 just so you know amazing it'll be live on my channels so it's already amazing it just went up right now yeah when it yeah i wanted to make sure you you've got it right yeah it's working amazing good stuff it is working we're online we'll just see where we are on youtube what's your what's your channel on youtube it's it's just your own book yeah i'm on youtube and i have to mute there we go um so all of america basically us central latin and some of brazil because we shared it across latin america too so we'll see what we have joining in so do you recording in progress is it is it the um let me just see let me just adjust the uh the screen here no worries whenever you're ready i'll kick us off here and we can start the the dialogue after like an hour or so we're gonna move over to questions from the general audience here too okay just to obviously pre-select them and walk through them together but and are you streaming this on your platforms um we're not streaming directly but it's open to the audience so it was promoted to a large you know database of emails it was promoted on our social media channel so we expect a relevant audience here great let me just cool um so i think to kick us off we're already a minute over and just to be respectful with time so to start for those of you that are in the us or latin america that don't know who i am just to present myself i'm going to be having this conversation with yadam and tomas my name is marcio ramos i'm the president of yes yadis um paulo um it's a large institute um devoted to being a voice for individual freedom here in brazil and our mission is to develop young leadership under the principles of individual liberty free market um private property and the rule of law right going back to the basics of john lock and basia that's our our focus here i'm also joined here by tomas botelio he's one of our directors this year um tomas will be joining us for this conversation welcome tomas and a big thank you to yadam i'll do an introduction here in the second year so jump over to you um towards the end um a quick acknowledgement to sponsors so editoria lvm brazil paralelo caravelas costuria high global college marque bolos santae coaching baker chili and capital social and a quick acknowledgement to some of our friends here in brazil that's helped support us kyle daniel lucosta davie velez gabriel cunner lucas mota luiz paulo aranha paulo garner odrigo milan odrigo sanckowski and tomas magalho is the list is growing so it's going to get longer and harder to share over the years here um for those of you that are with with us questions um please send them to the q and a feature here in zoom um we'll be selecting them and sharing them with yadam towards the end here um and please identify yourself so we know your name and we can sort of call on you if needed um last topic here so a quick introduction on on yadam's bio and and yadam if i if i have anything wrong here please feel free to correct me so um dr brook is the host of the yadam brook show um he's a renowned lecturer on capitalism politics and economic freedom and freedom of speech as well as and is also a philosopher and historian of the work in life of an rand he is currently chairman of the board of the an ran institute and serves on the board of the clemson institute for the study of capitalism and is a member of the associate of private enterprise education and finally of mount pelican society um yadam to kick us off would you mind telling us a bit about your story in your own words and in sort of how and when did you get in touch with with liberal or like we say in the u.s libertarian author authors and ideas yeah and we'll have to talk about libertarian right you know because i don't identify myself quite as a libertarian i actually like the word liberal better but um at least a classical liberal as we have to we have to say in the u.s given that the the left stole that word a long time ago from us exactly but i was i was born and raised in in israel and as almost everybody who was my generation in israel i was very much raised under a socialist collectivist nationalist kind of atmosphere in environment so i in my teenage years i was committed to all of those i was committed to to to socialism to nationalism to collectivism and i was talking to a friend of mine one day and he was spouting these pro-capitalist ideas kind of market ideas and i said you know where you're getting this uh this nonsense from and uh he basically handed me a copy of atlas shrugged and i know many of your members have read atlas shrugged and um so i read it it took me a long time to read it i read it slowly and uh i argued with it i debated with it i yelled that i ran i threw the book on the wall a few times but by the end of the book uh i was convinced she had me uh it it made sense it was right it was liberating it was this new idea this this new philosophy that i'd never considered i'd never heard of uh it it basically uh provided me with with uh you know moral power right it was life was about me it was about making my life the best that it could be and um and and that was incredible that was an incredible feeling an incredible sense and you know at that point i went on a mission to try to study angrin's ideas as thoroughly as i can i could and in those days there was no internet there was no communication i i didn't know she was alive she was still alive then and uh i ended up reading as much as i could if i ran in israel while i was there and one of the things that happened when i read her was that i i decided i wanted to move to the u.s i you know if you only live once and the purpose of life is to be happy and to make the most of your life and do the best that you can then um you got to go to the place that has the most liberty the most opportunities the most uh opportunities to be successful and and to manifest uh your your choices in your your successes so um i served in the israeli military for three years uh while committing myself to one day moving to the u.s uh while i was serving i met a bunch of israelis who were into iran so we finally found other people and got into debates discussions moved to the u.s in uh 1987 10 years after i read atlas shrugged and uh with my wife and went to school so in israel i got my undergraduate degree in civil engineering so some of you don't know that i was a construction manager once but uh i did that for a while then i went back to school and got an mba at the university of texas in austin um stayed on to get a phd in finance i really liked finance my finance classes i enjoyed them and uh at that point uh i uh this is behaving weirdly at that point i uh end up getting a phd and uh got became a finance professor at senate collier university worked there for seven years while i was doing that i started a business uh that basically ran conferences about objectivism in iran so i got to know everybody in the iran kind of objectivist movement and uh when the previous executive director of the iran institute retired they approached me asked me if i wanted to be ceo uh so i took that position in 2000 did that until 2017 at which point i moved on to becoming chairman uh starting my own youtube channel podcast i give lectures all over the world i write books uh free market revolution equal is unfair still waiting for the portuguese translations but hopefully they will come one of these days and i also been involved as a partner in a hedge fund since 1998 so i still have my foot in finance and and in investing in making money so that's that's always good to to do that as well on the site so that's kind of my background i've devoted myself to studying iron man uh and uh to to teaching her philosophy to the to the best of my ability thank you for sharing we also i'm also a classic um liberals um we also prefer the word liberal but we know that when we do this in english we have to sort of adjust because of the interpretation yeah that's one comment that was interesting it's also interesting that the jewish community in brazil is is very liberal i'd say we have a lot of people of the jewish community in the institute so i think it'd be interesting to study why but it's interesting that we see them joining us and going in that direction with us on those ideas because on the in the united states they tend to be leftists you know i don't they vote democratic overwhelmingly they vote they vote 90 for the left so it's interesting that in in brazil well liberal properly understood is neither left nor right but but they all that they are taking this alternative route is interesting and it's interesting to understand why understand absolutely the wise are always always make me curious and i remember when you were speaking a joke that we have in brazil that we say that when you're young if you're not a collectivist that you probably don't have a heart or emotions right but when you become older and more experienced if you don't you know if you don't have if you don't become a capitalist or a liberal you probably lack some type of sort of intellectual a mind intellectual like a mind exactly we don't joke about that exactly but you so well that is standard well that is a is a joke of the different versions of it all over the world the reality is that if we lived in a proper world nobody would ever be attracted by socialism in the left it is a vile evil ideology whether you're young old or anywhere in between and collectivism is is evil it's a rejection of you as an individual it's it's saying that you don't matter and and no young person should think that they don't matter right that that only the group matters and their purpose of their life is to sacrifice for the group in some way so uh so it's um i long for to live in a world in which everybody gets it and we don't have young old you know the fact is very few people are classical liberals in the world in general young or old and most of the objectivists i'd say they're more young objectivists than old objectivists and and a lot of it has to do so it kind of goes against what you just said it kind of has to do with the fact that objectivism appeals to