 Welcome to The Bill Walton Show. I'm Bill Walton. Capitalism has lifted billions of people out of poverty in the last 250 years, yet it remains vilified, demonized, mistrusted. In particular, the Prophet Modi is generally equated with greed and therefore evil. So what should be the purpose of business? Is it profit or something else? Joining me to talk about this is Iran Brooke, Chairman of the Iain Rand Institute, host of the Iran Brooks Show, editor of In Pursuit of Wealth, the Moral Case for Finance, and who I consider generally a great man, great man of courage and intellect. So Iran, welcome. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. It's good to see you. Good to see you again too. It's been 15 years, 20 years since we first met. Since we first met probably 20 and haven't seen you probably in eight, nine years since the financial crisis. Well, I thought you were doing good work then. I think you're doing good work now. So we're we're back at it in a different mode. You just recently debated with John Mackie, who's the very, very effective and I think great CEO of Whole Foods about whether business should focus on profit. And I want to talk about that. But also, I wanted to get clear just how beneficial capitalism as business has been to the world over the last 250 years. You've got some you've got some data on that, don't you? Yeah, I mean, it's pretty straightforward. If you go back 250 years to about the founding of this country to that period, basically 95% of the entire global population was living on $2 a day or less. And I'm inflation inflation adjustings. There's no, no trickery going on here. $2 a day of less. You know, anybody in the audience can think about what that means. How would one today live on $2 a day unless you couldn't. It's a horrific, horrific life. And that's how all of humanity lived. And since then, we have seen unbelievable progress in terms of wealth, in terms of quality of life, standard of living. 250 years ago, life expectancy in the most advanced countries in the world was 39. Most of the world, it was closer to 29. So we're talking about we've much more than doubled life expectancy now. In spite of COVID in spite of everything we're living through life is unbelievably good by historical comparison. And all of that is really a consequence of freedom. It's a consequence of leaving people alone to pursue their own happiness and protect their rights and that's what capitalism really is capitalism is a system that where the government leaves you free to pursue your values free of coercion and where they they protect your rights primarily property rights in the context of economics, but where they leave you free. So if you think about 95% of humanity living under poverty. 250 years ago in extreme poverty $2 a day or less. And then you look at 30 years ago, the number was about 30%. So a huge decline. But then if you look at today. It's 8%, 95% to 8%. Now how did we get 8% not because of foreign aid. Not because of global charity. Not because people trying to do good. But actually people trying to do good in another way that is people starting businesses, hiring people, engaging in commerce and trade and as Asia's opened up and freed up their economies and adopted even a little bit of capitalism. They have prospered so today, global poverty is again by far the lowest that's ever been in history, all as a consequence of this amazing system of capitalism middle classes is massive and global and increasing. We're seeing countries in Africa adopt these principles these principles of capitalism, they are thriving. This has nothing to do with race ethnic group geography, anything like that it has to do with universal principles that lead to human flourishing and capitalism captures those universal principles. Well as I thought about our conversation today, I think probably got 15 or 20 items we could probably spend five or six hours we've got roughly 40 minutes so might want to get right into the heart of the matter. And at the heart of the matter if you think about business capitalism finance. It's the profit motive. And nothing seems to be more demonized in the profit motive and we're looking at somebody like Larry think it runs black rock I think manages three or four trillion dollars I may be exaggerating by not much. Who's now telling CEOs of public companies that they've got to invest in ESG which I think means environmental social governance, which is not at the heart of the profit motive or, or, or is it now you and john talk, maybe in a different direction I wanted to get into that first. John talks about a purpose driven business, and he sets out all these metrics for for motivating people in the business and externally to see the vision for what the business is supposed to be and I, you know that it's hard to argue with that then you argue that the, that the business is about shareholder wealth maximization and profit. Now, is there a big difference between those two things. I think the difference is a difference of focus and the difference of what is primary business is a unique institution among all human institution and what makes it unique is it is about creating value for profit nonprofits create value for other things. A government creates value sometimes usually destroys value but when it creates value it creates value in a different mechanism, but the mechanism by