 It's always a real pleasure to be at Clemson, Bruce Yandel and I often joke that there was a period where it felt like a second home because I was here so often. And it's always a pleasure to see Brad. It's an interesting day today to be talking about a free market revolution. The day after we got the election results. Americans made a decision yesterday. They made a choice. And the choice that they made was to continue on a path that we have been on for a very long time and in a sense accelerate the direction, the movement along this path. And this is the path of big government. The path of greater government involvement in our economy, more government redistribution of wealth, more regulations, more controls, more intervention in each one of our individual lives. That was the choice made yesterday and one could argue about whether there was an alternative or whether there wasn't an alternative or what the value of that alternative was. But clearly Americans embraced a continuation of a path towards greater and bigger government that really started, I would argue, about 100 years ago in this country. And this is a choice that really intrigues me. Yeah, I think it's a fascinating choice because we're faced with, on the one hand, big government and government spending and government intervention and entitlements and redistribution and all this stuff. And on the other hand, a vision of a free market where government is small, where government doesn't do much, capitalism. We call this capitalism where government protects property rights but generally leaves people alone to pursue their own lives. And history, over the last 200 years, we've been running kind of an experiment about these two systems. We've been running an experiment of how these two systems do when it comes to creating wealth, when it comes to raising the standard of living, when it comes to raising the standard of living of the poorest among us. So we've got capitalism, freedom, free markets, statism, government intervention, government controls. Some countries have moved more towards freedom and towards capitalism. Other countries move more towards economic controls and government intervention. And we can evaluate. We can look. We've got history. We've got across many countries, across geographies. We can look at the results of one system and the results of this other system and we can evaluate which one creates more wealth, where's the highest standard of living, where did the poor do better? And the results are in. The results have been in for a very long time. And we've done this across time. We've done this across geographies. And the results are almost always unequivocal. Capitalism, freedom produces wealth, produces increased standard of living. The poor do well. They're still poor relative to everybody else, but they're not poor relative to what they used to be. They're not poor relative to economies that have chosen this other path. So when countries go on the path of more government intervention, more government control, more redistribution of wealth, we see poverty. We see lower economic growth. We see lower standard of living, less innovation, less progress. And we've tried some pretty extreme examples of this. We've tried communism and fascism where the government basically takes over everything and controls everything. And we know what the result is. It's tens, if not hundreds of millions, of deaths. It's low standard of living for everybody. It's a horrific life. We've tried going pretty close. I wouldn't say we've ever tried what I would consider pure capitalism, but we've come close to capitalists. We've tried close to free markets where the government is very limited and very controlled and does very few things. And economy goes instead of living go up and we're incredibly successful. We tried this in America in the 19th century. Real incomes doubled twice during that period. What are real incomes doing these days in the United States? Almost nothing. They're not going down. They're going up, but a little bit. Very slow. Not doubling. Not on that path. We saw massive innovation. People forget. People think innovation is an iPhone. I mean, that's innovative. It's great. But think of an innovation that takes us from the buggy to the automobile. Think about innovation that takes us from the ground to the sky. Flying. Think of trains. Thinks of telegraphs. Thinks of telephones. That's grand scale innovation. That happened when we were free. We've tried mixtures of the two systems. All kinds of mixtures all over the world again in all kinds of different places. And the general principle is, and you can plot this almost on a graph, and you can see the correlation, is the more you leave markets free, the higher the standard of living, the greater the prosperity, the better people are off. The more you control, the lower the standard of living, and so on. You see the path, and it's corralling. And you can see it right now across the world. There's an index that comes out every year called the Economic Freedom Index. And it basically looks at ranks countries based on how economically free. And you plot that as compared to standard of living, as compared to GDP per capita, measures of individual wealth, and you can see a high correlation between how free a country is economically free and how well-theatres, how well people are doing in that country. There's a high correlation between those things. By the way, just as an aside, 12 years ago, the United States was number three on those economic indexes. Last year, it was number 10, and I think this last report, it dropped to number 18. Canada, countries like Denmark, countries like New Zealand and Australia are today ranked based on these indexes, which are flawed, and they're not perfect, as more economically free than the United States. We've clearly headed in the direction, this direction, direction of statism, direction of more government intervention, and so on. So you have to ask yourself, if people vote their pocketbook, if people what they care about is making a living, is more prosperity, more wealth, higher standard of living, then why aren't we moving in the direction of more freedom? Why aren't we moving in the direction of capitalism? Why aren't we moving in the direction of limited government? Why aren't we moving in exactly the opposite direction? Not just in this election, almost in every election since the 19-teens, since President Wilson, maybe even before that. Government grows all the time, even Ronald Reagan. During eight years of Ronald Reagan, the size of government, government spending actually doubled. Now, it shrunk a little bit of a percent of GDP, but they spent more money. They spent more money during those years. So government never seems to shrink in spite of the evidence, and the evidence is there. And it's not just empirical evidence, it's not just facts that are out there, but we also understand why this happens. All you have to do is go to the economics department here at Clemson, and they will tell you, we have theory that explains this. We have a lot of good economists who know why freedom works, why when you leave people to be entrepreneurial, when you leave people free to innovate, the standard of living goes up. We understand how the price mechanism works. We understand all these things, supply and demand, all this stuff. It's understood. It's not that there's a lack of theoretical understanding of the workings of capitalism, and all we have is empirical evidence, and people spin it. No, we know this stuff. Now yes, the economists who pretend that it doesn't work, but the secret is that they're pretending, because they know, even Paul Krugman, who by the way won a Nobel Prize for an article he wrote, which was about free trade, which is actually a pretty good article. So he used to know economics. So why is it we've got the theory, we've got the facts, we've got reality, in a sense it's stemming us in our face. So anybody, I mean, you guys are students, so I don't expect many hands to go up, but how many of you have been to Hong Kong? A few people have been to Hong Kong. You should go at least once in your life to Hong Kong. This is a magnificent place. 