 Okay, good well good evening everybody. Thank you for being here. It's a real pleasure. Thank you loose for inviting me This is I think my first public lecture in Hong Kong. So it's this is a real treat Self-interest and how it affects the world around us and what a big impact it has an effect that's a kind of a weird title, right? I mean if you grew up like me I I grew up in a good Jewish household you guys grew up maybe in Chinese households and some of you are Europeans You were taught from when you were very very young The self-interest is what? Bad right greedy right evil evil, right? So self-interest and improving the world. I mean, what's that got to do with one another, right? That doesn't go together from where this young we're taught what? We're taught that what is what is virtue? What is goodness? What is moral to do what? To live for others to serve others My mother taught me to think of myself last to think of other people first Now we can talk about whether my mother actually meant that or whether any mother actually means Right particularly Chinese mothers But that's what they tell us And they don't tell us that by accident. It's because their mothers told them that it's because every preacher at every church or every synagogue or every Religious institution says that that's what you should do Because every philosopher almost with a few exceptions has said that the standard of goodness the standard of virtue The standard of living a good life is to subjugate yourself and to serve others We erect statues we call boulevards We give names to these things to people who we perceive as having made big sacrifices have served They're so-called common good We have a sudden perception of what is right with his good mother's mode is virtuous and it's all associated with being selfless or at least a perception of being selfless of Sacrificing of living fathers in one way or another and when we think about self-interest What do we think of? When you pointed a kid in the schoolyard and he said He's being self-interested or he's being selfish. What do we mean? Yeah, we mean unscrupulous this kid has all the answers Unscrupulous absolutely right right because we don't think well if you the actual definition an actual description of self-interest is taking care of Self we don't think all he takes care of himself. We think he's unscrupulous. That is he does what he does at other people's expense He'll lie steal cheat stab us in the back to get his way We've been taught that that's what self-interest means to us So we have we've been taught we've been educated very consciously That's morality virtue goodness is about selflessness about taking care of others About sacrifice. What does the sacrifice mean? What does sacrifice mean because we use it a lot But we almost never never actually what does it mean to sacrifice? So you're paying a price of someone else so I don't know I paid 300 bucks to my iPhone was that a sacrifice? Yeah, so sacrifices you give something and what do you get in return? I did nothing more negative. Yeah something negative something or nothing right because when I buy an iPhone What do we call that we don't call it it nobody actually thinks that me buying an iPhone is a sacrifice? At least not for me. Maybe maybe you guys buy iPhone's a sacrificial Yeah, well a sacrifice would be me buying an Android. That's right But what do we call it when I buy an iPhone? Do we call a sacrifice? No, what do we call a trade and what's that? What's the characteristic of a trade? What's the nature of trade? Mutual benefit. I buy this iPhone for $300 because it's worth how much to me How much is it worth to me if I buy it for $300? No, it can't be 300 guys econ 101 You wouldn't bother you wouldn't bother right if it was if it was exactly the same you wouldn't bother You know the effort of sticking your hand in your pocket and taking the 300 bucks not worth it You will value this more than what you will need to pay for when you buy a nice pair of shoes for X number of Hong Kong dollars. I won't speculate It's because you value the shoes more than you value the money You're not sacrificing. You're improving your life by buying those shoes You're improving your life by buying the iPhone and The other side Apple is improving their fate by selling me the iPhone. They are making money They're making a profit. I get The value I get from the iPhone is productivity Coolness, you know, whatever it happens to be right Apple gets money for it, but we're both benefiting It's a trade the nature of a trade is mutual benefit win-win the nature of sacrifice by the definition of a sacrifice is that it's Somebody loses you if you're sacrificing lose. Otherwise, why is it a sacrifice? Otherwise, it would be trade if you're winning and other parties winning. Why not call it a trade? So it's hard the nobility of sacrifice That's goodness. That's right and almost nobody ever stops to ask a really really crucial question Why why should I sacrifice? Why should I live for the people? Why are the lives of other people more important than mine? Where does this come from? This commandment Why is my life? You get one shot at this all of you one Unless