which business creates value and measures value is through the profit motive. What is profit profit me is the difference between what it cost me to produce something and what somebody is willing to pay for that thing. That is the value I've added, in a sense to the world. I've taken a bunch of different elements, put them together and increase their value. Right. If I hadn't increased their value. Nobody would be willing to pay more for them. So, profit symbolizes profit is a place is a monetary value a dollar amount on how much value is being created when a business is extraordinarily profitable. That means it's extraordinary in terms of the amount it value it is creating for other people, because other people are the one buying the product. So, to me, the focus is on making a profit. That's what you as a CEO do you're trying to maximize the profit of the business, you know within the bounds of ethical behavior and and within the bounds of what I think the mission of the business is. But in order to do that in order to motivate your employees and in order to motivate yourself and there is a certain vision you have for the business. And that vision is to be the best company in a particular industry order, or to produce X amount of value for your customers, you're oriented towards your customers in your vision. At the end of the day, your owners, who are the shareholders that's whose wealth value you're creating. Well, you think about so called natural resources there are really no natural resources it's what our creativity is brought to bear to make something a resource and you know the notion that that the profit and greed or somehow a negative when people go about creating something create value but what I think about business is you take some inputs and you rearrange them you get creative you think about what would be desirable for somebody to buy pay for and if your revenue is bigger than the cost of your inputs well then you've got a profit it's nothing very sinister it's as simple as efficiently allocating your your capital labor and and your finance. Well and creating real value for people right that's why they're willing to pay for you why somebody willing to pay for you to pay you something why is why somebody, why am I willing to pay $1,000 for an iPhone, I'm willing to pay $1,000 for an iPhone not because all the components in the iPhone add up to $1,000 and willing to pay $1,000 for the iPhone because it adds more to my life than if I didn't own it. It adds more to my life than the $1,000 I'm giving up for it so I'm winning. Apple is winning. It's a win-win transaction. Apple is making a profit representing how much the iPhone adds to my life above and beyond the cost of all the components that went into that iPhone. So their profit represents the value added to me right the value added to my life now be at the minimum but beyond that think about you brought up natural resources. People forget this but oil that black stuff black stuff that comes out of the ground that gunky it used to be that that would lower the value of your property if you found oil on your property because you couldn't grow anything on it. It was really hard to get rid of it. And it was useless, useless. And then people innovated people use that you know discovered that this thing had properties and use science and use the engineering and use technology to turn this black gunk into the most efficient, produce of energy human beings have ever seen. And the entire world has changed because of cheap energy resulting from that black gunk. And what is the profit the profit is taking that blood gunk turning into something human beings and use, providing the with the value of that usage and getting paid for it, making everybody's life better in that way. Why is profit demonized I mean I've made my way in on Wall Street and run businesses and obviously I understand that profit is a good thing because it allows you to attract capital that if you're doing something well you can build more of it and, and create even more value for for your customers. What's the moral what's the moral issue we're facing here why, why are why are businessmen demonized because we seek a profit. So, here, you know, I'm, I'm pretty controversial in this point in the sense that I think we demonize that's why I wanted to talk with you. Because we've demonized self interest. Yeah, businessmen are self interested. They're about making money. And it's not that you go and make profit so that you can invest it to make more profit. You make a profit because it's great to make a profit. Right, it you make a profit because you can live a better life off of the benefits of that profit. You can invest that profit to make even more profit true. But again, it benefits you. Yes, there is a benefit to everybody else. But the ultimate motivation of going to work and producing is the joy we get out of the work we do. And it's the profit we generate from it and it's self interested. And yet we live in a society, going back thousands of years not new that is demonized self interest that is demonize anything associated with self interest. If you're not sacrificing, if you're not, if you're not, you know, suffering, then you're never going to be a morally virtuous person all our saints are people who suffer. They're not happy. Well, one of my one of my marine my producer, day to day producer