 Did we get it to a livestream? Yeah, I mean, the one from YouTube. The YouTube, which I tweeted and let the world know. YouTube? Running? It said it is live. I mean, it should. And what cameras are you using? Well, we're not having a camera. So it's just audio? Yeah, and the screen. We could put it on the floor there. Yeah, you could put it on the floor. Because people are expecting... It's up to you if it works. Yeah, let's give it a try. Yeah, it's fine. So I need to move. This is the most... It's the camera vision. It's fine. So I go from here... to there. So it's going to be moving in this direction. It's not moving. It's stuck. It's stuck. It's stuck. It's stuck. It's stuck. It's stuck. It's stuck. It's stuck. It's stuck. It's stuck. It's stuck. It's stuck. It's stuck. All right, good evening. Hi, I'm Patrick Moranda. I'm the Vice President of the activities at the event of the Master's of Students' Liberty. First of all, welcome everyone here. It's really great to see that someone here can read it here. Yeah, before we start with the lecture, and welcome our speaker, we would like to give our president, Mark O'Neil, a chance to explain a bit about what Master's of Students' Liberty is about. And what we do, we're going to organize... to give him a round of applause, Mark. Thank you very much, Patrick. So, for those who don't know MSFEL, MSFEL is not shaped by way. We just are in our second year as an organization. So, we, as MSFEL, we are an Interfaculty Student Association. We promote the ideas of liberty in personal, social, and in economic contexts. And we do that by organizing debates, lectures, as tonight. And, well, we are delivering food for food. We want people to think critically about the status quo, and we want to challenge you all to also do that, to ask questions during the Q&A. We will have an hour of Q&A. So, that will be enough. And after that, if it's not enough, we're going to have a social at the tribunal. So, you can, where Dr. Group is also joining us, so you can join us there to have a conversation further about the evening. So, to tell a bit about our upcoming events, we've got, on the 3rd of November, an interesting lecture with a debate about Catalonia, the independence of Catalonia. They are voting on the 9th of November. On the 6th of November, we've got a lot of data. He's going to take us to another perspective, a unique perspective about the economics. He's going to tell about causes and cures of the economic crisis and from an Austrian economic perspective. And on the 11th of November, and I'm very happy to announce this, we've got the Prince of Ichtesstein to speak about our events, about entrepreneurship, the future of entrepreneurship. On the 26th of November, we've got a case for open borders with William Schneider. Do we need to have open borders for this year's sport or not? That said, I want to introduce our speaker for tonight, Dr. Brook. He's from the currently President and Executive Director of the INRAT Institute. He holds an MBA and a Ph.D. in Finance. Seven-time Professor of Winning Award and Chiefs in the past, so that's quite an accomplishment. So I'm very looking forward to and Dr. Brook, Dr. Brook for his words. Thank you. Thank you ESFL for organizing MSFL, something like that. For organizing events I take. Thank you all for coming. This is a terrific turnout and I'm glad to see all of you come to hear a talk about selfishness. That's the title of the talk, which is a real problem for me to be here to talk about selfishness because what if we all be talk about selfishness? What do I know you are coming here thinking about? What does it mean? What does it mean to be selfish? What would we be taught from when we were very little, very small, by our mothers, by our fathers, by our teachers, by our university professors? What do we be taught that selfishness means? Means what? Something bad. Selfishness is bad. And what way is it bad? In what way is it bad? In the schoolyard. In the schoolyard. And as a kid and we say, you're selfish. Do we mean he's taking care of himself, which is a literal definition of selfishness? No. What do we mean? He's what? He's bad. But in what way is he bad? Evil's just another word for bad. Give me examples. What do they do? What does a selfish person actually do? Not share. Yeah, they don't share. Right? Number one, they don't share. Remember that? What else? Is it just that they don't do stuff? What do they do? They act in their own interest, which means what? Ignore others. You guys are way too benevolent. You're too nice. I don't know. When we called in my schoolyard, when we called somebody selfish, he was a lying, stealing, you know, backstabbing SOB. And I'm not translating SOB. So somebody who exploits other people, what we meant by being selfish was somebody who exploits other people, somebody who does anything to get his way. And it was the antithesis, the opposite of what it meant to be moral, to be moral, to be good, to be virtuous, to be noble. Because what were we taught? What were we taught? Was morality. What were we taught? Was nobility, goodness, virtue. What is morality? What is good? What is virtue? To do what? To share. To share. To give. To sacrifice. We're taught from when we're this age. I mean, again, now, my mother taught me, right, to think about this first, to think of yourself. Last, that the purpose of morality was to teach you how to sacrifice. Sacrifice was noble. And sacrifice means what? It's really clear what the terms that we're using mean. Sacrifice means giving something and expecting what in return. Nothing. You better speak up because these two here, they're quite vocal and they'll dominate the evening. So, yeah, because I can hear them, I can't hear you up there. Sacrifice means giving something up with the expectation of getting nothing in return or getting something less valuable in return. That's what sacrifice means. So we're taught from when we're very young that virtue, nobility, goodness needs to sacrifice. It means to be self-less. It means to place the well-being of other people ahead of your own well-being. To take care of others before you take care of yourself. Now, that's just what we are taught. It's what our parents taught us again. It's what our preachers teach us in religion. And it's what our philosophy teaches, in philosophy classes, in ethics classes, in morality classes. Indeed, some philosophers are gone so far as to say that when you're doing something good for somebody else, if you think for a minute about how it could benefit you, it's not wrong. So the whole point of morality, the whole point of ethics is