70 years ago, it was nothing. It was a rock in the middle of nowhere with a fishing village on it and rice paddies on the hillside, right? There was nothing there. Today, there are skyscrapers, skyscrapers that are amazing, you know, I wish we had a skyline like that in the United States. Modern, beautiful, soaring skyscrapers. And you've got seven and a half million people living on this rock. And these seven and a half million people came from all over Asia. They took rafts, they took dinky little boats, they risked their lives, they risked the lives of their families. To get to this rock, why? What was there? Freedom, freedom, no, there was no safety net, a little bit of safety net, barely a safety net. No universal health care, no entitlements, no government regulations of every aspect of their lives. Freedom, freedom to succeed, freedom to fail. And they've succeeded, they've succeeded. GDP per capita in Hong Kong today is equivalent to that of the United States. That's success. On that little piece of rock, all they have is freedom, economic freedom. They lack some political freedom. And basically what freedom means is their property rights are protected. But other than that, they're pretty much left alone to work out the dealings in the economy. So here it is, the evidence is right in front of us. We've got the theory, we understand it, and yet we work in the other direction. We continuously go away from economic freedom, away from prosperity, away from what leads to these great results. And the question has to be asked, why? What is it about us that we choose this alternative path? And my argument is that people actually don't vote their pocketbook. People don't actually think that the most important thing is standard of living. People don't actually think that the most important thing is wealth. If they did, we would be living in a laissez-fait capitalist paradise. People vote what they think is right, what they think is just, what they think is good, what they think is moral, what they think is ethical. I'm from California, which is a depressing thought this morning. Because we had a ballot initiative in California that raises the marginal income tax in California at the top rate from 10% to 13%. That's a 30% increase, which will make it the highest marginal tax rate in the United States. And the same proposition also, at the same, raises the sales tax to the highest rate in the United States. And it won. Now, this is a tax that everybody pays, sales tax, everybody pays it, right? And a lot of Californians make more than 250,000 a year. California is a very expensive place to live. A lot of middle class Californians make 250 and up, and yet it won. People voted to raise their own taxes by a big margin. I fell asleep, luckily last night it looked like it was going to lose. I fell asleep thinking, okay, at least that. And then this morning, so here we are. People voting explicitly against the economic self-interest. Why did they do that? Well, because they think it's right to do it. Because the state is in trouble. Because the state has this enormous deficits and they want to close those deficits. Because the government has been cutting education spending and they want to fund education and they don't want education to be cut anymore. Because they think it's right. The problem is that there's something about capitalism. There's something about free markets that people find offensive. That they think is wrong. That they think is bad. And as a consequence, they generally vote against it. They generally move against it. So what is it? Because we have this almost gut response, almost emotional, immediate response to capitalism that says no, we don't want that. As a culture, right? An economic crisis happens, who do we blame? Before the debt is even in, who do we blame? The capitalists, the bankers, Wall Street, free markets, free markets. Remember 2008, we had all these banners, capitalism has failed. Nobody even knew exactly what happened and already they were declaring capitalism dead. What is this gut response that resents free markets so much? Well, what is it that free markets are about? What is it that a marketplace is about? Why do we go into the marketplace? What do we do in the marketplace? What's capitalism about? You're cheating. Why does Steve Jobs make these iPhones? The first iPhones that came out had a profit margin of 60%. So when Steve Jobs came out with these, he was thinking, I want to make Iran happy? That's my name. No, right? He was thinking, what was he thinking? I want to make what? Money, I want to make a profit. I want to make money. Now is it just about money? Was that the only thing going through Steve Jobs as he was putting this together, it was just money? What else was it? Passion, he loves this stuff. It was his passion. He loves creating stuff, he loves creating beautiful stuff. He likes creating beautiful stuff in his image. The image that comes out of his mind. So Steve Jobs is about whom? Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs is pursuing his self-interest when he's creating this. And I like to say that when I went to the mall in 2008, to buy one of these, the economy was spiraling out of control and it looked really, really bad. So I went to the mall to buy one to stimulate the economy. That was my purpose in buying one of these, right? Because that's why you guys go to the mall. You care about your fellow man and you want to make sure that they all have jobs. Now, you go to the mall to satisfy your self-interest. To pursue the things that you think will make you your life better. Whether it's more productive or just make you feel better or make you look better, whatever it is. It's things that you think that will make your life better. And who loses in that transaction? Who lost when I bought the iPhone? Nobody. I was better off, it cost me 300 bucks. Why? Because it was worth more than 300 bucks to me. That's why I went and got it. And indeed, I've got a lot more than $300 worth of productivity and pleasure and just fun out of this thing. Much more than 300, right? What about Apple? Did Apple lose? No, they made a profit. It's a trade. When we go to the mall, when we do these trades, who loses? Nobody. They win-wins. They win-wins. And yet, what is the motivation behind this trading? It's self-interest. And what do we know about self-interest? What have we been taught since we were this big about self-interest? It's bad, right? I grew up in a good Jewish household. And my mother told me, you think about this first. Think of yourself. Last. Be self-less, right? Self-less. Don't think of yourself. And what is the most noble thing we are taught? What is the most noble thing we can do, most moral thing, most ethical thing, the most righteous thing that we can do? Sacrifice. Sacrifice means giving something and getting what in return. Nothing or less. Because if you got more in return, what would we call it? We just called it something else a minute ago. We called it a trade. You give up 300 bucks, you got an iPhone. That's more. That's a trade. Trading is when you give and you get more. And it's not just material. Because what I get out of my iPhone is not material. It's fun. Fun is not material. Right? So, sacrifice, self-lessness, those are virtues and self-interest. Eh. Not so much, right? Not really a virtue. And in some cases a vice. And yet, what's capitalism about? What are markets about? They're about self-interest. They're about people pursuing their self-interest. So Bill Gates. Take Apple's competitor, right? Microsoft. Bill Gates makes billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars for himself. How does he make it? By producing stuff and trading with us. Bill Gates touches every human being on the planet by making Microsoft the successful company. He raises all of our standard of living. He makes our lives better. Everybody's lives better. Everybody's lives better. Do we give him any moral credit for that? Do we consider him a good guy because he did this? No. Because he made money doing it. That's not a sacrifice. He wasn't being self-less. See, even though he makes all of our lives better, we still don't give him any moral credit for it until he does what? Until he resigns from Microsoft, sets up a philanthropy and gives it away. Now he's a good guy. Now he's virtuous. I could guarantee, I think, I haven't talked to the Pope, but I think I could guarantee Bill Gates' sainthood. What would it take to make Bill Gates a saint? See, I'm more silly than I am. He would have to take that money and give it all away, move into a tent, and if he should show some suffering, a little bit of blood, because that's what we think virtue is. That's what we think morality comprises of. Suffering, sacrifice, self-lessness. So we live in this split and this world with this dichotomy. Our morality tells us, be self-less. Don't think of yourself too much. Sacrifice. Profit is suspect. And an economy, an economic system called free markets and capitalism, that yes, provides the standard of living and the goods and all that good stuff, all the material stuff that we want, and yet demands from us to be self-interested. And we know that this is bad, that this is no good. That cannot exist. I mean, in Bill Gates' case, you have somebody who created, who made stuff, who built a company, who built a product that changed the world, who affected every human life on the planet and he gets no credit for it. How are we going to sustain capitalism if we can't give its greatest exemplar to any more credit for it? And we don't. You know, even when Steve Jobs, who everybody liked, because he's just a likable guy and his genius was evident, even when he died, it took about two weeks after he died, the article started coming out about how he wasn't philanthropic and he didn't give any money away and Apple had all these bad social practices and immediately they jumped on him. Because he's a capitalist and he's self-interested and he has to be something very wrong with that. Now, what does this lead us? So this lead us to have this dichotomy. But it leads to particular government types of programs. So think about it. Think about the morality that says that you're, to be a good person, you're responsible to take care of others, to be self-less, to sacrifice. Well, there are people who need stuff. They might need healthcare. They might need food. They might just be poor and you've got stuff. Why aren't you helping them? Well, you say Americans are always charitable and we've always helped some, but they still seem to need more. And I, the government, am coming in and saying, look, we're just going to help you be more moral. We're just going to help you fulfill your moral obligation to them. So we're going to tax you a little bit and give it to them. And they'll be better off and you'll be able to feel better about yourself because you are now moral. It's exactly what's happening in California