 So I'm going to start. So obviously inequalities become, I'd say over the last four or five years, a huge issue in the United States. Interestingly, I don't think it's been much of an issue before that, but it suddenly became this primary issue. It got to a point where you couldn't open up a New York Times or a Washington Post paper on any given day and not find several articles blaming almost every problem in the world, including terrorism in the Middle East, on the issue of inequality, on the issue of the gap. Remember, inequality is the gap between rich people and poor people, rich in the middle class, middle class and poor. But something about the gap in income or wealth, depending on who you speak to. Some people prefer the income, some people prefer the wealth, but it should get the general idea. It's the material difference between us. President Obama said this is the problem of our time. The Pope said this is the biggest economic issue of our time. And many people attribute the election of Donald Trump last week to people's angst about the issue of inequality. So I'm going to argue today that inequality is irrelevant. It's not a good thing. It's not a bad thing. It's a who cares, that there are real problems in American economy, in American society. Their problems are poverty. Their problems are people being poor and not having the tools, not having the environment in which they can rise up easily into the middle class and above. There's a problem of no economic growth. The economy is not really growing or growing too slowly so that the middle class feels constrained because there's so little economic growth so they don't feel like their standard of living is rising. And there's a problem at the top, a real problem at the top. And that is the problem of cronyism. There's much too much government in bed with business determining winners and losers and as a consequence some people gaining money not because of their skill in the marketplace or because of values they produce but because they're in bed with the right politicians. All those problems are real. They're happening and they need to be dealt with. None of those problems. A cause by inequality, not a single one of them. Equality might be a consequence of some of them but it's not the consequence that is the problem. It's the underlying phenomenon, the phenomena of lack of mobility, the phenomena of cronyism, the phenomena of no economic growth. Those are what we should be focused on and trying to find solutions for. Indeed, I doggy, the most of the proposals to deal with inequality will make the problem of poverty worse, the problem of cronyism worse, and the problem of no economic growth worse. So, the proposals being provided, much larger distribution of wealth, more regulations, more controls, raising the minimum wage will all make these problems much, much worse. In a Fremont, which I believe is the solution to all three problems. In a Fremont, people make money by creating values. They make money by selling up services or products that we value. You become very, very, very rich in a Fremont market by improving the lives of lots and lots and lots of people. Great. I love billionaires if they made their money honestly and in the marketplace because I know that every billionaire out there that did that has made my life or somebody's life that I know better off, whether it's a Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or Sam Walton. They created wealth by making my life better. It's indeed the only way you can create wealth in a Fremont. I buy an iPhone for 300 bucks. How much is the iPhone worth to me? Well, more than 300 bucks, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered. My life is better off of that. Apple made a profit. Cool. They made a profit off of making my life better. That's wonderful. We'll take, what have I got, 45 seconds? Okay, so I'll leave my J.K. Wallins example. Right? I'll end with this. Right? J.K. Wallins began a billionaire. She used to be a wealth Fremont. Income inequality exploded because of that and yet it's wonderful. I got poorer because of J.K. Wallins. I'm really depressed, right? Because I read all the books, my two sons read all the books, I went to all the movies. I spent over a thousand bucks on J.K. Wallins stuff. I got poorer by a thousand dollars. She became a billionaire. There's income inequality for it. But you know what? I am much, much better off for having read Harry Potter and for my kids having read Harry Potter. Who cares that she became a billionaire? I actually think it's a good thing. Not a bad thing. Thank you. I should start saying I'm against equality in particular regarding time. I want to have more time. So, first of all, I should say I'm here mostly to react to Jaron's views. And I want not to distort your views in trying to react to your views. And your argument is, I think, a variation of an argument that has been fairly typical in this discussion, which is essentially the issues are, you know, I'm going to simplify it and then you said a few other things. But, you know, the issue is not inequality, the issue is poverty at the bottom. You said cronyism at the top, and you said also growth. This is sort of three sort of issues. But, you know, in the debates of inequality, I'm not a, I do inequality to the extent that