 So we have today a very special guest, Jaron Brooks who is chair of the In-Rent Institute. I think, so Nastya will be introducing the speaker in detail, more details. But I would really thank the Knowledge Fund and Person and Nastya who made possible that Jaron is today here. And we have right person with the right team at the right time, at the right place. Perfect. So thank you Jaron for finding time to be today with us. So Nastya. I would just like to say that I think as a team, all of us at Canvas, the one thing that we have vowed to do is to not have sad and depressing birthdays for Kaha because that's probably, I mean it's as sad as it is, but we thought that who could we invite, what could we do that would be in the spirit of Kaha and also be an entertaining event that would broaden people's horizon and would also be incredibly interesting. And here we have Jaron Brooks who is the chairman of the In-Rent Institute. And if you study at this university I'm pretty sure you know who In-Rent is and what is Atlas Shrugged. And so no need to add any extra. I think that the topic of today's lecture is basically a description of Kaha's life. Because the morality of capitalism is definitely something that, well, Kaha had to get used to. And he was a capitalist and throughout his life he learned not to feel sorry for the fact that he has earned a lot of money. And with the money that he had earned he has created this university and we're all here today because of that. So a warm welcome to Jaron Brooks and his morality of capitalism. Very short announcement after the lecture so we will have the presentation of our new promo video. So I did not see it so nobody has. So it's just creative autonomy of our media studio. But what I want to suggest is that which was not planned, Nasi also made a new or updated Kaha's website and maybe she can also shortly present it. So it's a surprise for Nasi. It's a surprise to you too. Okay, floor is yours. Thank you, thank you all. Thank you Nostasia, thank you for inviting me. It's a real pleasure to be speaking here on Kaha's birthday. So the morality of capitalism. I thought we'd start with kind of a little bit of a discussion about what capitalism is. Because I find that as I travel around the world and this is country six on my current trip. I started in South America. That people don't really have a grasp of what capitalism actually is. They associate capitalism with what we have today. Maybe not in Georgia or maybe not in a particular country they tend to live in. But they kind of look at America or something and they say, yeah, that's capitalism. But it isn't. So let's start with what capitalism is. What is it that I'm going to defend from a moral perspective? So in my view, capitalism is the idea of free markets. Free of what? Free of? Free of coercion, free of force, free of government regulations, free of government control. Free of government intervention, period. Under capitalism there is a complete separation of state from economics. Capitalism, under capitalism the role of government is limited to the protection of individual rights. In the context of economics, if you will, the protection of property rights where all property is privately owned. So in that sense, in that pure sense of what capitalism is, we've never had capitalism. Capitalism is still an ideal, like one of Ayn Rand's books, Capitalism, not known ideal. It's an ideal that is still unknown in the sense that we've never really completely practiced it. By the way, that book, Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal, is coming out in Georgia. I think the first copies are going to be available tomorrow. So in the coming weeks, you should be able to find Capitalism, not known ideal by Ayn Rand, available in Georgia at the Bookstores. And I highly recommend it, a brilliant, brilliant book. So Capitalism is the system of really free markets. And we've never seen it. But what have we seen? We've seen that everywhere in the world where it is tried, where elements of Capitalism are tried, where some free markets are tried, where some respect for private property is tried, those places do well to the extent that they practice Capitalism. The more respect for property rights, the more consistent, the more the rule of law, the more freedom individuals have, the more successful societies become. Now, what do I mean by success? I mean richer, I mean fewer people in poverty, I mean people living free, healthy, long, successful lives, or having the opportunity at least to do so. The more capitalist, the higher the GDP per capita, the more capitalist, generally the longer the life, it works. Capitalism works. And indeed, the opposite is also true. The less free markets, the more we regulate, control, introduce coercion into the economic system, the poorer people are, the worse off people are, the fewer opportunities they have. So there's a direct correlation between how much freedom we allow in a society from an economic sense and economic well-being. And, you know, we have hundreds of examples of this all over the world. It doesn't matter what continent you're on, it doesn't matter what ethnic group you have, it doesn't matter how rich the country used to be, whether it has natural resources or doesn't have natural resources, none of those things matter. All that matters, the only factor that matters is the extent to which you allow for freedom. I mean, take a place like Hong Kong, which is a rock, an island, in the middle of nowhere. 75, 100 years ago, there was nothing there. A fishing village. In general, in the area, a few tens of thousands of people lived there. They were poor, they had nothing, there's no natural resources in Hong Kong, there's nothing. And about 75 years ago, or 100 years ago, the British came, and all they did was establish the rule of law, protection of property rights, protection of contracts, and nothing else. No real safety net, no socialized healthcare. Just, if you went there, you had the opportunity to build something, create something, and keep it for yourself. Very low taxes, almost no government intervention. What happened to this sleepy little place in the middle of nowhere that the Chinese didn't even want? They basically gave it to the British for 100 years because it was insignificant. It didn't mean anything. Well, over the last 75 years, Hong Kong grew from tens of thousands of people to 7.5 million, and it grew to 7.5 million not because people had lots of kids, but because massive numbers of immigrants came to this place. They came from all over Asia. They risked their lives to come there. Why? I mean, the rest of Asia was dominated by socialism. You'd think they'd all want to stay. It's because they were dirt poor, they had no opportunities, they were being oppressed by their governments, and here was an island, a little, tiny little island, a freedom of opportunity, a place where they could make something of their own, where they would be left free. Today, Hong Kong has more skyscrapers than New York City, on a much smaller place. It's magnificent. I always tell people, anybody here being Hong Kong? All right, two. Everybody should go to Hong Kong once in their lives. You've got to see this place. It's stunning. It just is stunning. And the rich by GDP per capita, average GDP per capita in Hong Kong is higher than average GDP per capita in the United States of America. In a sense, they have created more wealth in 75 years than Americans created over 250 years. All because they were left alone. Free, little regulations, little controls, no coercion. The government basically acted as a police force and as a court system and left everybody alone. They don't even have a central bank. They use, basically, they use dollars. So, everywhere you go, you see this, right? Maybe one of the most striking examples right now about this difference between capitalism and socialism is in South America, because you see it, it's very stark. There are two countries in South America that are truly amazing, right? One is, it's a country that 30 years ago was the poorest country in all of Latin America, all of South America. So, 30 years ago was the richest country in all of South America. We'll start with the rich one. 30 years ago, richest country in South America had fertile land, was exporting food. Has, this country still has, the largest oil reserves in the world. They have more oil in the ground than Saudi Arabia. It's not the best oil. It's a little expensive to produce. Saudi Arabia is really easy to produce and very high quality. But still, they have more oil than Saudi Arabia. And 30 years ago, they were the richest country in all of Latin America on a pro-capita basis. So, individuals in this country were relatively well off. Today, it's the poorest country in Latin America. It's so poor today that people are starving in the streets. There are no cats and dogs in Caracas. There are no pets. You know why? Because they've eaten them because they're so hungry. They've broken into the zoos. They've eaten the animals in the zoos. Now they go through the trash. Kids, middle class kids, don't have food to eat. Millions of them are leaving and going to the neighboring country of Colombia. Now this country is Venezuela. And the reason it went from being the richest country in Latin America to the poorest country in Latin America is because it adopted 30 years ago and slowly gotten worse socialist policies. They started