right now. But think about healthcare. We start off always with a small group that really is needy, that really needs our help and is not getting it through charity. Not enough, it turns out, right? Well, they tell us. And government gives them a little bit. But then there's another group that's not quite keeping track, keeping up. So we start with poor people and old people. And then there are younger people, don't quite qualify as old people, but they're not quite poor enough to get the Medicaid. So we create a program for them. And then there are children who fall in between the cracks and we create a program for them. And then there are other people who don't have health insurance and they're going to the emergency room and the emergency room is turning them away. So we pass a law that says the emergency room has to take them. And nobody's going to say no to that because our morality requires that we take care of them because they need it. And who are you to be selfish and say you're not going to help them? By the way, the rule that emergency rooms have to treat all patients was passed in 1986 under Ronald Reagan. Nobody opposes this stuff because it's small, it's just, it's good. And soon enough, you've got 32 million Americans who are uninsured and we have to take care of them. And when the current system, the Obamacare system collapses we'll just have universal health care and all of us will take care of all of us and we'll have socialized medicine with all the consequences that are involved. And we've moved from this capitalist vision, this free markets where health care is incredible quality and actually reasonably priced to a system which is socialized. And we know what socialized health care is like. Just visit Canada, visit Europe. I come from Israel, I know. I've lived under socialized medicine many years. Visit Israel, it sucks. It's not what you want. And we moved from here to there not because of any economic argument. Not because anybody said over here we have better health care for you. What they've said is we've got better health care for them and you are going to be sacrificed to them and you say, fine, that's my moral duty. That's my moral responsibility. I'm okay with that and I'll vote for it. And we move systematically in that direction. That's how we get an entitlement state. That's how we've got all the entitlements. They use this morality against us and we say nothing because we have no alternative. We have no alternative morality to stand on. That's one way in which they grow government using the morality of self-sacrifice. But there's another. What do we know about selfish people, self-interested people? What do we know? What do they do? When I point at you and say, you're selfish. Do you guys mean that as a compliment typically? No. By the way, selfish means taking care of self. But that's not what we mean. What do we mean? We don't say you're taking care of yourself. We mean you're a what? You would do anything to get you away. You would lie, steal, cheat. You would exploit other people. You would backstab. You would do whatever it takes to get to what you want. That's how we have framed self-interest. Guess who has an interest to frame it that way? The people who want you to be selfless. They want you to present to you with an alternative. Either be selfless or be a lying, stealing, cheating SOB. Who's going to want that? Bonnie Madoff, but that's it. Everybody else wants to be good. So they all choose to be selfless and they get caught up in this trap. So we know that self-interest leads to lying, stealing, cheating. So what do we do? Because we know all businessmen are self-interested. We've just showed that, right? And Steve Jobs, he's the best of them. They're all self-interested. So what do we need to do if these guys are self-interested? If these guys are lying, cheating, stealing? If we just left them alone? What do we have to do to them? Well, we have to control them. We have to watch over them. We call that regulation. We have to regulate them. We have to make sure that they behave. Because we know that if we leave them free, they'll go back to that lying, cheating, stealing. You know, every time I walk into an elevator in a building like this and I walk in and I see that little diploma on the wall that says that a government bureaucrat has inspected this elevator, I go, oh, yeah, good, right? Because, God forbid, if they hadn't inspected that elevator, we know that elevator builders would build elevators that killed us. Because generally that's how you make money in business by killing your customers, right? I mean, think about it. We believe that. You laugh. But we actually believe that, right? I'm not going to ask you for a vote because I know the result. But how many of you think McDonald's would poison us if not for the FDA? I'm scared to ask that question because I think I know the answer. I don't believe they would. I don't believe, but we believe that. So we have to have all these regulations in order to control McDonald's and make sure they don't poison us. Now, how they make money by poisoning us, I still haven't figured out. But that's what we believe because we bought into this notion of self-interest. So self-interest leads us to the regulatory stage. And every time there's a crisis, we blame it on these greedy capitalists, on these self-interested capitalists, on those lying, cheating stealers. That's who gets to blame. When in 2000, Enron, WorldCom, Taiko, there was a bunch of cases of fraud in corporate America and these guys were caught. The immediate response of the American people and politicians in particular was, they're all crooks. And we need to regulate all of them. We need to control all of them. There's even a quite to fire them all. I was on Bill O'Reilly show in 2002, in the spring of 2002, and Bill, I don't know if you guys watch Bill O'Reilly, but Bill wanted to fire every CEO in America. That was a shtick that night. He was going to fire everybody because they're all crooks. How do we know they're all crooks? We caught five. They must be all crooks. And they're all self-interested. Self-interest leads to lying, cheating, stealing. They're all crooks. Let's fire them all. Instead of firing all, Congress passed a bill called Salbanes Oxley. You guys are too young to know what a other disaster that was, but some of your professors, I think, do know. This bill probably cost the US economy between one and a half to $2 trillion of GDP. It cost hundreds of thousands of jobs. It's a crazy, crazy piece of legislation. It basically controls every aspect of what our business does from an accounting perspective. It also controls... It raised the cost for IPOs, initial public offerings. It's had devastating economic... Won't get into all the details. How many crooks has it caught? Zero. Did it prevent the financial crisis? No, but everybody feels better because now we're watching over these guys and we know they're crooks. Just a matter of time. We'll catch them. So my argument is simple. As long as we hold onto a morality that is the exact opposite of what is required by capitalism, what is required, I'd even say, for all our transactions, for any kind of trade, for progress, for freedom, we will not have capitalism, progress, and freedom. As long as we hold onto this morality, we will continue to expand the welfare state. We will continue to expand entitlements and we will continue to expand the regulatory state. And we're seeing that right now with Dodd-Frank and Obamacare and everything else. We're just seeing growth, growth, growth, because we're holding dearly to the selfless morality. Our lives are not ours. Our lives are to serve others. Your job is to take care of whoever needs your help and to help with your happiness. That's the morality. And the economic political consequences are statism through and through. But there is an alternative. There is an alternative morality. There's an alternative moral code. One doesn't have to buy into this notion of morality. And that's the morality that I ran or the moral code that I ran presents us with. She asked a simple question about this issue of being selfless, about this issue of living for others. She asked a very simple question. She asked why? Why is your knife not as worthy as other people's? Why isn't you who should be making decisions about your own life? Why are you born into this position in a sense of moral servitude to the needs of others? And there's no answer. No real answer. So what she proposes is you're not. Selflessness is not good. She says self-interest is good. Your life is the standard. What's good for you should guide what your morality should be. What's good for human beings? What makes the individual successful? What makes it possible for him to thrive? What makes it possible for the individual to be happy? To flourish. That's what the good is. So what does make it possible for us to flourish, to be successful? Where did all the values that we have, this projector, this mic, the clothes that you're wearing, where does it all come from? The food that you eat. Everything. Every human value that you pursue. Where do they come from? They come from the mind. You don't have genes for this. Now if you look around the room, look at your neighbor. I know you're not going to look, but believe me, they're pretty pathetic. And this is why. They're slow. They're weak. They have no claws. They have no fangs. Try biting into a bison. You can't. If we were just as a physical entity, dropped into the wilderness, we could not survive. So how did we