 But without further ado, let me briefly introduce Yaron Kutuny, I had the privilege of knowing Yaron for almost two decades now. But Yaron is the Chairman of the Board of the Anne Rand Institute, and he wears many hats. But one of the hats that we will see is those private, so that means he's an author and his books are published in the Internet, which is a very smart speaker. And listening to Yaron is always a pleasure, and I invite the audience here to really, really ask questions after this optimistic talk. And Yaron also heard of the Yaron Mokshu, which bears life on the truth, and as I've already mentioned, many, many years ago. Plus that he, of course, has his new clean clothes. And of course, when you can read him, he has his Wall Street offering every once in a while. And about the most important thing is his personal pursuit of wealth, and the moral base of finance is that the people are free. So we will receive the box of books and you can buy them here at the Anne Rand Institute's website, and of course, this is all good. But one thing that I would also ask Yaron to touch upon was his book, and then his book is unfair. And Eric has decided to fight against income inequality. And coming down through crisis, a lockdown crisis now, this issue will be discussed in more than ever. So I invite you to also ask questions as we pass to Yaron. Thank you very much for coming. Black to Vienna. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Can I take this up for a moment? Say yes, we have just gone through quite a crisis. We've gone through a period of time where governments have felt that they can lock us down, tell us to stay home. And the shocking thing is not so much that governments did that. I think what's really shocking is that we all accept it. And country after country after country in the world agreed to the Chinese style lockdowns. And no protests, no objections, nobody stood up, nobody tried to defend a basic fundamental liberty, which is to live your life. What the last, I think, 18 months of illustrated is I think a trend that we've been experiencing now for, I think, 20 years. A real state decline in liberty in the West, freedom in the West. There was a period, not that long ago, some of us, some of you might be too young, but it was a period not that long ago where the prospects for freedom and liberty seemed incredibly positive. A little bit walking down. Eastern Europe was liberated. It seemed like the West in one. Now if you think about it, the 20th century, fascism was defeated, communism was defeated. And we end the 20th century with a real, real energy and a real thrust towards what seems like both freedom and liberty. In Western Europe, you had arbitration in the United States, you had Ronald Reagan. We revitalize the ideas of liberty government. Not quite as much as some of us would have liked. But don't you miss Ronald Reagan and Margaret Baxter? That's compared to anybody in this family today. So we went through a 20th century which appeared like the old collectivism was dead. And we were moving into an era of individual liberty and individual freedom. And I think most of that turned out to be a delusion. But essentially, we have lived now 20 years of a clear move and decline away from that. Not just in practice, because I think in practice we never moved that far towards freedom. But now in theory as well, there's a greater, larger and larger movement today advocating for a variety of forms of collectivism. That's true in America. That's true in Europe. I mean, think about Australia right now. I always thought of Australia as a free country. You know you can't leave Australia? You know how that fly out of Australia? Australia's citizens are allowed to leave Australia. You can't leave Melbourne, five-mile radius from your home. Sydney has been in lockdown for 120 days. This is supposedly a free country. Individuals can't make decisions about their own life, about their own risk tolerance. But what they can and cannot do on a daily basis. If you go out and demonstrate, I don't know if you've seen the pictures, of a straightening police beating up demonstrators in the streets of Sydney and the streets of Melbourne. And these demonstrators demonstrate for what? For revolution? No. These demonstrators are demonstrating for, they want to go back to work. They want to start living their lives. But this has been coming for 20 years. And it's interesting because we're in September 2021 now. 20 years ago was, of course, the event at the mall. 20 years ago was 9-11. And 9-11, I think, began the explicit, the obvious, the perceptual level, if you will, a slide away from any liberty and freedom. 9-11 represents the beginning of the surveillance state of our rights being violated in a variety of different ways. Anybody remember when you went to the airport? You went to the gates and you got into the plane. Remember those days? And people would come, they'd send you off, and you'd kiss and say goodbye at the gate just before you entered the airplane. Now you have to go two hours in advance to take off your shoes. You have to, you know, take out your computers. Why exactly? Nobody can tell you, right? One guy wants to try to smuggle the bomb in his shoe and it didn't work. But now we all have to think, oh shoot, somebody wants to try to sneak something, but now we all, it doesn't matter. And they can't evaluate you as an individual. They can't screen you in any kind of quick way. No, we all have to. I've seen six-year-old girls being patted down because they might be carrying a suicide vest. A six-year-old girl, really. So starting in 9-11, the government took on in the United States. We got the largest reshuffling of government. We got the Homeland Security Department, TSA. The whole mechanism is NSA. They're listening right now. But don't be careful what you say because