 Thank you. Thank you for the introduction. I'm sorry. I didn't understand anything you said, but I saw the pictures Which looked horrific I take it both which from China one was both the video and the pictures were from China So it's it's always a pleasure to be back in in Japan and an opportunity to talk to you And in and again talk about iron man's ideas, which I think are so important. So in introducing The concept of individual rights and talking about the concept of the rich. I want to first Before we get to kind of what's going on in China or it might be relevant in For us in the in the Pacific Rim or in the United States or globally. I think what's really important is first understand Why we should care for us And then we can think about them Why do we care about freedom? Why do we care about liberty? What's in it for us? When it comes to freedom and liberty in many parts of the world You know, there's this notion that freedom how that that people have in their hearts. Everybody wants to be free But 99.99% of human history people have lived Unfree lives and just live them Without complaining or if they complained without doing anything about it the Natural if you will condition under which human beings have evolved since the beginning of time has been unfree and unfree I mean Where Cursion force has been applied to them. They've been told what to do and they've been doing what they were told to do most of our ancestors almost all of our ancestors were unfree and you know, unless you have some aristocratic blood in you and you are part of the masters who told everybody what to do and even they are not really free They're dependent on the serfs to do what they say. Otherwise They don't last very long and of course they depend on the other masters to not come and slaughter them and kill them So there's very little evidence to suggest that freedom is just there and just waiting to gush out We see time and time again Countries people's have the opportunity to embrace freedom and turn away from We see countries that have been free Turn authoritarian so freedom is an achievement Freedom is something that takes real intellectual work and a real cultural commitment to it and for freedom To become the dominant View the dominant approach in a culture has to be a certain Attitude it has to be clear to people It has to be clear Why we should be advocates of freedom. So what's why for you why freedom? Why Liberty? Well freedom and Liberty are important if You care about your life if You want to live the best life that you can live and if You believe you have the tools To be able to live such a life So for example, if you're taught from when you're very young That Your mind doesn't matter That reality. Yeah, maybe it exists. Maybe doesn't only I don't know the Pope knows Truth comes from an ancient book or from some form of revelation and You have to have Experts to tell you how to live what to do and that's your only option because you Impotent when it comes to actually conceiving of a good life Then freedom is not very valuable to you. What are you gonna do? You're dependent on them anyway Your impotent your mind is impotent your ability to live is constrained So you're dependent on Somebody else for your own life anyway, so why be free if you think about Many religious cultures do not embrace freedom for that reason Because there's an authority. Who am I? We just do what's written in the book. We don't think for ourselves So one of the first Ideas that you have to have if you're gonna establish freedom is The efficacy of the individual's mind the efficacy of reason our ability to think to understand reality to know reality and Therefore to act on our own behalf based on our own judgment and that our own judgment Is valid that we don't rely on some mystical ability to commune to know anything if You will you can think of this You know, there's a there's a sense in which this struggle around freedom goes back at least in the West You'll have to tell me, you know what the parallels are if they are any in Japan but it goes back to kind of a This this debate between Plato and Aristotle right Plato tells us what that where do you find knowledge you find knowledge in some other dimension and Only certain people have the ability to discover that knowledge and most of us will never know We'll never see real reality. We'll never be able to judge for ourselves So politically that leads to an idea of a philosopher king Somebody who can get that knowledge and they for wool over us and it's in our interest to do what he says Because he's the one who knows what's really going on. We're ignorant. We just don't know There's a he has this metaphor of a cave. We're just in a cave looking at shadows, right? They can see the real world. They can see the sunlight versus Aristotle Who tells us no no no no the world we can see it and we can understand it and we can discover knowledge for ourselves And in a sense, that's the battle over freedom. It's a battle over the human mind It's a battle over the idea of whether you control Your life, but also whether you can know the world out there It's not an accident therefore that this idea of political freedom political liberty comes out of an age called The age of reason comes out of the Enlightenment comes out of a period in which in Europe they rediscover the idea of Reason the efficacious of reason Ability to discover the world. It's not an accident that that period the age of reason the enlightenment is also known as the age of science Newton and What follows in all the scientific discoveries that happened during the 18th and 19th century? So we want to be free or should want to be free Because we want to be able to use our own mind our own judgment to pursue our own values so that we as individuals can be happy so Underlying this idea of rights and this idea of political freedom up really two concepts the efficacy of reason and Individualism the sanctity of the individual the value of an individual the fact that individual life matters Indeed, it's all that matters in a sense politically So individualism and reason individuals using their reason in pursuit of their values in pursuit ultimately of their happiness That's what we want freedom for we want freedom so we can pursue our happiness We want freedom so we can use our own judgment to pursue happiness not be told what happiness is not be told What actions to take not be told what values to pursue but choose them for ourselves now That is kind of the philosophical context for the idea of freedom and To realize that to make it real politically We need something that bridges these moral ideas about the sanctity of the individual these epistemological ideas which are about the efficacy of reason and The political idea of liberty and that's what individual rights. That's the The purpose of this concept of individual rights. It's a bridging concept between the idea of Individualism in the idea of the sanctity of the individual the idea of the pursuit of happiness and the idea of Freedom what are individual rights say? What do they mean? What are individual rights and and really individual rights again come out of the writing primarily as we understand them of John Locke the British philosopher in the 18th century early 18th century, but they're really the predecessors in other thinkers in in Europe during the previous 50 to 100 years But the idea of individual rights is the idea That you as an individual are valuable and Therefore you as an individual and ending yourself and therefore you should have the freedom Freedom from what freedom means what means the absence of force the absence of coercion The absence of an authority telling you what you can and cannot do See you as an individual should have the freedom to use your mind in pursuit of your values That's what individual rights mean It means that the government the authority that the governing body Must leave you alone to live your life as you see fit it should only intervene To protect your rights, so the purpose of government according to Rand according to this kind of line of thought is The purpose of government is only to protect your freedom to protect Your rights to protect your ability to act on your own behalf to act in your own interest to act in pursuit of your own happiness, but otherwise leave you alone and That's why you know in in the American Declaration of Independence They say you know we're all having the earlier but right to life Which means to live our life as we see fit based on our judgment our mind in pursuit of our values Liberty which means we can think we can talk we can write free of coercion free of force Unfortunately, they left our property in the original there was property there as well But that is we can keep the product of our labor We can keep what we earn. It's ours That's what property means. It's there. It's their ability to earn and to keep what you want and Pursue your happiness, which is the ultimate goal of all of this And that is what government is constituted to protect Not to give you not to define but to protect And that's which we have a constitution is to create a government that's sole purpose of the protection of that I think I think the Japanese constitution has the pursuit of happiness in it was the goal of of government, I think General MacArthur put it in there So Individual rates of this concept to protect the individual from other individuals But importantly to protect the individuals from the authorities from government It's to limit the scope of government Recognizing our individual liberty our individual freedom our individual rights to live our lives as we see fit Now as I think we all know No government in the world has ever practiced this kind of limitation Completely different governments violate our rights in different ways all governments violate our rights to some extent whether it's through coercion of through Taxation or whether it's through. I don't know mask mandates or whether it's to other types of mandates were mandated all over the place Whether it's through the regulation of business What kind of business you're allowed to open and how you open it? We're kind of Permissions you need in order to do whatever it is that you need to do all of those are acts of coercion Acts of force that constrain our liberty in the name always of what what's that? What's what's the purpose? Why did they do this in the name of what? Yeah, in the name of protecting you or protecting what they call the common good the public interest Which is a way of negating you as an individual because it's for it's you know So one of two alternatives there one is to argue that it's good for you and you don't know what's good for you Which is a return to the platonic attitude of we know what's good for you with a philosopher Kings We understand so we can impose this on you because it's good for you That's one way in which they justify in the second way justified It's we know it's not good for you, but it doesn't matter what it's good for the group And then they negate the concept of individualism note that they always negate