get here? With skyscrapers and technology and iPhones and all this stuff. Where did that come from? It came from this tool. Our minds. Our reason. Our ability to think. To observe reality, understand it, integrate it. Come up with new observations about it. Shape it. Shape our environment. Change our environment. Adapt our environment to our needs. That's how we survive. As a human species, reason and rationality is what makes our life possible. There's no gene that tells you how to do agriculture. There's no gene that tells you how to skin an animal. You have to figure it out. And it's not easy. Try it sometime. Luckily you don't have to. Because of technology, because of advancement, you don't have to. So if you're going to be self-interested, what is the one tool that you have that gains you all these values? It's your mind. So you want to be rationally self-interested. You're going to pursue your life in a rational way. In a long-term way. You want to achieve your happiness. Your life is yours. It doesn't belong to anybody else. You don't owe anybody. You can choose to help other people. You can choose to be charitable. But you don't owe anybody else anything. You don't owe them your charity. It's your life. What you make of it. And you get to keep the words of what you make of it. And lying, stealing, cheating. Is that self-interest? I mean, you guys are young. But believe me, it doesn't work. Lying, stealing, cheating. They don't work. And if you ever want an image of it not working, think Bernie Madoff. I assume you know who Bernie Madoff is. The guy who created the pyramid scheme. $50 billion. He was turned in by his sons. A year after they turned him in. One of his sons committed suicide. He's serving a life sentence in jail today. Bernie is. And the interesting thing about Bernie Madoff is he says today that he's happier in jail than he was before he was caught. Because think about what life is like when you're lying to everybody around you. When you can't look at anybody's eyes. When you can't honestly talk to somebody because you know that you are hiding stuff from them. That you are cheating them on the background. That's not a life. That's a disaster. You need to be honest. Not because you owe something to somebody but because you owe it to yourself. Because you destroy yourself by being dishonest. Lying, cheating, stealing is self-destructive. It's not self-interested. I mean at my age I can barely remember what actually happened last week. I imagine I have to lie about it. I have to remember two things. And it's not really two things because when you lie to somebody about something you have to remember who you lied to and who you didn't lie to. So it's like 20 things. And there's no way. So you're destroying your own ability to think. So lying, cheating, stealing are not self-interest. Self-interest is about you pursuing your rational life. It's about having, being honest and being just and having integrity and being independent. And taking pride in your own achievement. And being productive. Knowing that you can take care of yourself. Knowing that you can make the stuff that is required for your survival. Knowing that you're taking care of yourself and the people you love. What happiness requires. That's what success requires. People cannot be happy. People cannot be successful if they don't work for themselves. Work for themselves in a sense that they're making a living for themselves. That's the great tragedy by the way. One of the great tragedies of the entitlement state is the people who get the benefits and are therefore institutionalized into poverty often. Who don't get the experience of working. Who don't get the experience of taking care of themselves. Who don't get to experience self-esteem and pride and therefore happiness. They are the victims. So Rand presents us with an alternative morality that's completely consistent with the marketplace. Because she's all four people pursuing their values. She's all four people pursuing their self-interest. Rationally. She's all four us exchanging iPhone, trading. She talks about this, the trade principle. The idea that trade is win-win that we both benefit from it. That's win-win. Self-interest leads to win-win relationships. That's how we want to interact with one another. That's what we want to engage. We don't want to take from someone and give to others. We don't want to force you to help everybody else. We want you to trade. We want you to do stuff that's beneficial to you. But that's almost always beneficial to somebody else at the same time. So that's cheating, stealing, not self-interest. Now a person who wants to pursue his own life, wants to pursue his own values, does he want mother government sitting on his shoulder peeking over don't drink that sugary drink. Don't walk into that elevator. Don't do this. Don't do that. Don't open this business. No. You want to be left alone. You want to be left free. What's the one thing you don't want? If you value the human mind what don't you want? If you value your own thought, your own ability to think, your own ability to make stuff what don't you want? You don't want to be forced to do stuff you don't want to do. You don't want a gun. A gun is what crushes your mind. It makes it possible to create and to think. Just think I put a gun to your back and say from now on you have to assume the 2 plus 2 equals 5 or I blow your head off. Can you do engineering? Can you build a bridge? Can you do medicine? Can you do anything? I just shut you down. So we don't want guns. We don't want force. We don't want coercion. We don't want some people telling other people what to do. That's what freedom is about. That's what self-interest is about. And to a large extent that's what this country used to be about. That's really part of the founding principles of this country. If you think about what the revolution of 1776 was about 1776 it wasn't about taxes it wasn't about this or that particular item it was about a principle it was about an idea an idea was simple it was the answer to the question of who does your life belong to? Before 1776 the answer universally was always not to you. Your life belonged to the tribe your life might have belonged to the king, to the queen to the pope to somebody, some group some entity, some person but not to you. The founder said absolutely not the whole revolution that is the American Revolution is a stand that says no, my life belongs to me and they articulate this in the most important political document in human history the Declaration of Independence where they say that each one of us has an inalienable right what does an inalienable mean? it means nobody can take it away from you not even a majority not even 99% of the votes nobody can take it away from you you have a right to what? to maximize social utility to feed your fellow man to be your brother's keeper no, what do you have a right to? to your own life it means you have to live your life as you see fit pursuing your values without being cursed without people forcing you to do things you do not want to do and then include your neighbor it includes the guy across the street but it includes government maybe more than anybody they were trying to protect us from coercive power of government so you have a right to your own life and you have a right to liberty life, liberty which means you can think whatever you want to think and you can act on those thoughts you can pursue again your values and nobody has a right to stop you nobody has a right to force you to do something you do not want to do unless you're somehow violating somebody else's right unless you're trespassing on somebody else's property or you're putting again to somebody else's back the government has no role to play and in the most self-interested statement in human history each one of us has an unalienable right to pursue our happiness our happiness not the group not the collectives, not the kings not the states, not the countries ours now that's pretty self-interested that's the kind of self-interest that leads to freedom that leads to capitalism that leads to prosperity that leads to success that's the self-interest that we need to recapture that's the ideas those ideas of life-limiting the pursuit of happiness those unalienable rights those are the ideas that we need to capture if we want a free market revolution if we want a prosperous free successful country and world thank you all you're on thank you very much for that wonderfully inspiring talk just one quick announcement before we go to the Q&A for students here in the audience who are interested and would like a free copy of Iran's book free market revolution we have I think about 40 down here so let's not try to have a stampede after we're done for those who are interested in getting a copy of Iran's book if we could maybe form two lines down here in the front at the table we will have copies of Iran's book for you and just one last thing now about how we shall proceed in the question and answer period it's our tradition here at the Clemson Institute to reserve the first two or three questions for students we have live mics down here at the bottom of each aisle so if you would like to ask Iran a question students in particular please start to line up at the mics and then once Iran has taken two or three questions from students then we will open the floor to anyone else go ahead can you hear me yes hi Iran okay you asked me or you asked the audience who loses in the Apple customer trade and there was like I heard about a scandal about how they exploit