by taking private farms and collectivizing them. Everywhere in the world, from Ukraine to Russia to China to Venezuela, when you collectivize farms, all you do is bring about starvation. Collectivizing farms destroys food production. You'd think we would have learned after 20 or so million died in Ukraine, 60 million died in China. And now thousands, maybe tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, we don't know the numbers of dying in Venezuela. But no, they tried it again. They collectivized every or socialized every aspect of the oil industry, not just the oil producer, but the entire supply chain was nationalized. Guess what happened? They can't produce any oil. They don't have the technology. They don't have the capital. They don't know what to do with it. Most of the profits from the oil are being stolen by bureaucrats and army officers and Swiss bank accounts. Socialism, everywhere it's tried, no matter when it's tried, leads only to starvation and poverty and usually to mass murder. That's the history and Venezuela is a great example of it. Now what makes Venezuela striking is that right next door there's another country and this country 30 years ago was the poorest country in Latin America and today it's the richest country in Latin America. So one went like this and the other one went like that and what did the one that got rich do? They privatized. They deregulated. They eliminated taxes. They even privatized their social security. Their pension plan is 100% private today. Anybody know what country that is? Chile. That's Chile. Right next door. Capitalism works. If you care about making people rich and if you care about making poor people less poor, richer, if you want to reduce or eliminate poverty, capitalism is the only system ever known by man to do exactly that. What percentage of the population was poor before capitalism, before we had any free markets? 98 is not bad. Somewhere between 95 to 98%. Almost everybody was poor. What do I mean by poor? I mean by poor $2 a day. $2 a day. 95 to 90 equivalent to today's dollars. 95 to 98% of the world's population 250 years ago lived on $2 a day or less. Even in Georgia, living on $2 a day is really hard. Really hard. But 95 to 98% of all people 250 years ago lived on exactly that. Today, this is a place in Africa. This is a place still in Asia where people are still living like that. But we have gone from 95 to 98%. How many people do you think today live on $2 or less a day? How much? 15. 15. Anybody else? Yeah, you're cheating. You know the answers. He knows all the answers. It's less than 10%. 8%. And 30 years ago, it was 30%. So just in the last 30 years, over 1 billion people have come out of extreme poverty. We don't even know about this. This should be the most important news story of our generation. And yet, nobody talks about it. And why did they come out of poverty, these billion people? Because of foreign aid? Because of socialism? Because of charity? No. Because in places like India and China and South Korea and Taiwan and many other places around Asia and even in some places in Africa, they have adopted elements, just some elements of capitalism. And when you adopt even a little bit of capitalism, boom, people come out of poverty. It's stunning. It's amazing. So you would think that we would be celebrating this. You would think that everybody in the world would be a capitalist. You would think everybody would want to move more in the direction of capitalism, get government out of the way, deregulate lower taxes and make us richer because it works. You know, if we want to eliminate poverty, we should be going and becoming more capitalist. You'd think people care about poor people and therefore everybody would be shouting and clamoring for more freedom. But that's not what's happening anywhere in the world. In almost everywhere in the world. We're seeing particularly young people wanting more government intervention, more regulations, more redistribution. There's an inequality problem. We need to take more from the rich and give to the poor, as if that ever helped the poor. We need a redistribute. We need to regulate. We need a control. We need to centrally plan all the things that don't work we want to do. And all the things that do work we ignore and we avoid and we run away from and we hate. Now that's weird. It's strange. And it's something we have to deal with. Why? Do people so hate capitalism? Given that it's worked. Why do people resent? You know, doing away with poverty. You'd think everybody would be happy with that. But they don't. They're not. So the question is, what's going on? Because in terms of economics, the capitalist won 50 years ago. In terms of reality, we've won. In terms of history, we've won. But somewhere we're losing. Because we're losing the hearts and minds of people. People are not out there in the streets demonstrating for capitalism. They're demonstrating for socialism. They want to be poor, I guess. But nobody wants to be poor. So it can't be that. So what is it? Now partially it's people don't know history and they don't know economics. So they're just ignorant. But if it was just that, it would be easy to fix. But it seems really hard to fix. So let's think about a little deeper about what capitalism is. What are markets about? Why do people go to the marketplace? What is the purpose of entering the marketplace as a buyer or a seller? Why do we go to the marketplace? Why did Steve Jobs, why did he build one of these? Did Steve Jobs do this? Yeah, for money and you laugh. Because it's a little embarrassing to say he did it for money. But he did. You know what the profit margin and these things are? I mean the first one, the first generation had 60% profit margins. If Steve Jobs cared about me, he would have sold it a lot cheaper. But he doesn't care about me and you. He wanted to make money. And we feel a little embarrassed by that fact. You all feel it a little bit. But was it just about money? Did Steve Jobs make this only because he wanted to make money? No. Why else? What else motivated him? Purpose. Love. He loved the stuff. He loved the challenge. He loved the technology. He loved the beauty. He wanted to build something in his image. He wanted to do something meaningful, exciting with his life. But at the end of the day who did Steve Jobs build this for? Himself. This is a self-interested activity of Steve Jobs. I like to tell the story when I went and bought my first iPhone. It was 2008 and the US economy was kind of descending into recession. And I went to buy my first iPhone because I wanted to help stimulate the US economy. Because I'd read Keynes and Keynes tells us that if we consume a lot, we help create economic activity. And I know that's where you go shopping. You all go shopping because you care about your fellow man. And you want to make sure their jobs. And you want the Georgian economy to grow. No. Why do you go shopping? Why did I buy my first iPhone? Whose life was I trying to make better? My own. I went shopping because I liked the iPhone. Because I thought it would make me more productive. It turns out I was right. I thought it was cool. I thought it was a beautiful thing. And I wanted to own it for my... Because I thought it would make my life better. So the marketplace is a place in which we go to do what? To pursue what? Our own interests. We go into the marketplace to pursue our own self-interest. I mean, Adam Smith in the wealth of nations knew this. He wrote in the wealth of nations. The baker doesn't bake the bread because he cares about you. He doesn't know you. He doesn't care. He's making the bread because he's trying to make a living. Hopefully he enjoys making bread. But the main reason is he's trying to feed his family. He's trying to feed himself. People enter the marketplace to pursue their own self-interest. That is a truth everybody knows and understands even if they don't put it in words. And yet, what have we learned from when we were this big? What did our mothers teach us? What do our priests preach to us? What do our philosophers tell us about self-interest? Is it good or is it bad? It's bad. I mean, I grew up with a good Jewish mother and she taught me that self-interest was no good. You should always think of other people first. You should put your interest last. Now no mother means that. They don't actually want you to behave that way because they want you to be successful and to be successful you can't do that. But they say it because that's what's accepted in our culture as moral. What's accepted in our culture as good and moral is self-lessness. Be self-less. Don't be selfish. Be selfless. Don't think of yourself. Sacrifice means giving something up and getting what in return. Nothing or something less valuable to you. When I bought my iPhone, did I sacrifice? Why not? I gave something up, money, but I got something more valuable in return. If I paid $600 for this iPhone, it's because this iPhone is worth more than $600 to me. So I'm better off. So it wasn't a sacrifice. It was a trade. But now, what's really virtuous, what's good, what's noble, what's moral, is to sacrifice. It's to be selfless. It's to think of others first. It's to take care of everybody else. Not yourself. That is self-interested or selfish. And when we talk about somebody who's self-interested and selfish, do we think about Steve Jobs? Who do we think about when we think about somebody selfish or