with show asked me before we go and went on she said, Now are you going to be talking about selfishness less selfishness or selflessness. And I said, Well, that's what we're going to be talking about is it be better to be, you know, interested in yourself and your own happiness or is it more is it better to be interested in somebody else and their happiness. And yeah, I mean, in my view, the purpose your moral purpose in life, your moral purpose in life is your own happiness. Now the way to attain your own happiness just like the way to attain profit is not by exploiting people. It's not by treating people badly. It's not by being an emotionalist it's not by following your whim. The way to achieve happiness just like the way to achieve profit is by treating people with respect by trading with them win win relationships I like to say that the purpose here is to create as many win win relationships as you can. And that, and by in this in terms of pursuing your happiness by thinking by using your mind by being rational in pursuit of your self interest. So not self interest time ran and to me and to people who advocate for these ideas is not about doing whatever you feel like doing. It's not about doing whatever your whim tells you to do. It's by calculating thinking, figuring out what's good for you and doing that. Well and you don't believe in a system without guardrails. We, you know, we believe in property rights rule of law, you know, fairness and having having good courts to protect people against. Let's face it not everybody is that great a person and there's there are people but but but there's such a difference between a company. Let's take Apple. Yeah. I mean is is is the symbol of capitalism Gordon Gekko, or is it Steve Jobs, I think that 98% of the people that we admire are the capitalist in the mode of Steve Jobs who who creates something that everybody wants. He was in it for a profit. See, one of the real evils of a movie like Wall Street and one of the real evils of the general attitude towards finance is that we take a somebody who's clearly a crook. Clearly evil, clearly a bad guy like Gordon Gekko I mean his speeches, everybody remembers his Greek speech which is actually a very good speech. It was a pretty good speech. On its own that was pretty good except he was developing about it and and Oliver Stone. Let's us know he's not serious about it by the music he puts on right after the speech, which is take me to the moon let me fly among the stars by Frank Sinatra, which is clearly an indication that this is just kind of BS this isn't real right. So his real attitude towards finance towards wealth towards capitalism is is later on in the movie, where he tells his publisher he tells him the words is it's a zero sum game. My game is somebody else's loss, and I'm going to screw people if I have to. And that's just not true but that doesn't work is that's who he really is and of course he lands up in jail as a consequence, and justifiably so. But finance is not about that that's not what finance is finance is about win win finance is about the rational long term allocation of capital to create profit, which is a which is it which is representative of the values that those investments are creating it. And so Golden Gaco, the evil of the movie is that it presents Golden Gaco is a typical financiers what you think somebody like Mike Mokin was, when we know it's the exact opposite of what a typical financier is, and what a good financier is. Well, yeah, I worked in the merger and acquisition business and you know I read recently somebody was writing well of course, the whole merger and acquisition acquisition business has no economic value shouldn't exist and I began thinking about wait a second. I, I worked for companies owners of companies that had done as much as they could with their business they wanted to sell it and so what I would do is I try to find somebody who could see more of the business than than current owners. And I like to think about what I was doing is taking an asset and putting into stronger hands. Absolutely by doing that you're creating a lot of value because that that you know that strong ownership people have great ideas about what to do with an asset is the heart of the innovation. And of course what you're doing is you're reallocating capital. Sometimes that involves laying people off sometimes it involves making the business more efficient. Sometimes it involves shutting down a plant. But what you're doing there is allocating capital to better uses which creates more jobs, more wealth, raises more people out of poverty than keeping the old industry alive. People, people abstract away from this that's at some point we had, you remember the typewriter business typewriter people like you took the value that was in the typewriter businesses the capital and the labor, and we allocated it to the computer we allocated those talent we allocated the capital so that we could advance so that we could get better. If we had stuck with typewriters, we wouldn't be doing zoom right now. Right. If we'd stuck with buggies we'd have no automobiles today, and it's financiers who are the ones who we allocate capital to these new ventures, take it from old dying industries and allocated to new thriving businesses. And net that the ones responsible for this increase in wealth the capitalism is produced, because, you