workers in Asian countries and in general I've heard a lot about multinational companies going into small countries and exploiting them for their natural resources and cheap labor how would a more open, more free market fix this problem well I guess I don't agree with you it's a problem so what is exploit mean in this context so Apple goes into and I'll just pick Apple I don't know the facts exactly around Apple but Apple goes into a country that's very very poor and offers people a job people who typically don't have a job and they choose to go work for Apple why do they choose to go work for Apple instead of doing some other job because Apple's paying them more than the other job will give them so they have one their state of living has gone up so they could stay in the farm and make a buck a day Apple's giving them a buck and a half a day how's that exploitation they are better off Apple's better off so unless they're using force unless they're tying them to the machines and whipping them three times a day or rounding them up in the villages which just happened in history I'm not saying it hasn't happened that's awful if it happens if it's a voluntary transaction if people are coming to it willingly now they might not be happy because they want two bucks an hour they might buy three bucks an hour but one and a half is better than the one they got before they're better off indeed all these countries where they're standard of living rises these people have more wealth they can buy more products they can feed their families they can send their kids to school they can do things that 20 years ago they couldn't do they went deep poverty why because of so-called exploitation because companies brought in now there's more than that when this kid or this young person gets a buck 50 for the day what's happening he's learning a skill yeah because if they want what will happen somebody else will because now he's worth more he's able to produce more so he'll get paid more and that's how they learn skills and maybe this kid one day will own the factory and employ other people because he'll learn the skills that's how countries standard of living goes up but they start off over here you want to stay over here then don't send the multinationals in the fact is that the rate of poverty in the world has declined dramatically over the last 40 years dramatically during the era of multinationals exploited in these countries now natural resources is a little bit more complicated because it's not clear who owns these natural resources right I mean does the king of Saudi Arabia really own the oil in Saudi Arabia don't we get rid of kings and don't we really believe in private property so there's no real private property in these countries the ideals that are cut with governments over there that are not rights but that's because these countries it's not our fault it's their fault for not having proper property rights and not defining property rights but even in those cases what the fact that these mining companies go in and they mine these products is creating wealth in these countries creates jobs creates technology other jobs that are fun support jobs for the jobs that are actually in the mine the government usually takes a percentage of the sales so all this so-called exploitation I'm not saying it's all just because governments in these countries are involved and therefore forced incursion is often involved but overall they're raising out of poverty hundreds of millions of people we should celebrate it I mean multi-national corporations should be the heroes of anybody who cares about poverty in the world and it's exactly this awful morality that we hold that makes us view them as villains because they're making money how awful is that that they make money off of people when you graduate and you get a job your boss the company you'll be employed with is making money off of you they're paying you less than what you're worth to them otherwise they wouldn't employ you and you're taking the job why? it's more than you can get anywhere else and it's more than your time is worth sitting at home doing nothing so win-win thank you so knowing the benefits of a free market how can we as individuals change society's viewpoints of capitalism and stop the movement away from capitalism I think the two things you need to do I think one is you need to know the economics you need to understand the economic arguments you need to understand why capitalism works at least at the very basic level right? so I think everybody who cares about these issues should be taking a good basic free market economics class to really understand the arguments and how they work but second and second which never happens particularly not in these elections is we need to make the case that capitalism is moral that capitalism is good and capitalism is the only system that allows people to pursue their self-interest to pursue their happiness to achieve their values to raise the standard of living but that's not just a neutral financial thing that is a moral good to live a better life and we have to reject this morality of selflessness and adopt a morality of self-interest and advocate for it so one of the great tragedies of this campaign is that Mitt Romney a very successful private equity guy will defend private equity and of all the finance of all the finance stuff that you do out there private equity is one of the easiest to explain I don't know what he would have done if he was running a hedge fund because you can't run if you run a hedge fund you can't run for office because everybody thinks you're evil by definition right? because of the association of hedge fund in the world we live in today but we need to be able to stand up proud of our achievements proud of capitalism to explain that it is good good just fair the left see the left dominates this language what does fair mean what does fair mean everyone's equal right and what does that mean what does equality mean that everybody has to have as much as you have that's not what fair means that's what Obama would like you to believe fair is that's what the left generally would like you to believe fair is but that's not what fair used to mean fair used to mean people get what they deserve fair mean you get a just reward justice didn't mean equality so you can't give them all high ground you have to be able to stand up for what is just from an individualistic or self-interested perspective not buying to their perspective my question is in regards to the quality I think of some of the things that corporations make so in the McDonald's example that you used and you said well the FDA wasn't there to regulate McDonald's what would happen to the quality of their products or for example in the situation of stocks if stocks wasn't in place what would happen to the quality of like financial reports if they were not there and I know that you said that it wouldn't be in their best self-interest not to lie and cheat and steal but what if at the time they thought that it was a good idea to mislead people and to believing that they had these financial statements that weren't right so first let me say fraud is illegal it's a violation of your rights it's a form of use of force it's a form of coercion so if you commit fraud you go to jail you don't need regulations for that that's been existing forever but let me talk about the quality the quality would improve dramatically now I don't know about food I think I can explain why McDonald's would improve as well but let me start with financial statements because I know finance and accounting a little bit so I can explain why it would improve dramatically because you'd have competition who sets accounting standards today a group at least a group called FASB you know it's a little different now with Saubanes but it's basically a group of bureaucrats and some academics that they hire and they sit around and they think and they devise different means by which we should do accounting one system fit all imagine if you have competing accounting standards imagine if shareholders you know differentiated between companies not just based on the quality of the earnings but the quality of their accounting imagine if different exchanges said oh we only use this type of accounting because it's the gold stand in the accounting we don't use that kind of accounting Cyper Semiconductor is a semiconductor company in Silicon Valley that during the 1990s used to issue two sets of accounting books one based on what they had to do right what they required based on the law and a second that they thought was meaningful and one of the arguments the CEOs made is look we're in the semiconductor business accounting for semiconductors is different than accounting for banks is different than accounting for drug companies is different than accounting for other type of companies I want to present you with my books the way I think they make sense well let's see what the market thinks of that investors are not stupid if they don't like your accounting you'll get hammered in the marketplace now think about food imagine McDonald's has a challenge right it wants to you know let's make money and it's trying to source meat and there's no FDA and there's nobody telling them what the quality is what would happen right so let's say they could hire their own meat inspectors and find ways to incentivize them so they did a real good job and fire them so they didn't do a good job do you think the incentives McDonald's would provide those meat inspectors would be stronger or weaker than the