self-lessness. Instead, the nice self is to place other people above self. To serve. To serve other people. And who are the others? We can choose. Usually, there are those in need. Those who have less than you. Those who don't have what you have. So their need, somebody's need, poor health care, whatever the need happens to be, becomes a moral obligation on you. Why? Because you're alive. Because that's why goodness, morality, virtue demands. That's the definition we are taught. And indeed, I would say that we organize much of our economic life around us. Or much of our lives generally around us. We are told that we must share. Share is a great word. Because we learn it in the sandbox when our mothers tell us to share our toys with any strange kid who walks up. Now, we figured out pretty early that our mother wouldn't share the car keys with any stranger that walked up and asked for the keys. But we still teach our kids that that's their deal because it's the ideal of sharing. No matter who they are, they don't have a truck. You have a truck, it's your moral obligation to share that truck. And of course, when we're adults, we are expected to share our income. Now, we're not as benevolent enough to just have our mothers ask us to share the income. We use the state, which has big guns and big prisons, to force us to share that income. But it's all in the name of being good, being virtuous, being moral, being sharing. What's wrong with sharing? And we know, we know that if we leave people alone, they won't share enough. At least not based on our standards and based on the needs of some people. Because they are being too, what? They don't share enough wire because they're being too selfish. So we have to force them to share. We have to cruise them into sharing. Because they're going to be too selfish. They'll think only of themselves. They won't take care of other people if we don't force them to do so. So much about economic systems. Certainly the entire welfare state is predicated on the idea that the moral, the just, the right thing to do is the sacrifice to give, to help without expecting anything in return. Those who have should give to those who don't. That's the moral thing to do. And all the state is doing. All the government is doing is making sure that they behave based on the morally accepted behavior. So we're using a little bit of coercion to get people to be good, noble, just. And that's because it's their moral duty. It's their moral obligation based on all this morality that we've learned. We also, we also observed, right, how do people behave in the marketplace when we send them out to market? What do we know about businessmen, for example? Why are they going to business? Why does Steve Jobs build this? What's that? To make money, right? To make money, these things have a nice profit margin. 60, 65%. There's a lot of money in this, right? Now is it only about making money? Is it only about making money? No, what else? Yeah, he loves this, right? He loves the innovation, the ingenuity, the beauty art. So it's passion. It's passion, but whose passion is this? Steve's, right? You know him, huh? To him, he says, Steve. Steve Jobs to me. So this, this is about Steve Jobs. This is about making money for Steve Jobs. This is about Steve Jobs' passion. This is about Steve Jobs loving what he do, wanting to be innovative, wanting to be the best he can be. This is all about Steve. I picked up on that. And, you know, I like to tell the story when I bought my first iPhone, which I did in 2008 as the economy was finally out of control. I wanted to stimulate the economy. That's why I went shopping. Because I know, I know, I know you're all good citizens. You're all good people. And when you go shopping, you're going shopping because you care about your fellow man and you want to make sure they have jobs. That's why you buy the nice shoes. That's why you buy the latest coin. That's why you get your phone, right? No. I'm not going to ask who shops for that reason. I don't want to embarrass you. We go shopping to make who's like better. I don't want to buy the iPhone because I thought this would make me more productive. I thought it was cool. I thought it would be fun. I thought a lot of things, but they were all about me. I didn't care if that was making a profit or not. I actually knew they were making a profit and I was fine with that. I know that iPhone for 300 bucks, how much was it worth to me? At least that, much more than that, it turns out. You wouldn't have traded if it was just worth $300. The only reason you do it is because you expect to get more value than $300 out of it. An Apple made a profit, so we both benefited. Win, win. But we both went into the transaction for our own self-interest. And generally, we know. We know it's a culture. We know it's a world. Everybody knows this. The businessman are selfish, right? We use this to selfish. They're selfish. They're selfish. They have our money. And when they're not just about money, but they also have a passion and love and all those things, but they're all things that relate to them. Not to you. Businessmen ain't business. They like more interesting. They like more fun, and they like more profit. But we also know about selfishness. What? That is bad. We talked about this, right? Remember? Line stealing, cheating, XOBs. So we've got this category called selfishness. And in this category, we've got businessmen like Steve Jobs who build stuff and create stuff, right? Who are making stuff to make money. And we've got line stealing, XOBs. All in the same category. We use the same words that's quite the thought. So it's not surprising at all that most of us, I don't know if it's this room, but in the world out there certainly, most of us believe that most businessmen are like stealing XOBs. And we do believe that, whether you'll admit it or not, we do believe it. And how do I know we believe it? We believe it because we control and regulate them as if they're like stealing XOBs. The assumption behind every piece of regulation is if not for the regulation, these guys would screw us. I'd like to use the example of elevators in the US who walk into an elevator in the United States and there's a little diploma on the wall. And the diploma says that a government inspected, inspected the elevator and it won't fall and kill you. Because if not for government inspectors, businessmen would kill us every day. Because that's how you make money in free markets by killing your customers. Now some of you believe this, so I don't. Right? If they want food inspectors, McDonald's are poisonous. Because that's how you make money by