know, Schumpter the famous economist called the creative destruction. Sometimes you need to shut down certain plants in order to open up other plants. Everybody thinks oh the rust belt was shut down and manufacturing jobs went to China, which is complete nonsense, manufacturing jobs went to machines, they went to computers and robots, and the factories that were shut down that capital went to Silicon Valley and created many, many more high paying jobs in America than the jobs that were taken away when those when those rust built industries were shut down. So that's the beauty of capitalism it's the beauty of financial markets that they make that possible. Let me ask you the question that the social justice people would make well what about all the people left behind. I mean you've created these new businesses but what about the people working in the old businesses what's your, what's your answer to that. Those people live in a richer society. Those people live in a free society, and those people, to the extent that they're willing to take responsibility over their own lives, which I think our system doesn't incentivize them to do, but if they were interested in taking responsibility over their own lives would and could be retrained and produce much more than they used to be able to produce robots enhanced productivity they enhance productivity of everybody. And people are better off for the existence of robots now we live in a society where we don't encourage people to move. We don't encourage people to retrain. We don't encourage people to take personal responsibility over their own life and their own happiness and success. I always tell people instead of presidents now for 30 years telling steel workers in the Midwest, don't worry we're bringing the jobs back instead of saying that to them. Imagine a president saying to them, get in your cars and drive to Western Arkansas where there's tons of jobs, or go to where the jobs are, stop sitting and waiting for the jobs to come to you. The American way the American spirit was always to create your own future to create your own opportunities, go out there and find the plenty of jobs in America and have been for decades. And this is why this is why we're such a magnet for immigrants right because there are plenty of jobs in this country. Americans need to discover that and Americans need to take the action in order to go and take advantage of those opportunities that exist. And of course, as we know if the government got out of the way more. If we deregulated more, if the government shrunk and stopped spending as much as it did, if it stopped providing negative incentives to businessmen and to workers, then the number of jobs that existed in America is unlimited. Well, I've got a $5 word I like to use a term called voluntary exchange, which is where you get a willing buyer willing seller they enter into an agreement and it's a win win for everybody and what's been happening is we've got government breaking itself between a willing buyer and a willing seller and imposing certain outcomes. And, you know that by definition destroys a whole lot of economic value just now destroys freedom, but it also just makes the economy more and more and more sluggish. What do we now because of this regulatory overhang. I think the heritage weren't that with the United States like one or two and the freedom index and now we're 22 and the most recent ranking. So I think we used to be numbers in 1980. No night in, yeah, 19 in the, I think it 2000 we were number three in the world. Yeah, George Bush became president we number three today we're number 20 and that and the decline as a consequence of in spite of the mythology. There was a big spender and a big regulator. Of course we know Obama was a big spender and a big regulator. Trump was a big spender, and it didn't reduce regulation through, through legislation and of course race tariffs. And now we've got a Biden administration, and through those presidencies we've gone from number three to number 20, which is a massive decline of economic freedom in the United States and and truly tragic and I would argue that even that number three in 2000, the two of us would say that wasn't that good. That was not that great. We could have been a lot freer in 2000. And you know from an economic perspective, freedom in the United States has declined steadily. I would argue probably since, you know, 1913 14 and certainly since the New Deal under FDO. What's your take on what Larry think is doing with black rock and imposing ECG requirements on on corporations. I think it's terrible. I actually would love to have people who invest with black rock Sue him for a violation of his fiduciary duty his fiduciary duty is to manage that money to the to his to maximize the wealth of pension plans of investors in black rock funds, not to use his philosophy of social justice or social whatever to dictate investments so I wish people would leave the problem in America today is that so much of the money in our markets is managed by pension plans. Many of those pension plans are politicized with you know governors often sit on on state pension plans, teacher unions pension plans CalPERS CalSTAS in California are two of the largest institutional investors. Today then, investors in black rock black rock they focus to the politicized pension plans industries in the you