you're Buddhist and then there are many but you know put that aside. Let's let's just assume there's one You get one shot at this life Why not live it? for you Why is somebody else's one shot at this more important than yours? And if you ask that to your preacher to your philosopher to your mother, I Don't think you're gonna get a very satisfactory answer Generally the answer is because we tell you so Because God told you so or because The philosopher king is commuted with the world of forms that's a reference to Plato and is telling you so Iran asks the question why Why is it my life? What's important and our answer is that there is no why there is no answer Because they're wrong each one of us each human life life life Generally As living beings We face an alternative We can live or we can stop living we can exist or we can go out of existence To be or not to be there's a pretty profound statement that Hamlet makes To be or not to be to exist or not exist to live or not to live That's the essential choice that every living being has a plant an animal a human being Plants and animals know the answer Automatically not only do they know that they want to live they know how to do it They have it ingrained they have it programmed. It's in there. It's genetically Automatic a plant knows it needs sunlight you put it in the shade it goes finds the sunlight it needs water say dope Send it roots out to find the water An animal knows how to hunt it knows what to do, but we for the most part Have no knowledge of any of this stuff. We don't know how to live. We don't know we require knowledge We require choice. We have free will We have to choose to live as a first choice and then we have to figure out how to live How many of you know how to skin an animal and make clothes? I don't Grow wheat build a spear. I mean we could probably figure that out. That's not seems easy But my guess is that if I was actually in the middle of the jungle and had to build a spear a spear It would not be easy. It would be hard. We don't we're not programmed. We don't have it. We don't have that intrinsic knowledge Biology is not pre-programmed us to know this stuff. We have to figure it out Now what I ran teaches us is that morality the science of ethics should not be about dying Should not be about serving others Should not be about making other people's life better. It should be about figuring out figuring out scientifically What it takes to live? To live as a human being to live the best life that you can live to make the most of the one shot you have on this earth To be to use a cliche the best that you can be as a human being and it's not easy It's not trivial to figure this out and you need to engage with the world in order to find answers It's hard and if there is a science of ethics the science of ethics Should be about helping us to do that By providing us with principles with ideas of how to do this of what is required and if we just think Broadly and I'm not gonna I'm gonna do a whole seminar here on ethics But what is the one thing that makes it possible for us as human beings to live to survive To thrive to be successful in Living as human beings. Well, what is it? What is it that makes it possible stuff figure out? How to turn animal hides into clothes how to build a spear how to grow food Human reason our ability to use our minds our thinking our Rational faculty so if you're gonna take care of your life if you're gonna live the best life that you can live If you're gonna make the most of the one life you have It's not about the lion stealing and cheating that we associate with it. It's about using your reason It's about being rational. It's about figuring it out. It's about Thinking if you had a boy a lineman's ethics down to one word it is thinking the virtue of thinking That's what the virtue of self-interest is self-interest equals thinking using your mind figure it out Everything else is a consequence of that one thing so and would tell us respect the thinkers Respect the builders respect the creators that make us the people who do With their life make something of their life create something with their life produce use their reason Apply it to the problems of survival and build something from that make something from it. We live in a culture. Unfortunately Where that is not appreciated. We don't build statues named roads named boulevards for thinkers for producers for creators Because they tend to be happy and successful I mean when was the last time you saw a saint in a in a painting with a smile on his face All right saints don't smile They usually have arrows sticking out of them all kinds of places because the whole idea of morality in our usual commonplace conventional framework is moral equals suffering moral equals sacrifice I ran gives us a morality for living a morality for happiness or morality for smiling by having a good life For being happy for being successful morality for loving loving life Loving the things that make life possible that make life successful So if we look at some examples if we look at successful people out there and how the culture looks at them Take somebody like I like to use Bill Gates as an