 Alright, so I've been asked to talk about why Atla Shrug, I think, I believe, is such an important book. And there's so many things you can say about this topic. And I can do many hours of presentation on why Atla Shrug is important. So I want to specifically deal with two questions, kind of a personal, at the personal level, why I think Atla Shrug is such an important book for particularly young people, but really everybody to read. And then at the political level, why I think it's so crucial from a political perspective, how Atla Shrug can help shape a society, help shape a political order in the right kind of way. And I'll just start with a personal story. How did I read Atla Shrug? So I don't know how much you know about me, probably not much, but I was born and raised in Israel. And when I was 16, like almost every Israeli in the mid-1970s, I was a committed socialist. I was a committed collectivist. I was a committed immorality altruist. So I was everything I ran was against. And a friend of mine handed me a copy of Atla Shrug and it changed my life. It changed everything about my life, from my philosophical ideas to where I chose to live. I chose to live in the US, not in Israel, to what I ended up doing in life. It impacted everything because that's what philosophy does to you as an individual. Philosophy gives you the principles by which to live your life. And all of us have a philosophy, whether we know it or not, whether we thought about it or not. We are all guided by a set of ideas. For most people, 90% of the people unfortunately. That set of ideas is never thought out. It's never made clear. They never actually think about it as a philosophy of life. They just absorb it from their parents, from their teachers, from their professors, from their friends, from the culture at large. And they live. But they don't have anything explicit. They don't have specific ideas to help them guide themselves through life. In some sense, what happens to them is somewhat accidental. They don't think it through. They don't articulate for themselves. And they never know, because they don't think it through. Whether they're on the right path, on the wrong path, whether they have the right philosophy, the right ideas, are the wrong ideas. They just passively absorb it. So my first recommendation to end everybody, again, particularly if you're young, is don't let that happen to you. Whatever set of ideas you choose in life, choose them. Be conscious of them. Decide that they are right for you, that you want to live by that set of ideas. And that's what I did for me. That's what I was sure did for me. It's articulated a set of ideas, and initially, as I was reading at the shrug, that wasn't convinced. But it made clear that I had to make a choice. I had to decide. I had to articulate for myself what kind of life I wanted to live. And of course, by the end of the book, I was convinced that who I used to write. And I guess 40 years later, I still am convinced. But again, whether you agree with that or not, I encourage you to use the opportunity of reading at the shrug to go through this process of thinking. What is my life about? What am I living for? And how should I live it? And make it yours. Make it your choices, your decisions, rather than just absorbing what the culture feeds you. Because most cultures are not very good. So you're absorbing a lot of not very good ideas. Because most cultures are not very good because most people don't think about the ideas that they get. And this has been going on for hundreds of years, so a lot of not thinking has gone on. Now, Ayn Rand presents us with a very specific set of ideas about our personal lives. And the first most important question she asks is what should you live for? What is morality? What is ethics? What is the white code by which one should live? Ethics and morality are code for living your life. It's a code of values to make important decisions in life. So she asks every one of us to think about and choose what is the code of ethics? What are the principles by which we're going to live? And if you look at the world around you, if you look at what our culture tells us we should live for, it tells us that we should live our lives for the sake of other people. That the standard for morality is not our own good, but the good of others. That what virtue is, what goodness is, is being selfless. The culture tells us that goodness, morality, virtue is about self-sacrifice. It's about denial of self. And you see this everywhere from religion to secular philosophy. I mean, when I was little, my mother taught me, I'm a good Jewish mother, think of yourself last, think of others first, be selfless, sacrifice is good, sacrifice is noble. And this is everywhere in the culture. We're urged to sacrifice for the common good, for the public interest, for the state, for the country, for your neighbors, for your friends, for anybody, but yourself. The idea is to live for the sake of others. That's what morality has been, that what morality is, almost for that. So if you're an entrepreneur, if you're very successful in business, you should feel guilty. And most entrepreneurs and most successful people, at least the people I know in America, do feel guilty. Why do they feel guilty? Because all they've done, because to be successful, this is what you have to do. They've kind of followed their own interests. They've done what they passionately believe in. They've made money, God forbid. They've made money. I mean, if you think about, I like to use my iPhone, if you think about Steve Jobs, right, why does he make this? To make money, a lot of money in this. Profit margins, very high. But it's not just money, what else is it? What's that? Idea, he loves this, right? This is his idea, his value, his passion. He loves to make beautiful things. Love, unfortunately, is not around anymore. But this is about