one of two either they get your reason or they get your Individualism the value of you as an individual in order to use coercion against you all governments do that to some degree or another but Some governments do it more and some governments do it much more and there is a real difference between governments that are Like what we saw in the pictures and between what most of our governments Japanese government American governments do now It's to some extent an issue of degree, but there is a fundamental difference between the two Because Most of our societies or Western societies what we call Western societies and I include Japan as a Western society in that in that sense our societies that We still view as Free we're not as free as we'd like them to be we're not as free as I think they should be They're still way too much coercion way too much many mandates way too much government controls the government regulations the government's telling us what to do So what characterizes what is the difference fundamentally between a regime like China or even worse North Korea and Something like the United States and Japan Well, I think there are a few things that are clear markers that make a significant difference One is and maybe in a sense the most important one is The issue of freedom of speech Can you speak can you? You Can you debate? Can you make your voice heard see yes, there's courage and impose But can I stand up and say this is wrong and hear the arguments and here's my reasons and hey I'm trying to convince people that this is wrong so we can do something about it Do you have that ability that is a marker of a relatively free society that you can do that We can still do that in the United States You can still do that in Japan you can still do that in many countries around the world But you can't do it in China and You can do it in China today Less than you could five years ago or ten years ago. That is the direction China's heading is clearly away from free speech So I remember being in China ten years ago and being able to say all kinds of things about freedom and liberty and That the why the Chinese government was wrong and why you know the way they were running things was wrong and Already just before COVID in 2019. You could say a little bit less or you could say it but now people Were hesitant to come and hesitant to listen and hesitant to debate and today I wouldn't go So we've seen a slow decline in China in in freedom speech But you see it also today in the United States You see this decline in the ability to have this debate. It's not yet at the point where the government is imposing it But there's a shift in the culture We become a culture that doesn't want to debate certain things that certain things are unacceptable to talk about that you can't say Certain speakers are not permitted to speak at universities now the universities can choose who they want to have Speak and who they don't want to have speak it's within the rights So it's not a rights violation, but it's a cultural attitude that is against the idea of speaking debating arguing using reason To solve issues and again, this is in America. It's I mean we mostly hear about woke We mostly hear about the problems on the left, but there are similar problems on the right It is a culture-wide phenomena. They just have different topics that you can't talk about There's different different issues that are unacceptable to both left and right So freedom of speech is a right is part of those right to life liberty in pursuit of happiness This is the heart of liberty is the ability to speak is to argue ideas to convince people to try to reason with them to Try to change their mind to try to move them along in your direction the second characteristic of a free society is That you don't have and it's related. I think the free speech is that you don't have political prisoners You put people in jail for real crimes Which means when they violate somebody else's rights When they use force against somebody when they use fought against somebody when they really violate you don't put people in jail For their ideas their political actions their political points of view what they wrote what they did again For the most part our countries don't have political prisoners We put a lot of people in jail for things that are not Necessarily violating somebody else's rights We can talk about that if you want, but we don't put them in jail yet For their political activity. We don't use the government to try to Determine to try to screen out unacceptable people from a political perspective Again the tightest turning I think a little bit in the West about this and we have to be cautious But at least we don't do that China clearly they do Clearly they have political prisoners and in every regime That is an authoritarian regime what you find are people placed in jail for their points of view about the government China Russia is a good example Not only in Russia. They being put in jail, but you know, there's this phenomena of Russians falling out of windows I don't know if you've heard about this, but every week some Russian Official usually from the oil and gas industry dies and often they're dying by dropping out of a window suicide you know The you know the depressed accidents Suddenly a lot of Russians are slipping and falling from high places. It's very strange But just just on the flight here. I read of another Minor oligarch I guess who who has died So you could kill your opponents political opponents. You can put them in jail But one or another your political opponents are being silenced. So Russia technically is a quote Democracy right they vote But if you can kill all your political opponents Then yeah, you're the only man standing voting doesn't matter Remember the the poisoning right they they've tried to assassinate through poisoning through they've used Radioactive material to poison people So Russia is is well known as a regime that has eliminated its political opponents and that's That's when you know you're not free When if you have a particular point of view you risk being Being assassinated of all the countries I've visited and I've given speeches and I don't know 50 60 70 countries The country where I felt the most constrained the most a Little fearful was Russia. I mean China Was in again 2019 and before no problem could say anything in the audience was very open and there was a lot of debate and discussion Russia it was very cold partially because the people they are a little colder Chinese are very Friendly and vivacious people generally the Russians are very close, but partially I said it You know I said this years ago I think probably in 2015 or 2016 somebody asked me something about Putin at a talk I gave and I said, you know, he's a he's a thug He's a gangster and everybody in the audience You can't say that you know you have to what are you doing? Well, don't ask me if you don't want to hear my answer, right? That's but So Russia's is very much on this authoritarian line Iran Obviously North Korea you can tell the regimes in which this is happening. Turkey is You know kind of in a gray area, but certainly some political opponents have been put in jail and But you still don't get that right you don't get that in most of Europe you don't get that in in in You know, South Korea here Taiwan and I was gonna say Hong Kong but Can't say Hong Kong anymore, right? So that's to the and they and they highly related and the third is The fact that we have elections the fact that we can choose up political leaders Now many many of us argue that there's not much of a choice when you have to choose between Biden and Trump I mean But you still get a choose you get to argue you get to run yourself You get to start a new political party You get to you get to be engaged in a political process you get to have Some kind of say in what's going on in the country You can get people excited and get people to change their minds it's happened, you know, one of the one of the You know great examples in the United States It's kind of the abolitionist movement the movement to abolish slavery in the 19th century. I mean they changed people's minds The slavery was very much entrenched in the United States in the early 19th century and during the first half of the 19th century leading up to the Civil War People's minds were changed by people advocating for this group, you know, women's right to vote that was a change that people brought about through a process of arguing and deliberating and ultimately bringing about political force political power, right and that happened in country after country after country all over Europe and America and spitting out in the rest of the world so the fact that we can really truly influence the political process Not maybe as individuals, but at least we can get together as groups and and have an impact So those would be the three criteria for the difference between a free country and an oppressive country Now why should we care about? The fact that somewhere else there is an authoritarian regime. Why should we care about? you know Putin's thuggery and China's oppression of its own people It's violation of their rights clearly they are using force To dictate how people should live what they can say what they can think what they can do how they should live and You know in China it used to be that at least in you can in business They would leave you alone, you know, maybe you'd have to bribe the right people But once you bribe the right people, they'd leave you alone and that's changed in the last few years We saw that With Jack Ma and and he said something he said something negative about The Chinese Central Bank and their policies or the Chinese Treasury and suddenly he was silenced and and shunned away and the value of his companies Tanked and since then we've seen more regulations and more controls over businesses and over even in the technology space Where the Chinese had before pretty much left it alone But why should we care about any of this right? Why should we care about what happens in faraway countries? What they're doing is they're doing it to their own people So, you know, we've got enough problems where we are. There's enough battles You know political battles here in Japan there are political battles in the United States Why should we worry or care about these other regimes? It's just their own people Let's think at you know at least two reasons one is you care because we're human beings and And we care about other human beings. We know what value human beings can represent for us Right, we know how much they can contribute on life So, you know China for example just from an economic perspective put aside anything else China's made my life a lot better over the last 30 years and any American who's honest I think it's true of Japanese as well But certainly with Americans because we're so anti-China these days any American who's honest would say China Chinese production Chinese productivity Chinese You know work ethic their ability to produce has benefited us Significantly, it's made the cost of goods lower. It's