young people's idealism to them wanting the wanting to understand the world and wanting to be moral and wanting to change the world and wanting wanting to and then life erodes that idealism and and they get they get they get they they succumb to the pressures of society they succumb to the pressures of uh you know the world around them they get busy and and unfortunately they abandon um they abandon their commitment to uh to the ideal but you know some of this hold on to it so that's good and also before we jump to the next question we were doing an analysis of the day of one of Ben Rand's books together at the institute and one of our associates did an analysis of sort of the words behind uh some of it like individual or individualism and we saw that they had completely different interpretations dictionary wise brazil versus us yeah so it's also a cultural thing and in brazil you know it's it's sort of almost natural to be a collectivist when you're younger it's it's seen as a good thing it's seen as positive it's it's interpreted that way well in the us and i think that has to the book we read how we're you know family we have the values that we have since the since the foundations it's it's a it's a different interpretation in the dictionary so yeah latin america is i mean latin america is as was influenced from the beginning from really the the the foundation by german philosophy by german romantic philosophy uh latin america was never influenced by the anglo-saxons it it didn't really have the enlightenment didn't really have a profound impact on latin america because it was primarily spanish and portuguese and the enlightenment was primarily a phenomena of france and england and to some extent central europe there was some in germany some in northern europe but but it's really if you really think about it the modern individualist philosophy started in amsterdam in the netherlands where which was the freest place in europe in the 17th century spread to to france and england and scotland that's where the enlightenment happened and unfortunately for latin america uh you are much more influenced by the spanish and portuguese and the spanish and portuguese from an intellectual perspective became followers of the german romantics and and much more akin to rooseau, kanth, hegel, schopenhauer and marx uh then they were to the lock and adam smith and uh and and human and later on maybe mill and people like that so it it it the anglo-saxon world had a healthier intellectual philosophical start than uh than the latin world uh and and that explains the different dictionary definitions it explains the different culture uh the different levels of respect for the rule of law for contracts for private enterprise for capitalists you know in the in the 19th century because of the enlightenment because of the ideas the whole approach to making money and to capitalism and production and and was very different in in england uh and in america than was in the rest of the world and that positive attitude is what led and and drive from philosophy what led to the success of the anglo-saxon world disproportionately globally uh during that era and then into the 20th century and and what brazil needs it needs to catch up ideologically it needs to you know uh it needs to abandon its marxism and and hegelianism and and contianism really the german impact and and embrace kind of the uh the the pro-liberty you know the whole term of liberal you talk about liberal liberalist is really a british word coming out of the the 19th and 20th century liberal tradition of pro-liberty liberal meant pro-liberty and uh unfortunately again that tradition never caught on in uh in south america maybe no but there's hope but there is hope completely agree do you mind if we take a step back i know we're jumping into the philosophy right it's actually my favorite part two and probably whoever's falling but one question i wanted to jump back a bit also for people that are less familiar with your with your name or your work in the institutes what are the questions that we had here is you know the president's spokesperson for for an red institute you're on the board of the clemson institute could you tell us just a bit more on how you came into contact with these institutes and sort of your role and their role also in the u.s. and abroad sure so the the iron man institute was the first place i i contacted when i moved to america i mean it was the source of knowledge about iron rand and about objectivism which i was studying when i moved to america and i was interested in so i i was a student i'm um i uh uh attended conferences uh and uh in the 1990s when i was a professor i attended the iron rand institutes graduate educational program where we actually dove deep into iron rand's philosophy and really studied thoroughly there's a book called objectivism the philosophy of iron rand we call it opa for short uh written by lena pikov and that was the textbook that's the textbook we used and that actually is translated into portuguese so people can find that hopefully it's still in print but it is in portuguese as are many of iron rand's books and hopefully more to come uh so i uh got to know the institute because of my interest in iron rand and studied there and um and and to classes from them got to know all the intellectuals i also ran a conference business as i mentioned and i hired many of the intellectuals so they were my my employees as part of their the conference business uh i paid them to speak for me so that's how i got to know everybody and and uh at some point they approached me about becoming the ceo of the institute with regard to clemson institute um when there was thought about establishing a set an institute for the study of capitalism at clemson uh the and to be led by an objectivist and it is led by an objectivist by the name bradley tomson um the faculty they wanted to get to know more about objectivism and got wanted to know some objectivist to make sure we want some crazy you know crazy lunatics or something so i visited clemson several times before the institute was founded to try to figure out what would be the appropriate um uh what kind of institute to found who would be a good lead for the institute and uh to give them comfort that um you know we were not nuts we were not crazies and uh i i was the one of the people who recommended bradley tomson and encouraged them to hire him and and that has gone and i'm sorry being uh on the board of directors of that since its beginning and it's been phenomenal it's brought the study of capitalism it's brought the study of really classic um education into the heart of clemson and it's been a fantastic experience um interesting interesting i want to change topics a little bit i was uh in pratt thank you and said that you were born and raised in israel uh to serve points out it's funny the president of and ran these cities was also there he lived in you know community all you say that again akibut akibut yeah exactly the current the current executive director of the institute the council of the institute is somebody i hired and um and uh yeah he's an israeli too so so the israeli is having a big impact on the objective movement there's no question yeah absolutely absolutely but i was thinking about the foundations of the state of israel uh like on israel's birth and i mean the topic is complex but how much is to blame collectivism or individual enterprise to the creation of the state of israel and then uh second to that uh like if you could just elaborate a little bit more or what are the foundations for the birth strengthening and consolidation of the liberal libertarian ideals within a country uh because i feel like it was pretty collected this at first but then uh there was you know a change with time like how did that happen specifically in israel and it happens overall sure i mean i think israel's still very collectivist so the change there's some change but nowhere near as deep as we would like it to be but uh look israel was israel was um israel's founded as a country for jews to escape anti-semitism too it was really the vision of a man by the name of herzel who lived in the late 19th century early 20th century who came to the conclusion that europe would always be hostile to jews he witnessed the drafus trial in the late 19th century in paris and the drafus trial was a was an anti-semitic trial of a of a french uh senior french officer who was accused of things that clearly he didn't do but um he was found guilty only because of anti-semitism and anti-semitism was all over france and and herzel came to the conclusion he was a completely secular assimilated jew he came to conclusion and so was uh a drafus he came to conclusion that no matter how assimilated the jews became no matter how much they became part of a particular culture uh the the locals would always view them as different and would always anti-semitism was always rule and he thought it would get better would get worse to the point where jews would be uh murdered in mass of course he predicted in that uh what the nazis ultimately did and he said the only solution to this is for the jews to to start their own country and to emigrate to their country and protect themselves that way from the anti-semitism to become a to band together under the banner of of in a sense a collectivistic banner but for self-defense he was not a collectivist he was an individualist but the individualist who realized that to defend himself he had to get other jews together to defend it he didn't care where this jew estate would be um it it you know the historical home of jews is this role but he didn't care about history and stuff like that he just cared about protection and indeed when the british at some point offered him Uganda he voted for it now the rest of the Zionist assembly voted against it but he was for it he would he would go anyway just to get a place that where jews could be protected um ultimately jews moved to israel uh following that dream the dream of reestablishing establishing a state uh they brought with them to israel to what was then