 The Anduin Institute was founded about three years after Ayn Rand herself died in order to promote her ideas, in order to bring her philosophy to the mainstream of America, to get young people to read her books and to engage with intellectuals with her ideas, to make it ultimately to try to change the world, to influence the world around us based on her philosophy. So what is Objectivism? I mean it's a philosophy, so it's a lot, but fundamentally it's the idea that reality is what it is. It's not what we believe it to be, it's not what some external force made it, it is the way it is and we have the capacity to know that reality and that capacity is the reason. So we don't know the truth through revelation, we don't know the truth through our feelings, we know it through our capacity to think, to be rational, to reason, to use our senses and the knowledge of our senses to integrate it into knowledge. And only individuals can reason. We can't, you know, other people can't eat for me, but they also can't think for me. Individuals can only think for themselves, so the unit in society, the unit in ethics and morality is the individual. So the individual's purpose in life according to Objectivism is the pursuit of his own happiness, the moral purpose of life is to pursue your happiness. And how do you do that? By using your mind in order to choose the values necessary for your own survival and flourishing as a human being. So, Ayn Rand was against sacrificing to other people and making other people the focus of your morality of your life, but she was also against having other people sacrifice to you so that using other people, you treat other people on the basis of a trader relationship, mutual beneficial, win-win trade relationship. And then, of course, the only political system that really allows individuals to pursue their happiness that leaves them free to use their mind, to make their choices, to pursue the values that they deem necessary for their own life is capitalism. Capitalism is a system that protects us from the enemy of reason that is force. It is a system that leaves us free to pursue our values using our mind as our guide, so she was obviously against all forms of statism from socialism to fascism to the kind of mixed economies that exist today in the world. She believed in real capitalism, a capitalism where the government only does one thing and that is protect our freedom, protect our individual rights, our right to pursue our life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness, a government that basically had a police, a military and a judiciary and that is it. Well first, it's not just Koreans. Everybody thinks these ideas are somewhat strange because they've never encountered them. So the first thing is that people have never heard it before. You know, most people when they defend capitalism, they defend it because it works, but nobody defends it because it's moral, except Iron Man, except Objectivism. People were all taught, whether in the Eastern cultures and in Western cultures, that the purpose of life is to serve others, it's other people's happiness, or at least you should really, really concern yourself with them, right? And we believe that even though we don't live those lives. So most people pursue their own values, which is our careers. We try to make ourselves as happy as we can. We want our children to be successful. So we're torn between the moral duty to care for others and the reality where we live our own lives for ourselves and that creates guilt and part of what Objectivism says is, why are you feeling guilty? Why does this conflict exist? So I think it's important to understand what these ideas really mean, what self-interest really means. And Iron Man didn't believe that selfishness meant lying, cheating or stealing, because she didn't think lying, cheating or stealing are good for you. If you really think about it, you know, people who lie all the time, they don't succeed, maybe in politics. But in no other field in life do they succeed. And even the ones who succeed in politics, they're never happy. Happiness doesn't come from lying. Happiness doesn't come from cheating, stealing. You might be able to get money, but the money at the end of the day is meaningless to you if you didn't earn it. So Iron Man's self-interest is about using your mind based on reality to discover the principles that lead you to live the best life that you can live, the happiest life that you can live. It means treating other people as values, as potential values that you can trade with both at the material level, like when we go to shopping and we trade, but also at the spiritual level. You know, you benefit enormously from the people you love and the reason you love them is because they provide you with values. So it's about treating other people as end in themselves who you can then trade with, with the goal of making your own life better. And capitalism is just a system that leaves us free to do exactly that. Capitalism is not, you see capitalism gets blamed for all the problems that exist in a mixed economy. So capitalism is not what caused the financial crisis. Capitalism is not what caused the Great Depression or the Asian financial crisis or all these things, but it's always blamed for those things because it's easy for us to blame capitalism because capitalism is viewed as self-interested and it is self-interested, but we have a negative perception of self-interest. Capitalism really is just about freedom and it turns out when you leave people free, then what they do is they, many of them become entrepreneurs and they create jobs and they create businesses and they create, some of them, some people become artists or some people become teachers and people pursue their dreams. People do the things that they're good at at whatever level that they can. And what you get are thriving, successful, industrious and very wealthy countries, everywhere in the world, wherever it is tried. No system in human history has brought people