it doesn't really matter. They're listening anyway. The National Security, right, the guys who listen in, it turns out they were listening to emails of Americans. They were listening to our phone calls, collecting our emails. And, of course, now I'm overseas so they legitimately could be listening. They're listening in the US, of course. So we saw a beginning of that slide. We got a president Bush, Republican, right, who grew government spending, even if you put aside defense, dramatically, he has to cut taxes, but everything else, all government spending went up. We got the largest increase in the regulatory stage. You guys don't know this in Austria, but we got Soviet Oxley, massive, ridiculous increase in the regulatory stage in the United States during the Bush administration. And then, right, so we get this slow decline, wars, security, invasion of our privacy, massive regulatory bills, huge amounts of government spending, and then we get a financial crisis. And what is the world playing the financial crisis on? Who caused the financial crisis? Capitalism, right, free markets. All those free markets existed in the 2000s. So 2007 we had a lesbic capitalism, and then we got a financial crisis in 2008 because of the lesbic capitalism. I mean, the stupidity of the argument that capitalism caused the financial crisis is mind-boggling, and yet the whole world is brought into that idea. Everybody today knows the banks, capitalism, free markets caused the financial crisis. So what's the response to the financial crisis? More regulation, more government spending, more intervention in our freedom, in our liberties. More government, you know, bigger and bigger government, less and less limited. And again, see this across the entire list. And China, by the way, I think the financial crisis is a key time for China. I think up until the financial crisis, they generally want a path to liberalization. They generally believed it was a belief in China, that capitalism was the future, that that's what success meant. And then they saw the West collapse financially, blame it on capitalism, and they said, well, we don't know that. And you start seeing the beginnings of the shift in 2009, 2010, more state intervention, and today, well, of course, China's becoming more and more arbitrary. So you have three events, I think, three key events over the last 20 years, 9-11, financial crisis, and COVID. All bolstering the case of collectivism, state intervention, unlimited government, reduction in individual liberty and freedom. And what's amazing about it is that those trends over the last 20 years come from both left and right. The whole question of left and right used to be, we used to have this vague idea that the right represented three markets, and the left represented so few. But if you look at the American right, the American right over the last 20 years is represented by government. Lots of government spending, and a state that monitors what you do with fear of terrorism, it's always fear of something. And you see an entire political party that used to at least talk three markets. They didn't do much other than maybe rape. Talk three markets completely shifted. Today, the Republican Party stands for industrial policy. It's the National Conservatives' industrial policy. Managed economies, increased government spending. There's no talk of shrinking deficits, shrinking spending, shrinking government, limiting government in any kind of way. Expansion, expansion, expansion. And anti-immigration, and it's not just illegal immigration. Anti-immigration. There's almost no immigration right now to the US. And generally, a retreat from any ideas of individuality. You've got a left that's gone way to the left with wokeism and cancer culture, and you're not allowed to say this, and you're not allowed to say that, and if you do, we fire you. And a left that has become completely intolerable of any ideas that deviate from some kind of religious dogma that they have adopted. Whether it's critical race theory, or whether it's intersectionality, they change the name of these things every few years. It's basically the same thing. It's the idea of victimhood. That's what the victims, whoever they define as the victim of it. When we look at the political landscape today, we basically, in the US, you look at the UK, I mean, Bob Johnson is a conservative. Conservatives used to stand for what? Well, they used to stand for at least a semblance of, nothing radical, right? But a semblance of free markets, resistance to the left, reforming the welfare state, making it smaller and more efficient, lower taxes, generally, at least in America, there are very good lower taxes. What has Bob Johnson done since he became president? Well, locked the brits up. He's just announced he's increasing taxes. He's followed all employees in the UK and said, everybody got a check. Everybody got a check. There's just lots of money in the economy right now. But shortage is labor. There are no workers. Can't find workers. It was interesting in London. You talk to restaurant owners. You talk to shop owners. They can't find people to work because people are getting checks from the government. And even when they stop getting checks from the government, they got used to not working. It's hard to go back to them. The NHS, National Health Service, which is a religion in the UK, you'd think the conservatives would want to shrink it, privatize pieces of it. No. And the big thing about Johnson is very excited about is converting the UK to what my friend Alex Epstein calls unreliable energy. Solar. Can you mention solar in England? Have you ever been to England? I mean, it's much worse than in Austria. In terms of how little sunshine they get. They want to put solar and wind all of England. As if that is the solution. It's a little bit like your neighbor. I don't