 How many people here have taken a philosophy course? The smattering of us, yeah. Does that even count? No, I don't know. But I took a philosophy course when I was about 16 and I didn't even know it. I read the book Atlas Shrugged. I read the novel. And I got an introduction to Objectivism and I ran as a philosophy. And I can't say it really changed my life at 16 because I really didn't have a firm direction. But I know it influenced my life and it influenced the building of Rocco. And, you know, when Rocco was just starting, we were a very small group. We traveled together. We ate together. We worked together. And in the early years, we even stayed two to a room when we stayed in places. So having a formal organization or an event like this where you communicate philosophies and theories of doing business and how you wanted to do things, you didn't need to do these things. But as we've gotten larger, my ownership and executive management gets further and further from frontline supervision and people that have direct interaction with our customers. And it's important to keep that communication going about what the philosophy of the company is and ownership is in order to enable you guys to make better, more informed decisions that will align with the company's goals and direction. I have walked in here without Mr. Brooke's bio. If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go get it because I think we need to start with that. I can give it. What did you do with that? Do you know? I think I know. But Dr. Brooke is the executive chairman. Well, now I'm just chairman. You're just chairman. Thank you. Very good. Dr. Brooke, well, thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah, so let me give you a quick bio. I, like Lauren, read Atlas Shrugged when I was 16, same age. The difference is that I was already committed to a path. I was a committed socialist. I was a committed altruist. I was a committed collectivist. Everything that I'm not today. And I fought Atlas Shrugged. So when I read Atlas Shrugged, it was like, this can't be right. I'd throw it on the wall and I would yell that I demand and I would argue with her. And in spite of the fact she never yelled that I'd be back, by the end of the book, I was convinced. And she did change my life, in my case. Who knows where I would have landed up. Probably with some of the, what is it, Atifa group out there. If not for Atlas Shrugged. At the time, I was living in Israel. I was born and raised in Israel. And so I read the book at 16 and 18. I went into the Israeli army as all Israelis do. The one good thing came out of the Israeli army is that I met my wife there. So we've been married a very long time. And I got an undergraduate in engineering. They came to the US. So one of the conclusions I came after meeting Atlas Shrugged, among many conclusions was, I wanted to live in the best place on the planet. And I wasn't going to settle. And Israel was not the best place on the planet. So really from very young, I concluded, I wanted to immigrate to the United States. And then it was just a matter of finding an excuse to do it. School is the easiest legal way to get into the US. And so I came to get a master's degree at the MBA at the University of Texas. Landed up staying and getting a PhD in finance at the University of Texas. And I was a professor of finance for seven years at Santa Clara University in the Bay Area, Silicon Valley area. And in 2000, I was approached to run the Unran Institute. It's all through this period I studied her ideas and got to know the people involved with her philosophy, her ideas. And ran the institute from 2000 until about a year ago. And since then they bumped me upstairs. Now I'm chairman of the board. So that's my bio. Very good. I think you're done all right. We got a few of my books. We might have them here. I think we've got a few of my books here as well. We might be able to hand out some of them. But I've written a few books now. And my latest book just came out two weeks ago, which is The Worth Creators, A Mall Case for Finance. So going back to my finance roots, why finance is a good thing, not a bad thing. But we're not here to talk about me as wonderful of a topic as that might be. We want to talk about ethics and the world of ethics in life and in the workplace. I think one of the great tragedies, I don't know, the last few thousand years maybe, is that we grow up with this notion of ethics as something detached from ourselves. And as something that we'd like to get to that. You know, it's some ideal. It's not very practical necessarily. It's not the way in which we make money. Like making money is even perceived as often something contradictory to the idea of ethics. And then ethics is something, somehow, yeah, you got to do it because it's kind of the right thing to do, but nobody's enthusiastic about morality and ethics and following and being consistent about it and always doing the right thing. It's unusual. It's rare and usually we perceive it as involving suffering somehow. But what is it? What's the field supposed to be about? Why do we have morality? Why did those philosophers, you know, thousands of years ago, two, three thousand years ago come up with this idea at all, the idea of ethics? What's the purpose of ethics? Why have ethics? What's it supposed to do? Defines the culture. Yeah, the big sense that defines the culture because I think the way people behave will ultimately, in aggregate, set us up for what the culture is like within a business and certainly within a country or within a particular geographic area. But that's the aggregation. What is it in terms of the individual? What is ethics? Like direction, maybe? Yeah, it's the direction we take. We will find that a little bit because it's not... What kind of... What sense is a direction? It determines what? How you live your life. Yeah, it determines the choices you make. It determines the important choices you make. It doesn't determine everything. Not everything is about ethics. But the important choices you make are determined by ethics. Morality is, you know, in a sense, the study of what choices are good for us and which choices are bad. That's ethics is about good and bad. Good is to be something you want to desire, something you want to achieve, those are values. And the bad is something you want to avoid. But what's the standard for good and for bad? What's traditionally the standard? How do we decide what something good is and what something bad? So, fine range. The good, fine range. The good is that which helps your life. The good is that which furthers life, which makes life possible, which makes life successful, which makes life flourish. And the bad is that which hurts life, which destroys life, which threatens life. So, in a sense, and I grant here it's very similar to some of those Greeks who first came up with kind of these ideas. In a sense, ethics is about figuring out what works, what leads to success, and what destroys, what's bad for human life. So, ethics is the study of how to make each one of our lives the best lives that we can have. What are the things that we can do? What are the values that we pursue? Values are things that we act again or keep, things that we want and are willing to act together. So, ethics is the study of what are the values that lead to human success, that lead to human happiness. So, when do you start if you even want to do that? How do you even, how do you figure out what those values are? What are the virtues? What's the difference between values and virtues? Because I'm going to use the terms. Values are things you want to act, to gain or keep. What does a virtue mean? We throw these terms out in the culture all the time. But what's a virtue? It's