is to suffer. Sacrifice means misery. Sacrifice means suffering. The idea of enjoying oneself that is a suspect, a model. Based on the code we live on. And the second is still really, really rich. So how do we make him a saint? I haven't talked to the police. I can't guarantee you. But Bill Gates has become a real model hero of speech-same death to him. Statues built for him. Die for. You have to give it all away, move into a tent, trust a little bit of blood. That would be good. That's what we admire. That's what the moral code that we live with demands. Now that moral code is incompatible with Microsoft. It's incompatible with the economic freedom. It's incompatible with the marketplace what people are pursuing so interestingly. So of course whenever there's a crisis, whenever there's a problem, we blame the capitalist. They're self-interested and we know self-interest is bad. We be taught not only to be selfless and good, but what is being selfish? Let's use the word. What does selfish mean? You know, the old dictionary definition used to say taking care of self. But that's not what we mean when we're going to the kid in the school yard and say, he's selfish. What do we mean? What do we mean by that? He's a lying, cheating, and so on. He would do anything to anybody to get his way. That's what's in our mind when we think of self-interest. That's what our morality has taught us. But at least 2,000 years that there are two moral codes. One moral code is care about your others selfless, sacrifice. Other people's lives are more important than yours. You have to do whatever it takes. They need is a command on you. They need requires your action, requires your value. You are not important. That's one moral code. The second moral code is self-interest, which means lying, cheating, and manipulating people. Those are two alternatives. Now if those are the two alternatives we either choose, but most of us don't want to be bad people, so we either choose sacrifice or we choose a morality. We choose not to take morality seriously at all. If a crisis happens when there's a problem who are we going to blame? Well, the bad guys. They're the selfish ones. Who's selfish in our economy? Businessmen. And particularly financeeers. This is the reason why we particularly hate finance, right? Because Bill Gates has a product he can hide behind. They all use wood. Look, I created this. I'm an okay guy. But what is a bankership? There's no product. He's naked. He's right there. Now if he was smart he would say, Bill Gates couldn't create a good economy, which is true. Capital comes first. Before you get jobs, before you get innovation, before you get entrepreneurship, you need capital. But that's hard. That's hard to explain. You need a college course for that one. Why finance works? Why it's actually productive? But they clearly are all the different professors. Nobody is more nakedly self-interested than the bankers. They're about money. They're about to make your profit. There's no product to hide behind. So when you have it, there's a problem. We blame those people who are self-interested because they've been taught from again from day one that self-interest is evil, that self-lessness and sacrifice are good and noble. And as long as that's the law of code, you can explain to people how capitalism creates wealth, creates a good life, raises standard of living, and they don't care because the core of capitalism is this immoral relationship, this immoral motivation because capitalism actually rewards self-interest, it encourages self-interest, it fosters self-interest, and if we believe self-interest is evil, we don't want a system like that. And people do not vote their pocket books. That is one of the biggest mid-self-trade. People don't vote their economic interests. If they did, we would be living in laissez-faire capitalist heaven. People vote what they think is white, what they think is just, what they think is moral. And you see this in some simple examples you can do. So, you know, eight out of ten richest counties in the last election voted for a president who promised to raise taxes on them. And they voted for him. In California, we had nine propositions. We all got a vote on whether to raise taxes on the rich, anybody above $250,000. I mean a lot. Raise taxes by 30%, from 10 to 13%, stating the tax. How do you think they're rich voted? They voted for him. Of course they voted for him. Right? My favorite example in the, you know, and you can ask somebody to explain the whole thing. But if you look at minimum wage as an economist, not as a political thinker, just a pure economist, take Paul Krugman. You know Paul Krugman? When Paul Krugman, a long time ago, when Paul Krugman was actually a card, he wrote a textbook on economics which has a chapter on the minimum wage. And the chapter is brilliant. It shows that the minimum wage is unbelievably destructive to the poorest of the poor, to unskilled young laborers, that it creates employment among them, that it raises prices for the poor, because they're the consumers of the products of the poor minimum wage people, and that the minimum wage makes no zero economic set. And you can show this is very easy to do. And you can teach economics classes I've done. And everybody will get an A on the tax and then you ask them are you four minimum wage and everybody will raise an A? Because it feels good. I'm helping the poor. No, I'm not helping the poor. It feels like I'm helping the poor. And that's good enough. And you know what, if they sacrifice some poor people to other poor people, that's okay too. Because sacrifice is good. So, this is not a battle about economics. And mind you, we won, those of us who are living in capitalism, won the economic battle a long time ago. We had some great kinds. Hyatt, Freetman, Manger, a bunch of them. There's no shortage even today of good remarked economists. We won that over. It doesn't