know what goes on in Austria. But Germany is the character to it. They went to solar and wind shut down nuclear, eliminated nuclear completely and what's happening. They're having to restart old coal plants because they don't have enough energy. So the Brits want to copy Germany or they want to do it even worse. And this is, again, a good circuit of it. Supposedly, market-oriented, applicable. And you can see this over and over again throughout the Western world. There is nobody in the language of free moment. Nobody is talking about deregulating, shrinking the state, getting the state out of economic lives. They're just not there. I mean, the political parties that seem to be successful these days are, you know, center-right, center-left, middle of the road, technocrats who tink a little bit here and tink a little bit there and tink a little bit here and tink a little bit there. But they're not actually doing anything. They're not actually changing anything. They're not thinking long-term. In the meantime, most governments in the West are accumulating debt to the unprecedented level. 20 money in our central banks are creating money at an unprecedented level. Nobody knows where this experiment is going. Zero and negative interest rates. Now, I know people have been warning about this for 10 years, but at some point there's a price to it. Now, we're paying it with your economic growth, which is what the Union is experiencing, what the United States is experiencing, what most of the Western world is experiencing. I mean, even China is now reporting low numbers of economic growth, which is not surprising. So we're experiencing it in the things that didn't happen. But a lot of us can have given up policies. In the political world today, speaking up against it. There's no voice, there's no political party representing them. There's no voice, no political parties standing up against the lockdowns. I mean, they were more competing about when you lock and who locks and vaccines versus masks, versus this, versus which mandate. But who is standing up against mandates, against lockdowns? I mean, with all the dollars, I know hard to believe the world about why can't we make decisions about our own health? Risk factors. How much risk we're willing to take. If you carry the virus, you should stay home. And if you don't stay home and you carry the virus, then the state has all to prevent you from infecting other people. But if you're not carrying the virus, if you're just negative, then it's you're innocent. The state has no business with you. The state shouldn't be able to tell you what you can and cannot do. Isn't that the old principle of liberty if you're not threat to other people? The state has no business in your life. So, if you think about it, what the state should have done at the beginning of the pandemic, and the state has a role in the pandemic, is to test, trace, isolate, which is what the Taiwanese did and they've had almost no COVID. Because, I think, every time there's a little bump, they test, trace, isolate, isolate, and people have it. Leave everybody else alone. And people wear masks not because they're told to wear masks, but because the Asians have a, you know, they wear masks during flu season. So, they just wear masks. But they're expected to take responsibility over their own lives. We're not, somehow, in the West. We are treated as one blob of a collector. Mindless, ignorant, irresponsible. Just waiting for the authoritarians in charge to tell us what we can and cannot do. You know, on what behalf we can and cannot wear, what diplomas we have to show in order to get it to restaurants or business, because the restaurant owner can't decide for themselves what was they're willing to take. So, we've seen over the last 20 years a dramatic increase in state control, state intervention. But more than that. Because I think a really scary part of the last year and a half for me has been the people's response. More than that, we've seen people accept the world of the states in their lives. Whether it's accepting that 9-11 requires all the security, or whether it's accepting that COVID requires what we are talking about. We've just been being intercepted, dumbed down, but what we really be told is that we don't have to take personal responsibility and we don't need to take personal responsibility. Somebody else has taken care of it. And in a sense, what we're seeing in the last 20 years is the ultimate victory of the collectivists. When we thought we beat it turns out that we never actually crushed them and beat them. Because I don't think we ever conceptualize the battle of right. So what is it that characterizes communism and fascism and our political parties today on the left and on the right and the people's response out there? What is it fundamentally that characterizes all these status, anti-freedom points of view? Left, right, center doesn't really matter. What characterizes them is they're all collectivists. They all don't actually care about the individual. Some of them do it in the name of the state. Some of them do it in the name of the race. Some of them do it in the name of the parliamentarian and some of them do it in the name of the public good or the common interest or whatever. But all of them don't actually care about you as an individual. Don't believe you can take care of yourself and try to dumb you down to convince you that you can't take care of yourself because that's when you'll turn to them. Because if you're convinced you can't take care of yourself, then you need someone to tell you what to do. What is really one is the spite of the fact that we defeated communism and fascism. What's really one is the fundamental collectivistic idea behind communism and fascism. We call it something different and if you think about in the U.S. and I don't know how much you get