supposed to be like a personality trait. It's kind of like a personality trait, but a virtue really is an action you take. It's activity you engage in, but at an abstract level. Just to give an example, honesty is a virtue. You try to be consistent with reality and not cheat and deceive. It's a virtue to be honest, but honesty in the sense that I mean it is an activity. It's not something passive. You have to be engaged to do it. So, virtue is the actions necessary to achieve values. Virtues are the actions or the character traits is another way of thinking about it because some of these actions sound like character traits that are necessary to achieve values. So, what's the most important value you think for human beings? Generally, just for human beings. Everywhere, no matter where they are, no matter what color skin they have, no matter what geography they live in, no matter what continent they live in. What's the thing that makes all other values possible? You know, from the next building we are in to the camera, to the clothes we have. How do we get clothes? I have no idea. I mean, how do you get clothes? I mean, it's cold out there. You guys need clothes. In California, we can survive somehow. You guys need this, right? How do you get it? I mean, where does it come from? It's some matter from heaven, right? At some point, somebody had to do what? Manufacture or make it. Yeah, somebody had to figure out if you could use animal skins because you could dry them out, you could cut them in particular ways, you could actually make clothes. Somebody had to figure that out. And then somebody had to figure out how to manufacture them and turn it into an industry and sell all of us. So, what is the activity? What is the thing that makes clothes possible? And food possible? And everything we have possible? Production. Production? Production, but what comes before production? Innovation. Innovation. Yeah, innovation. What comes before innovation? Who innovates? Somebody has a need. How do you fulfill the need? What does it take from you to fulfill somebody's need? Or your own need, never mind somebody else's need? What do you have to do? What makes us human? What's unique to us is no other animal has. Mental capacity. Yeah, what's another word for mental capacity? Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, you have to think. You have to figure out how to make clothes. You have to figure out how to dry the felt. You have to figure out how to cut it up. And you have to figure out how to create a manufacturing plant. You have to figure out how to turn this stuff out there into something useful. And you have to figure it out, which means you have to think. What makes human beings special is our ability to reason. It's our faculty of reason. It's our mind. It's ability to observe reality, integrate it, come up with new ideas, innovate all the words you use. But they all fall down to at the end. You have to have a thinking being. It's all about the use of our reason. And if you think about every aspect of our life, every value that's worth pursuing, we don't get there unless we do what? Unless you think. Unless you use your mind. I mean, when we get into trouble, usually it's because what? In life, generally. Usually because what? We didn't think. Get into trouble with our spouse. Jesus, because we didn't think. We get into trouble with our boss. Jesus, because we didn't think. It's because we acted based on what? Both in emotion, not based on thought. If you had to boil all of Iron Man's ethics into one word, it would be think. The most important thing you can do in life for yourself to make your life better is to think. That doesn't mean you shouldn't be emotional. I'm a pretty emotional guy. It means you don't make decisions based on your emotions. It means that at the end of the day, you make decisions based on reason, based on rationality. So for a reason, it's a cardinal value. Reason is the thing you want. You want to achieve a state of being where you're acting based on reason, based on thinking. In your personal relationships, in your business relationships, in your trade relationships, as a business, as an individual, reason is the primary value. Everything you invented in this planet was invented because somebody thought of it. Every innovation, every new product, every new marketing scheme, every new advertisement, every new sales tactic, it all requires thinking. Every new challenge that a customer loads you up with. The only way to deal with it is to think into it. And to think to cherish more than anything else in life, in your personal life, in your business life, in any kind of environment is thinking. Thinking rationally, thinking based on... Because what is thinking in tail? I mean, thinking is a nice word, but what is that in tail? Because it's easy to pretend to think. What is real thinking in tail? Gathering facts. Yeah, facts. And it tells facts. And it tells actual evidence. It tells understanding of the causal relationship between things, why things are happening. And we all do this intuitively in some sense. When we have something, when we have a math problem and an engineering problem, we know how to deal with it. We know where to look for facts. In the rest of life, it's a little bit more complicated to differentiate between facts and emotions and other people's emotions. But at the end of the day, thinking requires facts, requires evidence. It requires logic. Conflicts don't exist. So, in many respects, for Iran's philosophy, theatrical means to think properly. To think using logic. And to base your decisions in life on that thinking. With the standard being, your own success as a human being. What is going to make my life a successful life? What is going to make this company a successful company? That's the good. Everything else is the bad. Now, that's pretty abstract to say thinking, right? That's pretty broad. So, for her, the number one virtue is rationality. The action that you engage in to achieve value is to think rational. What does that break down to? So, how does that apply, for example, to the issue of honesty which we just talked about? Why is honesty, why would honesty be a virtue? If the most important virtue is to think, how does honesty relate to virtue? To thinking and to living a good life. Why is it good to be honest? Maybe it isn't. Yeah, so think about it this way. Who is the most important person to be honest to? Yourself. And what does that mean that I'm going to be honest with myself? It means I'm going to go based on facts. And that's hard. We all know that's hard, right? I'm just going to look at the facts. And I'm not going to let garbage in because there's that term in computer science, garbage in, garbage out. Well, it works with the mind as well. You feed your mind garbage, you're going to get garbage. So if you care about the conclusions you come to, then you want to make sure that the inputs, the stuff you put into this amazing machine called the human mind, is good stuff. Which means, is correct, which means it's factual, logical. So you don't want garbage in, garbage out. You want good stuff. You want facts. You want evidence. You want to use logic. And therefore you'll come to good conclusions. Honesty is primarily about being honest to yourself. It's about facing reality. It's about dealing with facts the way they are, not the way you perceive them, perceive them or wish them or want them. And it's so easy. It's so easy. You know, in Iron Man's philosophy, the number one sin, like the cardinal sin in the philosophy, is what you call the evasion. And evasion is the facts over there. But I don't want to look. Because it's going to make me uncomfortable. So there's a problem on the line. I don't know enough