example. Hey Bill Gates. Everybody know Bill Gates former CEO founder of Microsoft richest man in the world Last I saw although after after the stock declines. I'm not sure but Bill Gates Built a company from nothing Built what at the time was in the early 90s the biggest company in the world Made for himself 70 billion dollars How do you make 70 billion dollars? Or if I knew I'd go make it, but How do you make money in principle? How's money made? Making something that was something to somebody else, right? You make money by sacrifice you sacrifice others to make money I don't know how you do that Because why would other sacrifice to you depends on their ideas. I so people who come to work at Microsoft sacrificed Why they got a check They had a choice to go work for the companies. They could have stayed where they were originally What is it about going to work which is a sacrifice? You've got five options How would you choose between the options the one that would make you what the one that would Most fulfilling to you the one who pays the best if that's what your main concern is as some people, right? So why is taking the option that pays you the best of sacrifice? It's it's the best, right? It's your best option and therefore It's an improvement of where you were before It's a step forward not a step backward. It's a net gain on the net loss It's a trade It's not a sacrifice Now I know, you know, so so we might as well go there if this is we brought up I know that there's this perception like oh, you know every time an iPhone is made Some employee in Foxconn is only making I don't know what the going rated Foxconn is three dollars a day five dollars a day Whatever it happens to be and that seems like that's awful Right here. I am middle-class American with one of these nice phone and some Chinese Person in St. Jan is or Shanghai wherever Apple makes this is only getting three bucks a day But why is the Chinese employee taking that job? Because he's better off because the alternatives are worse because he's better off Otherwise you wouldn't take it you can go back to the farm doesn't want to go back to the farm farms no good Right. There are other companies that might employ him, but they play less or equal And what is the benefit he gets by taking that job? money but skills Learn something and If you track these employees as some people have indeed gone in and actually tracked them You find that they slowly advance they make more money some of them leave and become entrepreneurs some of them become managers They rise up to become the growing middle class of China. You don't start a middle class. You have to start somewhere And then you rise up So it's not a sacrifice It's a choice. It's a trade. It's not a trade We might do because we're rich easy for us We're relative to mainland Chinese in many parts of China. We I can Generalize I think on this group. We are relatively rich. So yeah, we wouldn't take that job But if we deny that person that job if we say okay everybody who touches an apple has to make Ten bucks a day a hundred bucks a day you decide on the rate. It doesn't matter. What would happen? They'd lose their jobs Their jobs wouldn't exist Some of us would say the price of an iPhone would go up to let's say $500 or $1,000 and some people maybe not me but some people would say at $1,000. I'm not gonna buy this Sales of Apple would decline and all those people would lose their jobs. So if you've done them a favor by giving them a raise No You've hooked them What causes people to make more money, you know in a market economy What causes you to go from three bucks an hour to five bucks an hour to seven bucks an hour to a thousand bucks an hour What causes that? your own productivity You are now producing more and more and more how do you get how do you get to become more productive by learning a skill? by having experience by gaining knowledge and You can't gain that knowledge. You can't gain that skill You can't gain that experience unless you have a first job that might pay you nothing Or very little nothing, but very little right nothing is compared to what we would expect to get Intentions All intents and it's a good example where some people get nothing of course internships where people get nothing are typically reserved for Middle-class kids everybody else has to get a minimum wage, right? It's just quite quite a hypocrisy So let's go back to Bill Gates Bill Gates made 70 billion dollars By trading with a lot of people By trading with his employees to help him make the products that he then sold to all of us And we all bought them. Why did we buy them? Do we sacrifice when we bought the products the Microsoft made? well, yeah, I'm an Apple user so for me it might have been a sacrifice, but Even I was an Apple user in the early 90s in the late 80s when it was tough to be an Apple user You guys don't don't know those days, but When you bought a Microsoft product for a hundred dollars at the end of the day, how much does that work to you? Tens of thousands that way it's it's hard to put a number on how much the Standardization that Microsoft brought to the computer industry is actually worth worth a huge