self-interested? The government. I don't think about that for the government. I wish they were selfish and self-interested. They're self-destructive, and they want to destroy everybody else as well. Yeah, rich people. Rich people who do what, though? What kind of behavior do we associate with self-interest and selfishness? Production? Yeah, greedy, but greedy means what? What kind of behavior? Bad, but what bad mean? What do they do? They lie, they steal, they'll cheat, they'll do anything. They'll exploit you to get their way. That in our mind is what self-interest means. Not trading, not building, creating, making stuff, but exploiting people, destroying people to get their way. So we're offered, in ethics, two alternatives for human behavior. You can be self-less, you can sacrifice, you can live for other people, you can model your life after Mother Teresa. And if you do, you get sainted, and, you know, you are considered a moral paragon. Nobody actually wants to live that life, but we consider that true nobility, true goodness. Or you can be a lying, stealing, cheating SOB. And those are the two options. And most of us try to navigate our way between this and live our lives, and then we succeed and we feel guilty because we want Mother Teresa. Because our mother's taught us that that was the moral ideal. Is it about helping other people? It's interesting, right? Because this morality tells us to be selfless. It's about sacrificing for others, about making them better off. But is it? Because when I look at the world, who helps most, who is the biggest beneficiary of mankind? Who makes mankind better off? Who benefits the poor the most? Businessmen. Take somebody like Bill Gates, right? Greedy businessman. It's like the second richest man in the world. Because another greedy businessman, Jeff Bezos, has beaten him, and is now richer than him, right? But Bill Gates made... Well, the real reason Bill Gates is not the richest man in the world is what? Because he doesn't work anymore. He doesn't work for a living anymore. We'll get to that. Bill Gates made 70 billion dollars for himself. How? How do you become a billionaire? I'm going to give you the secret of being a billionaire. So you can all become billionaires. How do you become a billionaire? What's the secret? Make something that everyone wants. Absolutely. You make something that everyone wants, and you have to add this other piece. A willing to pay you for it more than what it costs you to produce. Because if you sell something at a loss, you don't become a billionaire. Right? So you make something. Everybody. Let's put a number to it. Billions of people want. And a willing to pay for it more than what it costs you to produce. Now, why are they willing to pay you more than what it costs you to produce? Is this thing that they're going to buy? Is it going to make their life better or worse? Better. Otherwise, they wouldn't give up their money. So if it costs $100, it's cause... This thing, call it a Microsoft product, is going to make their life better by more than $100. So here Bill Gates goes out, creates Microsoft, sells his products to billions of people, makes the world a better place, improves the lives of billions of people. Billions of people are better off because of Bill Gates. He made the world a better place. Every billionaire in a free market makes the world a better place. You cannot become a billionaire unless that's exactly what you do. How much moral credit does he get for that? Do we think, whoa, Bill Gates, he made the world a better place? What a great guy, let's build statues for him. Maybe we'll even give him sainthood. Nah, we don't give him any moral credit because he made money. And it's not just that he made money, he made a lot of money, so let's give him a few negative moral credits. So morally, Bill Gates gets no credit for helping other people because he did help himself in the process. And that gives you a lot of indication into the kind of morality we live in. We live with a moral code that says, no, it's not about helping other people. What's it about? It's about sacrificing. So think about when Bill Gates becomes a good guy in the world today. It's when he leaves Microsoft. God forbid you actually build or make or produce something. And he starts giving all his money away. Now he's okay. Now he's a good guy. How many people is he going to help? Not that many, hundreds of thousands maybe, nothing wrong with it. It's fine, but he's not going to help billions. He's not going to change the world. But now he's good because he's not benefiting from it. Now we're still not ready to make him a saint. We're still not building statues for him. We're still not naming streets for him. Why? He's still got a lot of money. He still lives in a nice house. And he seems to be enjoying what he's doing. That's not acceptable. You can't be a moral saint if you're having fun. Have you ever seen a painting of a saint with a smile on their face? No. The whole point of sainthood is that you suffer. The whole point of sacrifice is that you suffer. The whole point of morality, as we're taught it, is that you suffer. How do we make Bill Gates a saint? What's that? No, he's already doing charity. He has to do a lot more than that. He has to give it all away, move into a tent, and if he could bleed a little bit for us, then we'd build statues. None of us would want to be him, but we'd build statues, we'd venerate him, we'd think, wow, and when he died, he'd become a saint. But think about that. That's the world in which we live. We live in a world where building, making, producing, changing the world, making the world a better place through production and trade is eh. Suffering, suffering, and giving without expecting anything in return, giving money away, that's good. Now that, in my view, is sick. That's not morally right. That can't be morally just. But think about what that does to our conception of capitalism. If building, producing, making, and trading is not morally good, then how can capitalism be good? Under capitalism, what do we do? We engage in self-interested transactions. We build, create, produce, and trade. That's the essence of capitalism. Yet all of that is deemed bad morally. It's condemned morally. What's good? Sharing, and giving, and sacrificing. And what economic system, what political system is good at sharing, giving, and sacrificing? Socialism. Socialism is great at sacrificing. Particularly if I can sacrifice you guys for those guys over there and they will, you know, help me get, keep getting re-elected. Socialism is all about sacrifice. Socialism is all about suffering. That's why it's nobler than good. We love socialism because it's the only system consistent with our moral beliefs, with our moral code, with this morality of selflessness. So in my view, if we care about prosperity, if we care about wealth, if we care about the poor, if we care about the quality and standard of life for human beings, then we need to rethink our morality. Our moral code is screwed up. Everything we've been taught by our parents, our preachers, and our philosophers is wrong. It's inconsistent with human life. It's inconsistent with success. And this is what Ayn Rand does. She sends all of that baggage, all of that morality into the trash heap of history, where it belongs. Because she asks one simple question. Why? Why should I sacrifice? Why is your happiness more important than mine? To me. Why other people's well-being more important than my well-being? Why? Who says I should live for other people? Where does it come from? That we should be selfless. An ancient book, some authority, but in logic and reason. How can my life not be the most important thing to me? You've all got a choice. Well, you can die. That's it. That's the fundamental choice we all face. And if you choose to live, then shouldn't be the question of how to live, how to live the best possible life for you? How to make your life the best life that it can be? How to flourish and succeed as a human being? Shouldn't that be the primary question that you ask yourself every single day? What should I do today to make my life better? To succeed. To flourish. And what would be the primary thing you would go after if you valued your life more than anything else? What's the thing that makes human life possible? What's the thing that creates all the values that we have that surround us? Everything. The desk, the building, the lights. Thinking, your mind, your reason, your capacity to think. So Rand says, if you really want to be self-interested, it's not about lying, stealing and cheating. You can ask me in the Q&A, none of those are good for you. All of those are inherently self-destructive. If you care about your own life, the one thing you should value, the one thing you should care about is your mind, is your reasoning capabilities. Every day you should think, what do I need to do today to make my life the best that it can be? No criminal ever did that. No crook, no government official, otherwise they'd quit. Does that. And what would you do if you care about your own life? Well, you'd find something challenging and interesting and thrilling to do. You'd try to produce and create and build and make stuff. That would be your focus in life. And you would want to surround yourself with productive, rational people. And you'd want to treat them how? How would you relate to other people? Not by exploiting them, or not by allowing