palestine uh western civilization they bought to it industry electricity they brought to it um opera and music and culture and and individualism to an extent and and and political freedom and in 1948 when they established the state it was established by socialists so many of the people who moved to israel were russian um socialists who uh didn't believe uh you know it moved before the communist revolution and didn't believe communism or socialism would ever take hold in russia and wanted to establish that in israel and then many of the other europeans who moved over were uh socialists so the country was founded by socialists um secular um atheist in most cases uh socialist jews who wanted this country to to protect themselves and to create kind of an oasis uh in the desert and they did that they they dried the swamps they created a real uh industry but but there was always this tension between and there is in any country that has elements of socialism uh that's western there's a tension between allowing people the freedom to be entrepreneurs to start businesses to to to do what they want to do as individuals and the state and what the state demands and the labor unions and everything and uh so israel grew grew it succeeded up to a point uh but for example in israel when i was growing up the largest employer was the labor unions not the government not business but the labor unions labor unions owned factories and employed people that system did not work well strikes all the time lack of productivity uh and and real economic uh stagnation during primarily during the seventies and then just like in great britain and just like in the united states uh great britain margaret thatcher was elected in the u.s. uh ronald reagan was elected there was a backlash against socialism in israel in 1977 the same year by the way that i read atlas shrugged so just a coincidence sentence i guess but uh there was a real backlash and and bagan who was the first non-socialist to be elected prime minister in israel's history was elected and while he was a mixed bag very nationalist very very collectivistic he also wanted to liberate the israeli economy and and during the following 15 years or so the israeli economy was liberated i'd say all the way to round uh into the 2000s there was slow steady improvements in uh in liberalizing the israeli economy and increasing economic freedom but the collectivism still stayed to a large extent at least as our government policy the nationalism the collectivism the tribalism still exists in israel uh but there is an element of individualism um and there is an element of economic freedom and that's why you see israel as the startup nation entrepreneurship and it's a whole question of why israel is so successful in terms of startups partially it's economic liberalization but also partially it's uh you know jews are very uh the jewish culture is very focused on learning very focused on intellectual side so uh a lot of israeli study a lot they they they care about the mind so they they devote a lot of resources to that but there's also a tradition among jews particularly israelis um of augmentation of of disagreement of not standing still yelling at the dinner dinner table arguing with everybody and debating like crazy and that is a good mindset for entrepreneurship that is the last thing you want are people that say yes okay everything's fine um entrepreneurs are disagreeable they are people who want to change the status quo they're people who are impatient they're people who want to imprint their views on the world sometimes they fail but failure is no big deal they failed many times around the dining room table in their argumentation so nobody cares about failure you start up again and you go at it again or you start a different business so israel is very very attuned to entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial mentality and in tech which requires education in the mind and and and and logic and so on um is very fitting to the kind of educational tradition among israeli israeli so um i think that has led to the success but there is still this tension always will be in israel between the collectivism under which it was founded and and there's a lot of religious religious religious people in israel who who um for example and exclude Arabs from from civil society muslims of civil society and that's anti-individualistic and and and wrong and uh there's a tension between the nationalism and collectivism and the free market and and individualism and that tension continues and will continue for a long time if i could just go on that yeah just i think just guide us back here to mas i think one thing that's interesting of what you said yeah and it's a strong belief on i think on our side and a lot what we discuss around conservatism too is family right and i mean a lot of the the family values that are very strong in britain the us date back to the magna karta right that are it's very connected with with jewish and christian values and even that idea of the the healthy and productive disagreement and rational debates dating back to you know our start of this thing thinking and so on so that's probably a very key important value there too um do you mind if i think just before we jump into the second topic which i think where is where tomas was going to drive us you know it might take you weren't we going to take you back to history again sure but you probably saw that one of the topics that we we brought in for this debate today or this discussion today was tocaville right and what he saw in the u.s back then and what we see in the u.s now so do you mind doing a similar parallel of you know the founding fathers usa or america versus you know what's happened over time and where the u.s is now i think it compares also it's what you're just saying oh absolutely it's going to be very depressing though i warn you um look america was is a unique country it's it's a unique country it's the only country in the world that was established on a moral principle on an ethical principle uh it is the main achievement the highlight of the enlightenment politically uh so what is the principle the the the united states is founded on it's founded on the principle of individual rights and individual rights is not some random idea people came up with it's not something that's implanted into us by god it's not we just have it because nature gave it to us it's it's it's you know it's somewhere inside of us you know as as as many will tell you if you open up a human being there are rights inside because that's not what it works writes a moral concept writes a concept that identify the fact that for human beings to thrive for human beings to be successful they must be free to act on their reason they must be free to act on the conclusions of their own mind and what does freedom mean in this context freedom means free of coercion free of force free of authority free of dictates they should be able to think and act based on their own judgment and individual rights is a way to conceptualize that to articulate this idea of freedom and the idea that this freedom must be protected by the institution that we create in a society as a monopoly over the use of force that is the only role of government according to the founding of america is the protection of individual rights that's what's government instituted among men to do protect inalienable rights the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and it's it's that concept of rights that makes america completely different right you don't really have that in brazil you don't complain about the violating my rights because you know that that tradition coming out of the enlightenment doesn't exist and it doesn't exist in latin america and to a large extent it doesn't exist in europe it is an american phenomena because america was the country founded out of the ideas of the enlightenment it's a falsehood that america is a christian country america is not a christian country america is the country that relegates religion to your home in the public square it is about reason and ideas and philosophy it is the country of john lock and voltair and and monoskew and the english and scottish enlightenment that is what america is now what does that mean it means that the government traditionally in america was very limited in its scope while it never completely lived up to the promise of the declaration of independence limiting itself only to protecting rights it did a pretty good job of of being limited small not intervening in people's affairs too much um and it and as a consequence of that it was a country that was the freest country in the world and a country that was opened its borders and where millions and millions and millions of people flowed in so that uh it is it was a country of immense economic growth immense freedom and immense uh you know success a country in which people came in pursuit of their happiness people came in pursuit of wealth people came in pursuit of success people left their families knowing they would never see them again crossed the atlantic ocean or the in some cases the pacific ocean and you know built a new life in america so it was a that's the america tockville uh encountered a land of immigrants a land of ambitious people he talks about their self-interest uh a land in which personal initiative community initiative but initiative at the community level rather than top down was what allowed the country to grow and be successful a country of industry hard work attitudes of people pride in the work and in their success and the ability to grow um it it was a it was a country of you know people were religious but they kept the religion to themselves and did not interfere in other people's religion i mean if you think about christianity protestant religion splintered into a thousand different sects and they were all over the united states there was no official religion so religion partially prospered because there was no state religion there was no intervention of religion so the the country back then was a country where the federal government