the critical race theory and all this stuff you heard in Europe. And collectivism 101, you all should be defined by the race, by the color of your skin. I mean they are resurrecting racial theory in a way that is unbelievably shocking. I mean they are, you are defined by your race. I mean if a white person said what they are saying, they would call it an article. Again, collectivism, you as an individual don't matter, what you do doesn't matter, your mind doesn't matter, what matters is what somebody believes is the interest of the group. And this is the rise of tribalism we are seeing all over the place where people, and again, you are seeing the tribalism on the left where these kids who do critical race they don't understand what the hell they are talking about. They have no concept of it. They have been given a formula. They have been given something to follow what to do and what to say and how to say it and they won't do it. And you are seeing on the right what people mindlessly are talking about, talking about by Donald Trump the day before and now they are just repeating it. They don't know what they are talking about. But on both sides it's just mindlessness because that's what collectivism is because collectivism is the theory that says the individual doesn't matter what the group does and what we need to do is do what's good for the group but how do we know what's good for the group? Because the group doesn't talk. The group doesn't think. There is no collective consciousness. Where is the good of the group? Where do we find it? Well we need somebody to articulate for us. I mean that's why all groups need leaders. Right? I mean how do we know what the alien race wants? Oh we need a fewer for that. He communes with the spirits of the alien people and he tells us what they want. How do we know what the proletarian want? The proletarian don't have a voice don't have a proletarian mind. They need a leader. They need a Stalin to commune with the spirit of the proletarian and speak to us and tell us who needs the sacrifice? To whom? It's always about sacrifice. And how do we know what could go away studio? Whatever these things want. We need a leader. Collectivism always leads to proletarianism. There's no other out and the people in the middle, the moderates they can postpone, they can delay because of this general feeling that the proletarianism is bad but they're playing right into the game because they're just tickling at the edges instead of standing for the opposite of collectivism. Which is what? What's alternative to collectivism? It's individualism. And individualism is what made the West the West. Individualism is the idea that individuals have the capacity to take care of themselves. The capacity to know the truth. To choose the values. And the model standing to do so that their lives matter. That their lives in a sense are the only thing that matters. Each individual has a separate being. The sanctity of that individual life. If you think about the enlightenment which I think is the root of the ideas of freedom and the ideas of liberty that I think everybody in this room embraces. I mean the alternatives of those at least in the modern era are in the enlightenment in the 18th century. What are the key discoveries of the enlightenment? Well, basically two. One is that each one of us has the capacity to discover truth. We have reasons for each individual. Truth is not revealed. Truth is not in ancient books. Truth is not something only some people have. The truth is something that anybody can discover using a particular method. The method of logic. The method of observing reality. The method of understanding. Of integrating. Of using reason. And then everybody has it. And now today I say that. But think about the 18th century. In the 18th century you don't get to choose anything as an individual. Why? Because you don't know anything. You don't assume to be too ignorant and too incapable of knowledge. Truth comes from the experts. That's what happened to be priests at that time. They happened to be kings or queens or emperors or whatever. They didn't tell us how to live. How do you what's your profession? How is your profession determined? Exactly. I mean you get to know what you want to do. You have to choose. And you still don't get to choose. You have no profession. They don't have jobs. And man how do you how do you get to choose your profession? Well in most places you do what your father did. You join the guild. Whatever your father did you do. One of the most fascinating facts. Everybody knows the Leonardo da Vinci. One of the great geniuses of all time. Why did Leonardo da Vinci get to be a painter and an architect and an advisor and all these things? How come in the Renaissance why didn't he just do what his father did? He was supposed to become a notary. Notary. Why did Leonardo da Vinci become a notary? Like his father. What made him what made it possible for him to have this amazing career that we all benefit from to this day? That he was different than everybody else? He was born out of wedlock. He was an illegitimate child. And therefore the guild wouldn't accept him as an order. He had to be a legitimate child to join the guild. So he was free because he was a bastard. I mean that's incredibly cool right? But you had to be a bastard to be free. Everybody else imagine you're not the waste of all the Leonardo da Vinci's who got to be notaries because they were born to a father and other people. But that's the world. You didn't get to choose your profession. You didn't get to choose who to marry. You didn't get to choose who your leaders were. You didn't get to choose pretty much anything. You were born pretty much with about the same wealth as you died with and that was it. If the king decided there was a war you went to war if the king decided something else you