them to exploit you, but by trading with them, through win-win relationships. Rand's, Iron Rand's ethics is all about creating win-win relationships with other people. Not lose-win, not win-lose, not lose-lose. Win-win. Now if you think about it, isn't that what capitalism is? In the system, where we deal with one another through win-win relationships. Where the producers, the creators, the builders use their mind to make the world a better place. We all benefit from it. But they are living. All of us, hopefully, are living a life based on our own mind. Pursuing our own passion. Pursuing our own dreams. I mean, to me, Bill Gates is a moral hero. I would love to build a statue for Bill Gates. Because he used his life. He made something of it. He used his mind to make the world a better place for me and for you. He's a hero. Put aside everything else that he might think or do in his business life. He is a hero. And I would say any businessman is a hero. Because by creating wealth, by making money he has made his little world a better place. He is taking care of himself and his family. He has used his mind to make his life better. So according to Rand's ethics, rational egoism or rational self-interest or rational selfishness the purpose of your life is your life. It's to flourish, ultimately, to achieve happiness. To do that, you use your mind, you think, and you produce. You create the values that you need in order to survive. And you trade with other people in win-win relationships. It's exactly what businessmen do. It's exactly what capitalism is all about. To defend capitalism, to change people's attitude towards capitalism what we really need is not more economics, although there's no harm in that. There's not even more history, although again, no harm in that. What we really need is a moral revolution. What we need is to replace the morality of sacrifice and selflessness with a morality of trading and self-interest. A morality that venerates the individual, where the individual is what's important where each one of us live for our own sake. We will not be able to defend capitalism unless we're willing to adopt a new morality to challenge the morality of old. At the end of the day, if you are striving to make your life better off the last thing in the world is a little mother government sitting on your shoulder telling you, don't eat that or don't drink that or too much salt or whatever. It's none of their business. It's my life, not theirs. I want to use my mind, my thinking, my time, my resources to decide on what my value should be and how I should pursue them. And as long as I'm doing that rationally and as long as I'm not hurting other people why is it anybody else's business? It's nobody's business. That's what capitalism needs. That's what a moral defense of capitalism is. A moral defense of capitalism is a moral defense of self-interest. It's a moral defense of individualism. It's a moral defense of the right of every individual to use his mind to make decisions for himself. It's a morality of self-interest. And again, if we adopt such a morality capitalism will take care of itself. There wouldn't be any socialists in a world like that. Nobody would let them get away with it. So I encourage you all to think, think about an alternative to what everybody's taught you, to what's everybody's considered, to what the philosophers, the preachers, and the mothers of the world have taught us. We need desperately a moral revolution in this country and everywhere in the world. We need a safe capitalism. And we can only do that by establishing a proper moral foundation for it. Thank you all. All right, questions. There we go, first one. Yes. What do you think about New Zealand? Yeah, I'm kind of familiar with objectivism, so I understand the whole hierarchy of, I mean I know they're one of the freest countries politically now, but I'm kind of interested in New York. So what accent do you have? South African. South African, okay. I can tell you what I think about South Africa. I don't want to hear about that. I love New Zealand. I mean, I've been to New Zealand. New Zealand has to be one of those beautiful places on the planet. You know, I did a five-day driving trip through the South Island of New Zealand, and it's beautiful. They also have one of the freest economies in the world, I think the number three right now. So yeah, New Zealand has a lot going for it. It's not, it's far from perfect. And you know, again, I don't think there's any place in the world that's anywhere near perfection in terms of real freedom. New Zealand is as good as it gets in the world in which we live today. It's far from what good should and could look like. Do you have any comments about the longevity of that good considering their morality? Yeah, no, I don't think it'll survive. So goodness doesn't survive for very long in this world because it always come under attack from the morality. So what happens typically is a country does well. Typically it did well in the 19th century, early 20th century. Then people get pretty rich. So then they say, oh well, we should really redistribute all the wealth because that's what feels good, right? We feel guilty. There's inequality, right? The poor got richer, but the rich got richer faster. Some of the poor got richer faster than others. So there's a gap. So now we have to redistribute wealth. So they adopt socialism. They go bankrupt. And then they say, OK, we should deregulate the economy and bring back capitalism a little bit. And they do that. And they get richer again. And then they feel guilty again. And they redistribute wealth. And they go towards socialism. And then, you know, you get this pendulum, right? And you see that everywhere in the world. And because nobody's challenging the premise. Nobody's challenging the altruistic premise behind it all, which is that equality is a good thing, quality of outcome. Or that the purpose of life is to sacrifice and to feel guilty when you succeed and all of that. As long as you don't challenge that premise, you're going to have this back and forth freedom, less freedom, more freedom. And you see it in Georgia. You went through a period where you freed up the economy. Things were going well. And they said, yeah, but that's a little too free. And it feels uncomfortable. These rich guys, they're getting away with too much. So let's regulate them a little bit. And the economy will suffice as you regulate them more and more and more. And then you'll wake up one day and say, oh, this is bad. The economy's not growing again. So we need to stimulate the economy. So we'll reduce regulation and lower taxes. And it'll get better. And then you'll feel guilty again. It'll go bad. I mean, all countries behave this way. And it's because of this morality, which constantly is battling with practicality. The morality doesn't work. So then you do something practical. It's immoral. But don't tell anybody, again, according to the prevalent views, and things get better. But then the morality kicks in and things get bad. So it's everywhere. You see it in the United States. You see it in Sweden. You see it everywhere. Thanks. So my question is about Western society and our society generally. It's based on Christian religion, right? So our values are based on this. This is me as an atheist. I raised in the family of priests. So my moral values are very strongly connected with Christianity. So how we have to change this morality? What's the way to make it? So let me first disagree with you in this sense. I think that Western civilization is not Christian. It's not Judeo-Christian. Western civilization, and the positive aspects of it, is Greek. It's a statillion. It comes out of Greek philosophy, Greek mythology, the Greek view of life. I would actually say that Christianity, I'll never be invited back to Georgia, but Christianity is anti-Western because it's anti-Greek and it's anti-Enlightenment. If you think about what makes the West the West, it wasn't the Christian era. That was horrible. It was the Dark Ages. It was really, really, really bad. What makes Western civilization, Western civilization starts with the Renaissance. Renaissance is a Renaissance of what? Of ancient Greece. Like Michelangelo. Where does he get the idea of making a David? It's a biblical story, but a David like that. Where does he get it from? He sees Greek sculptures and he's trying to elevate man to the way Greeks viewed him. And if you see the progression from the Renaissance through the Enlightenment, the Enlightenment is an era of secularization, of respect for two things. The respect for reason and individualism. It's a putting religion to your private realm. But in every other respect, in politics, in science, in every respect religion is not relevant. You're dedicated to facts and reason and reality. So the essence of Western civilization is Greek, it's reason and individualism. Those are the fundamental concepts. And the West succeeds to the extent that it rejects religion and elevates reason and individualism. So I would argue that the problem has been in the West. That during the Enlightenment, when we put Christianity aside, the one element of Christianity that we embraced and did not give up is morality. We adopted the Christian moral code. And I think that's what drives us towards socialism constantly. I mean, the meek shall inherit the earth. That's not capitalism. In capitalism, the meek don't inherit the