raised our standard of living It's freed up capital for us to invest in other things. It is It's unimaginable The the global economy over the last 30 years. It's unimaginable What it would look like without what's happening China over the last 30 years We will be so much poorer and I know this goes against the grain of so much of the thought out there But it's just economic fact the you know the division of labor globally globalization has been a phenomenal economic Phenomenal economic fact that has benefited all of us It's made life easier better cheaper more fulfilling and it's We don't appreciate it because the differences are small and they accumulate So every year your standard of living goes up a little bit, but it's incremental. It's small But you know, I know because some of you don't even remember life before the iPhone Because there was no life before the iPhone because you were born about you know but And I remember vaguely I remember life before the iPhone and Now I complain about my iPhone all the time, right? But when I actually sit down and think about all the value the iPhone has added to my life It's unbelievable. It's fantastic, right? I You know, there's so many way I give a whole talk just on the iPhone But there's so many ways in which this is true, right? I remember when I moved to the United to the US in 1987 All my family was left in Israel. I would never call them You know, maybe once every three four months. I would call because it was super expensive Right, and it wasn't they didn't have the money. I didn't have to see you never communicated Now I can video conference and tell my kids a bed night story every night and it cost me exactly zero I Mean just that think about that in terms of how it makes travel possible, right? Hey, I remember we were just talking about this I remember driving around a foreign city not knowing anything trying to read a map and read the signs and It's shocking to me the traffic accidents were 10 times higher than they are today, right? Everybody was driving with maps now you plug in the GPS you put in the thing no matter where you are in the world You can go from point A to point B in the most efficient Direct way possible and safe. I mean just little things like that, but it's little so we don't notice them So when we get to using an iPhone to do the GPS well we complain because it doesn't always take us to exactly the right place But the difference is huge we just don't remember that difference and we don't appreciate But all of this has been made possible by the productive ability of The Chinese and it's not something you should be taking for granted because a lot of countries have not achieved that They did it so We care because other human beings around the world are value to us They make stuff they make our lives better To the extent that they produce the extent that they create anything It's better for us trade is a win-win, right? When you buy an iPhone, right? Pay a thousand dollars for this you pay a thousand dollars because you believe at least that it's gonna be worth more than a thousand dollars to you So I win when I buy an iPhone It's worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to me don't tell Apple and Apple wins they make a profit and all trade is win-win I mean unless this fraud unless we're cheating one another, but 99.9999% of trade is Upfront and no fraud and win-win So we value other people because the potential trading partners for us both spiritually and materially and We care about what happens to them and as China declines my standard of living is going to decline That's just a reality if we stop trading Standard of living goes down, but there's a second reason we should care and we're seeing that I think in Russia today When dictators and authoritarians are Used to violating the rights of their own citizens used to using violence of their own people Then they have no compunction. They have no problem then using violence against other people Once they are free to do it internally Why not do it externally? Indeed, it's almost a prerequisite Because One thing is true of authoritarian regimes. They all fail They're all losers all of them they don't succeed If you go back over the 20th century and you look at all the authoritarian regimes in the 20th century They all failed they failed their own people and ultimately they failed themselves and You know, there's so many myths about authoritarians, you know that they're so charismatic, right? I don't know Hitler and Stalin who had this charisma people just flocked to them Well if people just flocked to you, why do you have to use force against them? Why do you have to restrict what they say if people love you so much if people are so Enamored with you. Why do you have to limit their speech and limit their opposition? No, I mean, you are the enemy of the people you are Supposedly inspired and to some extent they know it and your only way to control them is by silencing them and by using force against them and That never works. It always fails Hitler failed Stalin failed not only to starve his own people, but ultimately communism collapsed Mao failed Authoritarianism does not succeed it can last for a while depending on the circumstances, but ultimately it has to fail and when it fails internally when it fails For your own people then the impulse is to go out and start a war To go out and seek a distraction Now I don't think this is what Putin is doing. I think Putin is a believer He believes in some kind of mythology of a Russian empire He believes in some kind of destiny of the Russian people as great people and the control, you know, control the world If you want to understand some of what drives Putin you should listen to Dugin is his one of his many I think Russian nationalist philosophers and they have this notion of a Russian spirit and a Russian destiny and a Russian place in history Which they get out of thin air You know, it doesn't exist. There's nothing there's nothing real about it, but they've made up this mythology And and Putin wants more land. He wants more influence. He wants more power So if he's willing to oppress his own people if he's willing to use force against his own people He's willing to throw people out of windows And what's a few tens or hundreds of thousands of millions of Ukrainians to him doesn't matter He's willing to bomb cities. He's willing to kill as many people as necessary in order to get his way so we should care because These two things are happening. We're losing trading partners We're losing the ability to enjoy the benefits that we get from these amazing people out there, right? and We are risking that the regimes who are authoritarian will lash out with war and destruction and And actually hurt us physically So not just hurt us by taking away the potential traders trading partners, but actually hurt us physically through through warfare And I think that's the situation which we have today in In in in the Pacific You know, North Korea is not a big threat primarily because it is weak. It is poor. It Doesn't have the capacities to really threaten anybody. Yes, it has nukes, but do we you know Do we know that they'll go off there? You know the chance that they would actually work is very low and The chance that they're willing to commit suicide in order to do something like that is very low But short of nuclear weapons, they have nothing they have no capacity to hurt us I think one of the one of the things I hope that the war in Russia will teach us Because because I do think we're learning important lessons in Russia right now And that is the not only authoritarian governments weak and destructive internally But ultimately they lose militarily You know Russian weapons systems are terrible They're really really really bad. They've always been really really really bad Why because before Russia it was the Soviets building them communists were building them. How good could they be? Remember the cars that the Soviets built. I don't know if anybody remembers that they built automobiles They were horrible. Nobody would buy an automobile built by the communists. Why would you buy a tank built by the communists? It's the same thing Quality is awful The last thing that they think about is the soldier because the soldier doesn't matter So most of the weapon systems that the Russians built are death traps for their own soldiers So I I have a little bit of first-hand experience with this because I was I was in a war in 1982 Where we fought against? Russian equipment right T-72s I remember T-72s because I was for for a short while I was in the tank corps in Israel and And we were trained to fight T-72s And we were really afraid because everybody told us T-72 is the most sophisticated tank in the world It's got this little profile. You can't hit it It's it's only got three crew members instead of the usual four because it's got an automatic loading machine So it could fire faster so it's more efficient We were terrified of the T-72s and Then in 1982 we went to war You know and we the Syrians at T-72s and we discovered that they were they were awful tanks You didn't have to hit them You exploded anything close to T-72 the vibration would take the automatic load here out of sync and The tank wouldn't function so the crew would get out and run so Israel actually captured a couple of Completely functioning T-72s they handed them to Americans who you got because they know nobody had ever seen one from the inside Right and and that's the kind of thinking that you you know I hope I assume that they've improved the T-72s things but since but for example, Israeli tanks always had this layer of protection For the crew So I don't know if you know how they these layers work, but they're really they're really kind of cool It's like an armor that surrounds the tank and the armor is has explosives in it So when the external explosive hits There's an internal explosion that happens at the surface That dissipates the force of the missile that hit so that the projectile doesn't enter the tank and kill everybody inside And it's primarily it might decapitate the tank the tank might not work anymore, but it saves the crew Russians don't I mean some of the modern tanks have it, but they never used to have it and not all of them have it Why because they don't care that much about the crew. They don't care about the individual. They don't care about their people so one thing I think we're learning from the war in Russia, which we should have known is That The soldiers are not motivated The weapons are not good They're not well trained. They don't have good strategy They're not good at producing. They're not good pretty much at anything That's what authoritarian regimes lead to now Chinese are probably better But probably not great It's not clear the Chinese Soldiers are motivated or That their equipment is that much more advanced than the Russian equipment on which it is based There are a lot of the Chinese weapons systems are based on Russian weapons systems So there's a sudden incompetence in authoritarian regimes ability to wage war and I'm hoping