ones the FDA provides I happen to think they would be stronger because they could fire them but imagine they didn't do that imagine they decided to outsource it and imagine that they were competing private companies that graded meat and provided all kinds of information to grocery stores and to fast food chains and direct to consumers and you paid for this information and they did it and they were competing and if they didn't do a good job guess what would happen nobody would hire them so they'd have to do a really good job so my guess is you'd actually have more information about the products that you buy you'd have to they'd actually be safer and the quality would actually go up because that's what happens in markets now what do you think would happen if the government decided to determine quality and cell phones it would set the standards of iPhones and you know Microsoft and do you think the quality would go up or down I'll put a bet with my entire wealth at stake it would go down it would go down when the government gets involved it's just just simple economics these incentives are not right they don't have any incentive to make the quality go up you know what drives the incentive to the quality go up profit profit self interest people want to do well people want to do better now again not to say that they're not going to be companies to cut corners we've always had a legal system they knew how to deal with that there's always going to be frauds you put them in jail there's always going to be companies that sell cheap products they're cheap not many people would buy them or maybe only people who want cheap products would buy them but you get that beautiful market differentiation you get all kinds of products thank you I just wanted to see if you could say a little bit more about the logic that underwrites regulation in general but I guess other kinds of government intervention market and particularly the morality of selflessness or altruism that underwrites some of these interventions because I'm wondering if the kind of this sharp distinction between selflessness and selfishness isn't a little bit too simple so to give you kind of example to anchor this down I bought a house three years ago or three years ago which I sold last year five years ago or so at any rate the with after the economic collapse property values dropped this is an Indiana the market was very hard hit by the housing market a number of people in my neighborhood lost jobs their houses were closed upon sure I could make a selfless argument that I don't want to see them suffer I want to see them keep their house and I think the government should intervene and write down some of these mortgages to help them survive the truth is though I didn't want my property values to go down right I wanted to be able to sell my house for at least what I put into it if not more and at the end of the day I wasn't able to do that I had to take a loss but I had a very selfish interest in having society quote unquote sure right yes I get it so this is the argument that says you know it's like a public choice argument right this is the argument that says that there's special interests that have a self-interested self-interested benefit from government regulations and government redistribution and they're the ones who vote for it and they're the ones who get it in place and it has nothing to do with anything else it's just it's just motivated by this and let me say suddenly that goes on now I would argue that that's not self-interest it's a long argument but that I would argue it's not self-interest that's self-destructive it's not really in your self-interest long term because a society in which you're manipulating government like that is going to come back and bite you it's not in your long-term rational self-interest to pursue that but it doesn't matter what we call it right now rent seeking right let's just call it rent seeking you're out there to try to try to make a profit off of the government by manipulating it and that clearly goes on it goes on all the time I'm saying I don't think that's a dominant factor I don't think it's a D dominant factor one I'm saying the way that that you can get away with it right the way you can get all this room to vote with you is by using the selfless argument and that's indeed what happens right so it's not just the people who are going to benefit to vote for it a lot of people vote for it like in California we're all raising taxes it's not that the people who are going to get the taxes of voting for the raised taxes it's also the people who are going to pay it most rich people in California voted for raising their taxes so it's the way you convince everybody else is through morality and I would argue that it's morality that gets the process going that in the beginning there isn't this interest play but in the beginning though it's set up through this moral dimension and then the interest step in and try to manipulate the process government initiates these things and it uses and maybe it's initiates them because it's out for power maybe it's just a power grabbed by some bureaucrat but again the only way you can get away with it the only way you can explain it the only way people will vote for it is if you use as a moral argument and they do all the time you hear it all the time you see it all the time I mean Bushiana wrote the paper Baptist and bootlegged right and it's this dynamic between using a moral argument in order to capture rents my argument is that it's the moral argument that is at the forefront and it's the moral argument that starts the process and if you want to get rid of the rent seeking you have to get rid of the moral argument because once you get rid of the moral argument I can see right through you and I am voting with you you can try to go vote for that but I'm not voting with you right so it makes it makes your rent seeking transparent and you can't get away with it anymore so I want to eliminate this moral argument I think it's very easy at that point okay so you've talked about two different types of morality selflessness and selfishness I'm just curious as to in your opinion what point will society reach a breaking point in which people will depart from the morality of selflessness and move to selfishness what do you think what type of event or something in our foreseeable future will so I don't believe an event will cause it I don't believe people learn from events or from experience or from the facts of reality people learn up here it's only going to happen when people figure it out when they think about it when they study it and when they choose it I don't think so people say oh the economy needs to collapse and then when the economy collapses we'll realize that socialism doesn't work and we'll adapt free market capitalism it doesn't work that way it just doesn't usually when massive economic collapse happens what do we do we turn to authoritarian figure to save us all that's what happens so the only way is education the only way is to convince people to get people to read books to get people to think about these things this is a long process of education and the politics of it in my view all we want from politicians right now is to slow it down so that we have enough time to educate people so we can save this country not to use the political process to save the country because that's too far fetched so it's just this is hard work this is work that's education education education there are no shortcuts unfortunately I have a question about how there are I believe that there are certain government programs that needs to take place in order for the country to be well off and one of these is government oversight to prevent the formation of monopolies do you believe this is necessary or required for a country to do well when you're only seeking self-interest no not in a free market so if you have a real free market which means the government has not evolved in the economy it's out of the economy then there should be no antitrust laws there should be no laws against so-called monopolies now I can make a rights argument for that it's just not right for the government to step in if I'd be incredibly successful so that I dominate a market it's none of their business they should be external to this but I can also make an economic argument monopolies just don't exist not in the real world yes on the blackboard of your economics professor they do exist in reality in a free market monopolies don't exist because there's always competition there's always somebody who's trying to go after you there's always somebody who wants to make this product what are they motivated by self-interest they're motivated by profit so you might have 90-something percent of the market and if you let up for just a little bit you will lose it even your economics professor will say there's huge barriers to entry because there's a lot of capital requirement that's what venture capital is for that's what these private equity funds are there just give us a shot at Microsoft we'll fund it just give us a clear shot show us how they've lacked stuff and indeed what happened when Microsoft lacked stuff because the Justice Department went after them by the way why did Microsoft get sued by the Justice Department because they were giving away a product for free that was the antitrust case about Internet Explorer and Netscape goes back to the rent-seeking behavior Netscape got the government to go after Microsoft because they were selling the Explorer so immediately competitors entered and Microsoft