earth. The entrepreneurs inherit the earth. The summoner in the mouth is far more consistent with socialism than it was with capitalism. The idea of Jesus sacrificing on a cross since he didn't commit is the ultimate sacrifice. That's anti-capitalism. It's the opposite of everything we be talking about. It's that that drives us towards socialism until we are willing to reject Christian morality and adopt a new morality based on reality and reason, based on facts and evidence. We will not escape the socialist draft. We will not escape this collective draft. And that's why it's so hot because you're just relatively religious. Other countries are much more religious even than you are. America is pretty religious. And they hold on to that moral code. They don't care about religion in anything else except morality. But that's where they action it. That's where they have to give up Christian morality in order to really outcast it. And that makes it really, really, really, really hot. That's the only way to do this. Thanks. Dr. Burke, thanks for your lecture. It was very interesting. Basically I have two questions, one bigger and one smaller one. So the first question is, we see the rise of the chronic capitalism, particularly in Georgia. I think this year we will start the government of the pension fund, which will be basically divided with three entities like government, big companies and banks. So my question is, how can you describe us? The chronic capitalism is more like an ugly capitalism or more collectivism or formal collectivism. This first question and the second question. This is the harder one. And the simple one is, any chance of seeing in your future your debates with Ben Shapiro or anything like this? That's the easy one. Because he's a big fan of this Judeo-Christian morality and that would be very interesting to see. So Ben, if you're listening... Yeah, I mean he said that he's interested in debating. So I think it's going to happen and I think it'll be a lot of fun because he's smart and it'll be interesting to see what he says when I say what I say. I don't think he has an answer but that's the reality. But he's smart. So I think that's going to happen. Again, I don't know when. Let's assume he doesn't chicken out. I certainly will not. That I will guarantee you. In terms of cronyism, first, there's no such thing as crony capitalism. Never use it. Never talk about crony capitalism. Cronyism is a feature of statism. It's crony statism. But all statism is crony. There is no non-crony statism. Now why is that? Capitalism, as I said earlier, the feature of capitalism is a separation of state from economics. If you separate state from economics, there can be any cronyism because the state has no control over business and business has no interest in the state because the only interest business has in the state is what? It's the fact that the state has control over the business. I'll give you a great example. In the mid-1990s, Microsoft, Bill Gates is Microsoft, you know how much they spent on lobbying, you know, crony activity in Washington D.C.? How much money did Microsoft spend? Exactly zero dollars. Nothing. No cronyism. No lawyers. No presence in Washington D.C. Nothing. Nada. They left Washington alone. And the politicians got really pissed off because in those days Microsoft was the biggest company in the world based on market cap. The largest company in the world and they were not lobbying or put it another way, they weren't bribing any politicians. Right? They were really rich and they weren't handing out anything. So Microsoft was invited to Congress. Did you see Zuckerberg in front of Congress? Yes. So this is the mid-1990s. It was Microsoft in front of Congress. And the Microsoft executive sat there and Congress, the congressman said, you have got to start lobbying. Indeed, this Republican actually, a Republican who was in the hearings with Zuckerberg, he's that old, from Utah, right? A senator from Utah, he stood up, he's a Republican. He yelled at them. You guys have to start lobbying. You need to have a presence in Washington D.C. You need to build a building in Washington D.C. You need to have a presence here. In other words, he said, you've got to start bribing me. He didn't say it that way, right? You don't do that in America. And Microsoft said, we're not interested. You leave us alone. We will leave you alone. We're not interested in lobbying. We're doing fine. We're the biggest company in the world. What do we need you for? All right? They went home to Seattle. Six months later, knock on the door. We're from the Justice Department. And we're here to sue you for antitrust violations. Now, what was the crime that Microsoft committed that violated anti-fragulations? They were doing what? What were they doing? Anybody old enough to remember? They were giving away Internet Explorer for free. For free? How dare they? Because I was using Netscape. You don't know even who Netscape is, right? Netscape was a browser. You downloaded and you had to pay $79 to use a browser. It was the only browser. There were a few browsers. You had to pay for all of them. Today, I mean, if anybody charges you on the Internet, you go ban that site. But before, you paid for everything on the Internet. So I used to pay $79 for my browser. Microsoft said, we're going to give it to you for free. So Netscape went to the government and said, ah, this isn't fair. Unfair trade practices to give away something for free. It's called dumping, right? And that's why they were sued. But really, the reason they were sued was what? They weren't lobbying. Guess how much Microsoft spends today? They spent 20 years on the government supervision. That was their agreement. They had a government bureaucrat at Microsoft supervising every decision they made for 20 years. A few years ago, finally, the guy left, right? They left. So how much do you think they lobby today? They spent tens of millions of dollars. Tens of millions of dollars. They built this wonderful, beautiful building in the middle of Washington, D.C. about equal distance from the White House and from Congress. And everybody can see it's the Microsoft building. We are here. And now they leave them alone. Google, from day one, has been spending the money around because they saw what happened to Microsoft and they know this is how you stay clean. Facebook hasn't bribed the right people. I mean, they don't call it bribes in America. They call it lobbying and they call all kinds of things. And all of this because the government has control. It starts with politicians. It starts with statism, regulations and controls. So if you want to get rid of cronyism, you have to get rid of government regulations, government controls. The smaller government is, the less cronyism there is. So cronyism is a feature of the big state. Cronyism is a feature of statism. It's not a feature of capitalism. Capitalism is the elimination of cronyism. So I would argue, I would never use the term crony capitalism. It's crony statism or cronyism. I use cronyism. It's the system where the state and business are hand in hand. But that's because the state has guns and business has not much choice. And then it figures out that it can manipulate the system. It figures out that it can benefit from having an ally with guns. But that's not how businessmen make their money in a free market originally. That's a consequence of government power. Thank you very much for your interest. It is on. I was just wondering because one of our students asked the question about the ethics and morality of Christianity. There was a quite smart guy named Max Weber which wrote that actually the Protestant ethic is the basic for the capitalism. And that of course would not exclude the Christian morality from the capitalistic world. And my question would be then, so you really think that this smart guy was wrong? Or what is your idea when you're wrong? I think a lot of smart guys are wrong. Karl Marx was smart and he was wrong. Yes, I think Max Weber was wrong. Because I think he identified the success of western civilization wrongly. He saw it as happening in northern Europe and that it didn't happen in southern Europe. And northern Europe was Protestant and southern Europe was not. And there's certain things about Protestantism. It focuses on the visual relationship with God rather than a collective and an authoritarian view through a pope. That he identified with the success of the west. I think all of that is wrong. I think the central success and the reason it happens in northern Europe is because that's where the enlightenment happens. So the enlightenment is what leads to the success. So the renaissance happens in southern Europe. But it creeps north and then the enlightenment happens in the north. It happens in Paris and it happens in Scotland. If you think of the great thinkers of the 17th century. 