matter. If we truly believe that it's an evil economic system because of the incentives it provides because of the way people behave, because of what it rewards, we'll never have capitalism. We'll turn our backs on it over and over and over again. And this is, I think, a significant contribution to the entire debate about capitalism. It's to ask a very simple question about the moral code that we all take for granted. And that simple question is, why? Why must you sacrifice your life for the people? Why should you live for others? Why is your neighbor's life more important than yours or for them? And equal to yours. Why? And at the end of the day, there's no answer. It's always because of us, because our mothers our creatures have lost their daughters. But not that there's any reasonable answer. And when the answer is it's not. Your life is the most important thing to you and should be. You should cherish your life. You should live a lower life to the fullest. You should make the most of the one shot you have on this earth. You should be self-interested. You should celebrate your self-interest. And indeed, self-interest is not about lying, cheating, stealing and being an SOB. None of those are self-interested strategies. If you think about the people you know who relied a lot in their lives not huge success stories. They don't do well over the long term. It's not a strategy for success. What is what is the core? What is the thing that makes human life a success? What is the thing that makes human life possible? Trust. Happiness. Happiness. Close. Think about this. You know... You know... You know... You know... No! We didn't build this rebuilding by helping others. We don't have these wonderful clothes by helping others. Iphone did not come about by helping others. What created Iphone? Well... Look around you. Look around the people around you. We're a pretty pathetic animal. You can look. We're slow. We have no fangs. We have no claws. You put yourself up against a saber to tiger. The saber to tiger wins every day. And yet... We're in the comfort of this beautiful room. Right? With technology all around us. And the last time I saw a saber to tiger was in a natural history museum. What allowed this to survive? How did we beat the saber to tiger? By using our mind. By using our mind. Cooperation is a product. It's not the reason. Reason is what makes it possible for us to thrive. And reason is what makes it possible for us to communicate. We've got sets of words and then communicate. We plan. We strategize. I mean, from the from the very birth of agriculture somebody had a bigger agriculture role. Agriculture didn't just come into existence. Somebody had to figure out the relationship between a seed dropping to the ground and what I mean. You know, it's raining that day and somebody coming out of it. Now you all laugh. Because you learned that in kindergarten. But it was a time when human beings didn't know this. Somebody had to figure it out. And so now that we've learned what somebody's did, there's all kinds of cultures discovered out of agriculture. But some individual had to figure it out. And then some individual had to figure out, okay, well, we see this causal, scientific relationship. I cannot turn this into an industry called agriculture. That was the Bill Gates of his time, the entrepreneur. And we probably burned both of them at the stake for that. Because that's what we do to people who discover new ideas. That's human history. Human history. Isn't that called a government? The government was the one doing the sacrifice. Which was. So what guides our life, what makes human, if you look at his, what makes human life successful is reason. It's our mind. It's our ability to think. Our ability to see reality, to observe reality, to stand reality, integrate reality, and reshape reality. Make it fit our needs. So if you're going to be self-interested, it's not about lying, stealing, cheating. It's about thinking. It's about using your mind. It's about pursuing your values in a rational way. And yes, that includes cooperating and helping others, working with others. When? It fits. And sometimes it doesn't fit. Sometimes you don't help others. But the focus is not others. The focus is you. What are the values that are necessary for me to meet my life, the best life it can be? And some of those relates to other people like love and relationships and friendship which are important spiritual values that relate to other people. Some of them are material values like my wonderful iPhone and it's proposing an ethical system that says self-interest is what's no more. Bill Gates is a hero for building Microsoft. We should build statues for for that. Yes, we should. No, you won't. Sacrificing is a waste of a life. Thinking of others as a priority and it's a waste of a life. What about you? What about your life? What about your values? So what she's calling us to do is be the best that we can be as human beings. Find those values that make us one of the best human beings we can do. Reorient morality complete. It's just trade. Win-win is wonderful. It's beautiful. It's noble. It's moral. It's ethical. It's good. Win-lose, which is sacrifice, sucks. Why would I want to lose? When I have an option of win-win with both parties win. Nobody has to lose. And indeed, capitalism is a system of win-win. That's why we hate it. Because that's not moral. Moral is win-lose. And win-lose is almost always lose-lose. Just try it in a relationship sometime. All the important values are self-interested values. Love. I love love. Love is great. But love's not about sacrifice. Love is about recognizing in other human beings the values that you admire. It's about the way that other people listen makes you feel. Imagine, just before the wedding you go up to the person you're about to marry and say, this is a huge sacrifice for me. I get nothing out of this. This is all about you. This is a