 And I'm Rand, you know, I was telling you offline she is someone that I consider myself to be a increasingly a closet fan of I haven't read any of her books cover to cover yet, but I've been working my way through a number of her texts that are published online. And I have a high degree of resonance with her as it pertains to freedom relationship to the government or to the state and her ideas on property. So I'm hoping we can start to get into some of that today and I, you know, again, going to be really leaning on your understanding because I have not read enough of her yet, but certainly plan to do more of that throughout this conversation. So I started reading the virtue of selfishness today. And maybe I'll just open by reading an excerpt of that. So, I'm right, I'm Rand writes, yet the exact meaning and dictionary definition of the word selfishness is concerned with one's own interest. It does not include a moral evaluation. It does not tell us whether concern with one's own interest is good or evil, nor does it tell us what constitute man's actual interest. It is the task of ethics to answer such questions. My current view on this this is kind of like the the Jordan Peterson Sam Harris debate about ought and is right like we have science in the world telling us what is some extent. The struggle has been how to derive what we ought to do from this set of, you know, objectively determined facts. And it appears to me that I'm Rand is sort of surfing that edge a bit. She's saying there's an objective dimension to human reason, human morality. Perhaps this gets into natural law. And I'll just state my current views to see how they may be shaped about our conversation is I I've labeled myself freedom maximalist, which is essentially libertarian anarcho capitalist agorist. There's all these different terms just maximizing mutual consent and all action right no no coercion, basically. But the limiting principle of that in my current view is private property rights. Everyone should seek to maximize their own self interest or their own, I guess as I and Rand would say selfishness up to the point or up to the boundary of other people's person and property. That's how I think we create the most wealth in the world and it's also how we resolve the most conflict of our scarce resources. So a bit of a mouthful, but I just wanted to kind of put my position out there initially so we can see how it goes through the conversation. So, so there's a lot of obviously in common between your views and Rand's although. Again, she we've talked about this before she was not an anarchist. She believed in limited government government did not cause a government that protected you from coercion and we can we can get into that but. But let's let's talk a little bit about this is art and selfishness issue because I think this is really at the core of her ideas. And in many respects the politics are derivative of her ethics. You start with the ethics you started what your purposes in your life, why, you know, and how to live your life, and the politics kind of come out of that. So, it is this question there's this fundamental question in philosophy about how do we derive and can we derive an art, what one should do from reality from the nature of existence from objective fact from science from from what's out there. And she said you absolutely can. And her the virtue of selfishness and the first essay in the virtue of selfishness the objectivist morality is really geared towards solving the problem there is art problem. The problem that philosophers have told us over and over again, cannot be solved that Sam Harris attempts to solve it I think somewhat superficially, but it's attempts to solve it and that Jordan Peterson is saying you can't do it forget it. Rand, Rand wrote about this, which is selfishness was published in the 60s that she wrote about this a long time ago. And I think she had it solved. She basically is saying, look, the fundamental question that human beings have to face at the core of everything else is to put in Hamlet's terms to be or not to be to live or not to live to survive or not to survive. We all face a basic alternative certain actions we take are going to lead to death. Certain actions that take are going to lead to life. Death is a one way street. And it's, it's, you know, once we decide we're not going down that street if we decide we want to die. Human knowledge is irrelevant. Ethics is irrelevant. Everything else is irrelevant. What makes ethics morality relevant is the choice to live. And once you make the choice to live, then the question is, well, what are the things in reality that are required for us in order to survive in order to live? How as human beings do we live? And that's a scientific question. Right? This is poison. Don't take that. This is good food. Yes, take that. These are behaviors that will leave to destruction. These are behaviors that will lead to a full life as a human being. These are values that if you take seriously lead to death, these are values that if you take seriously lead to life. And basically the things that the ideas, the values, the virtues that are going to lead to life that are going to lead to success that are going to lead to flourishing. That's the good and everything else is bad. And that's the good is morality, right? The moral is the good. Morality is a science of values. It's a science of the values that are essential, that are important for leading a life, for living one's life. And that's the basis on which we make decisions about important things in life. So the values and virtues that lead to life are the good and everything else is to be avoided and therefore we would label evil or bad. So there is, if you will, there is this human nature. The fact that we face this alternative that we can die, the art is all the things and we can't get into the details of what the art is, all the things that make human life possible, that support human life and advance human life. And we can get into what those specifically are, particularly what are the principles, the ethical principles that lead to living versus the alternative. Subscribe star locals and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those, any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see the Iran book show grow, please consider sharing our content and of course subscribe. Press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live. And for those of you who already subscribers and those of you who already supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.