never spent more than three four percent of gdp uh except in the civil war it was a country in which states were left alone it was a country in which individuals were free to live their lives as they so fit to where their rights for the most part were protected not completely but for the most part now it was also a flawed country right i mean there's a question that at the same time uh there was also slavery and uh and uh in the talkville talkville talks about that the south i think as talkville describes it was suffering from that slavery that that safely was holding the south back the north was much richer much more successful much more prosperous than the south but nevertheless it was a divided country as a consequence that division went away after civil war but unfortunately so did there was a slow erosion of that idea of limited government so if you come to today america today america today has a government a federal government that is about four to five times larger than it was back then on a per capita gdp on a not per capita on a gdp basis a percent of gdp and if you take into account state government and local government it is probably uh you know seven to eight times bigger than it was back then we have a lot less freedom our lives are regulated and controlled by a bureaucracy that cares nothing for our liberties and freedom there's no conception of individual rights nobody nobody understands individual rights you could take the last i don't know certainly the last five presidents and they would fail a quiz on what are individual rights or what are the founding fathers conception of the individual rights or what does the constitution actually say what does the constitution mean what does the declaration of independence mean they're complete morons when it comes to the american founding and and the ideas of america indeed that is true of the bureaucracy that is true of our presidents and sadly it is even true of our supreme court there's almost no supreme court justice today who understands even superficially the concept of individual rights maybe two maybe three at most and even there it's not a deep understanding of individual rights it's a superficial understanding of individual rights so um so long the founding of america is long forgotten we are now very much like a european country uh we have a welfare state we have a regulatory state we have massive government we have a massive military with bases in a hundred plus countries around the world um you know we we we uh we don't really stand for anything anymore uh freedom liberty are words that people say and have no understanding and no relevance to their life uh we are a country now that leads the world in bizarre stupid ridiculous ideologies from critical race theory to the alternative right um and and uh everything in between intersectionality and i mean we export this stuff this stuff has been exported to europe it used to be that all bad philosophy came from germany now we're sending our bad philosophy back to germany so uh uh we're exporting it around the world and it's it's sad because there's still a remnant of um there's still a remnant of the sense of life of of liberty of of americanism of freedom but it doesn't manifest itself politically there's no political manifestation of it and it is really just at the level of sense of a feeling there's very few intellectuals who stand for it they're very few and as a consequence you know we got excited americans get excited when the economy under donald trump grew a two percent a year i hate to break it to people but two percent a year is pathetic our economy should be growing at four five six percent a year and there's no reason it cannot there is no limits to growth there's no such thing the only limitations to growth are limitations imposed by government policy so we grow slowly we stagnate our government grows non-stop we have massive debt where debt to gdp now is over a hundred percent or just over a hundred percent it's going to grow even bigger uh there's no prospects for serious economic growth in the united states entrepreneurship is in decline um and and uh innovation is in decline it's it's it's a depressing picture uh talkville would not recognize america he would it would look like europe rather than um rather than the united states taking over the world at least europe has infected america and and i blame it on german philosophy so and i in rand blamed it on german philosophy it really is the the the kontagel schopenhauer marks access and and and more more recently i would even add Nietzsche access to nihilism implied ultimately in Nietzsche that is destroying the u.s and ultimately destroying the west thank you yeah i think we have a similar perspective and if domas also wants to jump in here but one of the things that i wanted to comment was that um it sort of reminds me in living abroad from the u.s of that that perspective of a third generation of a family-owned company where the founders they know what they're doing they know why they made that decision usually the the children understand because they were there they listened to the the family but the third generation has it only at like a sentiment level it's no longer taught or discussed it's not reflected on there's no true philosophy there it's just it's just a sentiment of what used to be and the feeling that i have when i see people discussing this in the u.s is they're they're they're saying that they want certain things without even understanding why they're important and what's needed to get there and what are the foundations for that to exist um i have a similar perspective and domas do you want to add anything i was going to jump to the next question which i think connects with this no uh i just wanted to comment quickly first thing is that our supreme court has bigger problems like i know how much you you know into that but we're we're having an institutional crisis right now in brazil uh and one of our five fellows partners here is called brazil para alelo and they make a wonderful job talking you know more about the basics of society you know uh so they talk about philosophy again cultural values your family values and and that you know in a lot of senses precedes uh the the path for liberty and that's kind of like how i felt you exposed that matter and i think they're pretty much right in that sense that you can't just you know throw throw down their throw liberal ideas as as we've seen you know you know the the middle is middle east interventions you know and the return of failure in afghanistan more recently but but you know overall i think that's that's a good thing you know to actually work with the basics and and and get a you know and get get people to actually imprint a liberal view based on philosophy first then then politics itself so i think that's that's probably the uh the way i don't know if you want to comment on that i'll just say that it's it's very difficult to export your ideology it is very difficult to to change other countries when you don't have that ideology anymore you don't believe in anything what what is what does a george w bush believe in that he's going to change the middle east and what to what to the mixed economy neither here nor there stand for nothing modern america um what exactly is uh are we going to change afghanistan too a little bit more western uh so to change another country or another culture one has to actually believe in something and actually hold an ideology and be consistent in holding that ideology and then be willing to educate that other culture and be willing to say for example which we're not today your culture is primitive and bad our culture is good you should adopt our culture here it is but we can't even say that i mean george w bush a month after 9 11 was celebrating the ramadan in the white house uh you're not going to change the muslim world by celebrating their holidays a month after they attacked you and and and and decimated you right um so you have to have some pride and confidence and a and and knowledge of your own virtues of your of what you have to offer the world if you have any hope in changing that world completely agree um i think what what also what tomas was referring to and what's it's an interesting movement here in brazil i mean you actually have you know fox which is i wouldn't say it's liberal thinking right it's not philosophy in any single manner to be honest but in brazil interestingly enough we've had an alternative media coming up and actually getting a lot of attention in space and people's people's houses and minds discussing philosophy discussing good music discussing good family values good discussing good books discussing where you spend your time at home with your family with your mind with yourself i find it i'm blown away when i see this happening and we're they're actually good friends of ours we work together we think we have a similar direction we want to achieve but that's happening in brazil that's it's being born 20 or 30 or 40 million people are seeing that discussing that at their home i mean people i know are signing up and watching that content i mean it's it's discussing philosophy at its basis so it makes me optimistic about the the future of brazil and somehow because that the discussion is happening um and one thing i think that's right i i'll mention this i i do think that there is i mean i was very impressed by um the intellectuality of brazilian culture and the inclination within brazil to look at philosophy and to study it um and there is a sudden desperation in brazil that doesn't exist in america yet that is you guys have tried everything and it's all failed everything except freedom right and it's all failed and people are miserable and it's it's and it's you know the 200 million brazilians and the the gd people capital is still very low uh there's unbelievable corruption and a very well educated very um you know intellectual population can't get anything done everything is bogged down and people are pissed off and upset and and and have had it so and and it's partially why you elected somebody like