know the institutional investors in this world, rather than to the individuals who own those pensions, or to the individuals who invest directly in black rock. Maybe a trade off between returns for companies that invest in these these other social goods like environment social and governance or do you think that companies that are going to be focused on pure shareholder wealth maximization are getting up doing better in the long run. I think that the companies involved in maximizing shareholder wealth are going to do better in the long run the problem is this. The problem is that those companies are getting penalized by regulators by investors and therefore the number of those companies are shrinking. So what you find when you actually go to these ESG into these ESG portfolios is you see that they pretty much invest in everything they're just diversified portfolios of everything and that's because they have twisted the arms of CEOs to at the very least pretend to be ESG so what we've had what the real damage in my view is we've turned the entire US market and all almost all CEOs in America into people who at the very least give lip service to ESG, and that the very worst actually do it, and therefore reduce productivity, reduce profitability, reduce wealth creation. And I think ultimately reduce GDP growth or growth in the economy. Overall, and I think that one of the reasons what we've got our economy is not really grown much is is we barely seen an increase in quality and standard of living over the last 10 years or so 12 years is because of some of these policies that some of these companies are doing not because they necessarily want to, but because they think their investors wanted or the government wanted or somebody else is forcing them. Well, most most CEOs of these big companies are really more more corporate politicians in a way I mean they're they're a long way away from the marketplace and creating one of the things that some does is discourages them from becoming CEOs, and it encourages schmoozes and politicians to become CEOs, because what is your job as a CEO. It becomes to to to finagle the regulations more than anything else to deal with regulators, not to make money. Yeah, I saw that as a member of the financial services roundtable most of the CEOs of the big financial institutions were were gaming the system that way and that's the reason I became to admire John Allison so much I know has been involved with John Allison. He was a real entrepreneur and had a principle based way to run his business that had nothing to do with gaming regulation and for that he just stands out in my mind as as as as an American hero well, not just an American world wide hero. I absolutely I mean john is john is fantastic both as a CEO and he also has this intellectual side I mean he gives great speech, and he's a he's kind of a businessman philosopher, which is which is pretty rare and a really unique individual Yeah, I mean, the world would be a much better place. If we had, if we had many more businessman who who who emulated john Allison. Let's circle the john, the john Mackie debate. You know, he got it's very, I think in ways in many ways you two are talking about the same thing but using different words. We've got this notion there's the shareholders but then they're also the customers, the suppliers employees and the community. And you've also got the investors obviously and that somehow you're supposed to maximize or optimize value for all those stakeholders which are the near nearly held but as I think about it as a practical matter if you want to run a business for profit. You've got to have happy customers, your supplier relationships have got to be good your employees have got to be felt that they're being well taken care of well treated, respected. And you have to have a good brand in the community otherwise people are not going to buy your product or service I don't. I don't see the. Here's a difference. I don't see that I don't see the conflict except in words because you can't. You can't run a business with a win lose attitude towards any of those stakeholders. Absolutely so. So, first, to some extent, john presents this as a marketing issue. And so he thinks that this is softer to say we're truly trying to maximize the benefits to everybody and not just one group. And I get why he's doing that he's trying to avoid the self interest, which is which is which is so tainted in our culture. But no you see, I mean you've been a CEO. Yes, you have to be good to your customers you have to be good to all these groups, but you still need a way to make decisions. I also run this exercise with my students I said okay let's assume that you've made you you have an opportunity to close a plant in Illinois, and open it up in Florida. And it turns out that if you do that shareholder is a significantly better off. Right, it's just it's a profit making idea you still make money in Illinois, but if you move the plant to Florida, you're going to make more money. Right. How do you make that decision. So, according to john's methodology you you make a list of all your stakeholders, and you somehow try to maximize everybody's well be. But the fact is you're going to be laying off people in Illinois. So some employees in the short run are going to lose just reality. They're going to be laid off, but some employees in Florida going to