about your business to use your examples, but there's a problem on the manufacturing line. And I kind of got a hint of it. But you know, if I actually accept that there's a problem, oh my God, you've got to stop and you've got to figure it out and you've got to tell your boss. It's 4 o'clock. It's almost time to go home. It's just easier not to think about it. It's just easier not to think about it. Because if I think about it, I'm honest enough, that if it actually gets into my consciousness, then I'm going to have to do something about it. So there's that point in life. You can see it in personal relationships. You know, is my spouse lying to me or not? Does that really make sense? Well, I'm not going to think about it. Because as soon as it comes to your consciousness, you have to deal with it. And you don't want to have to deal with it. So you just don't think about it. You don't allow that factor into your consciousness. That's the beginning of every really, really bad thing in life. Bad stuff happens when you do that. Because when you face stuff, even bad stuff, you can handle it, right? You can solve it. You can find a solution. You can ask for help. There are ways in which to deal with it. But when you ignore something, and as fast as nothing good happens. Because the fact is not going away because you ignored it. You don't control reality in that way. So the fact is still going to be there. So honesty is there. Primarily, we'll get to being honest to other people in a second, primarily to make your life better by facing reality, facing the fact, and dealing with them even when it's not emotionally convenient right now to do. Because we all know this. When we ignore stuff, it only gets worse. And bad stuff happens. Bad stuff to us, to the company, to whatever the unit you're looking at. This isn't like a sense of duty, or I have to do it. It's no, I want to do it. Why do I want to do it? Because I want to live a good life. I want to do it because I want the company to be successful. Yeah, it's inconvenient, but I want to do it because the long-term goal here, right now, will be achieved by me doing this. And ethics generally should be about achievement, should be about success. Right now, right here on this earth, in this lifetime, it's not about duty, it's about achievement and success and a good life. Lying to the people, right? Why be honest with other people? You don't have to kind of remember all that now. Yeah, I'm speaking to the only group. See, I use that example. I speak to students a lot, right? And I use that example all the time. I say, look at my age, I barely remember what I did last week. Literally, I don't. I mean, I had a struggle, like, where was I last week? With me, it's often what continent was I on last week because I travel so much. And now, if I lie about what I did last week, I have to remember two things. That's hard, but it's actually more than two things. Because I have to remember what I did in the lie. I have to remember who I told the lie to and who I told the truth to, why I told these people the lie and why I told these people the truth. It's way too much work. It's like impossible, right? And what always happens, almost always, right? You're going to get... You're screwed up. You're screwed up, right? Because these people talk to these people and then, you know, you screw it up. And the older we get, the more we screw it up, right? So we learn, hopefully, right? Lying doesn't work as a strategy from making anything better. Not your relationship with other people. Not your relationship with yourself. Not in business. I mean, what happens if you lie to your suppliers or you lie to your customers? You make them mad and they don't want to do business. Yeah, it doesn't take long. You can get away with it maybe once, a little bit, but it never is once, right? There's never such a thing as once. Every lightness states another light. That's Bernie Murray made up. Yeah, I mean, Booty made up is a great example, right? It's not that Booty made up sat down one day and said, I'm just thinking about rationality, right? Something Booty made up said one day and said, you know, I want to be really successful. I want to live the best damn life I can live on this. And so I'm going to figure out how to steal money from my friends and family. Nobody does that. Criminals don't. That's not how the criminal mind works. Booty made up saw a pile of money and he took it. He didn't think there was no reason. There was no rationality. There was no facts. There was no thinking about, ooh, what are they going to be the consequences? How are we going to cover it up? He took it and he said, ooh, I better cover this up. And then they start covering it up. And yeah, he managed to pull it up for years, for years. Partially because, you know, we have a screwed up, you know, system where we don't actually look for crooks, right? Regulators, I don't know about your industry, but in the finance industry, regulators don't spend any time actually looking for crooks. They're much more interested in my filings and that I dot a V.I. and cross a T when I fill out the forms that I'm supposed to fill out than actually catching the bad guys, right? Who also dot a V.I. and cross a T but they're actually committing fraud, right? But they're not looking for fraud. They're looking for the I's and the cross T's. So in Booty made up's case, just as an example, the SEC got reports. This hedge fund guy actually wrote them an overport on how, what he was doing was fraud and they, he did it year after year of three years in the economy. And how did they catch Booty made up? His children, his sons, discovered that he was committing fraud and they called the police. And the one son committed suicide a year after Booty made up was arrested and nobody wants to have anything to do with them. He's in jail. And what's interesting about made up because I think it's a great example of how dishonesty hurts you, not just everybody else around you, but it hurts you. Booty made up says today in jail, in spite of his son committing suicide in spite of everything, that he's happier in jail today than he was before he was caught. Because what is the state of mind of somebody like that before they're caught? I mean think about when you lie and what goes on in your mind? You know you lie. You know you lie. You feel guilty. You know they're going to get you. Particularly if you lie a lot. He had to cover the lies up. Who is he lying to? I don't know if you know but all the money he took was from his friends. Very prominent Jewish. Everybody he took the money from was Jewish foundations. His people he would hang out with the country club. It was all the people he interacted with day to day and you'd have to look in the eye of people that you're stealing their money from. I mean that is destroyed, soul destroyed. You're constantly anxious. You're constantly convinced you're going to be caught. Again, not caught by the police. At least of your wives. Caught by your family and friends who now know what a scoundrel you are. Lying is unbelievably self-destructive. So we were talking about this and I used to do a bunch of seminars on business ethics in Hutchison. Not far from here, right? Hutchison Technologies which now I guess sold to TDK a Japanese company. And you know so I gave this example of you know you're working late and well you know what you're late. You go out after work drinking with your buddies and you call your wife and say you know I'm working late. Then you go home and I said how long do you think before she figures this out? I mean because you have to tell your buddies now that when they see your wife that you're late. You know it's just it's really complicated when he raises the hand. He