 Let me focus on the question at hand, which is the question of the morality of capitalism. And what way is capitalism model? Is it at all model? But first let's ask the question of, what do we mean by morality? What is it that we mean? When we talk about morality of a system, morality of a socio-political economic system. I don't view capitalism, by the way, just now only as just economic. I think it's broader than that. I think it's an entire political-social system. And I'll define what I mean by capitalism in a minute. But before we get to that, we need to talk about what is morality because I have a different conception of morality than many people out there. I believe that when judging a social, political, economic system, there's only one standard that should apply. And that is the extent to which that political system enables human flourishing. So to me, morality is the ability of individuals to flourish, to succeed, to live a good life, to live a life of where they can pursue their happiness, where they can pursue their values, based on their own judgment. So not based on some authoritarian telling them what they can and cannot do, not based on some dogma that says that they have to live a particular way, but what is moral is a system, is a system that leaves individuals free to make choices about their life, to choose the values they pursue, and then to leave them free to actually pursue those values and hopefully attain them. No system can guarantee happiness, no system can guarantee flourishing. The best we can hope for is a system that leaves you as an individual, free to try, to pursue, to achieve the best life that you can live, because that to me is what morality is about, achieving the best life you can live. We only have one life, as far as I know, one life, you gotta live it, you gotta make the most of it. And when it comes to politics, when it comes to society, when it comes to a political system, we want a political system that gives us that opportunity to go for it, to try to live the best life that we can live. That's my standard for what is moral. It's not to impose a particular way of life on anybody, but it's to give them the freedom to make the choices about the way of life they want to live. And by that standard, and I'm open to being challenged on that standard, and I'm sure some of you will, but on that standard, there is only one moral political system, only one, and that is the system of capitalism. So what is capitalism? What we have today is not capitalism. There is no capitalism today in the world. Capitalism is a system in which the government is such that all it does, its sole responsibility, its only job is to protect our freedom, to protect our ability to make choices. It's to protect our freedom to act, to act in this world, to act in pursuit of our values. Government has no other role under capitalism. So in capitalism, the government, for example, has no economic responsibility, does not intervene in the economy, at all. So it does not regulate, it does not control, it does not centrally plan, it does not tell you what you can and cannot do, it does not tell you how you should or shouldn't live. The whole point of capitalism is that it leaves you free, free to make your own choices, free to make your own decisions, free to live your life as you see fit. It doesn't try to dictate your life for you, whether in your personal realm, or in your economic realm. Capitalism is a system that recognizes that each one of us, each one of us as an individual has inalienable rights. Rights mean freedoms of action. Each one of us should be free, should be free to take whatever actions one wants, good actions, bad actions, whatever actions you want, free of coercion, free of force, free of authority, free of somebody compelling you to behave in a particular way to do a particular thing, to act in pursuit of anything in particular. The role of government and capitalism is to protect that freedom. In other words, to leave you alone, protect you from your neighbor, protect you from cooks and thieves and fraudsters, protect you from foreign invasion, arbitrate disputes so that we don't have duels in the streets. And other than that, leave you alone so that you can make choices about your own life, so that you can decide the kind of life you wanna live. Capitalism is inconsistent with the platonic view of philosopher kings who know what's good for you and are gonna dictate to you what's right and what's wrong and how you should live. We abandoned that view of society a long time ago, but we still dabble it. We still live today in what I would call a mixed economy, what many call a mixed economy. We have some freedoms for the most part, where you can do what you want. You can, you know, we still have free speech for the most part. You can say what you want in most countries sometimes. You can sleep with whoever you want in most countries sometimes, not everywhere. You can live your life as you see fit. You know, for most things, you can even start your own business if you get the right permissions and if you ask nicely and in some places if you pay off the right people and you can usually employ who you want. You can't necessarily fire who you want, but you can certainly employ who you want. So we have limited freedoms. We have some freedoms. Some countries a little bit more, some countries a little bit less, but in every country, we have governments that intervene in almost every aspect of our life in one way or another. We are not free. Our income is, big chunk of our income is taken away from us. We are controlled and regulated in our business lives. You are controlled and regulated in every aspect of our economic life. What we sell, how we hire people, how much we pay them is all dictated by a philosopher king who knows better than us. We don't have the choices. We don't have the ability to act free of coercion, free of force, free of authority. We live in a world in which authority tells us what to do all the time. So I believe we should reject any model where we institute before us philosopher kings to tell us how to live and what we can or cannot do. You know, we don't call them philosopher kings anymore. We call them bureaucrats, regulators, politicians, but that's what they are. They know better