poisoning your customers. So we need food inspectors, but notice this is the implication. And we'll talk about the history of the Q&A about this. This is the implication of the regulations, of the controls. The implication is a direct implication that these guys cannot be trusted. Why can't they be trusted? Because they're about money, because they're about self-interest. And self-interest equals line stealing XOBs. They don't expect them for what they do. Because again, it's tied up to this concept of self-interest. It's tied up to this idea that there's something bad about this sexual feature of how they behave. So we take a businessman who's very successful, like Bill Gates. He makes lots of money, $70 billion, makes lots of money. How does he make money? How do you make money? How do you make money in a market by killing your customers? No, how do you do it? By satisfying your customers, by selling us something we value more than the price. Right? We sell your product that's worth more than the price we're charging for, and yet we make a profit off of it, because we're efficient, we're productive. So Bill Gates makes $70 billion for himself. For himself. And how much value is created in the world? You can't measure it. It's a trillion dollars. It's not a human being on the planet whose life is not better because of Microsoft. There's not a product out there that's not better because of computers, because of the internet, which were made possible by the standardization of Microsoft to the market. So here's a man, Bill Gates, who built a company that changed the world in profound deep ways. And what do we think of it? Morally, ethically. What do we think of it? He's a nice guy. He's not a good guy. He's a great guy. Why is he a great guy? When does he become a great guy? When he gives his money to charity, but when he's a businessman, when he's a businessman, you have plenty of time to do it. When he's a businessman, morally, from an ethical perspective, nobody thinks he's a good guy. They think he's a great businessman. They think he's maybe created great products, but from an ethical perspective, nobody puts him on the same planet as I don't know, my mother Teresa. Some saints, moral saints. He's not in the category of good from an ethical perspective. When does he become a good guy? When do we start thinking about him in moral terms? When he starts giving his money away. When he starts giving it away. Then he becomes somebody that we admire, that we respect. He travels around the world. Everybody loves him before. We were trying to put him in jail in America, doing everything we could. Now, I am respected because he's giving his money away. He's not a great man yet. Why? He's not a great man. He lives in a big house. What would it take to make him a great man? Abstaches would be built. What would be created for him after he dies? If he did what? If he had it all away, moved him to a tent. And if he could just bleed a little bit for us. If he could show some sacrifice. If he could show that he was really noble and good and virtuous. If he could overcome the tames of being self-interested. Then he's moral and good. But this is the ethical system we believe in. Implicitly again. We don't articulate this explicitly. Implicitly, this is a system. We believe that nobility is giving sacrifice and sharing. He's not sharing enough. He's still so welcome to give much more of the money away if you really wanted to. He's still being self-interested. That's why we don't think he's that great. And yet, to build a business like Bill Gates, you don't share, you don't give, you don't sacrifice. You build, you create, you trade. And you think about yourself. You think about how to make products for you and for your company and for your supply chain. Because you have a selfish interest to do something. So business, we don't view morally as virtuous. We view business as morally tainted. At best, morally neutral. At worst, morally bad. Charity. Community service. Volunteering work. Anything where there's a perception that we're not getting anything in return. That's moral. That's virtuous. That's good. I once attended an awards dinner. Lifetime Achievement Award for business leaders. In South Carolina, you cannot blame these people for being leftists. This is the heart of conservative America. And these guys had introductions. So they would introduce them. These introductions were long because it was a lifetime achievement award. So they would spend a minute on their business achievements and nine minutes on their charity and community service. Here are people who build businesses, who create stuff, employed people, took care of their own life, took care of their family. And that counts for nothing. What really gives you virtue, what really makes you good is the charity and community service. Even though, even though by any objective measure, you help more people by building a business, you change more lives by creating products. You change more lives by trading in the marketplace than you ever will in community service. The world did not escape poverty because of charity. The world escaped poverty because of businesses making money, creating products. One. One guy's on my side. So this is where we are today. I'm all code in my view. Shapes the kind of world we live in. We don't trust businessmen. We regulate them. We control them. Because we don't trust their self-interested motivation. We don't trust businessmen. We trust some ancient trust. We view businessmen as self-interested. They don't share enough. They don't give enough. So we take their money and we distribute it, call it the welfare state. But both of those, the welfare state, the regulatory state, the state, as we know it, in monotypes today, is completely driven by our morality, our self-less snaps. We want to give businessmen just enough freedom so they can produce enough so we can take it away from them and give it to somebody else. We realize enough that we need to leave them free, at least to produce a little bit. But the purpose is not their own world being. It's not their own goals. It's our ability to take this stuff and give it to somebody else. That's the purpose. That's the whole way we think about the world. It's all freeing by this morality of self-lessness. And nobody questions it. This is implicit. They're not talking about nobody on the white, on the left, in the middle. Nobody's questioning it. Nobody indeed is questioning it. It's our style. Except for Iron Man. Iron Man asks an important question. Why? Why is your life less important than the natives? Why should you live for the sake of other