17th and 18th. Really it's Amsterdam, Paris, London and Scotland. And it's that enlightenment, those ideas, that idea of reason as efficacious which generate the activity. Where was the Protestant ethic in the 18th century or in the 16th century? The Protestants in the 16th century, they were slaughtering Catholics when they were not being slaughtered by Catholics. Something happened in the 1700s that's completely different. That has nothing to do with religion. It has everything to do with the identification of the efficaciousness of reason and with the identification of individual rights. It's Newton and it's John Locke. And all the way through to Adam Smith and David Hume and Voltaire and Montesquieu and the encyclopedians who are most the atheist in France. That is the era that makes all the difference and for whatever reason, probably because you wanted to save religion Weber can't see that or doesn't want to see it. Yeah, but his idea was the different one. His idea was actually that if you are successful and if you are getting rich then you serve better the God. So if this thesis was right then it would not exclude the moral. Yeah, so if you get rich you serve God better. That's why rich people, nobody feels guilty. None of them feel guilty because they all feel like they are serving God better. They all feel guilty. They all feel guilty. Why? Because nobody believes that. Because it's not consistent with the New Testament. The New Testament says what really serves God is washing the poor person's feet. It's sacrificing. It's giving up your wealth. It's harder for a camera to go through the avenue than a rich man to get into heaven. Now I know other people interpret that other ways, but that's what it says. So wealth success is not for the most part consistent with most people's understanding of Christianity. Not mine. I don't know Christianity. Most people's. That's why when rich people get successful they feel guilty about their success. That's why Bill Gates, nobody thinks oh Bill Gates when he made Microsoft did God's work. Good for Bill Gates. We love Bill Gates for making Microsoft. No, nobody thinks that. We all think he made too much money, increased inequality. Now he's a good guy because he's giving the charity. The charity is what makes you good. I once gave a talk in South Carolina. Very Christian, Protestant, conservative, supposedly free marketplace. South Carolina. There's a luncheon for lifetime achievement awards for businessmen. So like three businessmen were being celebrated for their lifetime achievement awards. They read long biographies, the story of their life and what they did and their achievements and so on. So they read these achievements and the first minute and a half was about their business. And then 9, 10, 11, 12 minutes they spent on charity and community service. And they handed out their awards and then I spoke. And I got up and I said you should be ashamed of yourself. Your charity and community service is not what makes you deserving a lifetime achievement award. Your charity and community service is not that important. Your charity and community service didn't change the world. What changed the world is your business. But it's exactly because they're religious that they can't admit that and they can't be proud of it. I said America from 1776 to 1914 went from being a third-rate colony that nobody really cared about. That's why the British didn't really fight to the richest country in the world. Not because of charity and community service. Why did America become so rich? Because of whom? Because of whom? Who made America rich? Politicians? Generals? Generals make you poor. Politicians can only take stuff. They don't produce anything. Who makes you rich? Businessmen. Business is what made America rich. What do we call those businessmen today? No, what do we call the businessmen from the 19th century who made America rich? Robber barons. Because we hate them. Because we're conditioned to hate wealth creators. We're conditioned to resent business success. And that's not economics. And that's not history. That's something else driving that conditioning. And I think it's our morality. First of all, thank you for your lecture. I have some issues though. First of all, I used to call myself anarcho-capitalist. But now I'm calling myself free market anarchist. Why neither? I'm not an anarchist. I know. I think anarchists are totalitarians in the end. So I do not think so. And I think that Ayn Rand was wrong about anarchism. But anyway, what I'm going to say now. The first issue I hear is the term capitalism itself. So there is one economist, Steve Horwitz, maybe know him. Who said that the term itself was created by a socialist. And implies that capitalistic system, capitalism in general, helps capitalists. Which is completely wrong. Because capitalistic system is not helping capitalists or businessmen or producers. It's helping consumers. So there is the consumer who is benefiting the most from this system. Which is free market in general. And so from that regard, this term is wrong. And there is another guy who is Roderick Long. Who said such a thing? It's short, so I'm going to read. I think the word capitalism, if used in the meaning most people give it, is a package deal term. By capitalism, most people mean neither the free market's simplistic, nor the prevailing, neo-marketalistic system simplistic. Rather what most people mean by capitalism. Is the free market system that currently prevails in the western world. In short, the term capitalism is generally used. The assumption seals an assumption that the prevailing system is a free market. And since the prevailing system is in fact one of the government favoritism toward business, the ordinary use of the term carries with it the assumption that the free market is government favoritism toward business. It's colonialism, so can I get the question? Most people, once they say capitalism, they mean exactly chronic capitalism or chronism. Can I answer the question? Just a few more things and I'm done. So what I wanted to say about Bill Gates now, yes, consumers in general may also benefit from free market, but they do not like very much competition. John de Rockfeller even said competition is a sin. So what I want to say is that even Bill Gates benefited from a copyright system, which we libertarians do not consider as a rightful private property system. And that monopoly was implemented by the government. Yeah, because of intellectual property rights. So you libertarians are wrong, and Stephen Horowitz and along are wrong. Most people don't know the definition of anything. If you ask most people about almost any concept, they will get the definition wrong. This is why educators have to educate about what words actually mean and what they should mean. Bill Gates did not make money off of corporatism. He made money off of a free market and a free market cannot exist unless we protect property rights. And intellectual property rights are the most important of all property rights and must be protected. Rockfeller indeed said competition is a bad thing. Absolutely. Every businessman who is worth his soul is trying to establish a monopoly. That's great. By the help of government. No, without the help of government. Rockefeller did not use the help of government in order to establish his so-called monopoly. But the fact is that the market won't let them establish a monopoly. It's by the fact that they try. But yes, Apple has a monopoly. What's Apple's monopoly? What's Apple's monopoly? Put aside the stupidity of not believing intellectual property is property. That's just silly and it's incredibly destructive. What is Apple's monopoly? It's Apple. There is no other company that has the reputational capital, the reputational monopoly that Apple does. I can't call my company Apple and gain that reputation. I buy Apple products because Apple makes them. And I consider Samsung products for like five minutes and I always go to Apple because I know Apple. And yeah, that's great. That's wonderful. That's extraordinary. So let's go back to the word capitalism. Capital comes from Latin. It means of the mind. I can't think of a more beautiful term to describe what free markets are. They are fundamentally people's use of the mind to produce stuff. And the idea of placing consumers first is Keynesian, not free market. The free market is driven not by consumers, it's driven by producers. This goes to Say's law. Supply creates its own demand. It is producers first and then consumers, sure they benefit from the production, but they benefit more or less, how does anybody know? But there is no consumption without production. How many of you knew, well, you guys are too young. Let me tell you what I, I didn't know I wanted one of these. I didn't need one of these until Steve Jobs taught me that I needed it. I didn't want a cell phone. I indeed rejected cell phones. For a long time I refused to use cell phones. But the industry taught me that it was an incredible value. It is production first. You don't get consumption until you get production. 