how you should behave. They know better how much you should earn. They know better what you should or shouldn't produce. That to me is them all. It's none of your business, leave me alone. That to me is the right ethical approach to living, to trading, to interact. So I think capitalism on a theoretical level is the only system that is moral because it's the only system that leaves individuals free to pursue their own values, to live their own life based on their own standards, based on their own minds without coercion. We live in mixed economies that coerce us constantly. But let's, what about capitalism in practice? How is it done in practice in reality? Now first, let me say, and I know the left says exactly the same thing I'm gonna say, but I'm gonna make the contrast, that there really never has been capitalism as I just defined it. There's never been a complete separation of state from economics. Now the communists say the same thing, of course. There's never been real capitalism, there's never been real communism. We need to try it next time it'll get a work, next time we'll get it right. And this is the difference. The difference is that to the extent that you try socialism, certainly to the extent that you try communism, it is by the standard of human flourishing an unmitigated disaster. It leads to nothing but death and starvation. Everywhere it's tried, everywhere it fails. At whatever scale it is tried, whether it is a scale of a commune, a kibbutz, or a Soviet Union or China, it always fails and leads to death and destruction. Maybe not death on a kibbutz, but destruction certainly. Capitalism is the opposite. To the extent that capitalism is tried by the standards of human wellbeing, to that extent it succeeds. To that extent people are better off. People are wealthier. People have more options. People have more choices. People have more wealth. People thrive. Capitalism is a system that is being dabbled with for 250 years. And everywhere, no matter what, place in the world that is tried even a little bit, it has unbelievably good outcomes in spite of the anti-capitalist propaganda that you hear. I mean, the story of humanity is a story of endless poverty. We look at the history of mankind over the last 100,000 years, what you see is extreme poverty lived by well over 90% of all the population everywhere in the world. So for 100,000 years, basically income and wealth were flat. They didn't alter. They didn't change. Maybe they got a little bit better under Greece and Rome and then they went down and they stayed the same pathetic life. How long did people live back then? Anybody know what's the average life expectancy? Yeah, it was well under 40, right? And then something miraculous happened because at some point just on a scale of income, wealth, but also life expectancy, suddenly everything went up dramatically, not a little bit, not a little Greece or Rome, but suddenly everything exploded so that today in France, your income and wealth are well over, on average, well over 300 times what they were 300 years ago, 300 times. But in real, in terms of quality of life, the quality of your life is thousands of times better than it was 300 years ago. How do you value, you can't value monetarily the value of having running water and toilets. How do you value electricity? In economics, we can only measure dollars, or francs, or euros, but in terms of quality of life, our life is much better than we can measure it in terms of in those terms. We have today the kind of wealth that nobody 300 years ago could have even imagined. You live the best lives any human beings have ever lived on this planet. By any standard of wealth, income, your life expectancy is probably over a hundred. Mine is probably less, yours is probably well over a hundred. And if the right scientific breakthroughs happen, it could be a lot over a hundred. And there's no limit to the wealth, to the success you can have. What happened to lead to this inflection point of exponential growth in every measure of human wellbeing? What happened? Did anybody know how many people were in extreme poverty 300 years ago globally? What percentage of the world population was extremely poor? The UN defines extreme poverty as $2 a day or less. How many people were extremely poor 300 years ago? Yeah, over 95%. How many people are extremely poor today? In the world, not in France, but in the world. Globally, anybody know? Yes, it's like an important number, right? 20%, anybody else? More than that, less than that? 10%, what's that? Think Africa, think Asia, think the whole world. It's 8%. We went from 95% to 8%. 40 years ago, 30, 40 years ago, it was 30%. In the last 40 years, the greatest advancement human beings have ever seen in terms of the defeat of poverty has happened and you don't even know about it. We've gone from 30%, 40% of poverty, extreme poverty, to 8%, we should be celebrating in the streets. Nobody celebrates, it's a good question as to why. How did that happen? How did it happen that over the last 300 years, poverty has basically almost completely been defeated? And if you project another 50 years, it will be, there will be no poverty in the world. Now, what had created that inflection point about 200 and something years ago? Well, the ideas, ideas created that inflection point. And those are the ideas, the same ideas that are fundamentally behind the system of capitalism. 300 years ago, or really 230 years ago or so, the ideas behind capitalism were embraced in certain parts of the world. And those parts of the world exploded in terms of economic growth and progress. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran Book Show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening, you get value from watching, show your appreciation. You can do that by going to iranbrookshow.com slash support by going to Patreon, subscribe star locals and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those, any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see the Iran Book Show grow, please consider sharing our content and of course, subscribe. Press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live. And for those of you who are already subscribers and those of you who are already supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.