says, no this is he says I've got a real story for you, right? This happened. And this guy who he was working with you know he used to call up and he used to do this relatively frequently. He's the wife one day called up the boss and said how come you've got my husband working late every you know all the time? Right? That didn't turn out too well. Lying sucks. It just doesn't make any sense. Not telling the truth can be hard. But it's the right strategy. You know often the right strategy is not comfortable emotionally but it's the right strategy for living a good life. Again not as a duty. Not because you owe anybody anything you owe yourself. To live well. Not to live in anxiety. Not to get caught and not have you know business. Have your supply of a walk away from you or your customers cancel their account with you. Right? It's essential for your own survival as a human being and it's essential for their own survival as a business. So ethics, proper ethics and morality should be consistent with success. I'm going to say the model is the practical and the practical is the model. Things that really work long term are probably good. Model. And if you have the right values and virtues they won't work long term because that's how you structure them. You're looking for things to work. We've got thousands of years of human experience it's not like we have to reinvent the wheel. We can figure out we can look around and we can see what works and what doesn't work for human beings to be successful. Thinking works. Being honest works. Honestly it doesn't mean necessarily you have to tell people everything. It doesn't mean you have to volunteer information nobody really cares about. How are you and they give you the whole story of the last 30 days. Every sickness that every relative has. That's not what honesty means. It means not cheating on reality. It means not deceiving reality. It means acting based on facts and when facts are demanded from you you're giving those facts. And again that's true in your business relationships and I don't know if you have questions or examples but in your business relationship with customers and suppliers and it's true with your spouse and friends and boss and everything else. So again facts, thinking, reality that's the essential. Now what about applying this idea of thinking to how you treat other people? What's there? I mean put aside the honesty but what's the appropriate way to treat other people? What's there? The right way to be engaged with other people. The moral way, the productive way to engage with other people. There would be consistent, would be the application of being rational. How do you want other people to treat you? With respect. Does everybody deserve respect? Not everybody, no. Not everybody deserves respect. I know people don't deserve respect. Gunny Madoff for example doesn't deserve respect. So how should we treat other people? Does not everybody deserve respect? Based on a lot. Based on a lot. Or much. Yeah in a sense their performance. Their performance in life, their performance at work we should treat other people how they deserve to be treated and that can change a different context. So at the end it's how are they contributing in a sense to my life? Are they harmful to my life? Is Gunny Madoff good for me? No. Stay away from me. I'm going to treat you badly. You know if somebody is actually if somebody is a good employee how do you treat them? Treat them well. Somebody is a lousy employee. How do you treat them? Not as well. This is the idea of justice. This idea of justice. You get what you deserve. You treat people the way they deserve to be treated. And in the context of work how do we determine what is dessert? What determines dessert at work? How old you are? How many kids you have? What determines what desserts? At work? Yeah, your performance. How good you are at the job? How much do you contribute to the business? So justice is about rewarding people for their performance. And it's... And that has two sides, right? Because some people are good performers some people are bad performers and that means being willing to recognize it. Remember we talked about facts and being willing to face the facts and it's the hardest issue to face facts is when it has to do with people. But it's about observing the facts identifying the facts understanding the facts understanding who's a high performer who's a low performer and treating that accordingly and in a business that means different compensation. High performers get more than low performers because they contribute less to their venture. But in your personal life it's the same thing, right? People who you get a lot of joy and have a lot of fun with you can invest more in that relationship than people who, you know, just make you feel bad. It's no fun being around them. It's the same thing in life, right? You want to seek out the things that make your life better really better, not just superficially but really better and you want to avoid the things that don't. You want to pursue a good life. You want to find good people who are honest but who are going to, you know, make life be good and you want to avoid people who are dishonest or bad people but it's not good to be around. Employment, and this is always tricky in businesses, right? Employment is so important to figure out who the good employees are and they're not so good employees are who you want to reward and who you're not going to reward and have scales. That's what ethics means in business. It doesn't mean treating everybody the same. That's unethical. In my view it's immoral to treat everybody the same because not everybody is the same. So it's an ignoring fact. It's ignoring the reality. It's ignoring performance, which is the essential thing that you're trying to reward in a business environment. I mean, even our kids, we don't treat the same. If we're awesome, don't be evil. Treat them based on that. That's justice and if we don't do that, what are we rewarding? When we don't do that, what are we actually rewarding? Bad behavior. Bad performance. Mediocrity or worse, right? And who's going to suffer from now? Pretty much everybody. If it's in a business, a business owner and is going to suffer. But so are the good employees because they're going to say, wait a minute, why am I producing more? Why am I not getting rewarded for producing more? And they're going to be the ones who leave and the people who benefit at the end of the bad employees. And that's screwy. But we have this culture. It's hard to talk about this stuff. Shouldn't be. There's a strong streak of egalitarianism in Minnesota. Minnesota nice. I'm Israeli, we're not nice. We just say it. So justice would be another virtue. You want to pursue justice as a moral goal, right? Justice is good for you. Justice is good for the business. Treating people the way they deserve in every aspect of life. And the way they deserve is at the end of the day how they impact your life. Right? And that sounds pretty selfish, right? But at the end of the day it's your life. Why do we marry the person we marry? What's love? We're taught love is a very selfless emotion. Is it? Imagine you got your spouse the day before you get married and you say this is a completely selfless act. I'm marrying you I have no interest in it. It's nothing more self-interested than love, right? I marry you because of the way you make me feel. You make me feel great. That's why I marry you. You make me a better person. It's not about you, it's about me. That's the reality. Again, it's uncomfortable because we're not used to talking in those terms. But the fact is that when we love something, we love it because of the way it makes us feel. About life, about ourselves, about the