amount. It's changed Everybody's life even people like me who only use Apple Microsoft changed our lives and it changed the lives of almost every human being on the planet Because Microsoft products are used to make almost everything more efficient They use to improve agriculture in Africa. They use to improve productivity in Asia They've standardized computing and probably made the internet as we know it today possible Billions and billions of people around the world are better off for what Microsoft did and Bill Gates You know, he made 70 billion dollars off of that Why because billions of people were better off if you take a billion people and they contribute You know, they pay for your product just a little bit. It's a lot of money. So what do we think of Bill Gates? What is the culture think of Bill Gates good guy? Yeah, not a very good guy when he was at Microsoft was he a good guy not particularly Not particularly not not not you know one of those really evil guys But not a good guy right even though he changed the life of almost everyone in the planet because it's interesting a More code doesn't say you're a good guy if you help other people Interesting it doesn't say that because if by that standard Bill Gates would be a saint He helped seven billion people the more code actually says that in helping other people you have to sacrifice otherwise it doesn't count and Bill Gates didn't sacrifice he made 70 billion dollars So we look at him and say yeah, I helped seven billion dollars, but he he's selfish Because he made 70 billion helping other people and benefiting doesn't count You know, there's there's a lot of microlending that happens in places like India and Africa and other parts of Asia Microlending is when you give small loans to very poor people to start little businesses and and and they grow it It's it's there's some mixed research about it But generally it's perceived to be a very good thing it encourages entrepreneurship and encouraging Self-responsibility. Well, there are two large microlending kind of entities one is a for-profit and one is a non-pro-profit profit Who do you think it's all the credit? The NGOs the for-profit ones. Yeah, we don't like them Yeah, they're helping as many people, but we don't like that because they're benefiting at the same time Bill Gates did more To help poor people than any NGO ever has in the history of mankind Not a good guy because he benefited from I mean, that's weird So when does Bill Gates become kind of a good guy a little bit? Well, we haven't got the poor yet. He's still rich Well, he gave up his job in Microsoft God forbid he should continue to produce and make stuff and actually make any money And he became a philanthropist full-time That's a job give money away now. He's a good guy Why because he's not benefiting At least not in money So he's giving money away left and right. I don't have anything against giving money away But the fact is that Bill Gates will benefit far fewer people by giving the money away than he did in Microsoft But this now is considered a model activity a good activity a normal activity. Why? Because he's not benefiting even though it helped fewer people. He's not benefiting So that's that's a good thing. Now. How do we make Bill Gates a saint? This is where we get to your point, right? If he was poor Now if we wanted to make Bill Gates a saint, I have not spoken to the Pope about this site. I can't Verify this but he would have to give all his money away move into a tent And if you could bleed a little bit We want to see blood we want to see suffering we want to see pain again You've never seen a painting of a saint with a smile on their face Then you'd go to church and worship Bill Gates Now that's something there is very very wrong How can it be the building? creating making employing people creating incredible values for people Making good life for yourself Bill Gates has lived a good life He's exercised his mind. He's used his reason. He's used his personality to make his life a good life built a nice house for his family raised kids He said what at least from the outside seems like a very successful life. How can that be a moral it? But when he gives his money away, somehow it gets elevated. How can that be right? How can it be good that we take a genius like Bill Gates one of the great innovators of the last century and Tell him stop that to be a good human being you have to stop doing what makes you So brilliant and you have to do something else Hey, you might be good at it. You might not be good at it But you have to take away his dream take away his passion and put it somewhere else just to make him a good person And if you see Bill Gates talking, I've seen him some interviews. He's done when Bill Gates talks about his philanthropy You know, he's okay. He seems fairly cheery and okay, but when he talks about his investments in technology When he talks about the technology will he lights up? He loves this stuff and yet we're denying him that stuff Because we're saying yeah, you might make money. God forbid something's wrong with the world If that's the trade-off we accept as good If that's what we expect of our leaders when