250 years ago we didn't consume because nobody produced. We ate what we grew. That was it. So capitalism is primarily about production. So production, indeed, I think economics, the science of economics, is the science of production and trade, not consumption. Consumption is easy. Go to a mall. Anybody can do it. Producing is hard. Producing takes effort. Producing is an achievement. So we should venerate businessmen. They are the true heroes, not consumers. There's nothing heroic about consumption, but there's something truly heroic about producing, something new, something valuable to human beings, something that didn't exist before. That is valuable, and that's a product of the mind, the profit of capital. Capitalism does not... Now people get capitalism wrong. That's why I started the talk by saying what? By defining what it meant. But that would be true of any field that I went to. Any area that you go into, you have to first define what you mean. Because most people don't know. Most people are not experts. They don't think about it. Great term. I love capitalism. Questions? And there was one in the middle here. Okay. Thank you. You started from the definitions. And I was just wondering how you would define equality of opportunities. Because is it important? I mean, I guess socialists would define this equality of outcome. And I also know that you said that equality is unfair. Yes. I've got a book called Equalism Fair. Buy it. It's good. Can you expand on that a little bit? Yes. I don't believe in equality of opportunities. I think it's the same as equality of outcome. Equality of opportunity is just another outcome. The fact is we don't go all to the same schools. We don't all have the same parents. We're never going to have the same opportunities. Anytime you have a concept where you can never achieve it, there's something wrong with it. I don't believe in equality of opportunities. I don't believe in anything that to achieve it, you have to sacrifice some people for the sake of others. So how do we make all of us schooling the same so that everybody gets equality of opportunities? Well, you have to hurt the people who get good schooling because it's impossible to raise everybody. So I don't believe in it. What I believe is only one type of equality that makes any sense. And that is equality of liberty, equality of rights, equality of freedom, equality before the law. So we're all born with a right to life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness. We're all born free. You cannot, the government cannot discriminate against you based on your sex or your race or your ethnicity or your religion or any feature like that. We're all treated the same by the government. So the only sense in which equality means anything, the sense in which in the Declaration of Independence of America when Jefferson writes, all men are created equal, what he means is they're all equal in their rights, in their freedoms. We all have the right to be free of coercion. We all have the right to be free and act free from authority, coercion, force. That's the only sense in which equality means anything. I worked really, really hard to make some money so I could give really good opportunities to my kids. If you believed in equality of opportunities, you would suppress my kids' opportunity because some other parent didn't work hard to give their kids an opportunity. That's wrong. Anytime you suppress, it's wrong. So equality of rights, equality of freedom, equality before the law is another way to express it, is the only proper way to talk about equality politically. Yeah. Okay, first of all, thank you for your lecture and second of all, I wanted your opinion about the golden age of America when the country was run by... The golden age of? America, when the country was run by Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie. I want... Oh, my view is it was a wonderful, beautiful era. I don't think the country was run by them. I mean, business, they dominated the business world, but that is an era in which, in spite of the fact that they had a huge market share, prices went down every single year, quality went up every single year, productivity, labor productivity went through the roof, wages went up, standard of living went up. Everything we take for granted in the world today is created by people during that era who created the industry, the infrastructure, all the material wealth that we have today is based on things that these people did. They were not robber barons, they were the great benefactors of mankind. They're the same as the Bill Gates' of today in a sense of they made the world a better place to live in dramatic fashion. There's a wonderful little book called The Myth of the Robber Barons by Folsom, who is a famous economist, and I recommend it highly, and most historians teach that they were bad guys who exploited the system and used government to get ahead. It's just not true. I strongly recommend reading The Myth of the Robber Barons. Yeah, way in the back. Do you have a mic? So you mentioned secularism. Yeah. And maybe that's what we need and not change in the morality. I mean, not in the meaning of church and state, but separation of personal morality and morality of the system. For example, I may consider capitalism as a moral system. However, I may like sacrificing personal life when somebody, I may consider it virtual as well. I don't... Why do we have to get to religion? But I don't consider that possible. I think we have to have a moral code that applies to everything in life. And, you know, to have a dual moral code, to say, I behave this way to my family and friends, and I, no, I mean, I don't sacrifice my kids. I love my kids. So what I do for them, I do, because I love them, because they're a high value. So... I think we need a new moral code. And I think by definition, a moral code means it applies to everything that we do. And I think rational self-interest is a moral code that can and should apply to everything that we do. I mean, so my view in life is I want to make my life the best life that it can be. I want to die knowing that I tried my best to make my life the best. I want to die happy. I want to live happy, right? I want to make the most of my life. I only get one shot, right? If you believe, you know, if you're a Buddhist and you think you're going to be reincarnated as another human being, then, you know, you have enough of tries to do this. But I worry about reincarnated as a cockroach, so I've got, I view it as one shot, right? I've got one life and that's it. I want to make the most of it. I want to make the most of it in my business life. I want to make the most of it in my personal life. I want to make the most of it in every aspect of my life. If there's absolutely no reason, quarmorality, then I should say, oh no, in this part of my life, I'm going to be miserable. Or I'm going to sacrifice. Or I'm going to be selfless. Now, that doesn't mean it means you have good, healthy relationships with other people. That's what being rationally self-interest means. It means you have trading relationships with other people. I mean, I don't do lose-win-related stuff with my wife. Because lose-win in an intimate relationship becomes lose-lose and nobody wins. Your relationship with your spouse should be win-win. You should be doing stuff where you're both benefiting. And if you're not, it won't last. And it won't be happy. And the same with your kids and the same with the world. You want to establish, maximize, win-win relationships where your life is better and so is theirs. That's true in business. That's true in personal life. I don't see why one would be different than the other. Yeah. What would you say about Scandinavian countries? We are, the taxes are really high, but they are still developing wires. So what do I think about Scandinavian countries? We get this every time, right? No, it's a good question. What's the difference, you think, between Scandinavia and other countries? They have slightly higher taxes. Slightly. So in the United States, today, the government spends close to 40% of GDP. If you take federal, state and local government, total, the government spends close to 40% of GDP. In Sweden, it's like 42. So the difference is not that big, right? So first we have to recognize that Sweden and Scandinavian countries are mixed economies, just like the United States. Some freedom and a lot of controls. The only difference between Sweden and the U.S., let's say, and the U.S. is, by the way, growing faster than Sweden and is richer than Sweden, right? If you took Sweden, you know where it would be in terms of GDP per capita? Where it would be in the United States? It would be like the 40th richest state, like the 40 states richer than Sweden in America, right? If Sweden was a state. But all Sweden does is it redistributes more, but it actually, and this is what people don't realize, it regulates business less. It's easier to start a business in Sweden than it is in the United States. It's easier to run a bank in Sweden than it is in the United States. America, on the other hand, regulates a lot and redistributes a little, relatively. It still redistributes a huge amount, right? So they're both mixed economies and they have a slightly different mixture. But it's not like Sweden is socialist and America is capitalist. No, both are mixture. Let me tell you one other thing about Sweden because the history is fascinating. Between 1870 and 1958 or so, late 50s, Sweden was the most capitalist country in Europe. It had the freest market. It also had the largest industries. 