world. So, morality should be about teaching us principles to live and create life. And if you think if you're honest, if you're just these are things that in the end enhance your own life, your personal life, your business life. Take a few others. Thinking is great. But thinking in and of itself is not going to help us survive out there in the wilderness in Minnesota winter. What do you have to actually do to survive? What's the action necessary in order to survive? You have to think all you want what do you then have to do with the thinking that you've done? You've got to act on it. You've got to come up with a plan. You've got to come up with a plan and then you've got to execute that plan. And what do we call the execution of the plan? When it comes to you know, getting the stuff that we need in order to survive and ultimately not to thrive and flourish. Well, we need to be productive. We need to be productive. As human beings, we have to go out there and think, figure out how to do things and then do them. Every other animal, every other animal in nature is either genetically programmed to survive in a particular environment and just knows how to do it or what happens to them. They die. And when the environment changes then animals die. What do we do? As human beings? We adapt the environment to fit up so we don't change our biology. You know, it gets cold. We light a fire. We build a different type of structure, right? It gets warm or we migrate into some place that's warm or the climate changes and it gets warm. What do we do? We invent air conditioning. And if, you know, if we get too sunburned, we invent sunscreen. Yeah, we're going to stay in the sun. We love the sun, but you know. So we don't change our biology. We don't die off because the climate changes or because the geography changes or because something in our environment changed. We go out and change the environment to fit our needs. That's how we survive. We survive as a species, as a natural animal out there in the wild. It's funny and interesting when people talk about nature and human beings as if we're separate. No, we're part of nature. And nature has programmed us to survive by changing the world around us to fit our needs. So, you know, we need a house to chop down trees and we build a house. That's what we do. We want to build a better house. We level a mountain you know, and make bricks alternative to concrete and build house. That's what we do. We mine for steel. We build computers and windows. We take sand and turn it into glass. I mean, it's stunning. When you really think about what we do as human beings, it's pretty stunning. It's pretty amazing. And that's production. That's being productive. Doing that, turning glass, turning sand into glass. Needing milk and creating a dairy industry. There's no dairy industry naturally. There's cows roaming around. You know, and yes, 200, 300 years ago, all we had was we had a couple of cows in the farm and you milked everything. You got what you got and you couldn't trade and you couldn't, you know, that was all there was. And now there's an industry. You can supply milk anyway, everywhere. I don't have to have cows in my backyard. Cool. Very cool. And that achievement of what we have done as human beings and what we do as human beings is mind-boggling. When you really go through it and you really think about it. That's production. And that's an incredible virtue. We live in a culture that to a large extent looks down on work and looks down on producers and looks down on business. But business and production is the most important activity that human beings do. How many people were poor 250 years ago in the world? And I mean poor. I don't mean poor America style. I mean poor Cambodia style. Three dollars a day in poor. How many people, what percentage of the population 300 years ago on the globe was three dollars a day were poor in today's dollars? A lot is good but how 80 percent like 95 percent 95 percent In the world today how many people live on three dollars a day or less in a whole world like eight billion years ago? Back then how many people on the planet 300 years ago? Well less than a billion. Maybe half a billion. Today we have about eight. How many of the eight billion live on three dollars a day or less? Two percent. It's eight. Just 30 years ago it was close to 30. So it shrunk dramatically the last 30 years. Guess why? Why are so few people that poor today? Production. Because of production. Because of production. Because of innovators and entrepreneurs and businessmen. Not because of any politician I can guarantee you that not because of any philanthropist it's not charity that makes people wealthy that brings people out of poverty it's business it's hard work it's production it's innovation that's what brought brings people out of poverty everywhere anyway there's no country in the world then it become not poor never mind rich because of foreign aid or because of Bill Gates' charity and I don't have anything against charity but let's put it in this place it doesn't do that much what really helps people is having a job is being productive what really helps people is other people having a job and producing stuff so cheaply that even no matter what their wages are they can afford stuff suddenly because I mean there's stuff that's unbelievably cheap we are so rich today everybody in the United States is so rich today that you wouldn't want to be the richest person in the world 50 years ago as compared to a lower middle class person in the United States today somebody in a lower middle class today has a better quality of life than one of the richest people in the world 50 years no iPhones just thinking we all have supercomputers in our pocket this is more powerful than a computer that sent a man to the moon we think about it and everybody has one of these our clothing is dramatically cheaper because of China a lot of stuff is dramatically cheaper because of China why? because they're producing more people producing the world the better off we are in spite of what some people say about trade trade is unequivocally fantastic makes the world a better place for pretty much everybody so being put up is a massive virtue and what do we need? what does knowing so one of the things that makes it possible for us to achieve happiness is having a certain sense that you know you belong in this world that you can take care of yourself in this world there's a term for that what's a term for having a sense of life is good and self-esteem not the kind of self-esteem that they teach in our schools I'm not talking about giving everybody robins and patting everybody in the back and everybody gets the same grade and everybody just feel good about yourself just feel good about yourself not that kind of self-esteem I'm talking about the self-esteem that comes from achievement accomplishment from setting goals and getting those goals and achieving those goals it comes from not just achieving those goals but knowing that you achieved them recognizing the fact that you achieved them and not boasting about it but being proud of yourself it's good I've set a high goal and I achieved it this is cool that self-esteem you can't be happy without it you can't feel that I don't belong here I kind of hate this world and feel happy you can't do it happiness requires that you feel like you belong and that you can achieve that you can be successful here right now in this world self-esteem is really really really crucial to a happy successful life now where do we get most of our self-esteem where do we achieve where do we set the bar high where does that happen mostly at work it's funny to me the fact that we spend more time at work than any other activity will do in our lives certainly