gain, they're going to be winners. Right. How do you balance that my point is the only way to actually make decisions is to have a decision a decision matrix. I'm going to maximize shareholder wealth. Sometimes, that's going to mean customers are going to be unhappy when when the iPhone went from a, you remember the regular USB to like this special wire, some or took out the the headphone jack or the iPhone, some customers website, but you know what it made sense long term. So, I was one of them I like my, I like my phone jack. Sometimes you're going to make customers a little unhappy. Yeah, it makes sense for the company long term to do it if they took into account. Every thing they did, all these different stakeholders you'd never make a decision. You'd be stymied and I believe that john, because he's such a good CEO. I think that john in the end works to maximize shareholder wealth. Well, as you say you use the word marketing I might use the word motivation because as a CEO, what you discover is that in this culture, most people are not going to get turned on. When you come have them come into the office for a company meeting and say, our job here is to maximize profit. It just doesn't resonate. So what you say and said is our job is to create the best customer experience on the planet. Our job is to create the most wholesome food distribution that's whole foods I think I can't remember what what Amazon's was but it was a similar high purpose that tends to get people more fired up day to day. Now, what you don't back you would you back into very quickly though is that Tom soul is the great economist said, economics is about tradeoffs and business is about tradeoffs and everything. There's never anything that's a 99 one decision it's always sort of a 5545 decision. That's why when I listen to you to I thought gee they're really you're just using the one thing you don't trade off if you've got a decision that long term will maximize shareholder wealth. You don't trade that away. You maximize long term shareholder wealth that's your job. That's why you're there. That's why shareholders employ you. That's what you therefore now. Sometimes that I mean, laying some people off sometimes that I mean changing suppliers what about a time where you discover better supplier. What about the issue of and we're facing it with China. I mean, I was a very, very strong free trader I believe we ought to do as much business with China. Also, 1520 years ago thought outsourcing to the lowest cost place would be a good idea. But in, in, in China in particular we're paying a price because we've been doing business with a, with a country that is effect, totally controlled by the Chinese Communist Party and they're not really interested in liberal democracy or being invited into the world, the world liberal community they've they've got something very different in mind. We find ourselves with the, we made economic decisions to put a factory in China, or in Merck's case we they took a billion dollars and put an R&D center just just near Beijing. So you're, how are, how are I call myself a recovering libertarian for that reason because I think there are other considerations that we need to take into into account and I'll further this and make it even more complicated where there are people say that CEOs whose companies are domiciled in the United States should think first of the United States and only thereafter. So I think I've thrown you a five part question there but you can react to any way you want. Well so my view is the government has no business in this question. Right, it could be the move decides that it was a strategic mistake to open up a plant in Beijing because of supply chain limitations and so on but the government has no business that the best the government can do and the only thing in my view the government should do is create an environment in which these companies, you know feel better about producing in the United States and that's by lowering regulation lowering taxes and so on, but not by penalizing them not by by by increasing intervention. The United States don't trade. The United States doesn't trade with China. China doesn't trade with the United States. I trade with more who happens to produce maybe something in China and they trade with some Chinese people, and and and it's trade in that you know individuals, other ones are trading government has no business, getting in the middle as you said, between voluntary transactions now I might decide that I think China is abhorrent regime. Individual do not want that was you to benefit from my trade and therefore I will not trade with China. As I, you know is as I think was, you know, is appropriate could be appropriate today to do. I don't think it's all of government to tell me who to trade with her unless let me put in the unless. Unless the United States government declares that China is an enemy of the United States, a true enemy. And in that case, we shouldn't have an embassy there. And in that case, we should be, you know, we should treat it as an enemy stage just like we do Iran, and just like we do North Korea, and they're out but as long as from form policy perspective. The government of the United States is not declared China's an enemy and still has, you know, we go over there and they come over here is diplomatic diplomat and pretend that we're all cozy. Then