we condemn creativity and productivity and building stuff We'll get to questions. I promise You might even win the best question Something's wrong when we admire Philanthropy above production I don't I have nothing is philanthropy and nothing is charity if you're supporting values that you really believe in If you're promoting ideas that you really hold or you're helping people you really care for that's all good It's all good, but let's not fool ourselves Philanthropy and charity don't change the world Philanthropy and charity didn't build Hong Kong Philanthropy and charity didn't make the US what it is You know, I like to say the US in 1776 when it was founded was a third-rate colony The the the the Brits or the English didn't really fight Because it wasn't that important. They were too busy with the French and Spaniards and in the Americans won the war by default almost Because it was third, you know, it was a developing country By 1913 150 years later the United States had the biggest strongest most powerful economy in the world by far That did not happen because of charity community service in philanthropy What did what what what made that happen? Resources Hong Kong what natural resources does Hong Kong have a Large port there are lots of large ports in the world There are lots of bays with ports in the world. You have nothing in Hong Kong. It's a rock in the middle of nowhere You yes, you have a port lots of places are ports I I grew up in a city called Haifa that has a natural port believe me Hong Kong is more impressive than Haifa Natural resources the Soviet Union has more had more natural resources than America many times over The Ukraine the country of Ukraine has the most for child Land in the world for agriculture and yet people war and to some extent still are starving in Ukraine natural resources Natural resources don't produce wealth Natural resources do not produce wealth lots of places Brazil right where's Winston Winston's from Brazil Brazil has immense natural resources and it the poor good poor What produces wealth? It businessmen what produces wealth is capitalism what produces wealth is businessmen left free Entrepreneurs left free That's what produces wealth and they can take a desert and turn it into wealth like Hong Kong Like Australia feel it's pretty deserty Half of Israel is a desert And the reason it can produce wealth is because of entrepreneurs and because they're relatively free not as fierce I'd like not as free as you are in Hong Kong, but relatively free That's what produces wealth Entrepreneurs like Bill Gates like Steve Jobs and all kinds of variations that are not as brilliant and genius but free people creating businesses making products Engaging with other people on the basis of win-win transactions Engaging their minds to solve problems problems that exist in the world Problems that they'd by solving them they improve the lives of other people And none of them do it because they want to necessarily prove other people they do it because they're trying to make a living for themselves. I Mean Adam Smith recognized this Two hundred something years ago in the wealth of nations He says the Baker doesn't make the bread for you. He doesn't care about you He makes the bed for who? Myself he's trying to be starting to take care of his family trying to make a living Now Adam Smith thought that was kind of shady He didn't particularly like the fact that the Baker was doing it for himself. I'm answers. Why not? It's good that the Baker makes his bed for himself And by doing that he makes your life better because you get better at a price that you will need to pay and it's a trade It's a win-win so what Makes it possible for us to thrive what makes it possible for place like Hong Kong to be so successful a place like United States to grow as much as it did is people pursuing their own self interest by producing and creating and building and The political the political atmosphere that makes that possible is an atmosphere a system of freedom Because you can try to pursue your own self-interest in a system that's authoritarian, but you keep bouncing against a gun of The enforcer the regulator the controller the bureaucrat so what people Who want to pursue their own self-interest? By ultimately by improving the state of the world need is freedom is to be left alone If human reason is the way in which we survive if human reason our rational mind is the way in which We thrive as human beings which we grow and succeed then What is the enemy of reason? What is the enemy of of rationality? What is the enemy of human thought? What is it that makes it impossible for me to think or to act on that thought? Well religion is a barrier. I agree with that, but religion is a barrier. I can overcome right? I can overcome I can I can I can reason myself out of religion, but what is something you cannot reason yourself out of? force You cannot reason yourself out of somebody else pointing a gun at you force is the fundamental enemy a Reason and therefore force is the fundamental enemy of production forces the fundamental enemy of self-interest Force is the fundamental enemy of life Of human life, and we've taken