up to the age of 65 which arbitrarily is being set as a time gauge but we spend more time at work than anyway and we get our self-esteem at work because that's where we challenge ourselves that's where we do most of our thinking that's where we push ourselves that's where we're engaged and yet people don't seem to think that work is that important but this is what life's about we cannot say family is more important to us but the fact is you spend more time at work now family is important I'm not integrating that but the fact is this is where you spend your time and this is where you achieve and this is where you push yourself and this is where you get your self-esteem to a large extent one of the things that I believe are so hurtful about the welfare state and these ideas coming out of Silicon Valley of a basic minimum income I don't know if you're familiar with this about some minimum income is that you deny people the opportunity to work and if you deny people the opportunity to work you deny people the opportunity to set goals and achieve and if you deny them that you deny them the ability to have self-esteem which means you deny them the ability to be happy so when you give somebody a check and say yeah you don't have to work here's a check from the government don't worry about it you're killing that person you're denying them the ability ever to be happy it's horrible to do that to a human being so you could be poor a friend of mine tells a story about his grandfather who was a bricklayer he was a bricklayer in North Carolina very poor barely made enough money but made enough money to feed his family and put a roof on top of their heads had a little home he had his kids and we wanted to raise the kids and every day he could come home and have that sense of pride that he was taking care of his family he was feeding them he was clothing them they were being taken care of and in spite of being poor that person could be happy that person had a sense of belonging that person had a sense of pride that he was able to take care of the people he loved in this world and take that same person and give them a world free check say a bricklayer and that's how a bricklayer should work you know he has a check instead that's it the pride is gone now other people are taking care of his kids other people are working to take care of his kids it's money he has to come from somebody's work so productiveness which is I think a crucial virtue productiveness is what leads to self esteem but it's also what gives us a sense of purpose in life again we spend most of our time at work we challenge ourselves at work and this is why it's so valuable not to just view work as work but to view work as a career and to have goals and to challenge yourself and to push yourself which is because that's what purpose looks like it's about having a long-term focus a long-term perspective so productiveness means taking your job your work seriously it means having a career and viewing it as such and the benefit of that is self esteem and happiness and that sense that I can be successful I can achieve and that sense of purpose this is why I'm handing over life I think too many people have the notion that I can't wait until I retire and it turns out that people who retire young what happens to them tend to die young it's kind of funny because without purpose in life life just withers away and so people who retire young and who survive and who do well and who thrive or pick up a second career or pick up a really important hobby to them or get involved in something that really is intense that is the equivalent of a career people just sit around they're either very unhappy and some of them just die off it's an interesting statistic to look at death post retirement and the more engaged you are with the world around you the longer you live the more logical it is so having a career being productive having conductiveness as a virtue in anything you do in life even if it's post retirement or even if it's about raising your kids so whatever happens to me take that seriously take it as a career take it as something to apply your mind to to challenge yourself and to push yourself the last one I want to just talk about is pride I think pride is important I think having pride in your life having pride in your work having pride in what you do is part of how you ultimately get that self esteem because if you just achieve stuff but you don't pay attention to it you know the kind of humility is a fact I didn't really do anything it's one thing to say to other people to build that to quote Obama you know that wasn't that wasn't really an achievement that wasn't anything you're never really going to recognize yourself but pride is the idea Aristotle the great Greek philosopher called pride the queen of the virtues because pride was the idea of taking your life seriously it was the idea that I'm going to be maul because I want to live a good life I'm going to be maul because I want to be successful in living I'm going to run a company that's maul because I want to have run a successful company and it's taking that seriously not just saying it not just pretending not just what they call it now virtue signaling but actually living it and recognizing that you live it pride is often there's a slightly towards maul of perfection trying to be the best human being human being so it's not the typical perception or the boastful you know a very nice person who continuously pats himself in the back in front of everybody else to impress people but it's about taking your own life your own values your own virtues seriously and pursuing them so if you commit it to being honest another word for that is integrity having integrity so just to wrap up ethics morality is a tool for living it's indeed I think a tool that's necessary for living you can't be successful in life without it most of us absorb it from us alone we get it from our parents our preachers maybe we took a philosophy class and our philosophers said something about ethics but almost nobody very many times we do very few people actually sit down and think about it what kind of a person do I want to be what is right and what is wrong what are values and what are vices not what other people have told me what are vices and vices not what's written in some books somewhere but what do I really think is good and evil good and bad what kind of life do I really want to live what kind of person do I really want to become and we absorb stuff from the environment some of it's good my parents told us a lot of good things some of the stuff my mother said turned out to be true but some of it wasn't it's nice as my mother was some of the stuff was garbage but how do I figure that I'm not thinking about it, you're not going to some of what a philosophy professor tells us class is good and some of it's garbage but who's the only person who can decide it's you it's up to you to decide what's good and what's not for you they're based on facts right we talked about facts before based on facts what is good so I encourage you to think about it thanks questions we've got some time for questions and answers you know does anybody have any do you believe in the golden rule do you believe in the golden rule well you know the two golden rules actually like one more than the other do you treat others like you like to be treated actually don't believe in them because what does that mean I don't like to be treated I mean that's such a vague generalization how do I like to be treated when, where and under what circumstances by whom it doesn't really give you much guidance but that's by the way it's interesting because that's the Christian golden rule there's a Jewish golden rule which actually like that but it's