that the world Learns both of their incompetence, but also I'm hoping China is looking at Russia and Saying huh, maybe those weapons systems are better Maybe taking Taiwan won't be so easy maybe going to war isn't a good idea and Certainly, I think the North Koreans are looking because they are me all they have is people now It's cannon fodder. They don't mind losing millions of people, but they don't have The capacity to wage war against South Korea So one of the things I'm hoping that free countries learn from this is that if we invest in the mill in our military Capabilities and if we're confident in our abilities, we really don't have that much to fear You know unless of course, it's a nuclear situation Well, we have the capacity to deal with any one of these authoritarian governments fairly I think easily on a military scale I think the bigger problem is kind of the the the the move towards isolation in the world today and the move towards You know these these authoritarian regimes leaving kind of the global economy Which is going to have real significant economic consequences on all of our lives on everybody around the world But it's their choices, which which are hard for us to control Now, let me just say something about kind of international relations from a kind of an iron man perspective Although what I'm going to say now is my views not iron man's views. This is kind of so I don't know if she'd agree with me Or not who knows But but this is relates to how one should deal with these countries, right? So what should Japan's governments and Japanese citizens? Attitudes that say towards China should be and I would say the way to think about the world is to categorize it into three kinds of countries Three kind three different kinds of countries one are free countries So basically free countries as I said no countries completely free But basically free countries in a basically free country. You have diplomatic relations you trade you you have the full scope of human interaction and You know you have embassies and you have you you maybe have treaties and you you you can form coalitions around certain issues You know kind of multilateral organizations that the deal with particular issues because you're dealing with other countries that are free that are like you and the deal we know the deal with one another as Rational beings as you know debate and discussion is valued There's a second category though and that is the category of authoritarian governments out there in the world But this is authoritarian governments who you don't deem to be your enemy So they're not a threat to you. They're not Attacking your citizens and not trying to steal your stuff that they're basically Doing it to their own people. They haven't yet moved to the stage of being of you know of activities that that are that are offensive in That those kind of regimes I think that the government government of Japan government in the United States Should not have diplomatic relations with those regimes. So I don't think we should have an embassy in China Because once you have diplomatic relations, you're sanctioning them. You're saying you're the generic player we can talk We're equals, right? I mean one of the great travesties of the post-world war two era is the United Nations It's a horrible institution We're at the same desk. You had You know the security council that everybody where they have a veto you have the United States You have Stalin and they have well when you have by in the 1970s you have Mao Zedong as equals She have free countries and the most brutal authoritarian regimes in human history sitting as equals on the same table Debating freedom debating war These people don't know what freedom is and they are war-like nations. That is war-like regimes What are you talking about? There's nothing to talk about So I don't believe you there should be a United Nations that involves both free countries and authoritarian countries I think there should be a clean demarcation authoritarian countries shouldn't be shunned from a diplomatic perspective But as individuals You should all be allowed to trade with them you should be allowed to visit you should be allowed But with the risk right because there's no embassy there anymore So there's a certain risk, but that is a risk you have to internalize as an individual and deal with it But you should buy their goods and trade. That's fine Then there's a third category That is what I would consider enemy countries countries that are physical threat Clearly a country like North Korea is an enemy country suddenly South Korea Maybe to Japan. I mean they pointed missiles in the direction of Japan and talked about being You know an enemy of Japan and then I think you should have No diplomatic relations, but also you should not be allowed to trade Trade remembers win-win You don't want to help the enemy. So you don't provide them with a win So in that case there is Legitimate to embargo those countries. I don't believe in these silly sanctions We sanctioned five oligarchs, but not those oligarchs because those oligarchs gave money to you know I mean it's interesting to see how governments are dealing with the oligarchs in Russia Why these oligarchs are not those why does England sanction some in the United States sanctioned others and there's no It's not the same. Why only the oligarchs? Well, what about all the other people who cooperate with the regime who are not rich, right? Well, we need the rich guys It's it's just a it's a and you know, they're confiscating yachts. They're confiscating property with no trial No, nothing just some bureaucrat decides we want to it the whole regime I mean you then bar go a country and say it's just no trade with this country. You can't have any dealings with this country because they're an enemy and You don't want to benefit the enemy at all and Then it becomes tricky, you know, is China an Authoritarian regime offending its own people and and we can trade with them and all that or is it an enemy? Is it qualified as an enemy yet? I don't think so But it's moving in that direction. So at some point it'll cross the line and It'll get pretty tricky if it crosses that line, right? So if you're in private business, you want to diversify away from China as quickly as possible But so that's the way I think in a rational world. We would kind of divvy this up We would look at how these governments are protecting or not protecting individual rights If they're unfree in a sense that they're fundamentally violating individual rights, the government should have no business with those countries You as individuals would then choose so let's say China today Let's say it's not an enemy, but we turn authoritarian regime We might all choose as individuals not to trade with China because we don't want to help what we saw the pictures that we saw earlier of Chinese violating people's rights. We might not want to assist that but the government should not have a say Because the government is there to protect our rights and if China is not violating our rights government has no business one way or the other in China policy has no embassy. It has no official relationship with China, but other than that leaves it alone But then it's up to our own Morality our own choices in terms of what we're willing who we're willing to deal with or not do it So one of the things lacking today in the world is Really any kind of orientation towards moral judgment and a judgment of other countries and get judgment of other cultures and a Judgment of other political systems in terms of being right wrong good bad Everything is great. There's no, you know, it's it's considered wrong to judge even in front policy There's the realest school. We have to make all these calculations and evaluations But you never make an actual judgment about whether they're good guys or bad guys I think all of that is wrong and it's an agitation of this idea that we really started with Which is the value of the individual the value of his rights the value of his freedom The way we should judge Governments and countries and systems is based on the extent to which they respect the individuals right to live his life and We should make it clear as individuals As societies as governments, we should make it clear our judgments of different regimes based on this criteria I think it's the only criteria that matters politically Because politics is there at the end of the day to protect us as individuals That's its purpose so We should Encourage people to talk about rights. We should point out when rights are being violated. We should We should make a big deal out of Governments violating their own citizens rights and once they cross that threshold from basically free to basically unfree Once freedom of speech then our judgment of those regimes our judgment of those countries needs to change dramatically Even China I think over the last 10 years has changed quite a bit It was at least it's some realms free and some realms and then It's drifting and our valuation of it needs to change Significantly as those countries changed and we should demand of our governments To take a much harsher much stronger position in defending freedom and liberty freedom and liberty are not something We should be taking for granted. It's something we need to continuously forever Fight over we have to be vigilant about preserving it Otherwise if we're indifferent when it disappears in other countries We risk being indifferent when it disappears in our own country All right. Thank you Thank you for my question Country that is like similar to what I am thinks is an ideal society So my question is like how long do you think it will take to reach reach to a level where every society is kind of you know respecting each individual rights and operating a truly free sense and More importantly, do you think that that's the like eschatological end of human beings like is it the end of society? I Don't know. It's not a philosophical question. How long it's a prophecy. I'm not a prophet I Think it's gonna take a long time. I Don't think the world's heading in the right direction today. I think we're heading in the wrong direction I think we're heading towards more authoritarianism particularly in the United States and in Europe So I I think I think all the trends are going against us achieving this again I think freedom and liberty on achievement. They take education. They take ideas. They take a right philosophy and that takes time and So I don't know 50 years Hundred years. Well all countries you said all countries, you know, I don't 100 200 years. Who knows? I mean, it would be nice if there were one right because we could all go there I mean, I'll settle for one One night. I'm hoping 50 years Is it the end of history if the whole world? There's a sense in which it might be right in a sense that Conflict go away if history is this story of conflict and it then then then it's the end of that you know, but Again, given the freedom as an achievement, even when it's made even if we're in it's achieved Will it be sustained everywhere every country will