joke, right? But that's how we should live. We should live as theirs. Loving that person is valuing that person. All our values should be like that. And they should be thoughtful. And they should be rational. Because this is what counts. It's our minds that counts. Self-interest is not about emoting. It's not about doing whatever you feel like doing. Because whatever you feel like doing is often self-destructive. It's about figuring out and this is hard. I tell people to be properly selfish. To be rationally selfish. It's hard, hard work. I mean, it's not easy to sit back and say, what's really good for me? What should I be doing over the next 20 years that will really make my life the best like that it can be? How do I get happiness over the next 20 years? It's hard. I mean, luckily we've got Aristotle, Guy and Grant that helped in that search with some, you know, some woke mocks, which is what virtues and values that they discover provide for us. But the actual work is hard work to figure out what's good for us. But that's the work that morality demands. That's what ethics should be about. Our teachers should be teaching us the values and virtues that make each one of our lives the best life that it can be. That's what the Greek project was all about. In morality. What is a person who's truly self-interested and wants in a social context? Living with other people. What he primarily wants is to be free of force. To be free of courage. To be free of people telling him, forcing him to do things he doesn't want. A person who's truly self-interested wants freedom. He wants to pursue his values. Whether they other people like the values or don't like the values. What did Thomas Jefferson say? If your neighbor doesn't have his hand in your pocket, what he does in his home or what he does by himself is none of your business. That's freedom. Unless he's stealing from you, unless he's attacking you, you want to be free. And you know sometimes you make mistakes. That's okay. You learn from those mistakes. Or you don't. That's your problem. But you have no demands on other people. You don't sacrifice other people to you. And you don't sacrifice other people. So a truly self-interested person or morally self-interested person wants freedom. He wants the freedom to use his mind. The enemy of reason is force. And therefore he wants to live in a society that's free of force. And the only society that's free of force is capital. Good. I'm glad I got a land. I'm glad. In all these societies, free of force, free of coercion is capitalism. Capitalism. Nobody can steal your stuff. The government doesn't ever write to your things. The government can't tell you how to live your life or not to your life. You know, in Colorado you guys really value legalizing marijuana. It's just great. I'm all for it. So the government has no business in what you smoke. It's true. I agree. But then what is the government have a business in what I do in my business? The government has no business in my business. Not in my life. Not in my personal life. And not in my business life. If you really believe in freedom, then freedom. Capitalism is a gratification of force from human beings. It's the system that is based on the idea of voluntary exchange of trade. It's a system that leaves individual free to pursue their own self-interested values in an attempt to make their own lives as happy and successful as they can. And in that sense, it is the only moral system. Because every other moral system, every other economic system, political system is based on force. Every single one. It's based on redistribution of wealth. It's based on telling people what they can't account to do, how they can't account to do it. And it's nice to tell them, right? There's a gun behind you to tell them. So every system, every system of statism is a system of force. So capitalism is moral because it leaves you free. Free to pursue your rational self-interested values. It's the only system that allows you to do that, and therefore it is the only moral system. Thank you. Alright, now the fun begins. Yeah. I'd like to use a quote from your book, Free Market Revolution. Is that alright? Absolutely. It says, people who believe that something is evil will not not believe it, even if you tell them it works. And as you've talked to us tonight, it does work. So with that in mind, I always get asked as a defender of capitalism, well, yes, it may have worked in the past, it entered this environment crisis, and of course this is one of the more persistent arguments from the opposition. And what I always say is, look, free market means just that. Free to rapier or free to save it. And I get the same answer every time, not good enough. Not good enough, we need change now. So with that in mind, my question to you, doctor, is this, is your quote right? Are they simply blind with evil in their eyes? Or if they have something to this point? Well, I mean I wouldn't call anybody discreet with the evil. So I'm not calling everybody some of them, but not everybody. No, some definitely. But let me challenge the premise of kind of their example, right? And some of you won't like this, but we live in the healthiest, cleanest best environment the human waste has ever had. Think of it. What was life expectancy before the Industrial Revolution? 39. 