inequality is relevant for Latin American accounts. It's a fairly common argument. You know, you shouldn't care about poverty, you should care about inequality. So, there is no relevance to the issue of inequality, what you call the gap. So, the difference between however you measure that, the wealthy and the relative people. However, your own argument of how we solve all of these problems, which is the free market solves all the problems, is that you said I love billionaires, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, John Walton, and J. K. Roy. I hate her, I hate those films and that. Films won't take place. That's another story. I like George Lucas, you know, and another story. So, the story has implicitly an idea that inequality matters. And so, you actually like inequality. That's what you're saying. You think inequality is good because inequality is functional to solve the problem. You're saying, again, part of what is the conventional story in economics, we still teach it, I'm sorry to say, to all students in a sense, the idea that it provides incentives. So, the person that it's poor by the fact that they are lagging behind, they have to work harder and sort of improve. And I have problems with all of these arguments. So, I have problems with the notion that only poverty matters. I have problems with the idea that incentives are what matter to create wealth. And so, I suppose we're going to go back and forth on that more time to go into several of these. Let me just keep the first sort of shots at these ideas. First of all, I think the core of this is the question of causality. So, you also said, and again, correct me if I'm wrong, that you think that some of these three problems are causing equality. So, inequality is the result of, for example, the lack of wealth. That's what you would sort of suggest. And that's fair enough. I think that there is a two-way road in that respect. But the problem is that inequality is instrumental in generating some of these three problems. So, inequality causes some of them. So, there is an issue of causality here. I think at the heart of the differences in view. So, I think that there is significant evidence that suggests that more equality... I mean, it's debatable. It's not, you know, valid in all circumstances in all times. But there is a substantive amount of evidence that suggests that equality societies tend to grow faster. They have better social outcomes, including those associated to poverty. More unequal societies would end up having not just higher levels of poverty, but, you know, work health outcomes, lower life expectancy. So, the US, for example, even though it's a very wealthy country, has work health results, life expectancy, than almost all their peers in Europe, Western Europe, that are more qualitative even though we spend even more on health than they do. And there are several issues associated to inequality to explain that. I see that I have one minute. I have an issue with the notion that, you know, Bill Gates, where do I start? You know, he bought for peanuts an operational system that he, you know, basically what he did, you know, his life better is by signing a contract with IBM. And that's extent of his genius that he got a monopoly. So, you dislike monopolies, good lord. I don't know if that... If you look at how the internet and all of those things happen, you know... The opposite word, it's not the free market. And I don't like facelist solutions, that it's all the free market solves everything. I also don't think the state solves everything. So, I'm going to give you a fuzzy sort of rage story. But, you know, it was Darpanet. You can sort of check your emails there, because the military were, you know, funded by the state and produced all of that technology. And you had... I have 12 seconds. And, you know, a lot of that was done by cooperation. So, cooperation is as important as egoism and, you know, and the incentives of trying to better yourself. So, cooperation matters to... All right, a lot to talk about. So, we won't have any problem balancing each other, or off of each other. Let me be clear, just to clarify my view. I don't believe inequality is good because it's functional or because it provides incentive. I believe inequality is good because it is just. Because inequality is what happens when you leave people free. If you look around the room, we're all different. We all have different skills. We all have different talents. We all have different incentive, different motivations. Some of us work really, really hard and we get really great grades. Some of us cruise a little bit in college. Would you want to give the people who cruise a little bit in college the same grades as those who work really hard and get straight A's? Do you want to give everybody A's even when some people are smart and some people are not so smart? The reality is, we're not all equally smart. So, inequality is a reflection of our metaphysical nature. It's a reflection of who we are and what we are. It's a reflection of our morality. The fact is, we're unequal. Now, some of us even make choices not to be rich. Like, anybody who's chosen to be a university professor, right? University professors? I don't know. Some might be rich. Some of us are not rich when we started. University professors don't