sustain it equal, you know And there won't be anybody who backtracks and becomes aggressive and doesn't who knows, right? So I doubt that even from the perspective of great conflict that it just goes away completely, right just like In a free society where everybody is supposed to be rational or everybody's embraced rationality as the means and And you're teaching the kids and are they gonna be any criminals? Sure. They're still gonna be crooks They're still gonna be people making that choice in life So I don't think you ever have the end of history in that sense But there's another sense in which I think viewing history is just conflict is wrong because on the contrary if that if we achieve a state of real political freedom Then that's just a beginning. I mean imagine the progress that we will make as human beings imagine the achievements. They can be they can be Achieved that the products that they can produce the stars, you know, the planets that we will inhabit that You know, it's just it's just the beginning. It's the beginning of You know massive human advance. So in that sense history, no, I mean It's it's a mistake to think I mean you in school all we study in school is great battles and great political Politicians and things like that, but that's not what's interesting. I Mean the only thing if there's a sense in which the only thing that's interesting in history is the last 250 years In a sense, there's a sense where it's completely wrong with there's a sense of which that right and that is Everything that we have today is a product of the last 250 years and materially at least There was nothing before that Almost nothing slight advancements every thousand there, you know every hundred years They made a little bit more of an advancement advancement and then suddenly everything takes off That's what's interesting history and but you never teach that nobody teaches the Industrial Revolution as this amazing period In which humanity suddenly discovers the ability to to to produce and create and change its environment So the humanity can grow to be 8 billion people without starvation and without destruction and live Successfully nobody teaches that right you learn the battles Napoleon did but Napoleon in the big scheme of things not that important The guy invented the steam engine much more important The the the first thing you know John JD Rockefeller who figures out how to make oil into something we could use and Makes the process more and more and more efficient a thousand times more important than any politician who lived in the 19th century You're never gonna nobody's gonna teach you that the scientists are important businessmen are important politicians You know my caveat to that is of course spiritually the values go way back right to art Aesthetics that you know in a sense we there's a sense in which we peaked 2,500 years ago in Greece and then descended and and only came back in the Renaissance and developed since then and now we're I Don't know where we are in in deep in the in the bowels of hell When it comes to aesthetics and arts, but So so there's a sense in which human history is important, but even then do you do you learn art history? No, you learn on history from that perspective from perspective of human achievement and the value it has for human beings No, we don't learn that we learn all the battles and all the politicians, you know, which is the less interesting part of human history Less important part of human history Countries and If you look at the country's situation, you just mentioned the Jack Marques Previously maybe Gentlemen here or putting down the Iran, but maybe still economy is a very to the CGP mean Communist Party, but well, I wouldn't say that made me still the Communist Party try to everything, but On the other hand, they consider they have to consider about the human left Life level so in case of that Maybe still it's just kind of the rule to Nikoji or talk talk with them, but currently in CGP what that he did is the Politics try to control the people's economic activities. That is what you mentioned This is my understanding But however In free countries such as Japan, United States or Europe and those countries of course They in case of China maybe Genocide conducted by Communist Party against the will or Tibetan or Mongolian and then some people started to criticize what they're doing and then Some people think about maybe still they need to give the kind of the pressure again those countries but on the other hand Businessmen or business field or business sector or Stock because China is a big market Russian supplies and energy So even though we give the big one I mean Big issues against those countries But what we are doing is we can I mean obviously give the kind of the Strong pressure against those countries even though you're EU What Russian doing that they need energy from Russia and in case of Japan or many US businessmen as well People think about it. The Chinese are still the biggest market and if we cut off the those I mean you can call relationship. Maybe we have to Survive in a very serious critical situation, sure So let me just say about Russia and Europe first Europe crippled itself Europe doesn't have to be reliant on Russia Europe Created the reliance on Russia and it created the reliance on Russia knowing Putin knowing who he was remember This is not the first war Putin is engaged in I think it was 2008 that he invaded Georgia and basically took two provinces in Georgia and You know made them independent But the parts of Georgia In twenty four, you know, he's for two wars with the Chechens brutal wars in Chechnya Two wars because they try to seed from Russia. They try to establish their own Chechen Republic and You know, he just crushed them and destroyed whole cities and flattened old places And of course in 2014 he invaded Ukraine and in spite of all of that history and in spite of Putin's character and the way He oppresses his own people the Europeans have become more and more and more dependent on Russian or Russian gas, which is not necessary, you know, so for example Britain the United Kingdom they have natural gas If they allowed fracking They could get natural gas. They wouldn't need to Instead of investing in fracking, which is very cheap very easy to do They invested in windmills in the in the north, you know in the in the ocean Which is very expensive very dangerous very risky and Not very reliable and the funniest one I mean Germany has invested huge amounts of money in solar panels. I mean, have you ever been to Germany? There's no son. I mean, it's not Texas It's it's Germany is middle of Europe. It's cloudy and yet they've invested huge amounts of money in solar panels So a Germany used to have Lots of energy capacity from nuclear. They've shut most of it down They were going to shut down the last three nuclear power plants and now they brought it back in Japan I understand is bringing back its nuclear Energy, which is good You should be investing in new nuclear plants because your old ones as we saw in Fukuyama not very good So we should be investing in technologies that actually work instead of in solar panels and in wind and all of this that gives power to To To the Putin's of the world or even to the to the Saudi Arabia of the world I'm not happy about the fact that the Saudis have as much power as they do and And they have as much power as they do partially because they stole the oil that was developed by Western countries but but then also because We don't develop on resources the United States is different because They allowed for fracking. So we did they discovered fracking and then they let it loose You know and one of the reasons the United States is struggling a little bit now is because Biden when he came in said He's launching a war on fossil fuels So nobody's gonna invest in fossil fuels if the president says there's a war on fossil fuels So investment went down and they weren't ready for the crisis, but we You know chopping our own legs off we are weakening ourselves So we need to make sure that we're not dependent on authoritarian regimes We should have done that a long time ago with them in the least You know and You know, but we didn't we should have we should have not allowed Saudi Arabia to control all the oil and the Gulf Countries to control the oil, but we allowed them to do that We shouldn't allow the Russians to have a monopoly over natural gas into Europe And I hope Europe's learning a lesson and they're building LNG facilities and now they're they're gonna import natural gas from Israel in Egypt And from Oman and from other places from different places. So hopefully they'll diversify and hopefully they can cut Russia off so That's the idea China's more difficult and China's more difficult because again, we made certain assumptions about China which are Wrong now have turned out to be wrong Now maybe they'll still be okay, but so far they seem to be moving in the wrong direction, right? that is we made the assumption that as the because in the 80s 90s and early 2000s the Chinese economy was relatively free economy You know some American businessmen argued that it was the China was less regulated than America It was easier to do business in China than America and it was true but it was always kind of dependent on Whether the government wanted you or not because they don't protect rights seen America if the government does something horrible to your business Suddenly changes its mind and doesn't then you can you can go to court You can say what you're violating this and that you know you can do something when it's China The leadership can change and everything changes and Jack Ma goes to jail and everything everything shifts, right? And you have no Mechanism by which to try to redress it to try to to fix it But the assumption was that that economic freedom would grow That the middle Chinese middle class would get wealthier and then start demanding political freedom and that ultimately China would move in a direction of political freedom and our political oppression And if you look back It's easy now to say that was a big mistake But it looked very promising until about 2013 maybe 2015. It looked very promising The economic liberty there, but there was also some openness in terms of free speech. There were opposition. There were opposition Figures. Yes, they might have been followed by the secret police and stuff like that But generally they were left alone and they could do but books were published I mean all of Einran's books are in Chinese selling in Chinese bookstores even as in 2020 my book the title is equal is unfair was published in China, which just proves that China is not communist, right? It's it's it's it's fascist. It's not communist And it's still selling as far as I know it's still selling in China in Chinese books, right? So China looked like it was heading in the right direction and and people invested it, but now it's not So the first thing that has to happen is businessmen need to be to think long term and It's hard, but they need to think long term businessmen are