39. And it got better in certain periods. It got up to like 42, 43. Life is amazing. Think of the life you have. I mean, it's my modeling tree, right? I got to call it a plane. Remember what it used to take? You don't remember. Walking. Right? Walking. I've seen, I've seen not most of the world, I've seen a lot of the world. I've seen in China, and I've seen Africa, and I've seen all kinds of places in Europe. And it costs almost nothing to me. The quality of life is unbelievable that we have today. And you look at London 150 years ago, in the streets of London. Yeah, they didn't have all the wheels spewing stuff out. What did they have? Or horses. They had horses. Let's get all over the place. And in those days, they didn't have like a Disneyland. I don't remember if it was Disneyland, the guys would scrape it up, but it was just in the streets. That's where we went. That's where we had plagues. Right? Our life is unbelievably clean. The water we drink, you open the tap and there's clean water that you can drink. And we breathe. It's not with the sorts of smoke that we have in the caves. You think hunting gathering was fun? Brutal. Brutal life. Powerful life. We have it great. We should be celebrating. They find for human beings. Now, if you're a spotted owl, you know, maybe not. But I'm not a spotted owl. Neither are you. For human beings, this is the best time ever to be alive. From an environment perspective, I need respect. Well, there's certainly more. Culturally, there were periods that were better. For many perspectives. So first, I'd say, what crisis? What are we talking about? Oh, it's getting warmer. Okay, well, do you know what? We have air conditioning. Unbelievable. It's pretty amazing. Life is really comfortable. So what they want to do is stop industrial progress. So the cooling, the warming stops. So take a poor kid in Africa. They claim, the left claims to care about. There's a poor kid in Africa who lives in a hut today with no air conditioning. It's 90 degrees outside. Life is Buddha. If they industrialize Africa, which would require huge amounts of CO2 emissions to industrialize Africa, he will live in a house with air conditioning. And it might be, let's assume they're right, and the temperature goes up a whopping four degrees, and now it's 94, 95 degrees. What do you prefer? 90 degrees in a hut or 95 degrees with air conditioning? There's no question. You'll take air conditioning. That's ridiculous. It's true. What the global warming agenda is amounts to is making sure that Africa is poor forever. Forever. You think you can replace all this energy with solar and wind? Give me a break. That's a joke. You know the cement that it took to build this thing? You know how much oil goes into producing cement? There's no way you're going to replace all that in our lifetimes, our children's lifetimes with solar and wind. When you deny people the ability to produce energy with CO2, you're denying them the ability to rise out of poverty. Why is China so polluted? Because they're rising out of poverty. When you rise out of poverty, there's pollutions. When you get to the middle class, you start cleaning your act up. But it takes time. And if you put all the resources into having a clean environment, before you risen out of poverty, you'll never rise. You'll never rise. So the whole way in which the debate is framed is wrong. Now most environmental problems are solved with private property. Because private property, people who own it keep it clean. And this is about climate. So if we had private property over rivers, the water would be clean. If you had defined private property over other parts of what we today view as the commons, they would be clean. The problem today is doesn't belong to anybody. So there's no environmental disaster, one. And second, the solution to these problems is private property. So more freedom. Yes. I have a question. How much percentage of the Bill Briggs Foundation is from warm up from the black? I don't know. It's going to be a high percentage of the people who want to die as all of it goes to the population. That's my answer. We can't create this destruction of capitalism. Yes. Capitalism is the concept of creative destruction which was defined by Schulte the Austrian economy. And the idea there is that part of capitalism inevitably means that new technologies replace old technology. And new technologies come up and the old technologies die. And of course, there are plenty of examples of this. One of the ones I like is I don't know how many of you are attached to first buggies. When the automobile industry came about the first buggy industry was wiped out. And people had to retool and learn new skills. But what happened to the standard of living of America? Because automobiles are far more efficient far more productive than what's in buggies. And actually cleaner when you take into account the proof of those. So creative destruction is an ongoing post-system. It's all the time. I'm trying to think of a company that's gone bankrupt recently. Kodak. Kodak's a great example. Film. It was film. All of us bought those Kodak films. And Kodak didn't adapt to digital and it's how it was the last episode by Kodak. They made little digital cameras but they're not significant anymore. They used to be one of the biggest companies in the world. Now they're insignificant. That's the kind of Polaroid. That's what creative destruction means. And it's beautiful. In my view it's a beautiful process because it's a process of continuous enhancement. Continuous to getting better. If somebody comes up with something better than this Apple will decline. But we'll be better off because we'll have something better than this. And that's cool. D.I.A. 10-20 years. I think to me it seems you're addressing everything in kind of COVID Pepsi terms. You're not talking about any of the nuance. For example longer life doesn't necessarily mean better life. Sure thing. And there are capitalists many many capitalists who do not give you back in return a fair trade. For example a dentist. If I need a root canal it should not cost me $1,500 or $2,000. But you can't find anybody to do it cheaper. There's no choice because I pay $1,500 for a root canal. My dentist drives around the Ferrari. You're not addressing that. You're addressing the fact that big government or small government we've never ever once had an honest government so that if we had an honest government I think people would want it to be huge but government doesn't do too much. It does too many of the