did whatever your lord told you to do. And then suddenly in Europe in the 18th and 19th century suddenly individuals discover that they have a mind. They literally discover that they can discover the truth. A big part of this is people like Newton, teachers that we can explain to people what is going on in the world. And if I look at the world why can't I choose my profession? I've got a mind. I understand what's going on in the world. I'm just as smart as these other guys. Why can't I choose who to marry and hate? Why can't I choose who my political leaders should be? I mean literally it's the birth of reason the enlightenment is called another name for the enlightenment is often called the age of reason. It's the rebirth of reason that makes possible political freedom because suddenly it says you have a mind therefore you can be an agent. Therefore you can act. You are responsible. Because up until that point the assumption was well we all don't know the truth. We can't discover the truth. What philosophy and teachers is that? We're just in a cave. We see shadows. Plato taught us and western history is dominated by Plato based from Greece on. But we can't know the truth. The truth is in another dimension. It's in the world of forms. Only certain individuals, the philosopher kings can commune with the world of forms and then they come back into the cave and they tell us what reality really is like and maybe they help us see the light. But we as individuals can't do that. We're just watching shadows. We're too incompetent. We can't make choices. And if you eat Plato's Republic it's about the most opportunity you know state effort. I mean he has nothing on the communists. Everything is regulated. Everything is controlled. Why? Because people are too dumb to take care of themselves. So somebody has to take care of them. Plato cares. So we discovered that no, Plato's wrong. Aristotle turns out to be right. Aristotle is Plato's student. No. There's no world of forms. It's just mysticism. It's just you can prove that. This is knowledge. It's right here. We can see it. Our senses are validated. We can use our mind. We can discover truth. Aristotle is the first real scientist in a sense. He puts together something. He's wrong about almost all his science. But his method is basically the right method. So in a sense in the enlightenment it's a rediscovery of Aristotle. It's a rediscovery of life and a rediscovery of everybody of Aristotle's ideas. The idea that we're efficacious. We can know truth. And then if we can know truth, if we can make choices, if we can live, then what do we want to live for? Oh, we want to live to be happy. I mean the first conceptions, this idea being happy as an individual start arising during this period. In my life, in a way that will make me happy. That's my job in life. So you get this individualism and capable of achieving success and I want to be successful. I want to live. I want to make choices about how to live. And out of that comes the whole liberal revolution. The whole revolution of political freedom comes out of that. Starting in 1776 and sweeping across Europe and the rest of the world over the next few hundred years. But it's all in the name of this new philosophy really a philosophy of individualism of the value of the individual and the value of his freedom because in order for me to use my mind in order for me to use my mind in order to pursue the values that I need in order to be happy what must I be? What must be eliminated from the world think act in pursuit of my judgment my values my happiness what must be eliminated from the world force coercion authority and there's a concept for that there's a concept for that they came up with in the Netherlands a job lock solidified and concept is individual rights individual rights are not implanted in us that's something we're just born with magically individual rights are the conditions under which we as human beings die survive in a social context when other people are involved we need protection from them because some of them are bad guys rights recognize the fact that you every one of us should in a social context should be free to pursue there's like an act on behalf of this free of coercion free of force rights are just a recognition of freedom that freedom is the way we should live freedom is the appropriate way of living for individual human beings and for a while western civilization swung towards individuality and the benefits were massive we became unbelievably rich people McCluskey says they're what? 3,300 types of rich that we were 200 years ago 250 years ago that's a way, way underestimating I've talked to you about this way underestimating because that's just indolent to us but in quality of life gazillion times you can't measure how much better our lives are today because of this movement towards freedom and individualism that has occurred over the last 250 years just think of how much you know where in that calculation do you put having a toilet running water you can't measure that we don't buy that stuff really it was a capital investment made a long, long time ago so it doesn't count in the 300 multiple of 300 you know when I count the iPhone this is considered this is a thousand dollars cost a thousand dollars how does an economist view what's the value of this well the only thing we can do is to measure the value of this is a thousand dollars because that's how much I paid for it but how much does this work to me much more than a thousand dollars and if you think about it what it would take to replicate this 15 years ago we're talking about millions of dollars and even then you probably couldn't get away with it and what is the value of my ability to sit in Vienna and read a bedside story to my son in California I'm making this up because my son has gone out of the house so what's the