good at thinking long term I think much better than politicians are thinking long term But they need to think long term and what and you're seeing a little bit of this right? You're seeing Apple start moving production to Vietnam and to India And you're seeing other countries and what business we need to start doing is to diversify out of China you know not slowly fast and They need to start building production in other places now China has other problems Which businessmen should care about right and the biggest problem China has I mean that Two big problems China has one is the more the government intervenes in the economy The worst economy is going to do The less money consumers will have to spend the less of our interesting market it becomes So the more government intervention the worst things will be in China's the economy already is collapsing There's a real estate collapse in China right now I mean China's economy is probably shrinking And the second problem which will make that shrinking even more significant is a demographic problem China peaked in population probably five years ago and It's shrinking and it's shrinking fast. It's shrinking faster than Japan or South Korea, which already shrinking pretty fast China has the potential because of the one child policy To truly collapse them a graphical You know by some estimates within 15 years They could be at half the population of what they were at their peak They could be down to six to seven hundred million from 1.4 billion, which was what they peaked at right now That's huge. So as a business person, you have to think about what does that mean politically in China? What does that mean? Consumer-wise in China. Are they gonna be workers one of the reasons everybody went to China is because you know Silicon Valley friends of mine told me the reason we went to China is not because of cheap labor the reason we went to China is because if we needed a thousand engineers tomorrow in China You could hire a thousand engineers tomorrow and in the United States you can't you just don't have engineers China had millions of engineers That could be hired into it. So but are they gonna be millions of engineers in the future? If if every generation is small if young people who are the engineers of the future if that Then where you're gonna? Why go to China? So for a variety of reasons businessmen should be looking to diversify out of China and be looking looking at other countries and other places so That should be the first step and As business does that I think governments need to put more and more pressure on the Chinese now Pressure on the Chinese doesn't mean tariffs tariffs is the dumbest stupidest policy one can imagine Right because all you're doing when you place taxes taxing your own people and You're not you're not changing anything. You're not changing the dynamics indeed You know since Trump's tariffs on Chinese goods, we have a larger trade deficit with China than we did before Comments he values adjust. I mean it just doesn't make any economic sense. So what you want to do is I Mean one thing the West could do and should do is use what's called the bully pulpit use the stage To make to morally condemn the Chinese government I mean one of the greatest one of the great travesties of the 21st century of which is a young century, but still Is the fact that China took Hong Kong and Nobody said anything Quiet I don't know if the Japanese government objected, but the American government Trump said nothing Zoo the British government said something one week the Chinese were offended. So they they stopped Politicians need to stand up and and instead of condemning trade, which is a good thing Condemned Chinese actions like in China and just that condemnation just the words mean a lot You know one of the strength of Ronald Reagan When he was president was what he said he didn't do much in that sense He wasn't a great president but what he said so for example if you talk to Lech Walesa Lech Walesa is the guy who Who was the head of the Union that started the strikes in Poland that started in a sense You could argue started what ultimately led to the fall of the Berlin Wall. He said Reagan standing up to the Russians calling them the evil Empire Tear down this wall things like that gave them moral courage Inside Eastern Europe to stand up and face the communism moral courage if our politicians Said to the Russian to know this is wrong. This is evil. You should stop doing this. You are bad guys Stop it. It would make a difference It would make a difference of the better people within China who might ultimately rise up and challenge this regime Because that's what it's gonna take it's gonna take an internal revolution. So we need to speak and it's people underestimate the power of Taking a moral stand saying this is evil. This is wrong. You you know, you shouldn't do this That is incredibly powerful. And if the West had done that with Hong Kong I think China would have at least hesitated this way They got a freebie right no cost Maybe the people leaving Hong Kong is the cost but even then America didn't open up the doors to Hong Kong People who were leaving a few countries did but America didn't I don't know of China has taken in any of the Hong Kong refugees but The whole world should have said okay, Hong Kong people incredibly productive Used to kind of the values of freedom and liberty come we want you please come Nobody very I mean, I think the UK did a little bit. I think Taiwan did it obviously But that's it Australia. I think Australia opened up its doors I'd like to know what you think is the most promising development happening today to advance individual liberties God The most because I'm trying to think of any Well, I think Russia losing is definitely a good thing in terms of in terms of gaining perspective on authoritarianism What's the most important development, you know I think ultimately That you will not get a real sustained move towards individual rights and towards individual liberty until Ayn Rand becomes a much more significant cultural figure until her ideas are respected and debated and and and Circulating in the culture. So I think anything that has to do with bringing her ideas into cultures into countries into into the world is The most important thing that's happening today, and I think you're seeing that you're seeing that I mean the last 10 years last maybe 12 14 years I've seen an explosion in Ayn Rand translations and Ayn Rand's popularity outside of the United States interesting kind of interesting fact about Ukraine in 2015 and 16 Atlas shrug was the best-selling book in Ukraine It was translated into Ukrainian and in Ukrainian it was already existed in Russian But this was the Ukrainian and it was it was published in three volumes that came out separately One in 2015 16 I think or two in 16 something like that and during that period It was the best-selling book in Ukraine. That's good now You know as it made Ukraine a free country. No, it's you know There's a long time before that happens But there's a lot of young people who've read those books and who inspired and who are motivated to bring about that kind of reality sometime in the future and I think you're seeing that in more and more pockets around the world You're seeing her books translated. It's Japanese obviously, but you know thanks to some people in this room, but In places where we'd have never thought that it would be translated China every one all of her books are in trainees and selling the only two major languages her books are not in Farsi Iran and Arabic and There's real work to to get them into Arabic so Every other language every other language basically her books out there and and so getting her ideas out there I think is the most important and and the most exciting thing going on People in the future In my view in an ideal world People wouldn't be interested in politics So the only reason today we should be interested in politics is because politics is interested in us It affects our lives. It's involved in our lives. It's in every aspect of our lives. It's it's everywhere But you want to reach a state where the government is so limited and so small that I mean at this party or that party the differences between them are small They're all basically respecting individual rights. Who cares? So that's the ideal But today we need to care about politics because politics is in our lives It's interfering in our lives and we need to change that and I'd say that the way To do that is not to try to interest in politics per se, but to try to interest them in an ideal Young people want an ideal They want to believe in something better and something great and something beautiful and something amazing It's it's one of the things that happens to us as we age we lose that Sadly most people lose that right they lose that idealism But young people still have it or at least have the desire for it So we need to capture them with is an ideal not another shade of gray and the problem with Japanese politics Which is similar to most politics is it's different shades of gray. What's the difference? Should I care about these guys? Should I care about it because there's not that much difference between them and they don't seem to have an effect so one government comes into power and They do this and the other guy. What's the difference? Nothing different happened, right? So what we need to interest them is not in politics as it is today and what it is possible and what Politics can achieve in terms of increasing our liberty in terms of getting out of the way So I think it's idealism. We should be striving for it and and and and and a real positive exciting Interesting fascinating vision of the future which could get and this is why I know and appeals to young people so much Design man's an idealist. She she she portrays an amazing beautiful future She tells them what they could achieve. What is possible to human beings? That's why her novels in particular are particularly appealing because they portray The kind of heroes that such a world could exist in such a world. So I think that's how we do it Deep question Wait takes actually in a run over pen I'm not by the way member of ethics committee of you dirty and party of Russia of the people can be I'm not gonna argue about the place. I just have one question. Have you ever read I am writing in the book of her? I would I yeah. Yes, it doesn't feel like you did because one of the major takes if I ran is the plus struggle between a Pressure and lemon culture each ball. She's ex-executive person, right? So she perfectly knew what she's talking about It's a James Taggart. It was just they didn't ever tell her. It's not one country. He means another country Surprisingly for a person who's president by Andrea Institute You take a lot of takes about how one country is better than another country like Basically three countries. Yeah, I believe some countries are better than other countries I mean, you don't have to quote me. I'll say that again. So Almost any country as a status organization is bad against its own people like