wrong things. So we don't know we don't have anything to gauge what government should be. It should never be what it's supposed to be. So three things. You don't always get a term most of the things you mentioned. Longer life. Longer life being better and the third being an honest government. So one I'll take longer life any day and then it's my responsibility to make it better. Wait, for $39 You already kept the life so you could lay there. $39 I would have been dead 14 years ago. I've had fun the last 14 years. I've had a blast the last 14 years and I tend to have another blast in another 30 years. Longer life properly pursued properly pursued is wonderful and a better life. Now if I'm hooked to a machine in the last six months of my life do I want to be hooked to a machine? No. Disconnect me please. But that's the last six months we're talking about a massive extension of quality. In the last six months those people that have you hooked up to that machine are going to drain everything that you've saved and worked for so that your family has not That's true because I've written up a little contract that says that they don't have a right to keep me on the machine and my wife is going to disconnect it or whatever I do. Please do it. By the way the only reason you're hooked up to that machine for six months is because the government is paying it and it pays for all of that. If it was your money you wouldn't want them to unplug it and that's what should be to be your money paper not some food pocket. Good canal. Good canal. How much is a good canal worth to you guys? How many of you had really really really bad toothache? 1500 bucks is a bargain. It gets rid of the pain and it gets a hundred bucks any day. Now I have had new canals much cheaper than that partially because again I had the foresight maybe to buy insurance. Good thing. And if the government wasn't involved in the insurance markets if the government didn't regulate the mandate the legislative insurance the insurance would be good cheap. Good cheap insurance in a free market cost much less than a cell phone bill in a monthly basis. Everybody could afford it. And again insurance wouldn't cost you 1500 bucks it cost you a 25 dollar court pay or whatever. But even if 1500 bucks is worth it given the pain and I'm happy that the dentist has a foreword. I enjoy the fact that he has a foreword he's eliminated pain for lots of people. What is more valuable than a foreword? Government is as George Washington said profoundly when government is a force when government is a gun that's what it is. Government is about coercion. When you give people guns when you give people the power to cause what's the probability that they're going to stay honest? What's the probability when you tell them here's the guns that you can do anything you want to do? Because they know there's no limitation on government right? We want big government because you're honest. There's no way they're going to stay honest to regulate all of our behaviors in our appropriate way. What's appropriate? The government doesn't own my values. It's going to tell me what drugs I can use it's going to tell me what business I can start it's going to tell me what rules should marry me, play the order like that right? Now I can be the only one who knows what my values are. Government is a gun so the only appropriate function for government is the only appropriate function for a gun which is what? Self-defense. The government is there to protect us against crooks, criminals, terrorists or uninvaded and leave us alone otherwise and by the way we've never had a government like that either but that's the government where we would be most free and most prosperous and most happy. So what kind of noticing is that the smallest government becomes alert as a result of its value? So the value that's created as a result of the faculty goes into making the article about the government and since these values are not from generation to generation that's forgotten that we just sort of found it later and so what is going to prevent what you're proposing from just turning the plan in the same situation what we have? You're not identifying the cause and it reminds you to repeat your question. The question is governments seem to maybe start out small like the U.S. government in the 19th century was pretty small it's been about 3.5% of GDP today it's 21% of GDP so it's grown by many factors they start out small but then they grow and the values that kept them small kind of dissipate and my argument is that the reason that happens is a causal reason and the reason is philosophy the reason is fundamentally more relevant and the challenge the reason America went from being the small country and today the small government and today this unlimited government that we have today is because the founding fathers built what I believe is a magnificent political system on quicksand and the quicksand was their records they were conventional in English you asked them what was Marvel they would say sacrifice, self-listening that's what they would say and that I think undercut the political structure and destroy if you have a culture that actually accepts a morality of self-interest a morality based on the principles of reason and self-interest then it won't, it will reinforce it won't understand and again the immigrants I'm all for immigrants but the immigrants bought a continental philosophy to this country from Europe which undercut the very foundations of what this country was talking about that's just the reality and the only thing we can do to save it the only thing we can do to change it is advocate for a different philosophy a different set of ideas not just economic but philosophical ideas, moral ideas ethical ideas to challenge the convention yes you beautifully described how America can't find a suitable job to build dates and I endorse all of that the planes that we fly in now and