people? Why is morality about serving? About sacrificing. Sacrificing is a lose-win. You give and you expect nothing in return. That's a loss. Why a lose-win relationship better than win-win relationships? Why should we live for others? Why is good defined as self-less? And she wrote a book about this I recommend it to everybody called The Virtue of Selfishness where she articulates this. She says no. The purpose of life isn't to serve or shouldn't be to serve. It shouldn't be to share and to give and to sacrifice and to live for other people. Life is much too precious for that. Your life, every one of you's life is much too precious for that. You should live for you, for yourself, for your own happiness, your own prosperity, your own well-being, your own flourishing. And the purpose of ethics is a science. It's not to teach you how to be a slave, not to teach you how to be a servant, not to teach you how to live for other people, but to teach you how to live for you, making your life the best that you can live be. That should be the purpose of ethics. It's what it was for Aristotle. Aristotle doesn't ask the question about sacrifice. He asked the question what virtues lead to the greatest eudaumonia, happiness flourishing for you as an individual. The whole purpose of ethics is on you. What should I do? How should I live? What should I think? How should I live? What actions should I take to make my life mine, the best life that it can be? That's the question ethics should be asking themselves. And what is it? What is the thing that allows us as human beings to flourish, to be successful, to do good for ourselves, to produce iPhones, to produce desks, televisions, clothes, clothes. What is it that allows us all of that? Cheap life, cheap life. Modern day slavery. Greeter. Admission. Funny. Wow. You guys are all off base. Self-expression. What do you express it? What do you express? Look around the room. It's okay. I promise you will get to so-called slave labor in China. Look around the room. As a biological species, we are pathetic. We're weak. We're slow. We have no fangs. We have no claws. You go running down a bison and try biting into it. You can't do it. Or you're going to save it too tight. Who's going to win? Your dad. We already won. When we win? Because physically, not one of you would survive that battle. Physically, we're pathetic. So what is it that makes it possible for us to sit here in the comfort of this room when it's rainy and cold outside and be warm and be comfortable and make fun of capitalists to make it possible for us to be warm and comfortable? The plane. Our mind. The only thing. The only thing that makes a human species successful in this world is using our reason, using our mind. And only individuals use their mind. There's no collective brain. There's no collective mind. There's no collective reasoning. There's you either using your mind or not using your mind. Either succeeding in life or failing in life. That's what it boils down to. Life at the end of the day Think about it. I mean, does anybody here have a gene from agey clothes? I don't. You put me on the wilderness, I have no idea how to make clothes. But somebody thousands of years ago that Einstein of his day probably figured out that if you skin an animal in a particular way and you dry the skin in a particular way you could wrap yourself up with it and get warm. That was an act of genius and an act of using your mind. Agriculture, where does that come from? Somebody's got a lot of exploitation. Agriculture comes from somebody figuring out that a seed drops on the ground and if you water it, something grows out of it. An act of genius to figure out the connection between the two. You're taking for granted, I know, we all do. But somebody had to figure it out for the first time. And then another genius, calling the Bill Gates of his day, would figure out how to take those seeds, sow them and create a whole industry around it called agriculture. It probably took thousands of years between those two inventions and we probably burnt them both at the stake because we hate people who come up with great ideas. That's human history. That's what moves us. That's what moves the human race. That's what makes progress possible. It's people using their brains and in different ways. Some of us, thousands of years ago were good hunters. Others might have been good clothes makers and the hunters went out of hunts and they brought back the skins and the clothes maker made the clothes and they traded. Win-win, just like I buy on iPhone. They traded meat for clothes. But the meat the hunters had to figure out how to hunt. They had to build traps, they had to build weapons, all required. Thinking. Using your mind for your own survival. For the benefit of your own life. And then trading with other people for the benefit of your survival. For the benefit of your own life. All self-interested values. So to be truly self-interested is about thinking. It's about using your mind. It's about having reason. Using your reason. And then acting on it. Because the fact is that we're not born with all the stuff that is necessary to feed ourselves. We have to produce. We have to create. We have to figure out agriculture. We have to figure out how to hunt. We have to figure out all these things. Including how to make an iPhone. Or how to do something else. So you can get the money, so you can go and buy an iPhone. But we have to produce. We have to take care of ourselves. We're built for that. Again, you drop you drop yourself into an environment in which people are not producing most of us, unless we really use our mind would die. Would not be built for physical survival. So if you're really self-interested Iron man tells us two important things you should be doing. One. Think. Think. Think. Think. Observe that in a greater position. Figure stuff out. Figure out what's good for you. Figure out what kind of life you want to live. And then act. Act to produce the things necessary for your own survival. Work. Work is not just some trivial thing that you go to make money at. Work is the sense that you get that you can take care of yourself. Work is the sense that you get that you're worthy of living. People get their self-esteem from their work. One of the great evils of the welfare state there are many. Well, one of them is to institutionalize people out of work. We encourage them never to work. We give them a check and tell them you're worthless. Don't work. Here's a check. You don't need a work. And what that does is destroys their soul. Because it destroys any knowledge that they can take care of themselves. That