out of poverty except capitalism. So it works and it's moral because it leaves you free to pursue your happiness, to pursue your life, to pursue your values. And we shouldn't confuse again capitalism with the system we have today where the government is intervening constantly and writing all kinds of rules that distort the marketplace and distort our ability to trade in win-win relationship. The government steps in in the middle and says, oh no, no, no, you can't pay them that much, you can't treat them that way, you can't buy that product, you can't facilitate that relationship. It's the government that distorts capitalism and perverts it. So I think if people truly understood what self-interest is, it's really what they want. Don't we all want to be happy? Don't we all want to be successful at living, not just in our careers, but in every aspect of our lives? I think Ayn Rand's philosophy is a philosophy of success. It's a philosophy for living. She called it a philosophy for living on earth, on this earth. So it really is that. And capitalism, of course, everybody should be pro-capitalism because it's good for anybody who's willing to work for living, anybody who's willing to work hard. Capitalism benefits. And it's rewarding not only materially, but it's rewarding spiritually because you get to do what you want to do. You're not driven by an authority that is using coercion to tell you what you can or cannot do. Well, I agree that capitalism is under threat. But capitalism under threat, it's because it hasn't been defended properly. So during the financial crisis, everybody said capitalism has failed. And nobody stood up and said, no, capitalism has not failed. Our mixed economy has failed. Our regulatory system has failed. But capitalism has not been tried. How could it fail? It's not true that in 2007, the financial industry in the United States was completely free of regulation. Quite the contrary. Banking in the financial industry in the US is the most regulated industry in the country. And it was the most regulated industry in 2007 and 2008 when the financial crisis happened. It is a failure of those regulations that caused the crisis. And then if you add to that, the fact that the one product that banks and financial institutions deal with, money, is monopolized by government. There's a Federal Reserve. There's a South Korean central bank. And the government monopolizes the issuance of money. It controls the interest rate, which is the most important and the most complex price in the economy. And we let a bunch of bureaucrats control it. We wouldn't let them design an iPhone. We wouldn't let them price bread, but we'll let them price interest rates. So it's no wonder financial crisis happened. So if you look at the financial crisis objectively, what happened in 2008, the causes of it are exactly those. I'd say regulation and the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve kept interest rates from 2002 to 2005 below the rate of inflation for 2 and 1 half years. I'm a finance guy. My training is in finance. If you create negative real interest rates, which is what they had, you're distorting markets. And you're encouraging people to take on debt. So what happened in America between 2002 and 2005 is everybody borrowed money. And where did the money go? The money went right into mortgages, right into housing. Why into housing? Because another part of the government was saying, we want more people to own homes. We want everybody to own a home. We want to go from 63% of home ownership to over 70% of home ownership. So we're going to subsidize it. We're going to encourage everybody to have a home. So you had Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. And European banks and American banks were encouraged to own the new packaged mortgages. So for example, European banks, if they held a portfolio of American mortgage-backed securities, which is repackaged mortgages, they didn't have to hold any capital against that. That was considered zero risk. So even European regulators and American all encouraged banks to load up on this stuff. The rating agencies are regulated. And then the banks on top of that are told, don't worry. If you make money, you can keep it. And if you lose money, we'll bail you out, called Tubic to Fail. And Tubic to Fail has been around in America since 1984 when Continental Illinois, a very large bank in Chicago, was bailed out by the feds. And every time you look deeply in the financial crisis, and I've got a course, a six-hour course online on the financial crisis, where I peel the onion and go deeper and deeper, what you find is regulation that distorted this, regulation that distorted that. Markets don't create systemic risk. Markets don't create massive financial crises. Only government programs can do that. And in this case, it was housing policy, the Federal Reserve and the overlay of regulations on the banks, including the investment banks had made it possible. Lehman Brothers was leveraged 30 to 1. In a free market, no financial institution would ever be leveraged 30 to 1. It is because the regulators allowed them and then gave them a Tubic to Fail blanket that they could go to 30 to 1 in the bond market, lent them money because they believed they would be bailed out. And when Lehman went bankrupt, what was the most shocking thing about it is the surprise that the government didn't bail them out because everybody expected them to be bailed out. Everything was priced as if they were gonna be bailed out. And the shock to the system was, wait a minute, the government promised it didn't fulfill. And of course 24 hours later, if you remember, AIG was bailed out. So the market got the signal, we bail out some people, but we don't bail out other people, and we're not telling you who are bailing out and who not, which created massive uncertainty and drove the markets into greater crisis. So government caused the crisis and then made the crisis much worse. Well, I think it's very scary, but I think it's the