still too vague in my view don't treat other people the way you don't want to be treated so it's a negative feel for me don't steal I like that one better but I don't because I don't think it actually gives you guidance I don't think it actually tells you what to do but it's also it's not an issue in old fashioned because Aristotle I don't think would mind doing it he lived 2000 years ago so treat people the way you would like to be treated does that mean I should treat Bernie made off the way I want to be treated no I want Bernie made off to be in jail and I don't want to go to jail now you could say you could reinterpret it and say if I'm a liar cheap criminal then I should want to go to jail but nobody thinks that way so I believe you should treat people the way you did deserve to be treated and sometimes that's the way I want to be treated and sometimes it's the opposite of the way I want to be treated because I don't want to go to jail so along the same lines though are we not saying that we shouldn't shouldn't leave by example I think you should leave by example so in other words if some dude is walking down the street he thinks he's entitled to everything I should I want to treat him poorly absolutely the worst in the world because he doesn't have any desire to go get a job and get the training all that kind of stuff I should just ignore him and let nature take his course or do we say come on in let me help you we'll then show you how to be to get into this achieved and succeed by your successes I mean I would say it depends so some people yeah you should try to help them because they're worthy of help because in spite of him being in Germany there's a good site to him and he could learn but if I took somebody in like that and I said here are the things then I would say there's a door out you go so how much do you help is going to depend on how successful you think you can be with a particular person how much time do you have how much energy do you have are your kids needing your attention right now what's more important to you it's all contextual right but the context in my view is my life is there a value in me helping this person and if there is a value in me helping them because they could become a productive member of our society and if I would benefit in some way from them but if there isn't a value in me helping this person because they're really hopeless or because I'm busy right now or something really really important then I'm not going to help them so the standard is still my view the standard is still my life now I believe in leading by example not because not because I'm that concerned about other people I believe in leading by example because you should just do the right thing because it's good for you and if you do the right thing I'll say how come you're happy you know how come you're so successful how do you do that right and then they'll want to emulate you they'll want to learn from you they'll seek you out rather than you having to seek down and that's how you change the world around you I'm often changing the world around me that's why I do this stuff right but the best way to change the world around you for most of us is just to live a good life and then for people to look at that as an example your kids your family members and so on but I you know in my view we place way too much emphasis in our society in helping other people as the standard of the good I can't figure if I did this last time you know and it's not even that we value helping other people the same it's that we seem to really value if you suffer helping other people so to give you an example take Bill Gates how did he become rich how did he become a billionaire secret to becoming a billionaire there's a book that talks about all that too it matters spending time getting was it 10,000 hours yeah well that's how you become really really good at something but how do you become generally in the marketplace put aside what they had to do in terms of their skill set how how do you make that much money what do you have to do to make that much money provide a value to how many people a lot of people and you have to sell something the billions of people want and are willing to pay you more than what it costs you to produce are you making their lives better or worse better when I see a billionaire I want to go up and say thank you because in one way or another they have made the lives hundreds of millions of people better for being a billionaire and yet how do we treat billionaires in this culture like Bill Gates Bill Gates Marley from an ethical perspective what do we think about him when he was just at Microsoft running his man he was a good businessman but Marley we're not building statues we're not naming roads after Bill Gates right because he made money helping people but he still made money so it's not it's tainted when did Bill Gates become a good guy in our culture when he stopped producing stop producing left Microsoft and started giving his money away that made him a good guy now it's time maybe streets after him and building sculptures what would it take to get streets named after Bill Gates what would he have to do die no he's going to die he is going to die and we're not going to build statues for him he would have to die in a particular kind of way for us to build the sculptures how would he have to die yeah he would have to give all his money away move into a tent bleed a little bit maybe for us then die oh and none of us would want to do that none of us would give you all that money away but we'd say oh wow what a saint we admire and respect pain and suffering and and destitution in the name of helping others but when somebody helps others by making money now where does Bill Gates help more people at Microsoft when is charity Microsoft not even close not even close charity will up tens of thousands maybe hundreds of thousands but in Microsoft he helped hundreds of millions of people but he dared to make money doing it so that taints it morally and I say why so way to focus on other people generally instead of focusing on ourselves and thinking about how to be better at living we're focused on other people and we're way too focused on helping other people rather than teaching them how to help themselves and how to live a better life for themselves and creating the environment and the culture where people can help themselves and not be penalized by it and the best way to help somebody is to trade with them just to let them produce something and to trade with them I don't tell my kids to shave they're too old now to tell them anything but in the old days trade, you know Johnny wants your tractor see what he has to offer maybe he has a back home that he could offer to play in the same box together he got the bricklayer or you got the welder and you got the engineer at some point that bricklayer won't be productive because I've never seen a 75 year old bricklayer but I've seen a 75 year old doctor he made just enough money to provide for we can blame him for that we can say he should have went to school but it might not have been an opportunity well we can say everybody has that opportunity but that's not reality so at some point he's going to become unproductive so then what is my moral obligation as the doctor who's been assuming all this wealth and should I not go long or am I I mean I don't see why you have a model obligation to do it you might choose to do so but how do you get an obligation that's kind of unchosen how does somebody else's need suddenly necessarily it's like a pack of wolves we're a pack of wolves we're one being, one creature you know some people might one guy might be the alpha the omega you know we don't exist but we're not a pack of wolves that's