1870, by the way, Sweden was the poorest country, one of the poorest countries in Europe. By 1960, it was the richest country in Europe on a per capita GDP. It had the biggest companies. Eight, like six out of the biggest European companies were based in Sweden. So up until 1960, Sweden was this unbelievable story. And then they felt guilty and they adopted socialism and they said, you know, this isn't good, there's too much inequality, all the stuff you hear today. And they started redistributing wealth. So they accumulated a huge amount of wealth and they redistributed it. And Sweden became poorer and poorer and poorer and poorer. By 1979, what was the business that generated the most revenue in Sweden? Anybody know? ABBA. You've heard me give this talk, right? ABBA. I don't know if you know who ABBA is, right? The Singing Group. That was the biggest and the second biggest revenue generated in Sweden in 1979 was Johan Borg, the tennis player. That's how successful Swedish economy was back then. It was a disaster. In 1994, Sweden was bankrupt. You can look this up. They were like, Greece is today. They couldn't pay their debts and they started reforming their economy. By doing what? Getting government spending, reducing handouts and reducing dramatically regulation. And they became more capitalist. And they're still doing that. If you go today to Sweden, you're seeing reduced regulations, reduced taxes, reduced redistribution. They've done things like school vouchers, which in America you can't do. They have moved more towards capitalism than America has in the last 30 years. And therefore, they're doing pretty well. No way is cheating because they have oil and they're lucked out by managing it well, right? The government's managed it fairly well. But Denmark and Sweden and Finland are basically semi-capitalist countries just like everywhere else. You know, and that's why they're so successful. It's not because of socialism. It's in spite of redistribution. They've managed to stay wealthy because they don't regulate as much. We are almost out of time, so let's just have one more question and then we... Alright, last question who wants to do that. You've already asked. My question, so you mentioned that government cannot discriminate against people, race or color, et cetera, et cetera, which I totally agree. What do you think, can people in their personal life discriminate against each other? Well, we do all the time, right? Do we have the right to do this? I discriminate against employees who don't do a good job. The whole point of life is to discriminate. Now the question is should we be allowed by the states to discriminate based on race, gender, ethnic, and all of that? Should you be allowed to have a store, your private property, that's yours, and put a sign on the store, no Jews allowed? And my answer is yes. You should be allowed. It's not an issue of allowed. You're not violating anybody's rights. The state has no business in what you do in your shop. As long as you're not committing fraud, the government needs to stay out of it. Now, would I go to a store, and I'm Jewish so they wouldn't let me in, but if they had no blacks allowed, would I go to a store like that? Would I go with them? I would demonstrate outside. I would encourage everybody not to go there. If I thought somebody was a racist, I would discriminate against that person. I would actually have a sign outside my store. No racist allowed. Right? So I think racism is horrible, offensive, stupid, irrational, and ultimately money losing. Right? But it's only money losing if we, you know, manifest that. If we, you know, boycott it, it's our responsibility to do that, I think, when we see rationality and stupidity at that level. But the state, government has no business dictating to us what is moral and what is not, what is discriminatory and what is not. I mean, I discriminate who comes to my house. That's what private property means. You get to discriminate. You get to decide who comes into your store and who doesn't come into the store. People get to decide whether they want to use your, use you as a merchant or not. That's a pretty depressing last question. Anybody want to ask an uplifting question? Yeah, we've got an uplifting question here, and this will be the last one, I promise. Sure it's an uplifting. With the microphone because we're filming. What do you think about economic competition between China and the USA and which country is doing better? So what do I think of economic competition between China and the USA? I don't consider countries to have an economy and I don't consider that it would be competition between countries. China is doing well by selling stuff to me for cheap. Cool. America does well by producing and selling stuff elsewhere or by producing for internal consumption. There's no competition here in a negative sense. Trade is good but countries don't trade. America doesn't buy Chinese good. I buy Chinese goods. I love Chinese goods when they're good, right? Otherwise I don't buy them, right? I mean, where is this assembled? By the way, where is this made? Anybody know where this is made? No, it's not made in China. It's assembled in China. Where's it made? In the United States, in California, it's assembled in China. Where do the pieces inside of it come from? About 40 different countries. Now, is that good? Yeah. Because the entire supply chain is made up of win-win transactions where everybody from the workers assembling it to the people who make the chips to everybody across the entire assembly line to the designers in Cupertino in California, every single person is better off for having done it. Millions of people make this. And it's it's a beautiful thing. I don't consider them competing. I mean, the essence of capitalism is not competition. The essence of capitalism is cooperation. The essence of capitalism is working together. By the way, one of the companies that makes stuff inside this is Samsung, the biggest competitive Apple for these. So no, this is a beautiful product of cooperation that happens to be assembled in China that I happen to buy from China who cares, right? But it's me buying from some Chinese company. It's Apple buying from Foxcom. It's not America buying from China. The whole idea of international trade is bogus. Countries don't trade individuals trade, corporations trade, corporations are just individuals. People trade. And why I care if my stuff is made in Arkansas or in California or in China or in South Korea or in Georgia. I don't care as long as it's good and the price is good. That's what self-interest means. So, you know, China, I hope China becomes super duper rich because that a mean that it becomes free and it means it's producing beautiful things and it means all our lives are better. Just like a businessman. I hope people in China become incredibly rich. I hope America becomes even richer. But it's not a zero-sum world. China getting rich does not mean America gets poor. China gets rich means America's getting rich. That's one of the things Donald Trump never studied economics and the people around him I think skipped class because they don't know economics. None of them. I mean, I've never seen a group of more ignorant people than the people surrounding Donald Trump when it comes to economics. They are stupid in economics. Trade is win-win. China's not doing anything at the expense of the United States except when it steals intellectual property and then you deal with that stealing. You deal with that by boycotting those goods that are stolen property. You don't import stolen property. Trade is a win-win. We all benefit. Oh, now I've really got them going. Thank you very much. Thank you. If you have any question you can always just ask the lecture. We're not imprisoning him or taking him away. Thank you so much for this. I mean, I think that a lot of us have learned a lot about what it's like to earn money and not feel guilty about it. So that's probably the most important thing because it's the it's something that is engraved in us so deeply that we have to feel bad about it. So, thank you. That was great. Yeah, so we'll just quickly do this demo that I was forced to do. I'm not here by choice. Right. Yeah, so I wanted to create a birthday present for Okaaha and to include all things that exist about him like videos and interviews and articles and things that some of you have written your memories about him and to just get to one place where you can one stop shop where you can get all your info about Kaha Benukitsem. The one thing that I would like to say is that currently, because there is so much stuff, it exists in whichever language it existed before and if we go here. So Kaha lived 56 years, but he had 58 years. No, 56. He was born in 56 and he lived 58. There we go. Who remembers their parents' birthday anyway? So, and he was the educator and a reformer and a businessman and a scientist. So these are all four lives that he had managed to crumb in one life or one person. And if you go on to Kaha Benukitsem, I hope this works. You don't know Oh, this picture is taken actually in this room. So, yeah there's all these articles and videos with him about him being a educator. So if we go back the one interesting feature that I like here is the timeline that we have okay, well, it's a bit okay. Let's see. So, yeah. So there are some baby pictures of Kaha because I thought it would be nice to see how a man has progressed throughout his life and how could this adorable baby turn into well, we all know what he turned to into a wonderful man who did so much and it looks obviously better when you're on a full size computer and you can see how he had hair. Yeah, isn't that crazy and he had hair and well, he also and yeah, some things hadn't changed. So, yeah actually I will tell you a little secret. This lady right here that's my mom. So, you know some things are happening. So, yeah, so I think that you can see a lot of things about Kaha and about his life and how he changed throughout his life and how he thought because there is articles from 1996 for example and all throughout 2014. So I hope that you guys enjoy it and I hope that he would have liked this too.