they're good enough to take care of themselves. That they're strong enough to take care of themselves. That they can think well enough to take care of themselves. Welfare destroys the poor because it institutionalized them into a mentality of problem. And it prohibits them from getting their self-esteem that allows us to be happy, to be successful, to be prosperous. That's why social mobility in the West is down because the welfare state destroys it, annihilates it, creates barriers for people to rise up themselves. By telling them they're worthless which is exactly what the welfare state says to them. So to be truly self-interest, you think, you produce, you work, that production of work is necessary for self-esteem, it's necessary for your happiness, and then how do you deal with other people? How did we deal with other people here? When I bought this, what did we do? Trade. Trade? You deal with other people through trade. Trade in material goods? Trade in spiritual goods? Trade is win-win I give and I expect to get something in return. Something more valuable than what I gave. Friendship is a trade. Try having a friend with one sided and you never get anything in return. Unconditional friendship doesn't last. It doesn't. You guys are young. Same with love. What's more self-interested than love? I mean, the reason I love my wife is because she gives me so much. The guy's a poor group, he doesn't get it. It's spiritual what she gives me and physical. But it's a trade. Sex is a trade. If you're only one satisfied in sex, it ain't a good sex life. For you it is. How's that? He's getting pushed. Imagine going up to your wife to be the day you're getting married and saying, look honey, this is a sacrifice. You don't actually give me anything. I don't get anything out of this relationship. I marry you out of a sense of duty. It's completely selfless. That's absurd. The reason you marry somebody is they make you feel great because they give you a sense of yourself that nobody else in the planet gives you. That's what makes love such an amazing feeling. And it's mutual, hopefully. Otherwise you won't get married. But it's win-win if it's not win-win, you wouldn't engage in it. I'm sorry for all those who have love relationships, sexual relationships and feel for you. You should try it sometime. It's an issue of trading. It's an issue of justice. What does justice mean? Today justice somehow has evolved or been distorted into the notion that justice is equality. But justice is the opposite of equality. Justice is inequality. Justice is about treating people differently. Some people you love you treat differently than people you don't love. Some people are incredibly productive. You pay them more than people who are not productive. Some people pay a lot of money to sit in first class seats and they get first class treatment. Other people sit in, don't have the money. They don't get first class treatment. That's justice. Taking one person's money and giving it to somebody else to make them so-called equal, that is injustice. Treating somebody because they're good and friendly is injustice. I can give a quick example. How do you make me, everybody know LeBron changes? Yeah. How do you make me and LeBron change equally basketball? I want to play one on one with LeBron change and I don't think it's fair that he's so much better than me. So I want an equal playing field. How do we do that? What's that? Yeah, break his legs. Well cut his legs off. You'd break his legs now. What would happen? It's still beating. So we'd have to break his arms too. And then we'd get out of training. Then it would be just. Now everybody says, oh, nobody would do that. That's horrible. Breaking people's legs. But it's okay to take people's 50% of their income. It's okay to take people's time that they spend working hard to try to make a living, to create something, to build something and then just take it from them every year. 50% of my income is gone. I don't even see it. I don't know. I might before having my legs broken once a year. If I got that 50% back, what's the difference? There's no difference. Both incredibly painful. Believe me. When you make money, you don't know. So a whole perception of morality it rags you and my view is wrong. It's upside down. You should be living for your life. For your happiness. Which means you should be thinking. You should be producing. And you should be training. Treating other people with justice. Treating other people the way they deserve to be treated. And that only a free political system can achieve. So self-interest is the way to happiness because its whole purpose is happiness. Your happiness. It's the way to prosperity because it leaves people free and encourages them to produce. Because if they don't produce, nobody will produce for them. It's the way we become prosperous and it's the way we become happy. And lying, stealing and cheating it's not selfish. It's stupid. Anybody here lie? Don't. Lying sucks. It's a waste of time. You never get what you want. You're usually caught which ruins relationships. Wounds your relationship in business. Wounds personal relationships. Wounds love relationships. Lying is like the stupidest strategy ever for cheating happiness. So the fact that we associate being self-interested with lying is a scam. It's a scam by those who try to get us to be self-less to sacrifice because this is the story we've been told for 2,000 years. You've got two options in life. You can be self-less and sacrifice. Good. Or you can be a lying, stealing SOV which means being self-interested. And that's the same. That's nonsense. You can be self-less which I think is bad. You can be a lying SOV which I think is another form of bad and a form of self-destruction bad for you. Or you can be selfish, self-interested which means taking care of yourself which means thinking about what is the best strategy to live. Nobody who thinks thinks about the best strategy to live would ever like to live. It doesn't work. It's stupid. It destroys the one capacity you need which is the reason and the thing. Lying is a destructive strategy. Garbage in, garbage out. Computers, same thing with your brain. Lies are in. You get garbage out. You're destroying machinery of your needs for achieving happiness and success. So what I want to challenge today what I'm trying to challenge you with is not economic arguments. We can talk about economic arguments. I'm sure most of the questions will be in that for some reason that's what people want to talk about. But that's just an outcome. That's just a consequence. That's not what matters in life. What really matters