make a lot of money, but they're really smart. They have high IQs. They could have probably gone, we could have probably gone to Wall Street or somewhere else and made quite a bit of money. Economics, finance, we know math, we can do this stuff, right? But we chose to be teachers because we love, hopefully, I hope this is true of most professors, we love teaching. Oh, we love research. We love the intellectual engagement. And we're willing to give up some money in order to do the fun stuff that we love. Life is not about money, but life is about inequality everywhere you look there's inequality. It's who and what we are as a species. We're different. And if you leave us free, if you leave us free, then we're going to have different outcomes. So to me, inequality is a feature of freedom. That's why I love it. It's not a bug to use tech terms, right? It's not a bug of freedom. It's a feature of freedom because I love freedom and that's my key. I love freedom. I don't want people taking my stuff away from me in the name of some morality that they decide is good for me. I want to be free and when you leave people free in any society, what you get is inequality. Let me just address, so that's my moral point. My moral point is because I love individual freedom, because I believe individual freedom is the moral base. That's why I like inequality because it's the obvious, necessary outcome of leaving people free. Okay, let's get a little bit of economics. What about these correlations? Well, look at the studies. Yes, Zimbabwe has very high inequality and has horrible health outcomes. By the way, how you measure health outcomes is very distorted and we're not going to do a debate hopefully on the health care, although we could. The United States might have lower life expectancy for a variety of reasons, but if you have cancer or if you have heart disease, there is no better place in the world for survivability rates for cancer and heart disease in the United States, far higher than anywhere else in the world. Far higher, not even close. The reasons why life expectancy is not... We don't match other countries in life expectancy. But these correlation studies, and it is, its correlation is not causality, but more than that, it's if you look at the studies and look how they group countries that are unequal and countries that are equal and what they're actually grouping around, they're very dubious. We can talk a lot about monopolies. I would love to stand here and defend Bill Gates. There's a problem, by the way, in a free market of somebody having a very large percentage of the market. I don't think that's an economic problem. I don't think in history we've seen economic problems in a relative free market come out of so-called monopolies. Corporation, I'll end with this. Yes, I love corporations. Capitalism is a system of cooperation. It's not the system of competition. The essential characteristic of capitalism is cooperation. You cooperate with corporations within a company, but think about, you know who makes some of the stuff in this? This is an apple, by the way. You know who makes some of the stuff in this? Samsung. So they compete? It's going to explode. Apple has protected us in the explosive parts of the Samsung. Companies cooperate much more than they actually compete. The essence and the corporation goes across with customers, suppliers, every way. The essential characteristic of capitalism is voluntary, win-win cooperation. I'm out of time. So, let's go back. So I have a tendency to think of these things in more quantitative functionality than sort of ways of looking at it. You know, Jaram comes from a libertarian sort of philosophy, and I suppose he tends to think in terms of issues of ethics. So that's what you're referring to, and fairness and freedom. So I'll engage a little bit on that, but that's certainly not what I think is the most relevant issue in the discussion. But, you know, it's fair enough. It's in the question there. It's in the quality of fair. That's a complex question. So a few years back, there was a study of Capuchin monkeys. And they had to exchange a rock for a cucumber or a grape. And these are monkeys, not even apes. And the one monkey that kept giving the trainer a rock and got a cucumber after twice of this happening, he gets pissed off and throws the cucumber. He wants, you know, a grape. He's not stupid. There is an intrinsically unfair exchange that the monkey is capable of understanding. So I think you said that inequality is a feature of the species. So I'm assuming that you're setting equality. But not fair enough. And it's an intrinsic question about morality, I think you said. So that would make us less than the Capuchin monkeys. From what I understand, we evolved to have a sense of fairness. And, you know, I think when they teach political economy in this university, they teach about an experiment, which I forget the name. It's an experiment in which basically they give you $100 for one person that has to give you $100. Then, you know, they make a, it's a little game and they make a decision on how much money they give you back. And the notion is that they're not close to 50%, and there's extensive studies of this. The old main game. The old main game. So somebody was paying attention in that class. So good for you. So the