Steve Jobs. He doesn't care about me. He doesn't care about you. He cares about Steve. He happened to make something beautiful that's good for me and good for you. But he made it for himself. And he helped me and he helped you and he made the world a better place. But that doesn't count because at the same time he made money for himself and he enjoyed it. So our culture tells him, okay, that's okay, but you have to feel guilty about it. You have to redeem yourself. And how does he redeem himself? Well, Steve Jobs is not around, but let's take Bill Gates as a Bill Gates redeem himself. He starts a foundation and he starts giving his money away quickly. It's like buying himself into heaven. And now we think he's a good guy. Now he's wonderful. Is he changing the world? Not really. Not like he did it in Microsoft. But now he's a good guy because he's not bad at it. Because we don't like self-interest. So, now, you know, Bill Gates, we still don't like that much, right? Because while he's giving his money away, he's still rich. He still lives in a big house. And the worst thing of all is he looks like he's enjoying it. And you can't be a really moral, virtuous person if you're having fun. Right? When was the last painting you saw of a saint who was smiling? Saints always have arrows in them. So if you want Bill Gates to be a saint, what would you have to do? Make him suffer. Yeah, he'd have to give all his money away, move it to a tent, and bleed a little bit. And we'd name streets after him. We'd build statues for him. None of us would want to be him. But that's a whole different thing, right? We'd still buy him. Like we'd buy a mother tracer. Who wants to be a mother tracer? Nobody. But we, you know, the statues, you know, she's a saint. I really asked a simple question. Why? Why should I live for other people? Why should I sacrifice? Why should I be selfless? Why is their life more important than mine? Why isn't creating and building and making more important than giving? After all, you can't give until you create and make. Isn't the creating more important? Isn't what Bill Gates did at Microsoft and what Steve Jobs did at Apple virtuous and good? Why don't they get statues for that? So she asked this question of why? And there is no answer. Because my life, to me, is much more important than your life's own. And your life's more important to you than my life should be. That's fact of nature. I only have one shot at this. I don't live and eat your body. I live it in mine. My life is the most important thing to me. There's nothing more important than it. So for Iron Man, the question is not how should I sacrifice? How should I live for others? How do I do things for other people? It's how do I make my life the best life that I can live? How do I take the 100 years that I'm on this planet? You guys are young, so you probably got 100 years, I don't know about me. How do I take that time and make the most of live the best life that I can live? Achieve happiness and fulfillment. Live. Live a life worthy of a human being with everything that we as human beings are capable of. And not to suffer and bleed and give, but to make and create and thrive. And that's the message of after short. It's take your life and make the most of it. Live. Live. And the question is, and the question morality and ethics as a science should answer, I don't know how many philosophy students stay out here, but it should answer because it doesn't. It's not how they teach morality and philosophy today. But what morality and ethics should teach us is how to live. Because it's not obvious. It's not easy. There are a thousand different poles in different directions. The things that are motivating us. What is a good path and what is a bad path? What should I do? What shouldn't I do? What should be the principles that guide me to what's good and avoid what's evil and what's bad? That's a science. And this particular observation is not necessarily new to Iron Man. Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher, had the same kind of project in ethics. His goal of his ethics is to achieve eudaumonia, which is flourishing or happiness for the individual. And he says there's one road that leads to a successful life and then many roads that lead to an unsuccessful life. And you have to figure out what the road is. And this is exactly what Iron Man is proposing. So she's proposing values and virtues that help us achieve success in living. Now what are those? I don't have time to go over all of them, but I just want to give an indication of the most important of them. What is the most important value that you guide our lives? That's objectively the most important value for every human being? Time. What's that? Time. I can't control time, unfortunately. Time is what it is. Human being himself? Well, but what makes possible for the human being himself? What makes possible every value that we have? What makes possible for us to take advantage of time, to utilize time better? What makes possible this building and these lights and the fact that you've got a university and a projector? Do you see this tiny little camera? It's pretty cool. What makes possible these things? I mean, we're a unique animal, right? Unique but somewhat pathetic. I mean, just look around the room. That's a joke, but anyway. We're weak. We're slow. We have no fangs. We have no claws. You go out there into nature and try to run down your food. We can't. What do we do? We have to build. We have to make tools. We have to have strategies. We have to have, we have to hunt. We have to build traps. We have to think. Everything is about thinking. Every product that has ever been made by human beings is a product of human reason, of human thought. We have to figure out how to build a trap. We have to figure out how to build. Who has a gene for making weapons? Which would be useful in Ukraine right