bolsino but it's that level of frustration opens people up to maybe new ideas so i was in uh i think it was in san paulo at the airport and i was looking through a the bookstore and first you can often find in rand's books at the airports in in brazilian airports in the bookstores but yeah but what i found was this book and it was a it was a book with a bunch of pictures of philosophers on it and it was something like philosophy for dummies or something like that but written by brazilian and i'm looking at this and there's a rand's picture and it was like whoa you know that would never happen in the u.s nobody would write a book on philosophies for dummy kind of thing and have iron rand in the picture so in america iron rand is taboo right you're not supposed to read it you're not supposed to like her all of the critics most of the critics have never even read her but in brazil iron rand is this interesting woman philosopher from the united states why not include her in this and and discuss her in the beta so in that sense i think there's a lot more openness in brazil today to uh these ideas i think organizations like ifl um and uh what was the organization started in um in pota lega iii kind of brought iron rand into the mainstream at least with young businessmen and uh and i think that you know all the i fell and i e chapters all over brazil they read iron rand they were engaged in iron rand and you guys are the future of brazil you are the the business leaders the intellectual leaders you will have an impact on future generations and so i am you know i haven't been in brazil because of covid for a while but every time i come to brazil i get really really energized and excited because there is a there is a potential there that i don't see anywhere else in the world to a large extent because of ifl and i e and they have elevated that you guys have elevated the discussion there are more intellectuals in brazil willing to debate and discuss iron rand's ideas and to discuss philosophical ideas more broadly there's still a lot of problems there's still way too much mysticism in brazil there's way too much religion in brazil um and uh and and it's you know and you know you have a character like boston who got elected which is problematic but there is this real potential there's this real potential of people studying ideas taking ideas seriously uh you know what was it the t-shirts uh uh there were these t-shirts in um during the student kind of demonstrations a few years ago uh less marks more mesas like what place in the world would even know who mesas is never mind less marks more mesas only in brazil could that happen you you wore t-shirts in the in the united states like that people go who the hell's mesas we don't know who mesas is but in brazil it became a thing and and and mesas became somebody people understood people recognized and um and and and that that is that is amazing yeah we're also i mean proud of it it's still potential right it hasn't yes definitely just a potential come into something yet but we you hear uh among different groups you know hyac Rothbard mesas basia and others dating back to you know ancient greece and it's it's it's it has potential and it gets me optimistic about where we can arrive to because as you mentioned these are the people the people that joined bolsonado's government they were supporting him somehow because this was an attempt to go in in something that we saw some value in but a lot of that came from our groups people that were reading this and studying this and they're liberals among you know before anything and rational thinkers before anything so they've been really making the difference in yana i mean recently we saw also the economists right like i thought that was an interesting cover talking about the illiberal left right and they i was like this week or something this week this week this week exactly and i was actually really interested to read it and see it because it's not something you see come up in the u.s a lot that type of topic usually gets canceled there's a lot of aggression towards it it's not accepted um and i don't think they say this i don't think that's true i i think there's a lot of people writing about the illiberal left in america it's just to have a mainstream publication mainstream mainstream which the economist is you could argue center left center right depends on who the editor is in any given week but it's it's real mainstream for them to recognize it but yeah i i think one of the great tragedies in the world right now is the rise of illiberalism right the rejection of of of the better parts of the liberal tradition and you know and that includes uh freedom it includes individualism it includes uh uh you know democracy limited democracy democracy limited to the protection of individual rights and you see that on the left and on the right um and and uh but you're seeing that with obon in hungry right and and the american rights fascination with obon and hungry oh if only we could have this kind of power over people and and the media because obon is basically equivalent to nationalizing the media in hungry um it's uh and and of course the left is there was just an article and and this is a good example of the in atlantic magazine atlantic is also very critical of the illiberal left and atlantic is again left of center and they just have a story about the new puritans and who are the new puritans that are leftists the leftists who you're not allowed to say this word or that word you're not allowed to uh touch a woman in this way or that you know just everybody gone nuts around uh around on the left and who you know they don't burn people to stake but they uh or they don't but they basically accuse you witchcraft and and and uh label you uh you know a bad person you can't get a job you can't get published in academia so there is a widespread recognition now that the wacky left has gone wacky that they're very illiberal that they anti-freedom that they that they are not liberal anymore in america the liberal used to mean left but the leftist moves so far to the left that even the liberals the leftists in america don't consider them part of them so um it's um it is uh it is now recognized that and i think this is the trend that we're we're going to be experiencing in the last few years in europe and in the united states that um that we are moving more and more in an illiberal direction it reminds me a little bit right now i've just been reading about the vine of a vimeo republican about the period between world war one or world war two and while i'm not saying we're heading towards world war two or hitler or anything like that it does feel very similar to that period uh a loss of any kind of sense of confidence um a complete rejection of individualism it's just basically all the collectivists out fighting among each other completely uh complete uh extremes the the thing that even makes now worse than the vimeo republic is that even the united states is brought into it that is even america in in the 1920s and 30s there was there was fdr but generally america stood apart from this it still was america now america is part of this great divide of illiberal left and illiberal right and the the battle between them and look no matter who wins that battle what you get is illiberalism what you get is authoritarianism what you get is a is a uh a negation of everything we believe in so you know the more i read about vimeo republic of course lenne picovote a great book called the ominous parallels which unfortunately is not in portuguese but it is in english uh where he he parallels the evolution of german society to american uh society um through the 1970s and i think everything said is right it was just it's coming to fruition much more today than it did back then and it's it's very very scary to see what's going on how how people are fascinated by authoritarians i mean think about trump's fascination with xixi in china how much he admired him like uh people respected xixi and people didn't respect trump and he was offended by it he wanted he wanted to kind of respect xi gets which is an authoritarian or how much he he respected ogowan in in toky or uh um or any one of these other or obon in hungry or any one of these authoritarians was somebody that that he looked up to and today if you if you watch tucker carlson same thing they love the strong man they love the strong man and um that's scary on the right and we know that the left is already there the left just wants to jump in on that and the people in the middle trying to stave up both sides but it's very difficult because the middle unless you're truly liberal the middle is boring the middle is uninteresting the middle is unendialistic and therefore the masses are not attracted to the middle the masses attracted to the left and attracted to right and you we talked about this you you you experienced the same thing in brazil you've got an election now of two nutcases two populists complete nuts complete imbeciles right these are not people who have any qualifications to be president of a local union nevermind a country as big as brazil lulu and bolsino and yet they generate the passion the passion for the left and lulu the passion on the right for bolsino and if you came and tried to be rational and and try to capture the center people would ignore you they're not interested so the sad state of the world is that this this kind of left this kind of appeal to the passions is what is winning the day it's what winning the day and and reason thoughtfulness is not in vogue nobody is interested nobody cares that and if you think about the founding of america the founders were real intellectuals they were super smart super intellectuals they were opposite of populists they they took the country with them where they wanted it to go they were well read they they wrote they were men of letters they could write well they had libraries they studied these were some of them were scientists franklin for example these were amazing um intellectuals and yet they got the whole country to move them forward today you get