let's say you talk about Free speech and political prisoners is what qualify it basically free disqualify it basically frequent country in the authoritarian country So what's your take on Julian Assange? Well, Julian Assange a criminal for a variety of reasons. I'll tell you exactly why Julian Assange is a criminal Snowden is a hero, but Assange is a criminal So first of all, it's it's pretty ridiculous To accuse me of not having read I ran when you clearly a completely ignorant of I know as writings she talks about Differences between countries all the time in all her writings in all her essays. She talks about I She even makes comments about Israel and the difference between Israel and other countries in Israel at the time Which you made these comments was a socialist country and yet she viewed it as a superior country to other countries So, you know, you can ask a question and you could disagree with me, but to start off by just Making silly accusations and showing off your ignorance is ridiculous Julian Assange is a criminal because Julian Assange has no respect for human life He is willing to publish anything including stuff that would would harm human life That would destroy the capacity of free countries to protect themselves and defend themselves He was willing it was willing to to publish Trade secrets of corporations anything that's secret. He is willing to publish Including violation of property rights, which is trade secrets and corporate corporate information Which is none of his business and and is not in the public domain and the public has no court right to know it He is not a defender of freedom and freedom of information or anything like that. He does not have a concept of freedom He doesn't have the concept of individual rights or concept of property rights Yes, he stole stealing his coercion he stole he Okay, other people stole it and he published it So the guy who buys stolen goods from the thief is not a criminal because because even though he knows it's stolen goods He's not a criminal. Of course. He's a criminal. So once you are facilitating crime So Julian Assange was facilitating crime by publishing stolen material. So he's a criminal I don't think there's any question Snowden on the other hand clearly identified areas in which the United States were violating the individual rights of its Own citizens made sure to take out of what he published that which could which could harm Agents and and and people you know people in foreign countries that that might have been harmed by the release of the information I Tried to go through the channels to get things couldn't do that So he released information. He's a hero and I and I and I and I would I Yes, but he stole from those who do not have a right to keep it So in your opinion if there is a moral right, so if you say if you steal but for good like a Robin Hood would do, right? No Robin Hood's a criminal right Robin Hood's a criminal because he's more justified crime It's morally justified to steal from the government in order to reveal the government's Criminality, it's not it's Assange didn't do that Assange would publish anything and Assange would publish anything and it's not morally okay to steal from private businesses But I don't want you know, so that's my opinion outside. You asked what you got it I don't want to get into an argument about it in terms of differences This is a problem with libertarians the problem with libertarians And you can see this in the new Mises caucus in the American libertarian party right now The problem of libertarians is you cannot make distinguishing differences between countries you for you for Maui Rothbard North Vietnam was a better country than the United States, which is so evil and So disgusting. I mean he used to celebrate every time an American pilot got shot down in During the Vietnam War you can be anti-war Without relishing the idea of Americans dying there You can be anti-war without wanting the North Vietnamese to win when North Vietnam took South Vietnam when they united Vietnam under communism Libertarians in America celebrate it. This is why I don't call myself a libertarian This is why I don't want to be associated that much with libertarians because I think that's disgusting That if you can't see the difference between communism between authoritarianism where you can't speak we can't between Putin's Russia and Japan and the United States then you're blind and You're making yourself blind because you're not blind. You're making yourself blind am I making yourself blind you're destroying yourself and by Advocate doing this in the name of liberty and freedom. You're destroying the liberty and freedom movement and that's why nobody will take you seriously So of course there's a fundamental difference between If I say something and a policeman comes in and drags me off to prison. There's a big difference between that between that plus all the other coercion and where the coercion is limited to one sphere, let's say Taxation or economics. It's still bad. It's still evil, but it's a different degree of evil It's far less than a police state is So, yes, I I value it countries. I would rank them. There's an economic freedom index for a reason So you can rank them in terms of how free they are and you can still condemn them all and countries are legitimate I'm rend was not an anarchist. I meant did not believe in anarchy. She argued against anarchy She called libertarians in the 1970s hippies of the right, which was not a compliment She advocated she loved America. She loved America as a country She loved America in spite of hating its politicians and she thought it was an amazing country And she when she compared it to the Soviet Union, she thought the Soviet Union was fundamentally evil And she thought America was fundamentally good in spite of the fact that there was still coercion going on That's I'm ready. You're called Japanese for example, but I'm basically free country, right? So right after Snowden your favorite guy They passed a law called the Himitsu Hogo Ho, which basically prevents things like Snowden ever happening again in Japan It doesn't prevent Snowden violated the law. So passing a law against Snowden doesn't help So the whole point of Snowden is he violated the law No, no, I mean that's the thing I mean it's actually a sign you can't have a law that prevents Snowden from happening If you publish if let's say you're Snowden and you leave information from Japan and you give it to me and I publish it We both go to prison for three years and forever, right? Yeah, there is no freedom of speech in that sense at all Well, I'm not even talking about human rights things like I don't know what to say Women can't have their own last names, you know, after the marriage or like they have to For example, stay divorced after divorce for like almost a year Because you know, who knows so Japan could be freer. It's so much freer than Russia. That's the point It's so much freer, yes Yes, of course, there are more oppressive regimes than others That doesn't make you more taken moral stance saying like oh, US is all correct and Russia is all wrong Nobody said you will never hear me say You will never hear me say the US is all correct You didn't mention a single example of US Your whole lecture was about how terrible China and Russia is Which is pretty much China and Russia are terrible Yeah, but like US is comparably terrible US is not as comparably terrible Well, no one near as comparably terrible So, Iran war and Iraq war was still to justify the same as Ukraine war, right? There's a massive difference between the one you are Massive difference between the one you are and the one you are Let's talk about Israel. In West Bank, if you enter a relationship of a Palestinian lady You have to notify the Israeli government and take a 27-month open interview We really shouldn't talk about things you don't know anything about Oh, yeah, just to clear the door, yeah Yes, yes, I was going to look, see if you have any other questions You talked about Russia and we heard that someone in the Russian church was connected to people in power And we are talking about people in the religious organization in Japan related to people's power in Japan Are there similar things happening in the United States as well? Yeah, so the connection between religion and state is one of the signs of the diminishing of freedom And the relationships you see that in theocracies everywhere, Iran is a good example But yes, the involvement of the church in Russian politics is a bad sign I didn't know religion was involved in Japan, that's not a good sign And it's definitely rising in the United States You've seen the role of religion increase in the United States now You know, we just saw the Supreme Court rule on abortion Which, you know, they didn't use religious motivations to do it But it's not an accident that all the judges who voted for doing away with Rovis's weight are very religious And have talked about their religion and how it affects their view of these things The whole view of abortion in the United States is very much guided and determined by a religious orientation And what's really scary about the U.S. is that there is a rise in the view, in the opinion, that religion should be more involved in the state And there should be more relationship between religion and state And on the right there's a group called National Conservatives who are committed to the United States as a Christian nation Marjorie Taylor, whatever her name is, there's a congresswoman in the U.S. who's recently said, America is a Christian nation And the government should impose Christian values, very, very dangerous It's exactly how you get the kind of authoritarianism that we're so worried about It's a very slippery slope. Once you let religion into government, it's a very, very slippery slope towards complete... How many percent of Knesset is actually Orthodox Jew? Do you know? Yes, I do. As a percentage right now? It's huge amount, 80% What do you think about... 