now, but I don't think you have that gene. Nobody has a gene for building weapons. We don't have a gene. You know how to make clothes? Anybody know how to make clothes? I don't know how to make clothes. I certainly don't agree with me. I have to figure it out. How to skin an animal. How to dry the pelts. How to cut it up and shape it into... I don't know how to do it. Or take cotton and weave it. All of that's some genius that I think of at some point. Agriculture? We don't know how to do agriculture until somebody figures it out. So the thing that makes human possible, human life possible, advancements in human life possible is reason. For Iran, everything is about thinking. It's about reasoning. It's about figuring out what's good, what's not good, what's the right path, what is the right path. And the people who use their mind consistently are real heroes. Think about Atlas Shrug, most of you have read it. Think about Reardon, figuring out Reardon metal, spending hours testing, trying, failing over and over and over again. For 80 years, to develop the metal. And it's all a product up here. It's all thinking. And that's what makes him heroic. He's struggling against nature and he beats it. He figures out how to make something new that didn't exist before. That's his heroism. It's the fact that he's using his mind to better his own life and by doing that, bettering all of our lives. That's what Steve Jobs did. They are heroes. Not because they give money away. Not even because they make our lives better, although that's a nice plus. It's because they make their own lives better. And because they do it by using the tool that is uniquely human, which is the human mind. Do you know what the theme what Iman said the theme about the Shrug was? The theme about the Shrug, the meaning about the Shrug, is the role of the mind in human life. Because what is the strike and if you haven't read the book, you know, plug your ears, what is the strike of? Who goes on strike? The people who are using their minds. And when they go on strike, what happens to the rest of society? It collapses. Because without the mind, there is no society. There is no economy. There is no economic success. There is no economic progress. There is no life. So before we get into the political, the essence of Atlas Shrug for an individual is use your mind to live the best life that you can live. Be rationally long-term self-interested. The way to be self-interested is to be rational and long-term. Honesty and integrity and justice and pride and independence and so on. All just applications of the idea of rationality to different parts of your life. Why be honest, for example? Just do honesty quickly. Why should you be honest? Why should you be? Because honesty is about facts and reason and rationality demands facts. There is a expression in computers that's like this. Garbage in, garbage out. Garbage in, garbage out. If you put garbage into a computer, you get garbage out. If you put garbage into your mind, you get garbage out. Not good. Not rational. Not reason. The reason, to be honest, is you want good stuff going in. You want the truth. You want facts. That's true to yourself but that's also true in your relationship to other people. You want relationships based on facts, not on fantasy, not on lies, not on pretend but on truth, on reality, on facts. And when you don't live that kind of life, what happens to people who lie? Anybody here ever lie? I don't really want to know. It's stupid. It doesn't work. Lying usually leads to more. Lying. Choosing not one lie. Right? It's usually a series of lies. You usually get caught which is not good. Not in personal life. Not in business. But even if you don't get caught, there's now, whoever you like to, there's not a barrier. There's something that is unpleasant, doesn't work, makes you feel bad because you can't really communicate with the other person. I mean, try this as an experiment. Take somebody you really, really, really like and spend a couple of days lying to them and see how that works. Or go into business and try lying through a couple of days in your business. Lying is unbelievably self-destructive. It's bad for you. It's not rational. That's why it's wrong according to Iron Man. Because it's not good for you. So for random, you should be self-interested. Neither sacrificing yourself to other people, but also not asking other people to sacrifice themselves to you. Be independent. Live for yourself. Now, what kind of world does somebody who is independent who thinks to himself who wants to pursue his own life who thinks long-term? What kind of world does a person like that want to live in? What kind of world does he need to live in? If reason is your standard, if reason is where all values come from, what is the enemy of reason? What makes reason impotent? Somebody said something. Restrictions. And I would phrase it a little bit a little bit differently because there are all kinds of restrictions. Cursion, force, is the enemy of the mind. If I put a gun to the back of your head and tell you from now on you have to act as if 2 plus 2 equals 5. Try building a bridge. Try programming a computer. There's very little you could do with this once you have a gun at the back of your head. Cursion restricts a forced restriction of any kind. Restrict the human mind. When people are afraid to express themselves because they might go to jail because of their ideas, they think less about the ideas. Because if I can't express their ideas what's the point of thinking about them? If certain products that I make need some government regulator's permission make the product because through the LLC the more restrictions, the more coercion, the more force in society the less thinking in society. So if we value reason and if we each one of us value our own lives then what kind of society do we want to live in? In a society in