I can fly around the world by the way after you were mentioned not that long ago because it was so expensive do you care to why don't they become moralized or what the evil that we spoke of evil there is evil in this world and it is about they are using what will they say to us and what will some jobs take us by and the aeronautical engineers by planes are recruiting new ISIS so if you want to switch the phone policy would you want to give me a troll the question is that y'all go maybe I'll use this to get some sleep so you won't believe me so he won't believe it. So I don't do political criticism, I have no idea. I think he will win, but I don't know. But let me just say this, and I'll say it briefly because I really don't want to get into a compulsive discussion. The role of the government is to protect, the role of the American government is to protect the lives and property of America. And the job is to do what is necessary to protect the lives and property of Americans. And when America is attacked, the job is to destroy those who attack us. And I'll end it there. If you want, there are plenty of videos of me talking about compulsive online. Yes. Um, it seems like to me that the experience always is good. Someone has been on the job, but there's a force to go with the American people, right? Uh, it turns out I think they're all going to die. Um, that's what scientists show us. Sure, but freedom has nothing to do with death. But! But, if capitalism is to be a moral system, surely it must be rooted in mortality. So within capitalism, as a moral system, what is the role of death? How does death shape the morals? No, that's good. Yes, just get away with it. Which is like, so mortality tells us that you've got one shot. You've got your 70, 80, 90, maybe one day out, maybe some of these kids are 120, 130 years old or so. And that's it. There's nothing else. And I truly believe there is nothing else. So make the most out of it. It's about this world. It's about making this world the best life that you can live. Living the best life that you can live. And then the question is, what political system allows me to do that? Allows me to take that. Because think about it if we were really immoral, if we never died. Right? And nothing could kill us. We wouldn't care about anything. It's hard to have values when nothing can harm you. The source of values at the end is this fundamental choice that all human beings face. All living beings face. A life of death. And you better make the right choices in life. And what government does, what state is it does, is it constrains the choices that you make. It constrains the values that you can pursue. Instead of leaving you free to choose the values you think will make your life the best you think will lead to the longest, best, most flourishing life that you can live. So I force freedom in the sense of no coercion. No force applied to me in my choice of values to try to make my life the best life you can. That makes sense? Well, it's a little bit of how capitalism is a system. Oh, well capitalism is a system. Either way, I would define capitalism as a system in which we abandon coercion from human interaction. So we allow people to be free to make those choices. Rather than a government that constrains our choices. Or gang, or tribe, or whatever the constraints are. I want people to be able to make those choices. Yeah, that's going to be it. So you used work capital income as a measure of improvement of a society or a country? One measure. Okay, I was just curious to hear your comment on income inequality measures that are especially in a lot of these countries that you gave an example of as moving away from socialist systems to capitalist systems, especially China and India. So you want to write comments on income inequality? Yeah, I mean do you completely dismiss them? Or in cases where they show that it has increased? So let me put India and China aside for a minute. I'll come back to it. 300 years ago, what was income inequality in the West? It was non-existent. We were all poor. There's no income inequality. A few aristocrats out there, everybody else was poor. What in capitalism in the 19th century did the Industrial Revolution create? Create a vast amount of wealth, and at the same time, what happened? We got income inequality. Income inequality went from being flat like this to being like that. That is, everything went up, but some people went up much faster than other people. Why did they go up much faster than other people? Because they produced more, they created more, they had more value to trade. I think income inequality is wonderful. It's a sign of progress. It's a sign of success. It's a sign of value creation. We are not equal in anything except one thing. We're equally free. We equally have rights. We're equal before the law. That's all the same principle. But we have different skills. We have different abilities. And to the extent that we exercise those abilities, there's actually no reason we should be equal in outcome. But then you're also claiming that everyone is equally able to rationalize, make the best decisions. I'm not saying, because I know that's not true. I know a lot of people who don't make the right decisions, and I know they don't make the right decisions all the time. Why should I be penalized because somebody else doesn't make the right decisions? Because the only way to achieve equality is by penalizing people with the ability to make the right choices, for the sake of people who make the wrong choices, or don't have ability. I'll give you an example. You might think it's a silly example, but it's an example. I want equality of basketball. I want to be able to go on a court with LeBron James and be equal to him in basketball. And if you've seen me play basketball, you know that ain't happening. So what do we need to do? How do we create equality of basketball? I have to break his legs, and with me playing, break one of his arms as well. That's the point. The point is LeBron James, yes, he was born with some skill, with some good genetic makeup to make you a good basketball player. But he worked damn hard. He made the right choices in his life, and he deserved everything that he gets. I didn't have any of that. I don't deserve it. And I certainly don't have a right to break his legs, you know, to make me feel good. So you, for whatever reason, didn't get the education. You didn't apply yourself. You maybe even didn't get the right genes, right? That doesn't give you a right to my stuff, which I did create, which I did work hard for. But why do you have to break my legs? You don't have a right to break my legs. And taking my money is much more damaging than breaking my legs. I get 50% of my income taken from me every single month. 