in life is what moral choices you make. Is what kind of morality you adopt. Ultimately, the lowest moral choices will determine how you vote and what kind of politics and what kind of economics we all have. Much more important than that it will determine whether you're happy whether you're successful whether you live a good life and whether you believe that your purpose in life is to be good. Because most of us, and again I'll talk about Americans because I know Americans it's a little different. Americans seem to live kind of self-interested. They go into business and try to make a lot of money. They pursue their life in semi-self-interested manner and then they feel guilty because they should have been mother-traced because their mother taught them what was good, noble, just with self-lesson as to be if they've been selfish and that rips them to shreds and as they get older they become more guilty and even though they be successful like Bill Gates even though they've made money even though they've taken care of themselves even though they've used their mind and deep-produced them and traded they feel bad about and that's what motivates them to do the charity and the community service and all that not because they really believe in it not because they really think it's valuable but because they feel guilty about the lives that they lead to be proud of what you build and what you create. You should be proud if you can create and build a business and make money. Making money is a noble activity. It's a virtuous activity because it's activity that enhances your life because you're trading and when you trade the other side is better off as well just like I'm better off having bought the iPhone in spite of paying 300 bucks for it and I know this concept of trade is hard for you guys but we'll get into it in the future. Making money is good in and of itself if you're doing it through trading and not forcing other people, not using coercion but the only party in the world we live in today or the dominant party in the world we live in today the use of coercion, the use of force the use of guns, the use of prisons is government, not business so be selfish because it's your life be selfish because you only have one shot at this life, one I don't believe in reincarnation in afterlife you got 100 years you guys probably have 100 years on this planet to make the most of it to live a life that you won't feel guilty about afterwards to live a life that you'll feel happy about crying in that you'll be able to grow old and satisfy and enjoy the process, enjoy every step of the way, enjoy every day live live life fully that's what it's about that's what life should be about that's what you should talk, not sacrifice love love your work love the people you surround yourself with your life thank you if you want to take questions if you want to take questions just those of you who are curious and interested in more go to yourself and subscribe to EinRan EinRan.org A-Y-N-R-A-N-D.org is a website with lots and tons and tons of information and lots of free courses free content is a lot to learn I just gave you screen the surface of what's possible so if you're interested I hope some of you are go to the website plus follow me on Twitter and Facebook thank you let's open who wants to be the first there you go I'm going to repeat the questions without the mic it's going to be a problem so speak up go ahead without the mic because it'll take forever to wait for mics I don't think that would be your opinion it would be very shocked if you did I feel like selfishness it breeds other emotions selfishness itself might not be bad in certain cases so give me an example he was actually like from a pretty well off family if he had been selfish and followed his course as a lawyer in South Africa India would still be under oppression by the British and there's a product of that I can only see two outcomes either India is oppressed and the other one is Indians rise up against the British and then you get violence so I get the point so Gandhi a selfish thing for Gandhi to do would it be to continue to be a lawyer and go and make money but he chose instead of that to do something self less and to lead the Indian nation to independence in a peaceful way which resulted in lots of good things and let's just assume that the setup is true that is that everything you say is true I'm not an explorer in Indian history part of the problem is that the way we be taught about selfishness is to assume that selfishness equals money that selfishness doesn't equal money it equals between the values the rational values that are going to make your life the best life that it can be many people choose to have less money so I'll give you an example I mean I'll give you a personal example I got a PhD in finance I had a job off at Wall Street in academia clearly Wall Street would have made me a lot more money I would be a million in today many times over I chose to go into academia why? because I love teaching I love this stuff if you can't talk I love this stuff you can't buy this stuff you can't buy what we're doing right now from my perspective I don't want the money and that to me is no selfish thing I can do it's not about money it's about what are your values what are your rational values now let's say Gandhi I mean I don't know Gandhi so this is imaginary right because it got me money how to beat selfishness but if he was a peaceful resolution to India a place where he grew up where his entire family where the people he loves lives was more important to him than money I'm not saying it was a selfish decision because I don't know what went inside of his head but it could be a selfish decision don't associate selfishness with money just like Steve Jobs does it only make this by the way I get paid for doing this so I'm not doing it for free and I wouldn't do it for free that was not pay me my institutions pay me salary I wouldn't do it for free so I'm still in it for the money but I'm willing to give up a lot of money to get the pleasure, the fun of educating minds some of you think corrupting but I think educated mind just like Steve Jobs wanted to make money doing this but he also didn't want to make something beautiful that wasn't about money now he wouldn't have made, he needed both so one of the corrupt influences of this knowledge is to make you think of selfishness not just like stealing SOP but money it's funny, the left I'll just generalize left, Marxism generally is the most material money obsessed group I've ever met and it's people like me who love capitalism who love free market who care what less about