the thing about it the bricklayer lives his life and I think in a wealthy society and a healthy society saves money for his retirement and lives off of that and if he doesn't then he depends on charity depends on your charity as a doctor to help him and you have a choice but once you start thinking of that as a moral duty what about the kids in Africa do you know that you guys because you're not charitable enough there are kids every day dying in Africa and you could be more charitable you know today everybody could be but you're not because the fact is that it's far away you don't see it, you don't think about it and you're not worried about it and you know what, that's okay I think that's okay it's not your problem and at some point you have to say that's not my problem now if the bricklayer lives next door then you care enough and you help him out and this is why I think charity should be local and Bill Gates have to do his charity in Africa by the way why do you think he has to do it in Africa there's enough problems in Seattle a lot of homeless kids living under the bridges in Seattle a lot of drug problems in Seattle why does he do it in Africa he said nobody will blame him for being selfish he has to go out of the furthest away he can from where he lives to do his charity like so yeah if there are people in your neighborhood that need help and they're basically good people like the bricklayer he's worked all his life he's done what he needs to do now he's in trouble, then of course we'll help him who wouldn't help him, right that's the American thing to do not because we felt a sense of duty but because we like people and we love people and if they're good people we're going to help them but to take it on as a moral responsibility I'm going to help the bricklayer anywhere in the world all the time I mean that's ridiculous and all we do is feel guilty because the fact is we can't help every bricklayer and we don't help the kids in Africa and therefore we live in constant guilt and what does that do for your life, nothing so it's putting it in the right context doing charity where it makes sense to do charity makes sense within the context of your life and not feeling guilty about the fact that you can't help everybody and it's not your moral responsibility to help everybody some people tell me yeah but those bricklayers are going to get up and they're going to storm storm the mansions it's a civil unrest and the poor will rise up so Indian quality is called the poor will rise up and they'll but that's in a free country which we're still relatively not too much but relatively free it's never happened never happened you get people so frustrated they rise up and it's not free country it's like when the king steals them all the money but when the doctor's made his money legitimately because it costs a lot of money you go to school to get a medical degree and you know it's a certain skill that not everybody has and most of us don't want to deal with people who are sick all the time I mean it takes he's owned his money poor people understand that in a free country he produced a product that was more valuable than the product I produced that's the way it is there was a time when it comes when you feel like it's being stolen and that's why you rise up against the king when you rise up against and your stalkers or you rise up even today in America when you feel like wait a second the game's great some of these guys are cronies some of these guys get bailed out of the government by the government or get subsidized from the government by tax money I make nothing the taxing me and giving it to those rich guys then you get when you feel like it's unjust when you have a sense that no people are earning this like Bill Gates I don't listen to him again I would say thank you to Bill Gates because I think he's made my life better he's made all of our lives better but when you see some of these guys you go wait a minute one of the things that we're taught in our culture is that charity is the essence of virtue and you measure how virtuous you are and how charitable you are and my view is being productive in life building, creating, making whatever level you do taking care of yourself and your family and living a good life that's the measure of virtue and yeah you can do some charity as well but charity is not the measure it's just something your first responsibility is to you then if you want to take on other responsibilities that's fine but take care of yourself first and make sure you've you have one shot at this life make sure you've made the most of my father was in law enforcement and I always found a bit ironic how you see on the shields of various police cars and the first thing that he was taught when he became a police officer was what is your first duty as a police officer you are to go home to your family healthy every night that is your first duty is to yourself so it was a bit ironic ironic they teach them that although I shouldn't have many policemen no exactly you can do your job if you're not bad to do your job so you have to be alive to be able to do your job you're not joining the police as a suicide mission they're joining the police is to protect and serve you have to be alive to do that even in the military you don't go into battle with the intention of dying you're willing to fight for something and you might die but you're not going in there to die it's not the purpose but some things are worth fighting for taking the risk for but not everything else some wars are enough that's why I like volunteer always because then you get to choose some wars are not worth fighting for I like to tell I like to say if you can't look your son in the eye and say you should volunteer go fight for this because this is important then don't vote for a war don't vote to send other people's kids to go fight for a war all these politicians who said kids into war I want to see their kids go before I'm willing to say this is a good war something was necessary we seem to be flippant about it oh yeah let's bomb these guys you wouldn't be so flippant about it if it was your son one of the things that I found as I became more involved in politics and current political events in the last 10 years or so was I noticed that every time that I found this compromising we seem to be moving in the direction that I thought was wrong and I became I concerned about it did some research on it and I came to realize it's because we weren't presenting an opposing philosophy to those that I think are taking us in the wrong direction and that's one of the reasons I've asked that doctors to speak and this is true in life not just in politics when you compromise on something important I'm not talking about compromise between Italian and Mexican food but when you compromise about something important in life on one of these virtues for example if you compromise any one of those virtues you're destroying a part of your life you're destroying something and you know compromise tomorrow compromise is unbelievably destructive and you know only compromise between good and evil only evil wins this is true politically I mean there's never been a treaty any kind of compromise between a good country and an evil country that's turned out good for the good country never happened it usually just delays the inevitable but it doesn't actually work out well but that's true in life as well somebody's lying your employee is cheating and lying and you give him a break because you know who wants to fire anybody one last chance how often does that bike fire almost always sticking to your guns and being rigorous about morality in politics as well as in life as well as in business it's really really crucial and it's hard it's not easy