value of that you can't measure that in dollars you can't measure it in dollars but it's more than 300 times so it's thousands and thousands our life today is so good and we have no appreciation for that for the material value we have today all the results freedom is a result of individualism but you see nobody has defended that individualism immediately when the enlightenment ends the forces, the collectivistic forces start up attacking the values of individuals whether it's Seoul, Cannes, Hegel Schopenhauer, Marx Nietzsche, they're all anti-individuals they're all collectivists I mean Hegel what's the greatest value for Hegel socially the state we're all supposed to be absorbed into the state that's the key individuals don't matter to any of these philosophers and it's a broadside attack against the enlightenment, against Aristotle Plato will not die Plato keeps coming back and we today are cruising along on some of the values and virtues of the enlightenment on some of these ideas of individualism that some people out there still have a little bit of but they're being eroded they're being chipped away constantly by the forces at our universities as our schools and intellectual forces constantly talk in terms of collectivism in terms of what's good for the state of the group and again they define the group differently every time but it's always at the expense of the individual it's always the case that the individual is expected to sacrifice for some group and again the right has its groups the left has its groups so what we need, I think our mission is is to resurrect the idea of individualism it's to bring it back it's always being to fight for the enlightenment values it's to reject collectivism all kinds of collectivism not just the ones we happen to dislike at the moment if you look at the political map today left and right I find myself hating them at least in the other states almost equally they each want to violate my rights they each want to control me they each want to step on me they each don't care about me and you as individuals and the whole conception of the left and right which comes out of some silly thing I guess French parliament right after the French Revolution where the people who sat on the right were acts and people who sat on the left were something else it comes out of that it's not ideological it's off on the map I am I come to the conclusion it needs to be scrapped this whole because it feeds into right they're all collectivists so they should all be grouped together side like us to see it as we draw the political lines collectivism over here and individualism over here and put all the collectivists together where they belong communists and fascists can decide by side because they're both the same thing and all the different variations of collectivism the socialists and the various nationalists of various forms the nationalists in the sense of state above individual the nationalists who want to sacrifice you for the sake of some idea of the state all of them should be on the spectrum and then there's nobody over here which is sad but that's our goal our goal is to get us over here and over here is individualism over here is where the state is there to be our servant our servant to doing what protecting our freedom that's it it's normal for the state to protect our rights leave us alone we can figure out viruses the solution to viruses is not coming from the state it's coming from private individuals Turkish immigrants in Germany discovered the Pfizer vaccine right and the children of Turkey those evil Turks they're the ones who came up with Pfizer vaccines Moderna anybody know how long it took Moderna and BioNTech in Germany how long from the day the Chinese put up the DNA of the virus how long did it take them to have the formula of the vaccine a month, two months, a year or less than a year could get the vaccine in here two days literally two days because they had the platform they plugged in the DNA and they got two days they got the vaccine in a month they had the liquid they actually had a vaccine they sent it to the FDA for animal trials safety by June of last year we had vaccines that were safe they'd be tested for safety they hadn't been tested for efficacy for whether they would work but they were safe by June of last year now imagine a free market imagine a world in which we didn't have to pay the government to approve what we thought was healthy for us imagine a world in which drug companies came to us and said look we've got a vaccine this thing is killing hundreds of thousands of people anybody who wants it will provide it you know, hear the risks they are risks we tested it to the best of our ability we think it's safe we sign a release of liability and then most of us wouldn't do it God, these men are good but some of us, maybe like me who are first adopters would go and get vaccinated and you all would watch ooh, he hasn't died yet he's still standing ok, so no people and by December, when after you finally got around to approving the vaccine half of us would have been vaccinated you would have said hundreds of thousands of lives that's our free market route it assumes that you can make decisions for yourself and that people can negotiate and yeah, some people make stupid mistakes ok, so they make stupid mistakes and they suffer the consequence as usual but no, those kind of choices are beyond us we can't make decisions for ourselves we need a board of supervisors to decide who gets vaccinated when, how much and we need the government to buy all the vaccines because we can't buy them for ourselves our businesses can't buy them insurance companies can't buy them hospitals can't buy them the government has to buy all the vaccines and then distribute them and they're very good at that we know how well governments are distributing stuff in the United