money there's a lot of things more important than money there's a lot of things more important but the left can only think about money dialectic materialism it's called, not dialectic spiritualism or anything else yes should I just point you, I don't know where the mic is from I already have one I have two comments first my first comment is seems to be already in nature 100% of people are born a short perfect type unable to feel compassion by the people they're called psychopaths it seems like the things that they have in their personality corresponds quite a lot with the dialect another point I would like to make is that the reason was not a great person as everyone would say she was quite a horrible person who wanted to if anything keep the people under law and poverty forever and so pointing to her as being a beautiful good people I don't think she's a good person I think a culture thinks she's a good person she's a horrible person there's a lot of reasons among others what you just said my last comment is that you create a society where you optimize the happiness of people and you see more government taxation as a problem I do wonder why the people of Denmark seems to be so much happier than the people of Somalia Somalia has virtually no state the people of Denmark has quite a lot of state it seems counter-intuitive to what you're promoting regulated and taxed people in the world should be coincidentally that the happiness of people in the world great question in spite of the insult nothing I said excludes compassion the idea that people who are self-interested are not compassionate people is something you just made up to devise a a storm man that was never mentioned exists I talked a lot about love love involves compassion there's lots of things that involve compassion compassion is a value compassion does not require sacrifice indeed most people who sacrifice like Mother Teresa feel no compassion feel no compassion it's people who are capitalists who feel the most compassionate but let me ask you a question about happiness of the Danes so first nobody is right mind some people but they're not right minds nobody is right mind who uses Somalia as an example of anything good in the world and suddenly my example didn't say oh if there was only no government everything would be great I'm a great believer in government I'm not an anarchist I never used Somalia as an example of anything good I believe in government that does a few things that doesn't really work it does the protection the definition of protection of property rights it does policing it does military three things that don't exist in Somalia when those three things are done well you get happy societies like them we'll get to the welfare part of that in a minute like Hong Kong which has no welfare state but people are pretty happy with the lack of democracy because this is the funny thing about Hong Kong 70 years ago 70 years ago Hong Kong was a fishing village in which about 30 to 50 thousand people lived today Hong Kong has 7.5 million people those people weren't born in Hong Kong they came from all over Asia they risked their lives to come to Hong Kong they swam they went in a lot of boats from all over Asia to Hong Kong Hong Kong had no safety net because they had opportunities because they had protection for property rights and they could make something of their lives now they reach a point where they want to vote too good for them and I support that completely but just property rights without a vote drew 7 million people into Hong Kong 7 million people they never had to vote under the British they still didn't have to vote and yet they still flocked to Hong Kong since the property rights that drew them there that's funny about Scandinavians Scandinavians are happy people when you go around asking Scandinavians if they're happy they all say yes we're very happy it's funny because if you ask Scandinavians in America if they're happy they say they're even happier than Scandinavians than Scandinavians it's true and I'm from Jewish origin I was born in Israel if you ask Jews if they're happy they never say yes we know culturally it's unacceptable you say no good complains the studies that measure happiness are so bogus and so funny and so distorted I mean really now even on the level of economic freedom Denmark Denmark these organizations put out economic freedom indexes which countries are the most economically free and which are less economically free Denmark scores very high the United States is well below Denmark the United States is less economically free than Denmark since true Denmark has high taxes but it doesn't only have high taxes it has strong rule of law strong protection of property rights low regulations where Danish businesses and banks are far less regulated than America and generally it's more economically free than America so it's very mokey in this world of lots of economies that measure relative economic freedom and relative happiness particularly when you take it account when you don't control but a million other variables that are going on like culture and social expectations and all these other things nobody's happy in Somalia nobody should be happy in Somalia Somalia is a disaster by all of our standards we can agree on that next question yes my question would be do you not see a problem in the tragedy of the commons or do you not believe in that now I think it was a tragedy of the commons and the tragedy is that we have commons commons are dirty commons are not treated well you saw that when the wall came down 25 years ago between East Berlin West Berlin the commons in communism were filthy it was the most polluted place on the planet far more polluted than West in Europe was I mean that was the first thing that struck visitors when they crossed over to East in Europe is how filthy everything was how polluted everything was and the reason was it was the commons the solution to the commons is not to have any which means private profit which means I know which means you privatize what is the environment put aside global warming for a second what is the environment other than global warming it's for global warming a site for a minute I'll talk about global warming I'm not trying to evade the question I just want to separate it out into units so we can discuss it intelligently which is unusual I know but what is the environmental example fish stocks are the best way to deal with fish stocks as people have already started experimenting in Iceland and in Norway pretty collect pretty social estates is by privatizing them like yes by creating private units to measure how much you take