which there's no coercion. In which we are free. Now freedom is a word that everybody throws out there and nobody ever tells you what it means. Left, right, center, the most authoritarian government in the world is power for freedom. Nobody is ever against freedom. So what does freedom mean? It means no coercion. It means no force. It means the ability to do whatever the hell you want to do. As long as you're not ruining other people. As long as you're not violating this right to think and to act on their own behalf means following pursuing your reason, or in pursuit of your values. That's what freedom means. And that's what the idea of individual rights means. Individual rights means freedom to act in the pursuit of your values. Nobody has a right to stop you. Nobody has a right to limit you, to restrict you, to tell you that's not allowed. Simon says, Simon politically advocates for a political system of freedom. A political system in which the men of the mind all types from industrialists to artists to authors can think and produce and act and do what they believe is in effect their long-term rational best interest. And the only such system that's ever come about in human history is the system of capitalism. It's the system that the founding fathers of America tried to create. That's how logic said it did create. It's a system where government is limited to protecting us instead of being allowed to coerce us to protecting our rights, our property rights, our right to action, our right to live, our right to think, our right to pursue happiness and otherwise leaves us alone. That's freedom. Freedom is not replacing one authoritarian government with another authoritarian government. But the one authoritarian government happens to be, I don't know, my ethnic group, but not the other people versus ethnic group. How many of you have seen great parts? Anybody seen great parts of the movie? Too few to use as an example. Maybe a few more. So great parts, the Scottish, you know, they're fighting for freedom. But what does it mean? Nothing. It means we want to be ruled by a Scottish king, not an English king. Who cares? He's a king. So freedom means freedom of the individual to act on his own behalf. And the only system of government ever to recognize that was the original American system of government. And that is the original system of government which implicitly at the shrug is advocating for. It's advocating for freedom for producers, freedom for creators, freedom for builders, freedom for individuals to live their life as they see fit. Without mother government telling them what they can and cannot do without mother government inspecting them, regulating them, controlling them. So from an individual's perspective at the shrug there's a book about living your life to the fullest. About taking advantage of all the potential that is within you. It's about committing yourself to the pursuit of your own happiness. Committing yourself to your own flourishing to your own success as a human being. For a political system at the shrug there's a book about creating a political system that allows every one of us to pursue his own happiness. To exercise your own reason in the pursuit of the values you think are necessary for your life. So it's very unique in this sense because not only is it a great story, an exciting story, but it has this profound philosophical message that has implications for each one of our lives and for the political system we live under. I don't know of any other book that has anything close to that and certainly no other book that presents this specific philosophy. So encourage those of you who haven't read the book yet to read it. I know it's long but it's worth it. Those of you who have read it it's always good once in a while to read it again. Maybe 10 years or so after some experience in life people I know who read it every few decades, you get something different out of it because your experiences now are different. But more importantly than reading it again I encourage you to take the idea seriously and to think about it. A read from a fine man's non-fiction, particularly the virtue of selfishness and capitalism not an ideal, I don't know if they're translated into Ukrainian, but if not that's a project worth doing so they will be, I told and apply them. Live your life based on these principles. As I said in the beginning you got one shot at this. We all have one shot one attempt at living make the most of it. Achieve happiness do what you believe rationally is really in your own long-term selfishness. Pursue your own happiness and help create a political system that allows everybody to pursue their own happiness. Thank you all. Alright we've got plenty of time for questions so in English or in Ukrainian. Thank you for the speech. I'm a supporter of Yren's ideas but I've been wondering why Yren has so far failed to have the mainstream thought and maybe you have an explanation for that. I've had this critique that basically one of the reasons is that Yren supporters have so far failed to use like a reverse scientific apparatus to write like very fundamental books and that scientists, professional philosophers would take seriously. Okay so the question is why haven't Yren's ideas entered into mainstream philosophy? Why aren't they discussed in philosophy departments? Why aren't they part of the philosophy curriculum? Why aren't they engaged in the philosophy journals? And one explanation for that that people usually existing philosophers articulate is that we, those who defend Yren's philosophy have failed to articulate the philosophy in scientific philosophical detailed way in a kind of way that philosophy is dealt with in the language of if you will contemporary philosophy. So let me say a few things about this. One, I mean let me just try to explain why I think Yren's philosophy hasn't entered mainstream