you get them the dumbest most ignorant people running for politics and and partially because the population the people have been dumbed down to the level of all they care about is who can rail the emotions more and it's also interesting yeah let me to reflect on that that point is the the article in the cannabis and i think you're right i was referring more to it being mainstream and mainstream that gets to brazil right and seeing that coming out from the u.s mainstream well economists they also it's not not the u.s yeah not the u.s for sure and one of the references that we get here right when we see what's being written there and discussed and um they also as you mentioned they they reflect on the attack on debate and rational thinking um and not only just the liberal left but the attack on rational thinking and philosophy right and it sort of reminds me of what abraham lincoln said of the mediocre man or what missus said of anti-capitalism and how you know people in many cases i mean the majority of us are mediocre right that's that's how it works and that there's no equality before and you should never i think accept that you should fight for your individuality and your growth and stuff but i think there's an element of that also in these populist leaders yeah but but think about it i mean being mediocre doesn't mean anything yeah i mean i'm a mediocre basketball player that doesn't cause me to resent uh you know great basketball players right so uh the the fact that maybe you're mediocre doesn't say anything about your attitude to greatness and success it is not deterministic in that sense so america was always full of people who you know most of them were average that's how average works right and you can't have a place where everybody's above average so uh some are below average some are average some are above average but people didn't resent the people who were above average people didn't resent the wealth creators the scientific geniuses that the the the people who changed the world they thank them they appreciated them because they understood that they benefited from them you know i have a huge amount of respect for people who are far smarter than me because of what they give me whether it's einran who's far smarter than me thank you for the philosophy whether it's jeff bezos who's far better businessman than i am thank you for amazon it changed my life or steve jobs or whatever so your level of i don't know intelligence or ability in any is not determinant of your philosophy so the people the reason people today resent those above and this is where i think mesas is wrong is not dictated by the economic standard in that sense he's too marxist it's determined by their ideas by their philosophy and by their appreciation of what other people grant them a a world in which everybody is an egoist where everybody cares only about himself is a world where people respect their achievements of others because they know that they benefit when others achieve they know that the principle guiding human behavior as an egoist is trade value for value win win it's only a world in which we're taught that you deserve that you should be equal in outcome that the world is a zero sum game as marxism teaches us or at least modern marxist teachers that everything's about exploitation that other people success is at your expense that is the world at which in which the kind of culture that we have today can exist where people resent one another socialism leads to resentment everywhere always capitalism is benevolent capitalism leads to mutual respect great reflection ten degree and many other points too so we have a couple we had a couple more questions here but before we jump over to the questions from the the general public here that are following us in the event one I think broader question I think we discussed together is and thinking about the the condition of where the world is now and where we're going across different regions if you had to name one sort of genuine um liberal leader in the world today who would that be and what is what is his characteristics and why is he is he closer to that that mentality or that position or those values I don't think there is one I can't think of one I mean just go down in America's right start with Canada we've got a socialist leftist in Canada we've got a leftist in the United States and we had Trump was no liberal in in in the in the positive sense right Mexico is a socialist um Latin America is there any liberal in latin in Latin America today I can't think of one one would have hoped that the guy in Chile I forget his name the president of Chile Pinheiro would be because they were part of the of the Chicago boy revolution but he's stabbed liberalism in the back he's he's turned his back on liberalism completely nobody Paraguay or guay you know uh you know uh Colombia there was some hope but he turned out to be false hope and now much of the rest of North kind of that north part of South America is turning Marxist so you saw that in Ecuador we seen in Peru, Peru just elected a Marxist to the government so I don't see anybody in in Europe nobody I mean you you move from Portugal east right Portugal no Spain no France no Germany no Angela Merkel is far from a liberal in a in a positive sense Scandinavia I mean Scandinavia might in some bizarre funny sense be the closest England certainly not I mean the the conservatives in England right now are completely selling out on everything whether it was on COVID lockdowns or whether it's on climate change now and and completely or whether it was the renationalization basically of the railroad system or parts of the railroad system recently um certainly not Eastern Europe there's no liberals in Eastern Europe so I don't know if you have a suggestion I'm I'm open to hearing it I would suggest just open up to a broader view like getting out of uh the politicians political arena and thinking about like maybe Estonia maybe I don't know Estonia for sure but what what about somebody that you know it could be even a sportsman a businessman you know that is really making a change in the world and represents no uh the real plus whole liberal values do you see I don't know like you could argue Jeff Bezos whatever I don't know um anybody who's prominent and is willing to go out there and and really take the stage as as a real classical liberal I mean John Allison when he was CEO of BBNT I don't know if you know John Allison he was CEO of the 10th largest financial institution in the U.S. certainly was a uh a champion of objectivism and a champion of capitalism and was CEO of a big corporation but uh it really is pretty bleak out there in terms of the voices I think that the change is bubbling up under the surface it's a places like IFI it's at places like we just did an objectives conference with 400 people um it's it's you know and it's some of them business leaders but just up and coming you know young people like you guys who are who are going to make the make uh you know their place in the world create their place in the world um it's just the world right now is not receptive to these ideas and not open to these ideas and and if you do you know there's somebody like Danny and Hannan in the United States who is a little better but even he I think sells out once in a while it's hard to to find somebody who's consistent it's hard to be in politics if you're going to be consistent it's hard to be successful as an intellectual if you're consistent uh you know I people who sell out a far more popular on YouTube than people who are consistent uh on in on you know on these ideas certainly there's no objectivist who is a super celebrity on YouTube partially because our ideas are still so foreign so controversial so radical for even for people call themselves libertarians because libertarianism doesn't require you to have any philosophy and we kind of agree vaguely on ideas about liberty. Objectivism is a philosophy with a metaphysics and epistemology and ethics a a view of art right and politics yeah politics but politics is not the center politics is the end so um it's it's very difficult in a culture that doesn't respect philosophy not interested in philosophy to really make significant inroads with a philosophy that's super radical super different than anything else that people recognize. Thank you. I was thinking of also when I when we mentioned I was thinking Estonia and Taiwan has been also I think one but tending towards that even with all the challenges in in the Asian yeah I mean Taiwan is a great country and it's one of the great tragedies in the geopolitics of the world today is that none of our countries recognize it as a country you know the United States has no embassy in Taiwan has no diplomatic relations in Taiwan because they cut a deal with the devil they cut a deal with China um and uh and they refuse to renegade that deal but it's it's truly sad that um yeah truly sad it does and it also I think it leads back also to the the the triangle right of you know the US and Japan and the defense of Japan post World War II versus the relationship between Japan and China and how much of China has in the US depth and we're you know the US is stuck in that somehow so it is some type of pact it's a tricky situation to be in um jumping to the some of the questions here I'm gonna start with with the tricky one which I don't even know if this was said or not but it was a question that came in um one of the people here that they asked they mentioned that when you were in Brazil and you visited some of the favelas right the slums um that you suggested that the state could supply or you know land um to some of the poor people again correct me if this is wrong or this is a misinterpretation um and that does it help poverty no I mean the solution for the favelas is easy and at least in Rio maybe maybe in other parts of Brazil it's a little harder but in Rio it's it's easy look the state doesn't supply land to anybody the state should have no land not the amazon not any land not any rivers not any beaches the state is not an entity that should own anything