80% you said? 80%? That's complete nonsense. So now you're showing your ignorance again What do you think about Bitcoin, sir? I think Bitcoin is an interesting experiment, which unfortunately is probably going to fail Because I don't think the governments of the world, I don't think the central bankers of the world are going to allow it to succeed I don't think it's going to succeed without ultimately being allowed to succeed The usefulness of Bitcoin can be shut down pretty quickly and pretty easily Bitcoiners assume that we're all going to embrace Bitcoin And when the government comes to shut it down, we'll all object and therefore they won't do it That's science fiction in my view People don't object when the government comes and takes their money in the form of taxes People don't object when the government violates their rights on almost daily basis They can object about Bitcoin. That's the one thing they'll object about Ultimately, I think that if you had a truly free market, if government got in a way and you had real individual rights And you had free banking and banks created their own currencies and there would be real competition I don't think Bitcoin wins. I think Bitcoin loses So I don't think Bitcoin is the solution in a free market And it's certainly not the solution in a market that's not free Where governments have as much power as they do and can basically They can basically make it illegal for you to use Bitcoin to buy stuff You could still trade Bitcoin in the anonymous space in the cyber world, but it's not useful I'm hoping, I don't think it'll happen, but I'm hoping that people who thought Bitcoin was an inflation hedge might have woken up Because there's inflation now. It's not acting as a hedge. It's acting as the opposite of a hedge It's actually correlated. If you look at Bitcoin, it's heavily correlated to the NASVAC It's heavily correlated to tech stocks. It's a technology. It's an interesting technology But it's not a currency. It's never going to replace the existing currencies in the world That's science fiction and it's wishful thinking And now I sympathize with the wishful thinking, because I'd love to get the central banks out of the business of currency I've been primarily an objectivist for about 40 years And I've been watching the world through those eyes And I've realized more and more the importance of the objectivist of this tomorrow And I think that that book is really an underrated masterpiece And if that book will be better known, that methodology of the objectivist of this tomorrow will be better known That is the level at which I think so many arguments falter If people have the conceptual ceiling that she spoke of in her essays And I see that in all sorts of issues all the time It's that people can argue at a certain concrete level and maybe one or two runs up But they have a limit and they hang on the cross above that To me the latter abstraction thinking was so vague And you can argue politics in so many issues at this ground level But if people are unable to proceed above it as most seem to be You're banging the head against the wall So one reason suggesting and inquiring about the mission of the underground movement And promoting that book and that way of thinking If I don't see it promoted so openly I suppose Epistemology per se Yeah, promoting epistemology, quiet epistemology is hard Partially because the only way people get interested in epistemology If you first show them why they should get interested in it So the best way to, I think to promote her epistemology Is to model it, is to model the kind of argument to model the kind of conceptual use that she uses there And intrigue people through those ideas to then dig deeper into her philosophy And encounter their epistemology You can't come at them with epistemology Partially because they don't know that's what they need, right? They need it, we all know that's at the heart of it So I think that's one, so the one approach is to stimulate them to get interested in Ayn Rand To get them excited about some idea Often it's in the ethics because they want to promote their own life The people you really want, the people who really care about their own life To some extent or at least respond to that or respond to the novels And then they're going to find their epistemology, they're going to find that And we're going to be doing more courses and more, we've launched the Ayn Rand University And that'll have a number of courses on their epistemology as well So that'll be available online and so that'll be heavily promoted So that's, I think that's one way The second way is the real way in which you're going to change people's ability to think Is now from them studying epistemology That is going to be a very small group of people who will ever go into respond to that Because it's hard and it requires effort and it requires motivation They have to want to do it And the real way you're going to do it is get them young Is start not teaching epistemology young But using the epistemology to create the right teaching methods Using the mind Yes, teach them to think Teach them to be rational, teach them what it requires to form concepts What they're doing somewhat automatically, teach them what that means To test themselves and how they can challenge themselves Yes, and No, but it's worse than that The way you're taught, the way you're taught what you're taught is anti-this So whether you're taught to memorize, that's anti-concrete formation You're not taught how the concepts are created You're taught just to memorize them and to just regurgitate them You're taught lots of concretes with no integrating abstractions So the whole education system is geared towards undermining our epistemological abilities And I think this is becoming worse and this is why people's ability to think is declining Because look, people think of all the scientists and people could think 200 years ago Even though they didn't have Rand's epistemology That's because they had an implicitly pretty decent epistemology But our educational system, particularly in public education, is undermining even that implicit good epistemology If you have an explicit one, you can now teach them properly So I'm encouraged by the fact that so many objectives have gone into the field of education And there are many, many schools in the United States now inspired by Ein Rand Inspired by her epistemology, inspired by her ideas Starting from pre-K, starting with Montessori Because Montessori's epistemology is very aligned with objectivism So starting with Montessori and through the different age groups I think that's where you really have an impact That's where you really get a bang for the book Is teaching people when they're young how to think properly But yeah, I agree I mean, if people can't think, then what's the point of talking to them? I have a question Yeah, you said that we should improve our capability The epistemological capabilities But in this AI age, everything is controlled by You know, like you also retire in a country, use e-technology, surveillance technology And we gradually miss our, you know, judgment abilities Yeah, I mean, what the Theretians are now doing is the same they've always done Just much more sophisticated Now they have the ability to track you, to follow you And now the philosopher King can tell you What ice cream flavor you should buy Not just, you know, what to study in school They can intervene at every level And it's so, you know, the technology is a good technology AI is amazing But in the hands of the wrong people It can be used to control and to provide you with the values That you should be picking for yourself That you should be using your mind for yourself So it all comes down to do we give them the power to control us or not And if we give them the power to control us Then it's going to be really bad Yeah, I mean, I agree with you You should be more worried about Japan than you are with Russia Though you should also be, you know, particularly in Japan I don't think Russia is a threat to you But China could be I think the way you do it is you have to break the culture of conformity You have to break the culture of everybody doing the same as everybody else Because everybody else does it You have to encourage people to think for themselves Ultimately, this is about people caring about their own lives But caring about their own lives, their own values And wanting to live a good life This is not about politics This is about individuals' morality It's about ethics It's about individuals wanting to pursue their own happiness And being ambitious This is the one thing that you see Certainly in America today, but I think in Japanese culture and in other cultures Individuals are not ambitious about their own lives If you're ambitious about your life If you're ambitious about your values You don't want anybody telling you what to do You don't want people to dictate and to restrict and to constrain You want to be able to do whatever And you want to be able to fail Because you know that you can learn from failure And you can grow from failure So you want to be able to push the boundaries The problem, the reason governments are becoming more imposing on us Is because we're letting them Because we lack personal ambition And I'm not talking about personal ambition in Korea That's just one form of ambition We lack personal ambition in terms of how to live And what kind of lives to live for ourselves So what we need to teach the Japanese And again, you have, I think I don't know that much about Japan But you have a fairly rigorous educational system Where again, conformity seems to be the rule The same thing you see in many European countries So you might be good at a skill set Like math or science But not good at individual thinking Thinking for yourself So we need the most important industry to change The most important function to change this education You won't be able to, we won't be able to succeed in anything Changing the world unless you can change education Unless you can break the monopoly of government over education And ultimately change the pedagogy of education Pedagogy of education has to be around You know, teaching kids to think To the knowledge, real knowledge And to think for themselves And teaching them the skill of thinking themselves Going back to this idea of epistemology And then the kids developing the values To be morally ambitious for themselves To want to live a great life If you don't want to live a great life Then people don't care about freedom Then life's fine There's nothing wrong with life in Japan right now It's fine Unless you're ambitious And you see all the barriers and all the stop signs And all the things that are preventing you From doing the things that you want to do Then you're upset But you have to somehow ingrain that Ambitiousness in people And I think that's... So there's no shortcut There's no political answer There's no technological answer The answer has to be Changing the way people think about their own lives Today's session is Going to be a Q&A session That's going to be held in Chirashi But there's going to be a Q&A session In Japan and in the United States So I'm going to review it This time in the seminar In the United States If you're interested You can go to Chirashi In Japan and the United States You can go to Chirashi So can I say one word before you finish There is... We have launched this thing called You can find it on... Just look on your end university online There are lots of courses If you're interested in really studying You can be a graded student So audit these courses The courses on a whole variety of topics It's something that's going to grow Over the years You know, we're interested in students From everywhere in the world It's beauty of technology We're not limited geographically Everything's online Including if you're a graded student You don't have to come to campus You can take courses and be Evaluated online But there will be a wide variety of courses Please sign up If you're interested Go check it out And follow it Because it's still developing It's going to be a process But I think very exciting Thanks everybody