philosophy which I don't think that's the reason but I think the reason is it's a revolutionary. In many ways Yren's philosophy turns philosophy on its head. It turns it upside down. It challenges 2,000 years of philosophical thinking. Now there were good philosophers over the last 2,000 years born. But Yren challenges every single one of them on some pretty substantial issues. She considered herself really in a sense an aid to Aristotle to Aristotle's thinking. And Aristotle's ideas or your philosophical ideas or a system of ideas are not particularly popular in academic philosophy. I mean people study Aristotle and they don't study Aristotle from the perspective of these are true ideas. They study the technical analysis of what he did and didn't write. But she challenges the conventional model of use which are all altruistic in one way or another or egalitarian which is just a form of altruism. She challenges much of the metaphysics and the epistemology particularly post Kant and as a consequence of all that she challenges the politics. Now, what about rigorous analytical writing on Iron Man's ideas? First of all, such writings do exist but they're being ignored as well. Whether it's Leonard Peacock's Objectives on the Philosophy of Iron Man or the analytics aesthetic dichotomy that he wrote an essay about which is pretty technical and addresses technical philosophical issues. They're still ignored by conventional philosophers and I think again, they're ignored because not only are Iron Man's conclusions different than the way philosophers look at the world today but her methodology is different. And I think it's going to be a long time unfortunately, decades probably before academic philosophers accept her methodology which is much more reality you're in. But you see, Immanuel Kant and I'm not going to get too technical with you guys but Immanuel Kant has never human reason for reality and we've never recovered since. So it's hard to talk for philosophers if they don't quite accept that what we observe with our senses is reality as it is. And therefore all of Iron Man's conclusions that come from observation from observation of a reality he believes is real. If you don't believe that there's nothing to talk about and that's part of the problem with it's hard to have a conversation with a conventional philosopher because almost all of them are Kantians. And let me, so one more point and that's it but things are changing. So in America today at the University of Texas in Austin in the philosophy department there is a chair in the study of Iron Man a chair in the study of Objectivism the name of a philosophy. That didn't exist 20 years ago so that's new. They are fellowships for the study of Objectivism in a number of universities around the United States often in philosophy departments. And Rutgers University which is the number one, number two philosophy department in the world they are now going to have an annual conference studying Iron Man's ideas where academic philosophers will come in to discuss, agree or disagree but to discuss them. So the beginnings of that change of her ideas entering into the world of academic philosophy is happening as we speak but it's going to take a long time. Next question to you Do you agree that society described as a sort of part of the book maybe called kind of capitalistic in the U.S. so a kind of ideal society but not socialistic as both other U.S. are capitalistic. So do I think that the society described at the end of Alistar is a capitalist utopia not a socialist utopia but still a utopia as an ideal. I think utopia is a dangerous word and I agree with ideal but I don't agree with utopia so I think it's an ideal but even Gold's Gulch is not a society Gold's Gulch is a small group of friends who are living together. Iron Man never said that that's how a society would look like. It's something within a society for example Gold's Gulch has no government but Iron Man was a strong believer in government she was not an anarchist so Gold's Gulch is some ideal of how human beings should interact and the criteria by which they should live but not as a full-blown society Iron Man never wrote us a model of that which presents that ideal society fully worked out. Utopia implies something that can never really be achieved. I believe that the world of Iron Man because her philosophy is derived from reality can be achieved in reality so I'm an idealist and I believe ideals can manifest in reality can exist in reality can come about. It's going to take a long time I will never see it I won't see it in my lifetime I don't know that you'll see it in your lifetime but it will happen someday because the truth I think wins out in the end and I think Iron Man's vision for us is a true vision yeah Thank you for coming to Ukraine Thank you for lecture I suppose you travel a lot all around the world and I'd like you to ask whether you can name the countries that succeeded in all the important Iron Man ideas except the United States so so no country has succeeded in following Iron Man's ideas or Iron Man's ideas because of course the United States which is the most capitalist country in history came before Iron Man and part of Iron Man's ideas were developed by looking at the experience of America and saying what's good what's not good and how do I abstract away the principles that made America successful and form a philosophy around that and next time we try America let's get it right because the founders got a few things wrong slavery for example so the question I would say what country in the world is most capitalist or most free I think is a fairer question to ask and I think it's I think it's very difficult to say because some countries have a lot of economic freedom but very little political freedom Singapore is a good example lots of economic freedom contract law is respected as an entrepreneur you can