not even brazilia so the the land already for a philosophical perspective the land already belongs to the people in the favelas they own it because they're using it because they used it to promote their lives to make their lives better they used it for businesses they used it use of land as going back to lock mixing your mind your labor and the land makes it yours that's the essence that's the origins in that sense of of property so my solution to poverty in Rio now as I went into the favelas in Rio and when you go into the favelas in Rio you realize immediately that they sit on the best property in Rio like I don't get this it doesn't make any sense to me that middle-class rich people live low and the poor people live high I mean high is where the views are I mean I would pay a fortune to have a villa at the top of one of those favelas with the best view in the world right I think Rio de Janeiro is the most beautiful city in the world I've been to a lot of cities and if you could live up there and see the the geography the beaches that the the mountains that oh it's it's magnificent so I say give them property rights give them a deed on the land which they already own morally and let them sell it to to foreigners who want to build villas at the top of the favelas let them sell it to hotels imagine a hotel at the top there with that kind of view they would sell out like this so the the and this is by the way not just a my view Hanando de Soto the Peruvian economist was a was a liberal economist has suggested this a long time ago he says just one of the ways to cure poverty or to to reduce poverty in Latin America is to give poor people ownership of the land that they are cultivating on the land that they are living on then they can get a mortgage right they can use the capital to buy a tractor or to start a small business or to buy some inventory and that's how you get economic activity going not by giving them money top down but by giving them property by giving them ownership of something they already own for all the intensive purposes so I believe that all of the favelas in Brazil should be privatized the states should own none of it now people say that rewards going and settling on government land without permission good everybody should settle on government land without permission so that we privatize it all there should be no government land you know imagine selling off the amazon to private enterprise some of it to preserve it forever like you could sell it to these non-profits that want to preserve the amazon great others would do other stuff with it but imagine selling off all the natural resources that Brazil has to private investors including by the way foreign investors Brazil would immediately become a rich country and in a free country in an innovative country but nobody would ever do that because like it goes against the nationalist tendencies so yes I am for curing poverty in Brazil by selling off the by giving the favelas to the people who already live there interesting reflection it's one that I haven't given enough thought I think and get to hear your perspective on that too I'm curious what that what the what the negative would be what what the counter argument would be what what I mean they live there already nobody's going to take them away for nobody's going to kick them off that's not happening right they already live there why not give them a deed recognize the fact made a reality philosophically thinking in one thing that people might raise and again I haven't it's not a perspective of mine but just walking through the options could be sort of the rule of law of the process right and rule of law in Brazil in Brazil cares about the rule of law give me a break right so that's why I think it's optimistic right but the point is this of all the laws that people break in Brazil all the time including the judges and the police and the and the politicians the law of settling on government land to break that you know is a pretty small law in comparison so let's turn to turn a blind eye to that law which by the way again in my view is an immoral law because there should be no government land yeah I think the I won't want to look too long and this is we have other questions too but I think one of the the challenges with that is sort of what I described to you when I wrapped in Brazil of you know we used to have a mayor in Saint Paul who said would say publicly that he would steal but he would get stuff done right and I think that the point of the rule of law and I think it's a good discussion it's just doing that legally and openly right just what does that promote and that's it's a philosophical discussion right if you start breaking the rule of law somehow knowingly exactly but when the law is unjust then what the state needs to do is reverse it so for example slavery was the law in Brazil and in the United States and then at some point we said oh man this is an immoral bad law we go rid of it so if the law says these people you know it's like immigration in the United States the law is unjust today and a lot of people who came here should be legalized right the solution is not to penalize them the solution is to change the law good discussion we me and Thomas have had a debate of the law many times before so yeah I was I was about to jump into that yeah it's been a long discussion between us but anyways jumping to another question here this one comes from Felipe he is just I think it was an interesting question he asks how do you prevent liberalism from becoming a monopolist game right and he adds here the best getting so big that no one could compete what's your perspective on that here it doesn't happen never has never will uh what happens is that under freedom competition always shows up there's always competition so let's you can take many historical examples but let's do the classics in America right in 1870s uh what's his name a Rockefeller had 93% of the overfinding capacity in the united states monopolist right no because a monopolist is not a monopolist unless they have government protection Rockefeller had no government protection so what did he do what are we taught an econ 101 would happen if somebody gains a monopoly they raise prices and they reduce quality because they don't care because they have no competition but it isn't it weird that Rockefeller lowered prices every year increased quality every year why well partially I mean there are lots of reasons why one is he realized that if he didn't there would be competition because there were no barriers to entry there are no political barriers to entry people are always trying to chip away at a so-called monopolist second he realized that as he lowered the price of oil there would be more uses for it so there would be he would gain in economies of scale what he lost in profit margin and of course the reason we ultimately got the internal combustion engine with gasoline in it is because gas was so cheap who made it so cheap Rockefeller also when Rockefeller had 93 percent of the refining capacity in the united states who ultimately competed him out of the business because the business that he was in was not oil he was refining oil for what what was he refining it for there were no automobiles why did people need oil for lighting they used to burn kerosene lamps who competed him out of the lighting business hundred percent he lost his entire market share to Thomas Jefferson Thomas Edison right to electricity now who would have predicted that what regulator in 1870 knew what was going to happen with electricity in the future none so there was competition that we didn't even know existed what's called substitute products a product that would completely substitute for oil what's interesting is that if you take all that into account ultimately Rockefeller's business was broken up right in the 1920s i think by that point he only had 23 percent of the oil refining capacity in the united states not because of government intervention but because of competition there's always competition in a free market now you could the same thing happened to alcoa which had 80 something percent of the aluminum production same thing happened at IBM that had all mainframes how many people have mainframes today they were competed out of business right so the whole conception of monopolies is bogus it's wrong it comes from a complete misunderstanding a complete distortion of economics there is no such thing as a monopoly in a free market monopolies are creatures of the state they are granted special powers they are protected in a free market if somebody has a lot of market share that means they're being successful that's all success is a good thing last time i looked you want to be successful indeed you could argue that there's a sense in which apple is a quote monopoly it's not really because apple has become such a brand nobody else can sell apple only apple can sell apple and but that's the whole point of starting a business it's to gain so to be so successful that nobody can compete with you on that which you are successful in apple's case it's beautiful products and marketing it's not iphones it's not computers they're in the business of creating beautiful products and marketing them all so yeah beautiful and usable that's the it's interesting we see we see the opposite happening when state companies are privatized right so you the best example that we have here in brazil is vali the iron ore company it used to be a state-owned company they had it was it was a defended by state monopoly what happened after they were privatized they become more lucrative what they pay in in dividends and taxes is more than what they gave to the state back to the day which was negative in many cases they increased the the jobs supplied there by a factor of 15 to 20 their market value grew 15 to 20 to 30 times so the the other the interesting thing is which is and i just we discuss this a lot yet the attitude is there's in brazil every single example of privatization has been the reduce of of a monopolist sort of market in the increase of a capitalist you know sector industry