50% of my income is 50% of my time. 50% of my effort. 50% of my life. I would rather you broke my legs. Give me the 50% back. You don't have a right to break LeBron James' legs, and you don't have a right to reach people's money. So the only way to establish equality of outcome in any way is to destroy the able. It's to destroy those who have. And yes, I'm not saying that those who don't have a bad in any sense, some of them are. But some of them are not. People work hard, and some don't have the ability to become rich. So what? It's not about money. Where is that? There's a comment you didn't expect from me. It's not about money. It's about the values you pursue. You can be very poor, and happy, and proud as having achieved something. And you can be rich because you're a crook, and you'll feel lousy about your life. A good friend of mine describes it as his grandfather. He became a CEO of a bank, the friend of mine. But his grandfather was a bricklayer. And he made that almost nothing. But do you know what? He laid those bricks. He made an income. He paid for the food on the table. He paid for his kids to get an education. He owned it. He felt pride. He was happy. It's not about the money. I love teaching. If you've ever noticed, I enjoy this. Right? I've got a KHA finance and click on Wall Street. I'm willingly giving up millions of dollars in order to do this. Because I love it. Because it's not about money. It's about love. Capitalism is a system of love. Can you respond to the comment? You didn't build that. Yeah, I mean, look, you didn't build that as very philosophical roots. And philosophical roots at least in modern times are John Walls, theory of justice. The idea of John Walls is you didn't build it because you didn't do anything. It's your genes in your environment. You're a product of genes and environment. That's what you are. So if you are only a product of your genes and environment, it's not yours. And it's crucial for the left to make that argument. Because if you didn't build it, then we can take it from you. It's not really yours. And if it's only genes and environment, then it's not really yours. Now I happen to think there's a third factor more important than genes and environment. It's called free will. It's called choices that you make. And that's why it's yours. You didn't build it as other factors. For example, you know, Obama tells us that, and by the way, this is an idea created by or really popularized by Elizabeth Warren, well before Obama. It tells us you drive on roads that were paid by the government. So you owe the government something. But what the hell did the government get the money to pay those roads? Not by taxing me or paying for them over and over and over again. He tells you that you have employees. You didn't do it alone. Absolutely. I have employees. You guys have employees, right? And what do you do with employees? You pay them. So you pay for everything you've gotten from them. It's a trade, just like the iPhone. They are better off for it than you are better off for it. He tells you you had a great English or some teacher in your past that you should owe a debt to. And maybe that's true. And if any of you have a great teacher in your past that did profoundly impact your life, you should go back, find the teacher, thank them. And if you've got a lot of money, write them a check. It's not the government's job to do it for you. Justice is not social. Social justice is a contradiction of terms. It's an abomination. Justice is personal. If you have a sense of justice for the teacher, go and take care of it. Go and say thank you. Thank you is an act of justice when somebody does something good for you. So you didn't build it as crucial in this campaign around inequality. To me, you know, Piquetti, the inequality guy, wants 80% marginal income tax rates and a 10% wealth tax. Well, to justify that, you have to first get the American people to believe that you didn't build it. Because then we can take it away. It's part of the campaign around inequality. Yes, he's been jumping. I want to say my last name in song form. No. Are you going to sing in a speech, though? Yes. You live in a bug, you've got it all, you've got it from the homeworlds. So you're here in Hollywood. Yes, what would be theirs? What would be theirs? What would be theirs? Alright, it's time to write a question for the public. At the Apache, whose land this was? If you really believe that you shouldn't be breaking LeBron James's legs because you don't have enough skill, what about the colonists who come over who didn't have land to practice their own beliefs, but then decided that they can take it from other people just because they needed it? So first of all, first of all, that's irrelevant. You're right, man. Well, fuck you. That's got to do with racism. Even if I agree with you that they had no right to it. It's irrelevant to the question of where the capitalism is good or capitalism is bad. Because it's not capitalism in soul. Stealing is banned by capitalism. Capitalism doesn't approve of stealing. So to the