consequence of the education that these young people are getting in the high schools and schools and in the universities. So I mentioned before that Ayn Rand was an advocate of reason and a rational self-interested. When you teach people that reason is not efficacious, it's not the way in which we learn about the world. When we tell people that their knowledge is determined by the color of their skin or by the environment they grew up or by some other form of revelation, or we need experts, knowledge is only available from experts, kind of a Plato's view that the world, real knowledge is only available to the philosopher kings. You get young people who think that they can't take care of themselves. Or if they can take care of themselves because they're very smart, other people can't take care of themselves. I hear this all the time, but those people can't take care of themselves. That's pretty arrogant to say that somebody can't take care. We all have the capacity to reason therefore we all can take care of ourselves. So Bernie Sanders and AOC come along and say, yes, those people can't take care of themselves because knowledge is so hard, knowledge is only for us, for kings have knowledge, they can't take care of themselves, the government has to take care of them. You need to take care of them. So one, we undercut reason. Secondly, we tell people, it's your more responsibility to take care of them. It's your more responsibility to take care of the poor, the suffering, the needy, fill in the blank, whoever needs something. So it's undercutting the idea of reason and undercutting the idea of egoism or the idea of rational self-interest which makes this appeal of Bernie Sanders and AOC so prevalent. Altruism demands that we help others. Well, the government's just helping us be good altruists. And again, if knowledge is not available to everybody, then we need experts, we need politicians, we need bureaucrats to tell us how to do what we do, how to live our lives. So both Bernie and AOC offer these simple solutions. Don't think, we'll think for you. Don't worry, we'll take care of you. We'll give you safety and you can be numb, you don't have to think and we'll take care of you. And unfortunately, given the educational system that has become quite appealing. Even on the regulation side, think about why they wanna regulate everything. The reason they wanna regulate everything is because the biggest sin in the world is to be self-interested. And we know that businessmen are self-interested. That's obvious, they're out to make money. They're out for a profit, they enjoy what they do. They're having fun. That is unacceptable morally. So we have to control them, we have to regulate them. And we also know that self-interest is always associated, supposedly, with lying, stealing, and cheating. They're all crooks, right? It's like their perception of Lehman Brothers. Like there was no fraud in Lehman Brothers, they just went bankrupt, businesses go bankrupt. But we perceive it as fraud. And therefore, we need more regulations, more controls to catch all the crooks. We know there are crooks because they're self-interested. So to a large extent, what's driving the United States and the world towards these kind of statist ideas, the ideas of the centrality of the state is philosophies, philosophical ideas about epistemology, about how we know about the world. And in ethics, what's most important about the world. And of course, a lack of understanding of what capitalism really is and how it works. So, I mean, I think of capitalism as the system where we have a separation of state from economics completely. That to me is capitalism. What we have today are these mixed economies. We have some freedom, and we have a lot of controls. And it's true that in order to maintain the redistributive states, in order to maintain the power of the politicians, we need to leave, you know, they need to leave some people a little bit of freedom. So socialism can't exist. What, it can only exist as Venezuela, as poverty and death and starvation. So what they do is they give businessmen a little bit of freedom, so they create a little bit of wealth, and then you tax it away and you regulate and control it. But you give them just enough so you can sustain the system. You've seen that all over the West. And you've seen people are starting to get sick of it, but they don't know what the solution to it. She's seeing riots in France and a lot of angst in Europe. The people are upset with the current system. The current system is we keep the capitalists alive long enough. We keep private business going long enough so we can suck as much out of them so we can keep our welfare state going. But the people are not happy with their welfare state. They want more. And you know, but on the other hand, they don't want to fear the capitalist because they're the bad guys and they're evil. So you're seeing this dynamic, but if I understand the question right, I think it's correct and exploiting it and stealing from the people who create to provide to those who don't. Yes, there's no question in my mind that it's government policy that's causing the low growth in the economy. Wage-led growth is getting economics upside down, backwards completely. What drives economics is production. What drives the economy is innovation and entrepreneurship. It's business creation. Wages follow. Wages are consequence of increasing productivity. You don't lead with wages. Wages are consequences, not causes. But this is a consequence of the idea that what drives an economy is consumption, which exists in America and exists in Europe. This is what Neil Keynesian had promoted. What the real drive of an economy is consumption. And that's just false on its face. It's just wrong. Because if you think about it, how do we consume? Where do we get the money in order to consume? Real money. Well, we have to work. So we have to produce first in order to consume. And then what do we consume? We consume something that somebody had to produce. In