old main game suggests that we are hardwired to think in terms of fairness. And that fairness is, it's not the fairness you suggest. The fairness of inequality is good. It's the fairness of some degree of equality is a good thing. And which again goes to the notion that, because we lived, you know, in hunter-gatherer societies for, you know, millennia before we came down, you know, right after we came down from the trees. And so that means that we are probably hardwired to think in terms of fairness and that kind of inequality. So when I think of fairness and freedom, freedom is another word that you used and I have some time. So, and that comes very often in terms of the discussions, for example, of free trade, which I think it's a terrible misnomer. People that think about free trade, and I don't know your positions may be very radical in terms of this, but people that are in favour of free trade, they don't necessarily, they're not often against, you know, saying, look, we are going to decide that you cannot sell us poison. So there is a minimum of regulation that says, you know, the things that are going to be sold in the market have to have some minimum standards. And that's already managed trade. So we're deciding that for future sanitary rules we're managing trade, which seems to be a reasonable thing to do. So the question we're discussing really is where do you draw the line, you see? So obviously there is an issue of how much equality you want and how much inequality you want, which seems more reasonable debate from my point of view than how much inequality is fair and how much it can hurt. And again, it goes to the issue of causality and if we go back to those issues that, you know, you sort of wave and dismiss the data, all the data, it's correlation, not causality, forget all those studies. And there is a lot of problems with studies that's, you know, it's obviously true. But the correlations that I'm suggesting are fairly strong. And again, and indicate, for example, think of this, let's forget Zimbabwe, which is probably, you know, an outlier anyways and the U.S. is an outlier. But let's think globally. What's the period? You guys know what's the period in the whole history of humanity that we grew faster? It's a period called the Golden Age of Capitalism. So it's a period from the mid-40s to the early 70s. That's also the period in which the welfare state bloomed. So we had more government spending, significant redistribution policies in terms of health, social security, and so on and so forth. And yet, we didn't have a problem in terms of, and I'm precise at five minutes. All right, well, are we still going? So there's a lot there. I don't believe fairness is hard-wired. I believe people's attitudes towards fairness change all the time. And indeed, attitudes towards fairness in Europe are very different than attitudes towards fairness in the United States. A very different attitude towards fairness, I suspect. I don't know this in Latin America, but certainly in Europe, about fairness. Attitudes in Europe and the United States, attitudes towards fairness are very different. And attitudes towards fairness in the United States have changed over time. When surveys were done 50 years ago, 40 years ago, 100 years ago, asking questions about what other people made, people tended to have their attitude, I don't care, or good for them to be enriched. We have become systematically over time more envious society. I believe that has to do with the rise of a certain philosophical attitude in this country that's more collectivistic, more egalitarian in terms of outcome. And again, we've seen this in this last election. We're both candidates, I believe, of both egalitarian and collectivistic, very collectivistic, both of them. So that we stop caring about the individualists. We're not any more individualists, which I think is the core individualist, not a sense of being on a visit either, and a sense of primarily caring about your own well-being. We've stopped being a society of individualists, which was the way this country was founded, and it's become a society much more like Europe, which is a collectivistic group, think I care about my position within the group, rather about my position vis-a-vis relative to my talents, my abilities. I would like to see as returning to becoming individualists instead of being servants of some collective, which psychologically I think is a perception of fairness. I am for absolute free trade. Fraud is wrong. The only role of government in my view is to protect us from fraudsters and crooks and criminals and terrorists. But to protect us, to physically protect us, yes, if you're selling poison and pretending it's food, then you should be banned. But that's not managed trade. That's just basic function of the courts and government. 40s and 70s growth, first empirically, economic growth was much faster from the Civil War until 1914, until the big of World War I in the 40s and 70s. Average growth then was higher. But 40s and 70s did not see a massive role of government in spite of the rhetoric. 