question of where the capitalism is moral or immoral, has nothing to do with the indigenous Indians that were here. Now, it does have to do with what do we need by... They're still here. They're not past tense. Well, but a lot of them are not, unfortunately, because we killed a lot of them because that was the point. The point was that we killed a lot of them, which is tragic. A lot of bad things happened in the 19th century with the way America treated Indians. America did a lot of bad things. Slavery. It's a horrific thing, right? I'm not trying to justify the history, every element of the history. The question before us is not where the Indians treated well about me. The question before us is capitalism is a system, a freedom, a property rights, a just system or not. And nothing you should come to think of that. Now, I don't know what you mean by bubble. I don't know what bubble I live in. Look around you. This is Colorado. Older Colorado every month. It's like middle class. You have no idea but other people... When I didn't grow up wanting to middle class, I grew up in the Middle East. My people tried to kill me constantly. What bubble did I live in? That's bizarre. So many people. My wife's not a wife. I mean, it's a ridiculous assumption you always get when people disagree with you. They make you into a racist. I mean, that's ridiculous. I said nothing racist throughout the talk. And my life is the exact opposite of that. I've not lived in a bubble. I'm an immigrant to this country who came with nothing. But wine? Yes. Could you tell us about your experience in California? I don't know anybody who's anti-capitalist. But everyone seems to. Oh, everybody's gay. Everybody's anti-capitalist. Older Colorado. What's the people outside this building anti-capitalist? I don't know. So, how did it seem to you? Oh, why? How did the culture become anti-capitalist? Again, I think it was always there in the background because the moral code, the selfless, the moral code of selflessness is fundamentally anti-capitalist. So even when we had some capitalism, it was seeping in through that. But if you ask me, how did we take this big leap in the beginning of the century? So I think it's primarily because we imported German romantic philosophy into the United States in the late 19th century to the 20th century. We imported it in two ways. If you were wealthy in the United States and you wanted your kids to get the best education in the world, you sent them to Europe. And they came back with Hegel and Kant and Marx and everything else. And if you were Princeton and Yale and Hogs and you wanted to become internationally renowned university, the best universities in the world, you hired the best professors from Berlin and from Paris and from Hamburg and you brought them into the United States. And it's those ideas, those continental, I believe, Kantian ideas in the end. Kantian ideas that I think seep into the culture in many, many ways and undermine capitalism. So I blame the Germans. But don't make it no more. What happened when you were passing government not allowed them in? No, I mean this is why it's an intellectual battle. I'm not, in spite of my critics, I'm not for fighting, I'm not for guns, I'm for debating. Why I do this? I do this because I care about the world. I said capitalism is my love, my philosophy is a philosophy of love. I want the world to be the best world that it can be because I want to live in a world like that. I want my kids to live in a world like that. I do this because I love mankind and I love life and I'm trying to intellectually change the world. That's the only thing, the only tool we have is reason. We're not going to win this with guns. We're going to have to win the debate, the argument, the discussion. That's what it's about, right? And for that we need to speak and speak and we need a white and we need a weed. And weed, weed, I ran. One more question, have you already? Sure. And then are you going to stick around and talk? Yeah, I'll stick around if anybody wants to. You brought up the wealth of nations in front of the land and in front of good books. Besides wealth, what are the reasons for the good books to start a foundation on? Well, they might be the greatest economist who ever lived was Ludwig von Mises. And I would encourage people to read him. It's not easy to read. You have to be forwarded pages and interested. If you read wealth of nations, human action, I would mostly skip the first few hundred pages. The pathology part, go to the economics, which is a genius. That's ever lived, I think. And generally I would follow the Austrian School of Economics. Although I also like some Chicago economists. There's some things like Friedman and I like, and certainly today, there are people like John Cochran from the University of Chicago, or Kevin Bowie from the University of Chicago, where blogs, where we follow. But, you know, beyond that, there's a lot of good political thinkers out there. There's a lot of good economists out there. There's not a lot of good philosophy out there, unfortunately. You know, today I would meet Tara Smith from the University of Texas in Austin, who has a position there in the philosophy department. You know, I generally, I would urge you all, read, read, read. If you want to read a really, particularly the first few chapters, read the rational optimist. Because in the first few chapters he has these great illustrations of how human life has improved over the last 300 years. And just he does it in simple terms that anybody can understand. It's called the rational optimist by Matt Ridley. And it's very good. I mean, one is up after the first few chapters. The first few are very good. How do I recommend the law? Yeah, the law by Bastiat and Andy Bastiat did. So there's a lot of literature out there that supports the case of freedom. And supports the case of freedom here and everywhere in the world. Thank you all.