States compare how the vaccine was distributed by the US government versus how Walmart distributes stuff every single day or Amazon gets packages to my door within 24 hours it would be a complete game changer and yet, nobody even thinks about that it's inconceivable in the world in which we live where the assumption is, again we as individuals don't matter we can't make decisions for ourselves so we need to redraw the political map we need to call the political parties that exist today what they really are they're all collective and some of them are moderates so they're not quite as authoritarian as others but they're still collectivists and we need to start drawing up who are the individuals do they exist out there how do we create, how do we educate people about the value of individuals it's not that long ago that at least in America people thought that that was a good thing that's changed America's changed over the last 20 years I moved to America 34 years ago and I've seen this dramatic decline of the last 34 years not just in the politics not just in the economics but in the spirit of people I came right at the end of the Reagan administration where there was an optimism a positivism and individualism a can-do attitude an entrepreneurial attitude and most of that is gone it's sad to see but the others has become I don't want to insult you guys but it's become like you it's lost when it was to be America which was that individualist experience so that's the new political spectrum what we need to rediscover are the ideas of that enlightenment the ideas that I think are represented in what I think is the most important political document ever written which is the Declaration of Independence that was written by Thomas Jones and the idea there was it was not we're creating this new state this new country for the common good in the public interest so we can sacrifice some people to others none of that is in the Declaration of Independence indeed that's what they're rebelling against this country was founded on the idea that what matters are individuals the country was founded on the idea that governments as an instituted for one purpose and one purpose only to protect those individuals to protect their rights and it's stunning a whole country was founded on a more ethical idea of individual rights of the fact that individuals should be free because that's the appropriate way for people to live that's the only appropriate way for people to live I mean nobody could write a document like that today and be taken seriously but that's what we need to rediscover that's what we need to fight for the right to life to live your life as you see fit based on your judgment based on your values no authority can tell you what to do and what not to do unless you're a threat to other people nobody has a business in your life right to liberty each one of us has a right to think, write, speak and nobody has a right to stop us block us use force against us tell us some thoughts unacceptable well they can tell us but they can't do anything about it we have a right they cut this out but we have a right to property to earn our living to keep it and to use it as we see fit isn't a property rights anymore we have to get environmental approval for everything you do on your own property you have to get the state approval what you build well why is it yours if they need to approve what you do and inspect this to come in if I renovate if I chop down a tree in California you need permission from the state in what sense is it my property I'm just leasing it from the government I need permission from them to do anything and try not to pay property taxes and suddenly discover that you're only paying rent sign yours and of course we all work hard we make elderly and then half of it's gone before it even reaches us what right to property do we have in the state over 50% is not yours and they could raise it any time they could take it whatever they want there's no principle that says that it's your money and indeed the way politicians even talk about taxes they talk about you know how much they're leaving you it's as if it's their money and they're nice guys and you get to keep 40% of them they've got everything upside down again they're assuming like the kings did that everything is theirs I'm letting you use it right now be happy because I'm letting you that's the attitude of everyone to have a right to life, to liberty, to property and maybe most importantly you have a right to pursue your happiness it's your life your values, your mind your judgment, your decisions and that's what we shouldn't really fight it's the right to pursue happiness that's something I think we inspire young people around they've got a whole future in front of them and who's going to make them happy I mean we're at the Hayek Institute Hayek said that it's a problem of calculation and it is a problem of calculation but it's much more than a problem of calculation it's a problem of fundamental knowledge nobody knows how to make me happy except me nobody knows how to make you happy except you there is no meta-knowledge that says your values have to be XYZ you have to converse to be happy you have to make those decisions and if somebody else imposes those things on you they're not yours and they won't make you happy happiness is personal values are personal so it's not just an issue of calculation it's an issue of you can't even get the data often we don't even know exactly what our values are part of life if you're giving them out so a vision of the pursuit of happiness a vision of individualism a vision of freedom is what we need to be fighting for coalitions with the existing political whatever compromise us challenges how do we shift the debate the discussion and start fighting for what really matters and adds freedom and individualism thank you