pretty much do anything you want start a business choose your amount of wealth people are very wealthy in Singapore average GDP is very high in the capital and you're free economically in business wonderful business environment but you don't want to speak against the government you don't want to shoot gun in the streets right I don't know there's a famous case where somebody threw his gun on the floor in the streets of Singapore and they got kinged whipped so how do you free in some regards not free in others you know people compare the United States and people love to compare the United States and Sweden and Scandinavia and they say Scandinavia socialism and America's capitalism looks socialist and works fine neither one of those statements is right the United States is not capitalist it's got lots of regulations lots of controls and more every year it's far from capitalist and Sweden is not socialist indeed in many ways Sweden has more economic freedom than Americans do it's easier to run a bank in many businesses there's more freedom in Sweden than in America taxes are high in Sweden but other than Sweden you don't have protection for free speech they have hate speech laws I don't know if you have hate speech laws in the Ukraine do you have hate speech laws you do not really okay you guys can argue about it later really really bad thing to have hate speech laws America doesn't have that so that's a good thing so there are all these things that are balanced it's hard to figure out but if you had to push me on which one is the freest I would say Hong Kong because Hong Kong at least as long as the Chinese let it it has incredible economic freedom you can do pretty much anything you want from an economic perspective as long as you're not hurting other people great respect for poverty rights great respect for contract a real independent judiciary it's weakening now because of the Chinese influence so it's less independent but relatively independent judiciary which is the key to the rule of law which you guys need in Ukraine a completely independent judiciary not influenced by political pressure and at the same time you also have free speech you can demonstrate you can you don't vote right so the only thing you don't have in Hong Kong is voting I don't think voting is the most important thing in the world I'm going to vote next year in the American election I'll have two losers to choose between I don't know Hillary Clinton and some Republican losers now they have Hong Kong freedom than the choice between those two it's not perfect I'd like them to be able to vote at least on certain things but in California for example we vote on everything so they want to raise taxes everybody votes we all vote they have referendums so we all vote so guess what you have referendums to increase taxes on the rich how does everybody vote absolutely yes do you think rich people vote to raise their taxes or lower their taxes raise their taxes rich people always vote to raise their taxes so when Obama ran for president last time he promised to raise taxes on rich people 8th of the 10 richest counties in America voted for Obama in California we raise taxes on rich people just the state tax from 10% to 13% huge increase 30% rich people voted for raising their taxes why? because they feel guilty they've made all this money they've been all successful they're happy God forbid they have to pay a price so the politicians say you're happy you made a lot of money look over there if you don't raise your taxes we're going to have to cut education spending we're going to have to cut welfare and it's going to be your fault and they feel guilty so they pay I say Hong Kong oh the other one I love is New Zealand and I love New Zealand primarily because it's beautiful anybody seen Lord of the Rings movies? that's what New Zealand looks like those mountains and forests, that's New Zealand but it's also pretty economically free again, not like Hong Kong but Philadelphia and they speak, you know I like it because they speak English so, yeah as you came back once told that economy and state should be separated in the same way in the structure of the state so who should come back to that explaining this so Einrein once said that economics and the state should be separated just like church and state should be separated and for the same reasons now why should why should church and state be separated? why should the state not have a religion or I would even make it broader why should the state not have ideas the state should not have ideas in my view the state shouldn't be socialist it shouldn't be anyism because that separates people inside because as soon as the state has ideas it means that those ideas have cause of power behind them they're going to cause you if the state is protestant it's going to impose protestance otherwise what does it mean for the state to be protestant? if the state believes in a certain view of education is a good example right progressive education, James Dewey education then it's going to impose that education whatever the state believes it is an instrument of force that's what the state is, the state is a gun every time you think government think gun, big gun actually so ideas and guns have no business together the whole point of the gun is to protect us so that we can have ideas some of the ideas will be wrong the same with economics economics is action how we act in an economic context there's no role for coercion in how we act how we act economically is a reflection of certain ideas that we have the state has no role in that because coercion has no role in it so what I know and believe is that our economic lives we should be free of coercion we should be free of force we should be free of being told what to do and again as long as we're not voting other people the state has no business because the state is a gun so the state should