was gone Microsoft is a lot smaller today can you imagine you guys again are too young but I remember the days where I was the only guy I think in the universe buying Apple products like the late 90s and today and there were nothing their stock was below 20 they were selling for less than cash because the market believed that they were so unprofitable that they would eat through their cash and they weren't worth the cash that they had in the bank that's what Apple was worth today they're the largest corporation in the world that's an industry that's relatively free now I'll give you one example my favorite example of this is Rockefeller Standard Oil 1870s, Rockefeller has 92% mining capacity in the United States what do we use oil back then for anybody know lamps, right? lighting yet your econ professor some econ professors I shouldn't many econ professors wouldn't say this but some econ professors would say well if you had 92% of all the oil production in the US prices would go up and quality would go down that's a monopoly and yet if you go to the historical data just look prices go down every single year quality goes up every single year, why? because Rockefeller knows that if he slips up there are all kinds of entrepreneurs out there who will jump on to the business and do it not only in this country, the Russians are discovering oil and they're starting to refine it and they could import the oil cheaper right? and guess who ultimately competes them out of business out of the kerosene business nobody could have predicted this no government bureaucrat could ever think wow this is a competitor Thomas Edison but the genius of Rockefeller is by the time that Edison comes around with electricity he has lowered the price of refining oil so low that there are now lots of other uses for oil including the internal combustion engine which is why it went into automobiles so he also realized that by lowering price you discover new ways in which to use the product every case if you look at Alcoge in the 1950s it was claimed that they had a monopoly over aluminum prices were going down quality was going up, if you look at IBM during the 1960s and 70s they were accused of having a monopoly over mainframes there was lots of competition it just wasn't called a mainframe there were suit computers on the one side and there were many computers, you remember digital some of you remember digital and by 83 the justice department had to walk away because there were PCs so there's always competition in a vibrant wheel free market the only monopolies that exist are the post office right, where government protects you you try to deliver first class mail what happens to you? you go to jail now that's a barrier to entry but that only government can do thank you I consider myself pretty capitalist I was up last night till 3 in the morning watching the election and writing a page paper and I just couldn't believe that Americans selected the same thing we've had for the past 4 years do you think given last night's election America can come back from that and can get on the right track I've been talking about this all day with my pessimistic friends yes and the reason I think it has become Romney was so pathetic he was and not just Romney Aiken Murdoch, remember those names? no, legitimate rape illegitimate rape I mean who would vote for these guys you'd have to be insane to vote for them right so given who the Republican Party was in this election I don't think that this vote represents what Americans really want or what Americans really feel now it's this heartening because I can't imagine why you would ever vote for Obama but that's just my personal because I run a 503 and I not allowed to make political statements he's done such a bad job and he represents such bad ideas it's shocking and it's very disheartening if he had run against somebody who was and I'm not a huge Ronald Reagan fan but Ronald Reagan had some really good qualities if he had run against somebody who was 50% Ronald Reagan and still won then I would have said it's depressing but he ran again and nobody an empty suit in the Wall Street Journal I was on a panel with him at some conference and he said one thing I can guarantee that a Democrat will win this election it might be a Democrat that calls itself a Republican or it might be a Democrat that so the contrast wasn't there and it didn't have content Ronald he didn't stand for anything I mean I watched the debates they were pathetic even the one debate where they thought he'd won but he didn't win it was Obama who lost so he didn't have gravitas you know I wouldn't give up I still think it's worth fighting don't ask me about what the odds are of us winning of capitalism and free markets of you guys seeing it in your lifetime you'd rather not know the odds to that but the point isn't no matter what the odds are what alternative is there but to fight for it because it's right because it's good because it's staying really the only way to look thanks my question is actually similar to what he asked but I'm from India trying to escape socialism and last night told me that maybe it was worthless moving here I was talking the phone to my wife last night I met my wife in the Israeli army and when I met her you know after we dated a little while I said you know one day I want to leave Israel and move to the United States and Israel was very socialist back then it's still quite socialist but less so than when it was then and she said when do we leave so I knew that this was good and that was a long long time ago so it has been good and we were talking the phone last night and I said well you want to go back to Israel look my view is I mean you have to make your own choices of course and I don't think you have to be committed to any particular country I think you need for each one of you need to find the best place in the world to pursue your values and your life and your happiness I'm not I moved here because I chose to come to this country because I thought this was the best place for me doesn't necessarily mean it's the best place for you you have to make those choices but I do believe in the global sense that as America goes the world will go it is a declaration of independence it is the constitution of this country that created an era a 200 year era of freedom in the world the reason hundreds of millions of people are being raised out of poverty today is because of America I mean I know we get a bad rap in the world but we're it we are the beacon of light because we represent those ideas ideas of enlightenment, ideas of lock ideas of the English and French enlightenment and all that we are the material manifestation of it we're there people can see it they want to be like us if this country falls there's nowhere to hide in my view the only reason India is doing better today is because they've got an image of what they want to be like you know I'm sure people would argue in India with me but that's the way I see it and I'm not convinced the world can survive without that image now maybe some other country will rise up and provide that inspiration maybe I don't see it in the world right now but maybe right now it's this if you're going to fight for freedom this is the country to fight this is the country to stand on this is the country to put to go all in in a sense and see what happens thank you I was going to ask about Rami but I decided that was a waste of time thank you I want to ask about intellectual property what do you what is your stance on that because to me there's varying views like between like like the Austrian school of Cato yeah so my view is I'm a huge supportive intellectual property I am for intellectual property I think and I can't go to the whole argument right now but I believe all property is fundamentally intellectual property so farming is primarily intellectual activity so the work that you do in order to gain the land is intellectual primarily so at the end of the day all property comes from your reasoning mind this is just one form of it it's complicated to define it it's complicated how we deal with it but it's still property it's still your creation it still belongs to you now the best person I would read on this because I'm not an expert on this so I would probably blow it is Adam Massoff he was a professor of law at George Mason University so I think he's excellent on the issue of intellectual property you can see videos of him talking about this and there are a number of articles that he's written on it so Massoff M-O-S-O-F-F two S's thank you sure you made the claim that economic freedom translates to personal action but global surveys that are taken annually consistently rank more socialist countries like Denmark Finland Norway Sweden as some of the happiest countries in the world so my question is does economic freedom economic mobility necessarily translate to personal happiness or could it be detrimental or a hindrance so you're going to consider this a cop out but it's a fact I don't believe any of those surveys because I don't believe you can ask a question about happiness I don't think we have a clear definition of what it is I think it's completely subjective I think people say what they're expected to say you know I don't know those studies are bogus in my view now let's take these Scandinavian countries because I love Scandinavia and these countries always come up I mean look, Sweden's they're really happy what's the difference between Sweden and America today in terms of economic freedom who do you think is ranked higher in the economic