an institution We've got an institution this institution has existed for 10,000 years a human institution called government And we've given it a monopoly over the use of force and we've given it their ability to use force against us to limit our lives Limit our ability to be happy limit our ability to prosper to create to build to use our reason You want to start a business? He has 55 different forms you have to start up and some bureaucrats gonna decide if it's okay or not now in Hong Kong It's easy relatively to start a business, but it's getting a little harder. I think New Zealand has overtaken you It's not easier to start a business in New Zealand You want to you want to you want to make a new drug that might save the lives of millions of people? Well, you have to convince this bureaucrat over there that it's good He's the standard not you in the marketplace Yeah, the FDA or whatever the equivalent of the FDA is wherever it is The standard is not truth the standard is Somebody with a gun standing over you we restrain ourselves we constrain The entrepreneurs ability to produce to create to build We restrain the ability of individuals to pursue their self-interest and by pursuing their self-interest Indeed make the world a better place Because the world is a better place when we pursue our self-interest Because what's in our self-interest is to think to create to produce Is it in your self-interest? To lie steal and cheat many people think it is but isn't That's like lying anybody lie here anybody ever lie don't don't don't I don't want to know It doesn't work very well Not if you're trying to pursue a good life Lying usually means what faking it to somebody else Now there are lots of reasons why lying doesn't work, but I can give you some personal reasons You know, I'm at the age where I can't remember what actually happened about a week ago, right? I've got a span of limited number of days that I remember stuff But if I lied Last week if I lied about something that happened last week. I now have to remember two things What really happened and the lie? Which is hard two things, but actually it's much more than two things Because after I remember The lie and the truth who I told the light to and who I told the truth to why I told them the lie Why I told them the truth? That's at least six and it multiplies from there if you really extrapolate It's too hard. What a waste of brain energy The truth is one if you always do it. It's always simple Right. It might not be always emotionally comfortable It's efficient It's good for the mind. It's good for the brain. It's simple. It's straightforward Lying is just a waste of resources waste of time waste of memory We have limited believe me. It's limited, but lying almost always gets really complicated beyond this, right? No, I once told this story to a group About a guy who and I made this up. So this was a completely made-up story You know about a guy who lies to his wife about he's coming home late every night He's actually going with his buddies out drinking a party or whatever, but he comes home and he tells his wife every time That he's that he's working late, right that the boss is the man that that he will play me he does it over and over again and He's got a real problem now, right? Because he has to make sure that when the wife meets the friends They all lie for him and everybody has to get this story right and the story about which nights and exactly what's going on And who the bosses and so on And it's just complicated. They get waste of resources waste of time and you're gonna get caught So somebody in the audience raised a set and said I know it this exact thing happened and The wife called his boss and said why are you having my husband work late every night and of course the boss said I don't Not good Not good. You guys are too young to Know that lying to your wife is not a good thing and getting caught is really really bad But you'll have to believe me on this one. I Mean just think about it for a minute. You've got a best friend Think about what would happen to that relationship if you just one day started I'm gonna lie to him on a regular basis just so fun it It's gonna ruin the friendship if you're in business anybody in business knows that if you like to a supplier Or you like your customer you can get away with it. Maybe once maybe twice It ain't gonna last Nobody's gonna do business with you if you're an employee and he saw lying to your boss You're gonna lose your job You're not gonna stay there for very long lying is that is a dumb policy It's not good for you. It's bad for you And it's bad for this wonderful instrument. We have up here our reason our rationality. This is the instrument We need to really take care of Because this is what allows us to survive. This is what allows us to thrive This is what allows us to do well in life And lying polluted Corrupted there's a term in computers somebody here's probably in computers. Maybe many of you garbage in Garbage out Garbage into here garbage out You can't afford to put garbage into here lying is garbage Faking reality is garbage Putting your wishes your whims your emotions above your reason above