it and you own it and you can trade these units and it's actually sold to fish stock problems and there are other ways in which you can privatize the fish in the oceans to protect those fish stocks another example fish is elephants elephants are becoming extinct in Africa and then they found a solution you know what the solution is private elephants private no you won't let me answer so you create private reserves in which the owners have an incentive to protect their elephants from poachers because they make money at it either through visitors or through organized hunts but if you hunt an animal and there's profit in it they're more of that animal to be had what? no so what's that? carbon trading yes so you're asking about global warming yes when there's a problem the question is would that be in favor of carbon trading because didn't I say fish stocks are a form of carbon trading right because you've got a fish stock you get a piece of it of the action if you will and you can trade it and develop it wouldn't I apply that to carbon trading? if I believe carbon was a problem if I thought the solution was to reduce consumption of carbon even if it was a problem if I thought the reduction of carbon was the solution then carbon trading is a white approach to have if I don't necessarily think it's a problem not a scientist I'm not going to make a definitive statement about it but neither are you guys but you guys have been brainwashed into this 98% of scientists don't believe that it's another feature of your brainwashing because you believe the 98% of scientists believe this every study shows the 98% of scientists do not believe this but yeah right that's a nice use of math let me finish you can disagree with me you're going to disagree with me that's fine let me finish for decades the vimealist movement has been feeding us one catastrophic scenario after another I'm a financier you come to me and you want me to invest I ask you what your track record is and if you tell me that every investment you've ever made I don't invest in so I look at the vimealist movement I'm not a scientist I don't know the number I look at the vimealist movement and I study it going back and I look at what they say about dbt which scientists 20 years later said was untrue I look at what they say about global cooling you guys don't remember in the early 70's the Earth was going to co-fund page of the New York Times all the scientific magazines the Senate, the scientists the globe was going to cool didn't 1968 a famous book came out about Paul Orlich one of the great great vimealists that people still worship to this day that said that hundreds of millions of people were going to die of starvation during the 70's because of overpopulation then it happened so when I look at these things these string of failures I'm skeptical I'm skeptical of what they tell me next about the end of the world the end of the world ain't happening no I'd love to hear about the successes but I'd love to sometimes I'm talking about catastrophic losses let me keep going now let's say that they're right let's say the globe is warming let's say it's all true I'll grant you it all I'll grant you the carbon the human beings are causing the warming that stuck 14 years ago but 16 years ago but let's say it still happened what's the solution I can guarantee you one thing that the solution cannot be should not be must not be stop using carbon fuels because what that actually means is stop living because it does you can laugh but everything around you is made of carbon fuels of oil the plastic of the chairs you're sitting on this bottle this cup most of the synthetics in your clothes are made from carbon most of the stuff in this room is made from oil by products stop using oil stop refining oil it might as well go back 300 years when we were all poor we were all starving we were all subsistence farming children died before the age of 10 life sucked carbon emissions are created while you were finding the oil to create the plastic when did the carbon emissions come from the whole process is about carbon emissions you know when you stop the mini carbon this is where you stop the mini carbon when you're dead only time when your footprint is zero and I guess some people like that they want us to have a zero footprint yes yes I was wondering how you define coercion because in the last part of your lecture you implied that governments had a monopoly on coercion since they actually enforced them but in my opinion I think that money is one important because there's an important distinction in my view between two types of force or two types of power put it that way political power and economic power political power is about guns it's about grabbing you and moving you somewhere you don't want to go economic power is about providing you with values voluntarily you do not have to buy a product you do not have to buy a phone you do not have to use carbon fuels you can go live in the woods you have it's your choice to participate or not participate to trade or not to trade that is very difficult and that is not coercion money is not coercion the only way I can get your money is by offering you something that you value more than your money you value that two dollars you value the bread for more than two dollars so you will need to trade for it nobody coerces you you chose to use that two dollars to buy the bread when I offer you an iPhone nobody coerces you to buy it you give me your money voluntarily because you want something more valuable to you than that money so money is not coercion money is voluntary and if you're smart about it money buys you an improved quality of life an improved living standard and that's always your case my question is so you've you say that money is a good thing and my question as well if the individual is always striving to get more money into their bank account and economically more stable I think that the capital system itself competition is an inherent aspect of that and that kind of supports self-assurance and you know, striving for your own personal value but isn't there with competition a race to the bottom and with that don't you think a race to the bottom is a lot of people and you say that everyone can kind of achieve an economical stability and you know being that don't you think it's more if you're born or developed in the right interest to be economically otherwise I don't think the university will be okay so let me deal with two aspects of what you're asking one competition is a race to the bottom that's bizarre because in every in every really competitive market where we leave the market free