the US government has no business in raising tariffs so putting trade. I think we've made differ with you on that because I think that we've got a much more nuanced problem with China and you don't want to declare war on China for a billion reasons but there are also some self protective reasons you don't want to do that I mean I think major pharmaceuticals are manufactured in China, and India or manufactured India and subcontracted and then, then branded through China, I don't think you can, you can't find an aspirin manufacturer in the United States. Nobody, we've let this we've let the free trade system evolved to this point where we've got these interdependencies. I don't know how you manage your way. I mean interdependencies wonderful we I mean it's a whole point of division of labor is to create interdependencies. And the amazing thing I mean the thing is that I think businesses are learning that they don't want to rely on one supplier I think a lot of businesses moving to Vietnam to India. Ultimately, maybe the South American to Africa it's not coming to back to the United States I mean that's a that's a mythology, but it is going to be diversified across the world because nobody wants to be dependent on one entity and they shouldn't have a purely business perspective from shareholder wealth maximization perspective. I think one of the things businesses are learning Apple for example, is building a lot of facilities in India right now because they don't want to be overly dependent on China. So businesses learning as we know markets adapt, we get new information and you learn, but I also think that China. You know we are helping create turn China into a monster. And I think the United States is much at fault in what is going on in the world right now and the turn away from capitalism and the word turn away from freedom. Amplify that amplify that what do you mean why are we much at fault. I mean, we used to be, as Ronald Reagan used to call us a shining city on a hill. Yeah, we used to be a symbol of freedom and capitalism and free trade and, and know, you know, the best the capitalism had to offer. We have for decades been moving away from that I think the real turning point was 2008. I think when George Bush said we have to bail out everybody in order to save capitalism from itself or some ridiculous language like that. We basically send a message to the world the signal to the world that we were failure that our system capitalism did not work. We blame capitalism for the financial crisis which I think the two of us know is complete nonsense. It kept financial capital financial crisis. I have a couple of guys named Dodd and Frank or a good friend. God and Mr. Dodd and Mr. Frank who I would anybody should have gone to jail for the financial crisis not bankers it's Dodd and Frank. Right. We increase regulations we increase state involvement in our economy as a consequence. And we basically told the world in big letters capitalism has failed. It was it was the headline in our newspapers and it was the message. We basically by electing Obama and by nominating McCain, we basically told the world capitalism is useless and then that's continued Obama, Trump, Biden all anti capitalist presidents who projected an anti capitalist mentality and told the world capitalism is a failure. And the Chinese looked at that and they said, Okay, well if that's the failure, then, then, where do we go from here. And what they went is they basically went inwards in a sense of, we need more control. We need to do what America does on space I mean we did the same thing with covert by the way, it's funny. So, the last thing in the world an American would expect is when a pandemic kids, we have lockdowns. Who did we learn lockdowns from no CDC document ever that has been written in the past in terms of planning for pandemic had lockdowns as a solution. We learnt it from China, we are becoming like China instead of China becoming like us. We, instead of fighting China on the basis of the way to liberalize your economy is to mimic us. We started doing what China does that is telling companies how to run their business, where they could produce increasing tariffs increasing controls increasing regulation, instead of modeling what capitalism looks like. We are modeling for China, what, you know, we have now nationalist conservatives one industrial policy, right in the United States. It's scary. So who is the we though and we talk about it because I can't think of any of our political leaders, particularly that have ever made made this case. I can't think of a political leader who hasn't. Again, from, I mean, all of them have, have talked about, you know, embracing this model of constraining or having the government evolve directly in, in, in individuals decisions of placing themselves between traders between voluntary exchange, all of our political leaders have embraced models where we try to benefit the steel industry at the expense of that industry. I guess that that's what I meant though nobody's making the free market case the pure. Oh, there's nobody making free market case really from the bully puppet since Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan was the last president who found the bully puppet actually made the argument for for capitalism for freedom. What would you, what do you think of Trump. I'm very opposed to Trump. I