a sense, there have to be two acts of production for every act of consumption. For every time I buy something, there has to be somebody who produced it, and I had to produce something in the past in order to have the money in order to consume it. What drives an economy is production. Economic policies that are pro-growth. Economic policies that are pro-entrepreneurship, that are pro-the innovator, that are pro-business, that are pro-producers of any form. Small businesses, medium-sized businesses, large businesses. And I think the Korean model, even in the past, has been defective in the sense that it emphasized big businesses, that there was too much collaboration of government with business. But true economic growth will come as the government exits the attempt to try to manipulate the economy and frees up capital and business to start new ventures, to expand, to grow, to allow for entrepreneurial activity to create new businesses. Wages will follow. Wages will grow up because productivity will grow up. Capital is invested in increasing productivity. Every businessman makes money by making his workers more productive, which means in the end, by paying them more. But what has to lead is production. And you see, production comes from the human mind. Production comes from ideas. Production comes from little ideas that might increase productivity here or there. And big ideas that entrepreneur might change the whole industry. Ideas come from freedom of thought. Ideas come from the government leaving us alone, providing, not providing any kind of incentives, just letting people act on their own behalf and try to figure out solutions without government authorities telling them, this is acceptable, this is not, this you can do, this you cannot, this you can build, this you cannot. We shouldn't live in a permissioned society. We should live in a free society. And economic freedom is what drives economic growth. If you want economic growth, get the government out of trying to manipulate the economy. So you're absolutely right about entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is what drives an economy forward. It's new ideas, implemented, created, built. I mean the U.S. economy to a large extent relies on Silicon Valley for its growth, for its success, for its prosperity. And it's because there's an entrepreneurial culture that the government is trying to destroy, but that somehow resists it and keeps going. And I think careers lacking entrepreneurs, I think places like Japan and the whole world, to the extent that you have a healthy entrepreneurial culture, to that extent you will grow and you will succeed. And I think if you look at the history of Korea, if you look at the history of Japan, it's those entrepreneurs that created the economic growth in the past. And it's to that you have to return to creating that great entrepreneurial spirit. And entrepreneurs require one thing. And it's just one thing, and that's freedom. It's the freedom to act. It's the freedom to think, to come up with ideas and then act on them without getting permission. They need to convince the capitalist to give them money. They need to convince people to buy their product, but they don't need us to get permission from the government. So that kind of mentality. The other thing is that the welfare state creates an environment in which people want to be safe. Right, don't worry, we'll give you stuff. So don't be ambitious. Don't take risks. But entrepreneurship is about risk taking. And I would say life is about risk taking. Do really live to live a full successful whole life. It means taking risks. Life is boring if one doesn't take risks. And yet the government through its regulatory policies, through the welfare state is discouraging, and I think through our educational systems, is discouraging risk taking, destroying potential entrepreneurs of the future. And more than that, destroying the lives of the individuals because they're not gonna view life with ambition. So to get entrepreneurs spirit back, you need freedom and you need a different educational system. And we need to phase out the welfare state so that people are encouraged to pursue their own values, to pursue risk taking. Who is the John Galt of the 21st century? I mean, I don't think there is one. John Galt is an important figure in Atlas Shrugged. Of course, the figure that drives the action. I encourage everybody, by the way, to read Atlas Shrugged. If you're interested in capitalism, if you're interested in freedom, and then Atlas Shrugged and the Founta had had the two most important books that you should read. And I think if we got more people to read the books, I think ultimately, that's how you change the culture, that's how you educate them, and hopefully that'll have an impact on the culture. John Galt is a literary figure. There is no one John Galt, and there never will be one John Galt. But in many respects, every individual has the potential to be John Galt in your own life. I mean, who is John Galt? At the end of the day, John Galt is a man who takes his life seriously, who fights for his own values and pursues them without any compromise and without giving an inch. It's somebody who realizes that they live once on this planet, and they have to make the most of that life. So they take their life seriously every single minute of the day and strive to be the best that they can be during those minutes. And understand that our lives are shaped by ideas and that we need to take our ideas seriously. And at the end of the day, the world is gonna be determined by the ideas that we hold. So he is an educator. He gives us lots of speeches, Galt does. But he is a man who takes his life and he understands the importance of reason in guiding his own life. That's who he is. So everybody, every man and woman on planet Earth has the potential to be a John Galt. And when they will become John Galt, that's when we'll live in a free society. Equal is unfair. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.