have no economic policy the state shouldn't print money it shouldn't have a central bank it should have no energy policy it should have no education policy it should have no scientific policy it should have a policy about protecting us defending us and leaving us alone so that in education different people can offer different products and different ideas and some of them might be wrong but you get to choose not some bureaucrat just like you get to choose between Apple and Samsung which would be amazing because they both are really really good why? well imagine if a state bureaucracy made this it would be the size of that wall you couldn't they would never work but they couldn't even imagine it this could never come about so imagine for example if the state got out of education actually we get amazing does Apple also still remember the times of Soviet Union? yeah you might remember Soviet cause right? you might remember some of the products of goods used by communism that's the state so you want the state separated from production because that separates them from thinking that separates them from human decision and by the way, and then I'll take the question over there let me just make one more point if you want to be a communist under capitalism that's fine you can get your friends together if you live in a commune nobody has the right to force you not to be there you can each provide according to your ability and each consume according to your need and as long as nobody's using force against anybody else you can have a commune that's the beauty of capitalism you could be a socialist as long as you're not cursing that's fine and if communism is such a great idea it's not a capitalism but it's a lousy idea that's why communists need force capitalism is a great idea that's why we just leave you alone we believe that you'll all be good capitalists but again if you don't want to be that's fine just find another another people who agree with you and go and start a kibbutz if you know in Israel of course the kibbutz never survived the kibbutz has only survived by the government which means they only survived by coercion somebody cursed some people who are very productive to pay for the kibbutz but if they want to subsidize then you want to limit the kibbutz all the power to you I think it's stupid yeah no no there's one question you mentioned that you constantly do one self and think about your own virtue and your own targets so why don't they come here and keep telling all this to ourselves because you also have all those those are the only me because I love telling you all I'm enjoying myself right now this is fun for me I'm here on the stage and hated this teaching, I'm a teacher that's what I love to do that other people gain an understanding of what I'm saying that is the value I get from you it's the understanding and you know I used to teach finance and I enjoyed that so it's not even just about philosophical ideas I enjoyed the process of communication of teaching and knowledge those are my values that's what I love to do some people don't love this then I wouldn't do it I'm not going to say go teach objectivism to the world because it's your duty I don't feel it's a duty if I didn't enjoy it I wouldn't do it I also for my own selfish desire want to live in a freer world I want to see freedom happen and if it happens in Ukraine great I don't care where it happens I want to see it and I will need to go around the world and plant seeds and I hope that some of them results in freedom and if I get to see that in my lifetime I'll be very happy it'll make all of this worthwhile but I also enjoy the process but it'll make it even I'll give you all the selfish reasons I always have children I want them to live in a freer world I'm fighting and I love them it's not that it's altruism I love my children they're a value to me I want them, I want to die knowing that they will live in a freer world than I did so I go around the world trying to make it freer for my kids but there's another area I really really enjoy watching successful people happy people people who live life heroes I love Steve Jobs I mean even though certain aspects of a personal life are all screwed up I love my phones I've got an Apple watch I love this stuff and if some of you because of my talk take your life more seriously or like achieve great things that makes me incredibly happy because I get to see that I get to see it and I get to enjoy it through the products you make through the ideas you might have through the music you might compose through the paintings you might paint so whatever productive activity you choose I benefit from it I mean this is kind of an important economic point when other people produce and make a lot of money I'm better off I love rich people assuming they got rich by producing stuff by making stuff because it means that they produced stuff and made stuff that made my life better I use Google every day that the guys at Google are billionaires because my life is better because they're billionaires if they weren't billionaires we wouldn't have Google I mean the two are related you could only become rich in a free society with the values that lots and lots and lots of other people benefit from so if I can help any of you become super rich by making my life better I'm cool with it and that's why I give my speech yeah, second question sounds like a really hard question I understood Jack London and Steinbeck that's what I got one of the great tragedies of human history is that the intellectuals and the authors and the literary figures of the late 19th century and early 20th century how can I be nice about this oh, clue the efforts of capitalism had no clue about human history and what it took for human beings to survive Jack London is a fabulous author I enjoy reading him but he has no clue about the industrial revolution and he mischaracterizes