freedom index now Sweden I'm not sure exactly but Denmark I know in spite of the fact that Denmark has I think 90% marginal income tax rates are something ridiculous like that they are ranked higher than the United States in the economic freedom index if you want to open a business in Denmark it's easier than it is to open a business in the United States yes, they're perceived as socialist and they are but we've caught up to them we're even worse in some respects than them we have far more financial regulations in the United States than in Europe far far far more financial regulations here you know I've got a friend who runs Saxo Bank which is a bank in Denmark he'd rather run a bank in any way in the world than the United States Canada is more economic free than the United States so get out of your head United States capitalism, rest of the world socialism not true, everybody's a socialist these days I mean socialist by variations but in a sense of redistribution of wealth and massive regulations and the economic freedom index just look at it, we're not by 18 all these European countries are ahead of us so that's my first test the second test is particularly in Sweden Sweden is an interesting case study because what happened in Sweden because I get these questions all the time about Sweden so I figured I'd go look because it's nice to know the facts when you answer questions Sweden up to the 1950s was an incredibly capitalist country it was one of the freest countries in the world and they created enormous wealth they were industrialized they had these industrial families lots of products they were in heavy industry they were in automobiles they were all kinds of things they made huge amounts of wealth and then in the 60s they decided to turn socialist and they took all their wealth I mean this is like a caricature but this is essentially what they did so they took all those wealth that was created over there 150 years from 1800 to 1950 and they started redistributing it to everybody now think about that there was so much wealth that it took them a long time to redistribute it by 1991 the sweetest social estate was bankrupt you can look this up and they had an election and they kicked out the party that was in power and they put in a new party and I don't remember if they called them so socialist or not it doesn't matter because what they did was that they started shrinking government lower taxes decreased regulation and that's been the trend in Sweden since 1991 to today it's been slowly greater economic freedom same thing happened in Canada when bankrupt in 1994 basically and what they did is they shrunk government and that's why the economic freedom is higher than us because since 1994 they've been shrinking government except in healthcare and the only reason in healthcare you know why they haven't privatized healthcare in Canada is because they've got us so if you're really sick you can cross the border and go to the Mayo Clinic so get the free stuff when you're healthy you know who benefits enormously from socialist medicine healthy people because if you just got the snivels you just go and get treated for free but if you've got cancer if you've got a heart disease you don't want to be in Canada you don't want to be in Israel you don't want to be in Europe survival rates here are much, much higher my father was a physician in Israel a doctor now Israel has more doctors per capita than any country in the world it's a Jewish country the mothers have insisted on it and the quality of healthcare they're really small doctors these are some of the best doctors in the world and yet if my dad had a patient who was really really sick and could afford it he would fly him from Israel to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester and get treated there to the Cleveland Clinic or somewhere in the United States because the healthcare was better so I think freedom leads to happiness I can't show you an index I'll show you proof I'll say this that I think human happiness requires what does it require it requires the freedom to pursue with your values what you think is good for you but they have to be rational values they have to be values consistent with your nature so you have to be rational if you're irrational it's not going to work so you have to be free to pursue those values and then you have to be able to gain self-esteem you have to be able to be free to challenge yourself to push yourself to gain pride in what you do and that gives you the self-esteem to attain happiness maybe a better word was ever started you the word which is more like human flourishing it's kind of more than happiness I'm not sure exactly what it means but some translated into happiness flourishing it's living life to the fullest making the most of your life going out there and really challenging yourself having fun doing great things to do that you have to be free if somebody else is telling you what you do, what you cannot do when you can do it, how you can do it you're not going to pursue those things and therefore I don't think you'll ever be happy my question is do you think that America exhibits the selfishness and caring for its citizens or the exhibit like selfishness in what caring for its citizens like creating opportunities for other people to come to America and have a new start in being a first world country the last part trailed off or do you think that America is more interested in being a first world country and being self interested oh is this a question about immigration okay so I think America today is is very anti-immigration but for all the wrong reasons I think it's anti-immigration because we've been taught that immigrants take out jobs as if you have a right to a job I think we've been taught that immigrants coming into this country lower standard of living because they lower wages which I don't think is true so I think the economics of immigration have been presented in a wrong way that is distorted how Americans perceive immigrants I also think that there's xenophobia in America still we don't like people from other countries we'd rather not have it so we state our own kind in a sense there's still that in America but I don't think Americans are selfish I think Americans if Americans are selfish they say bring them in let's have immigrants let's have you know that 75% of all all graduates in engineering and science from masters and PhDs in this country are foreigners 75% and you know what we do when they graduate we ship them overseas we send them back home if we were selfish we would stamp a green card to every one of those guys and let them stay here to get a job to create companies to create business to increase our standard of living we want employees I'm a selfish guy I like the Mexicans coming over the border because you know they do a good job gardening they're good entrepreneurs they're responsible and it's cheap it increases my standard of living why would I be against? so I think if you were really self-interested you would be generally pro-immigration the challenge with immigration is the freebies that we give is the entitlements so what I would do is you need to get rid of the entitlement state and then slowly open the gates of immigration and let immigrants in this question might be a little bit off topic but I'm curious about your view on the wider state of objectivism as a philosophy specifically in the more fundamental branches like metaphysics and epistemology how do you see those ideas of Einran spreading through the culture you're doing an excellent job spreading economics and political ideas but I don't see the same kind of emphasis especially in the universities on her more fundamental idea she called herself primarily epistemologist, strong epistemologist and yet how she's portrayed in the media is often in politics and economics so this is kind of an insider question so yes, I get the question let me address it in this way I don't think for the culture to change what we need to do is teach people epistemology, epistemology is science of knowledge it's how we know stuff I don't think you have to teach people that I don't think that you need to teach people metaphysics I think people learn metaphysics and epistemology by how they learn other subjects so what we need is a correct methodology in which we're presenting physics, in which we're presenting history in which we're presenting morality in which we're talking about economics in which we're talking about all these areas people don't have to know you know the theory of concept formation for us to be free right? they have to know how to think they have to know how to integrate they have to know how to induce you know inductive knowledge they have to know how to think primarily but that thinking is going to come from education so what we really need if I was the all-powerful objectivist who could create whatever schools what you need is primary schools topics to talk correctly with the right epistemology the way we learn epistemology is by doing we don't have to know the theory now you need theoreticians we've got some, we don't have enough you know we've got some works on epistemology that have been written recently not enough, there should be more more coming but the theoreticians are there to train the teachers who then teach subjects you don't teach epistemology to kids that's not how you change the world on the other hand ethics politics everybody needs to know and I think by teaching a correct approach to ethics and correct approach to economics you're implicitly teaching epistemology