company in the increase of dividends taxes jobs etc so we have no examples not a single one of where privatization went wrong here to the opposite it's been it's been the other way around it's been creating capitalism creating free marketing creating space so and everybody knows this is not a surprise it should not surprise anybody and yet these myths continued true another if you i don't know how you're on time but i think we have a couple more interesting questions here sure um we another this is from one of our associates fernando he asks if the digitalization process right and the impact on income geographical distribution versus services oriented economy and finance and tech etc so new york and silicon valley and you know boston etc it it's been happening for decades in the u.s right it's it's something that's been happening independent of your perspective of it do you the question from fernando is do you think that's contributed to the american shift to liberalism liberalism somehow into a more state oriented culture or politics i mean it's it's hard to tell because of course the the tech industry is very left wing it's very illiberal in many respects people who in new york who are in the service businesses are very illiberal indeed i think most of america today unfortunately is very illiberal um no i i don't think so you know i the politics is not driven by economics in the long run it's driven by ideas um and look deindustrialization is a good thing industrialization sucks it's filthy the jobs are not great the the hard work physical labor and the thing that has deindustrialized america it's not china what deindustrialized america's technology robots computers you just don't need that many people indeed america people don't know this but america produces more stuff today than ever but it produces it with less than half the people because of computers and robots and and and technology so the illiberalism is a consequence of ideas and the illiberalism to a large extent is a consequence of the mixed economy it's a consequence of a slow drift away from freedom and away from capitalism and yet people feel alienated they don't understand they've always been promised that they will be successful and rich um no matter what and nobody's ever demanded that they take personal responsibility for themselves and they don't understand what's going on now they're being told that they're poor and they don't have anything i mean it's delusional the working class and the law middle class in america are rich relative to anybody else in the world but they they've been told by again intellectuals they've been told a false story about stagnant wages and standard stagnant standard of living and as a consequence they feel alienated and they have moved away from capitalism not because capitalism betrayed them but because the intellectuals betrayed them because the intellectuals have told them that they problems are the fault of capitalism this is why who your intellectuals are in a culture is everything everything for the future because the intellectuals tell the stories that the masses either endorse or rebel against and they shape the future and if you have bad intellectuals the future is not good and one thing to also reflect on just to add on that and just at my two cents here also is if you look at what happened to wages right in the you know in industrial jobs they as mises very easily cleverly explained is they went up because of tech because of offer and demand right the general offer and demand of jobs you know there's more jobs these jobs are paying more so there's a there's a opportunity cost for that person to you know to leave so if he's staying at in this we see this very clearly in the west right you know labor jobs pay high in the west versus anywhere in the world because just general wages are higher and that and people i think don't even perceive that tech is actually what brought their wages up not inflation or well when productivity goes up and to the extent that technology increases productivity wages go up so every work in the united states is a beneficiary of more technology even though some of the jobs got lost but look a lot of the workers who lost their jobs in auto or steel their children are working in silicon valley exactly i remember mises explains it through the butler example you probably remember that where he mentions you know being a butler there's no increase in productivity yet productivity outside increases and you know your wages to go up there's a cost of opportunity absolutely um yeah i'm just to walk towards the end here we have some closing comments but do you want to give you some space in the stage to give your final considerations if you have any on sort of democracy in the us or this chat or democracy in brazil i'll leave this stage for you for to wrap up sure i mean uh the world is heading in a in a very negative direction it's heading in an illiberal direction it's heading towards authoritarianism or one kind or another left or right in the end it won't really matter to us who are stuck with the authoritarians who want to control our lives that it's true in america it is true in brazil it is certainly true in europe it is true everywhere and the only solution to it is a renewed vigor around liberty and around freedom that i think the classical liberals have but what would i would encourage classical liberals to do which i think they have not done enough of over the last 30 40 50 years is take einranz seriously einranz is the solution to the problems that we have einranz doesn't just present an economic answer doesn't just present a a moderate political answer but she represents a real shift philosophically that can alter the culture she presents us with a new way of looking at the world a new way of evaluating reality and evaluating people and political systems and a new way of living your life as an individual she emboldens you to take your life seriously to to challenge yourself to be the best human being you can be and if people took einranz idea of self interest seriously if they really wanted to be the best that they could be if they really wanted to be successful at living then there's only one political system that allows them to do that and that is a system of freedom that is a system of capitalism so to bring about capitalism we first need people who are self interested enough to care about their own lives we first need people who are committed to their own happiness and their own success at living um so i i'm very i i get energized as i said when i come to brazil and see how many people are reading einranz or studying einranz i i urge people to take it seriously not just to read it because it's a good novel and get a few ideas here and there read her non-fiction study her ideas immerse yourself in her philosophical content and try to in a sense reshape your life based on these ideas and if we can get enough people doing that thinking that way i think the world is ours i don't think anybody can defeat us because reality is ours because because we have the best ideas in the world and it's just a matter of taking them seriously and living by them which i think people need to embrace completely agree yeah i mean i think one thing also to jump into our final comments here is you can never forget that the economy is nothing more than the sum of the productivity of individuals right absolutely we speak as as we speak of inflation we make this you know sort of word that's far from the reality of you know what the government is doing to you know with with with monetary policies we do the same with economy we make it inhuman and on individualistic and and on you know it's it's far off it seems something distant that we can control it's the sum of the productivity of individuals and if they have the right philosophy the right mindset the right perspective the right foundations that the the the sum of that should be we expect it to be positive right we've seen that it absolutely it always is whenever we attempt it we've never got it fully we've never had the the ideal of capitalism but we've gotten close and every time we get close good things happen i we should learn from history exactly to wrap up and final minutes here just to remind people and i mentioned this before yeah we have our bottom our annual formats our eighth forum coming up it i think it's an important event for people that are looking to go above you know build beyond the obvious beyond the surface and then come into more profound conversations about freedom and philosophy and you know leadership and so on and that's going to be on the 17th of September the website for that is forum sp.org it's going to be online free online and paid in person and also just encourage people to follow both the our own media and in our media you know to continue this conversation this is what needs to happen this is how we build the country we want to live in right in the future that we want to be in so yeah adam big thank you for your time big fan of your work and very inspiring to hear your words thank you i'm looking forward to to visiting brazil again hopefully next year and and maybe maybe attending one of your forums and in the years to come and meeting all of you in person that that there will be a lot of fun and hopefully hopefully you can build a real movement in brazil that that brings about a real change i mean i personally i'd love to have a home in Rio de Janeiro and and and spend some time they know where before you have to make it safe you have to make it safe you know we're doing our best thanks a lot my pleasure and of course people can follow me on your on book show dot com and on youtube facebook twitter just look up my name sorry i got you off thomas now i know i was just gonna thank you i really appreciate your time and your effort to the brazilian call us here we're in a difficult situation right now but we always get out of it yes in a way or another we haven't gotten it for 20-something years but we still intend to yeah yeah thank you guys good to have you with us cheers bye everybody take care everybody bye