it and indeed he mischaracterizes human psychology and human reason the second book I haven't read the third book by Steinbeck I mean Steinbeck is living in the greatest country in human history the wealthiest country in human history and all he can do is aspire to a socialist utopia which would make everybody equally poor and would destroy everything that was created in the country that he's living in I mean Steinbeck is a tragedy that is such a great writer has such a lousy philosophy and the great sort of route is again it's a misrepresentation of the causes of the great depression so now overproduction let's get to overproduction let me finish the question there's no such thing as overproduction there's no such thing as it's never happened in all of human history unless government does it so in the United States before the financial crisis there was overproduction of housing and we're subsidizing it in a marketplace there's never overproduction because what happens if you produce too much what happens to the price it goes down which clears the inventory out and what do you do do you produce more if it goes down and you're losing money no you go out of business has anybody in the audience ever had a problem to consume stuff if I gave you a bunch of money would you have a problem buying stuff with it no nobody ever has a problem you know when you have a problem consumption when I'm afraid that I won't have a job in the future that the future isn't certain a fear created by government not a fear created in the marketplace and then I stick the money in the mattress in a free market nobody holds holding is a fiction created by Marx and Keynes and doesn't exist in a free market because what do you do if you have lots of money and you finish consuming what do you do with the rest of it you invest it what does investment do well it makes more money but to make more money what does it have to do it has to produce it creates jobs and more production and if you don't directly invest that you put it in the bank what does the bank do with the money it lends it to people to either consume or produce money is never idle money doesn't just sit there ever unless you're so afraid of government policy that you're not going to invest you're not going to give it to the bank or give it out as loans like it is right now but that's because of government created uncertainty so the whole liquidity trap the whole story that Keynes tells is to be polite nonsense and Hayek proved it wrong back in the 30s but nobody listened Hayek it's about time they started listening to free market economists and stop listening to mohawks and Keynes because they're wrong and there's never been an example of there was no over production in the great depression there just wasn't there was no underconsumption in the great depression what there was was massive stupidity on the part of government horrible policies that created the great depression we have 10 more minutes I've got two more questions he had a question and this kid's this guy had sorry but I just I'm only one man who should be more disciplined than others so when do we have to leave yeah okay I have one question about make the questions really short why did you choose finance and what should be in your decisions why did you choose finance by accident my life was a series of accident I was an engineer but I wanted to get to the United States one of the consequences of reading after struggle so I wanted so studying was the way to do it what I liked about engineering was the management side of it so I went to get an MBA so I got an MBA and when I did MBA I took finance classes and really liked them and my finance professors liked me so they convinced me to get a PhD in finance so I enjoyed it so I got a PhD in finance because I enjoyed the combination of math and practicality and my research ideas my research was mainly in corporate governance and primarily focused on banking and today I actually am a part manager of a hedge fund that invests in banks long short banks in the United States and that's how I make a little bit of money we had a question and then okay these two short ones okay short I have a question and I want to know what you do no I told them I told them to do they asked me three things they should do right away I said privatize to anybody at any cost including foreigners open the borders up let capital flow in sell it to the Germans anybody but the Russians I guess sell it to anybody who wants to buy it privatize everything under the sun in Ukraine should be in private hands second I said deregulate get the government out of the business of business just eliminate regulations across the board third a flat tax get rid of that get rid of sales taxes have one flat income and a corporate tax just a flat tax and then I said there should be no the Ukrainian government should have no they didn't like this but they should have no department of energy no department of commerce no department of business relations they should free those sectors up so if you're worried about energy privatize it that'll get entrepreneurs that'll get capital that's the solution our government policy decided we had a whole discussion on wind farms but I think it's inefficient that's the short yes I've got only two uncomfortable questions I wanted you to get between Russian and Soviet so how many comfortable questions did they ask you there I mean comfortable questions they asked me in Russia well let me give you an example of what a comfortable question they asked me they asked me what I think of Putin and I had to think about I need to leave the country which was not very positive so that was the most uncomfortable and you could tell people in the audience would not I mean some are very supportive but they were not comfortable even in supporting what I said because I mean there's freedom of speech it's a tension over