evidence is garbage This is the instrument you have to find to You have to keep in great shape Because it's what your survival your happiness your success is going to depend on This is why education is so important one good thing our mothers teach us Used to be educated because it's good for you And by the way, this is the thing about the sacrificial morality That is so common in a culture Nobody actually believes in it My mother didn't think didn't mean for me to think of myself last She wanted me to be successful and you can't be successful if you think of yourself last Right just like your mother's wanted you to be successful She urged me to get an education for whom so I could sacrifice other people No, she wanted me to get an education so I could live a better life See but that somehow we've compartmentalized that's that's different. That's practical life Moralities over here. We all admire mother Teresa, but how many of us really honestly want to be mother Teresa So what happens to many people and again not so much when you're young when you get older You're living a life that's mostly based on self-interest. You've gone and got a good job You've made some money. You've had a family. You've lived for yourself to some extent to another most of your life In the back of your mind is this your mother is saying Have you sacrificed enough? Have you given enough? Mother Teresa is urging you over here to sacrifice and to be selfless And inside you've got on the one hand you've lived a pretty selfish life and on the other hand your ideal is Mother Teresa What is the emotion that causes when you wouldn't live one thing and believe in something else? Guilt guilt comes from an older guy Not very old but old because when you're we're young we don't feel it. It's something that accumulates over time guilt To me one of the great tragedies out there is that successful people feel guilty not for their vices But for their virtues for their success for the prosperity They feel guilty for that So what iron rand urges us to do is scrap that morality It's impractical. It's immoral. It doesn't make any sense. It's not good for anybody. Nobody actually wants it It doesn't have any It doesn't have any basis in reality doesn't have any reason for it scrap it There's a much better alternative A return to morality as it should be a morality that teaches us how to live This is really Aristotle's vision for morality How to achieve and greet you the man air happiness flourishing success be rational And if you read the virtue of selfishness, which I think is here um She articulates Some of the principles that would guide you you got to discover those principles for yourself and figure out how to live a good life And a good life leads to self-esteem. How do you get self-esteem? Self-esteem is the sense a positive sense about yourself How do you get that? How do you get that in america today? We believe you get that by giving everybody a ribbon But that's not how you get self-esteem You don't get self-esteem from other people patting you on the back. How do you get self-esteem? From achieving things from setting go Setting goals achieving them and recognizing that you've achieved them having pride in yourself I did it. I achieved it Cool And when you do that you get self-esteem Self-esteem is a prerequisite for happiness It's a prerequisite for living a guilt less Unearned guilt. I'm talking about guilt that you don't deserve life That's what we should be thinking about should be studying And if you get that if you get the idea that my life is mine To live as icy fit. As long as I don't hurt other people I should be left alone because I want to choose my values I want to decide what to do with my life. I want to decide how to live my life There one kind of political system do we want as individuals self-esteem As individuals who want to pursue their own happiness who want to choose their own values We want to choose how to live their own life. What kind of political system do we want? Do one mother government sitting on our shoulder telling don't drink that soda Too much sugar. Don't eat that meat Don't start that business We want to be left alone We don't want other people choosing our values for us Nudging us to do this or to do that. We want to be able to use our own minds To use our own Reason to choose our own values and to act on those values And that political system is a political system freedom. We want to be left alone. We want to be free What does it mean? Let's say capitalism. Let's say fair means What does it mean? Left alone. Leave us alone. Leave us alone capitalism. Let's say fair capitalism. Leave us alone capitalism Hands off So capitalism in my view freedom in my view Wests on a foundation of Individualism of individuals pursuing their own self-interest rationally and wanting to do that and Pursuing that and they want to be left free That's the only moral basis moral foundation for a truly free society You have As close as we have today in the world a free society here in hong kong. I hope You study you you you engage With some of these ideas to build a solid foundation So that you make hong kong even freer than it is today Thank you