think he was, I think he was very, very bad for America. Why, for multiple reasons one because many people think he represents capitalism and he doesn't he represents the opposite he's a he's a central planet at heart and and and acted as one. And you can see that I mean people talk about China with regard to Trump and and he failed with China in big ways, China became much worse under Trump than it was before Trump. And I think we partially because of him, but but think about steel tariffs on Canada and Brazil and other countries. It wasn't about China was about his protectionism he was a protectionist from day one. But more than that he turned the presidency into vulgar. He vulgarized the presidency. He turned it into the Republicans into a political party that stood not for anything positive but for just being anti left, and I understand being anti left as you know, I'm very anti left. That became the whole agenda is anti left. He the way he demonized the press as much as I hate leftist media, the way he did it, I think, I think put down the first amendment and I think now you're seeing a lot more of this anti free speech is going to come from both left and right and I think we info. I think, and I think at the end, he split and destroyed the Republican Party so I think today, there's basically no opposition to the agenda of the Democrats. There's nobody in opposition we've got Josh Harley, who basically an economics agrees with the Democrats. And we and we and then we've got we've got Republicans who are just too cowardly to say anything. If you turned to a Republican Party in a populist party in economics. There's no pro even semblance of pro freedom of capitalism anymore. Well that didn't cheer me up. Cheery mood, you're not in a cheery mood neither my particularly I you know and I look at what's going on now with this HR one and federalizing our national elections on the equity act and what's happening in culture I mean you're on I've, you know, our ideas, our ideas need to prevail and I don't think I'm not giving as high marks and getting our word out. No we're not and it's very frustrating and I think part of it is. I mean, part of it, I do blame Trump for because I think a lot of people who should have been advocates for capitalism God on the God on the bandwagon and God they voted away from from the true free market message and look, people have to evaluate Trump based on the fact that under his administration Republicans lost the House, the Senate and the presidency. I mean, more, you know, it whatever it was it was a losing strategy, and the Republicans need to do real soul searching and I'm afraid they're not doing it. And somebody needs to resurrect whether it's a Republican Party or another party, and actual American free market political party. And maybe we need a third party maybe we need a new party I don't know but the Democrats and Republicans are so corrupt today are so heading in the wrong direction today that I really do fear for this country. We need, we need somebody who has a just a little respect for the founding fathers and the founding principles of this country. So, so we're about we're out of time, but always happens to me, I will always happen we've got I do we're just getting started. I know I got it I got to get a Joe Rogan slot I need three hours, because what I'd like to do is like at some point I'd like to get you back, maybe on without john Allison or somebody like that to talk about. All right, what should we be doing. I mean what is what's the vision that we can paint for people I mean we know what's broken. And we know Trump's failings and I, I'm not as tough on him as you are my biggest beef with him as he failed to build out anything bigger than himself, and that we know doesn't last and it didn't last so I mean I think I actually think we could learn a lot and I know it's not popular Republican Party to these days you can learn a lot from Reagan. We can learn from his optimism and positivism verbally now he didn't do as much as he spoke I think he was a better speaker than a doer in terms of in terms of what if you actually look at the bills past and so on. We need to start by speaking that language we need to be optimistic, positive, strong, and we need to embrace this country, and not this country as is just the geography I mean, but this country as a set of ideas that were laid out by the founders and we need to, we need to take head on this nonsense of the left, the 1619 project in the cancer culture and all that, and embrace the greatness of this country and what this country really represents, but in not in in vulgar terms but in terms of hope, and in terms of optimism and in terms of greatness this country is the is the humanity. I'm so I'm so with you on that so now we've got the spine of our next conversation because we, we started out talking about wanting to get together to talk about all the great things that are happening and can happen I think we need to we'll circle back to that. Next time so you're on thank you it's great see again and and talk after all these years and you're on Brooke chairman and I think mostly founder of the and ran I and ran. You didn't found it but you CEO for a long time put it into stronger hands using my term you were you're definitely strong hands there. So anyway thanks for watching thanks for listening and we'll be talking soon. Thanks.