40s there was a massive role of government because of the war. So a lot of money was put. But standard of living in the United States, GDP went up during the 40s, which is bizarre. It tells you to suspect GDP numbers, but it went up dramatically during the war. Standard of living collapsed. There was no welfare state in the 40s and 50s. Remember, the welfare state is a creation of the late 1960s. It's a creation of the Johnson administration, 65 to 68. So you had some security, but no Medicaid, no welfare state, no massive redistribution titled under welfare state. That's all Johnson's great society, 68. And guess what happens right after that? Right after you get the 1970s, a period of stagflation, massive inflation, horrible economic growth. I always am bewildered by people who look back at the 70s and say what a wonderful period of time for America. It was one of the most horrible periods in entire American history. It was a dark, violent, horrible era in America. This is why they were willing to elect somebody who was as radical at the time as Ronald Reagan was. It was a depressing period. I lived in the U.S. for a little while in the mid-70s. Wouldn't want to go back then in any respect. New York was a dump. Nobody went out at night because it was dangerous. The economy was in a tank. American corporations were losing business in mass in those days to Japanese. Of course, we demonized the Japanese in those days. We wouldn't let them buy assets in the United States. They were the bad guys. Ronald Reagan passed a number of trade barriers against the Japanese to protect our industries. Now we're doing the same thing to Chinese. They are overpaying for our real estate just like the Japanese overpaid for their real estate back then. There's nothing about the 1970s to glorify. Really, nothing. Except the music. The music was the best. Popular music was very good in the 70s. So, modeling... Hopefully not disco. No, no, not disco. No. Just so I'm not surprised. Yeah, but then I correct myself. Not disco. But hey, we had Pink Floyd. Yeah, that was good. It was good music. Pink was awful. Off topic. So, if you really want economic growth or formula is simple, it's cut government. Reduce government spending, reduce government regulation, reduce taxation, particularly taxation that is attempting to manipulate. That it is attempting to give favors to some at the expense of others. Which is what Reagan did, tried to do in his tax simplification act. It wasn't that simple, but he tried to do that. So, if you want really economic growth, every country that's deregulated cut taxes has done very, very well. Okay, so we'll have... On that last note, I think I understand why the Oxford Dictionary gave the post truth the word of the... Well, the year. Maybe the countries that cut taxes and deregulated did well. We can talk about that. Certainly, in Latin America, it's an experiment of terrible consequences of exactly those policies. But let's go back to some of the stuff you said at the beginning. You suggested issues about fairness. So, we're back to the issue of fairness in general, and I want to say something about that. You again brought something that it's often brought in these discussions of inequality. The idea that envy, that people that want more equality are envious, which is a funny thing. You suggest that equality... You say, basically, equality is good. It provides incentives. You say, that's not the main reason, but I know you said that. It's not the main reason, but you use the argument. You get things from people that have incentive. Well, as I said, it's because it's fair. And you have here an argument exactly the story of what's behind the good side of inequality. Because if you're envious, that means that you would have the incentive to better yourself. On this issue of fairness, I think that, again, as I said, I don't think I'm concerned with your sort of fundamentalist view. Let's call it that. A view that inequality is always good and that individualism is always good. By far, the evidence is that we are sort of a mixed sort of bunch. We work better when we have some individualistic sort of concern, but also some sort of cooperation. That sort of mix that it's visible in those things that I said before. So the game, it shows that we are hard-wired to be cooperative. And I'll give you an example. An example in which cooperation is central, the state is central, markets are central. And about growth. I'm going to choose to talk about this. So think of the world that we have. This phones, the internet, and all of this. How is it possible? So we gave a monopoly to AT&T to have long-distance telecommunications. With one thing in exchange, that's what the government of the United States asks AT&T to do. All of the research and development you do, you give back free to all the companies around. And they use that at that time in the beginning to do telecommunications from California to some other world. Big tubes, it was those things that used to have on TVs. Backing tubes. And this company, because they have a monopoly, they have tons of money, they have a mandate to do research and development, and they have to keep growing because of all this stuff. And all these scientists do research on ways of doing this better. And they start to think of electronics. So Shockley is the guy that but other two guys also got it independently within Bell Labs. So Bell Labs has a monopoly which is a sort of a subsidy given by the state. So the state is providing them the resources by providing a monopoly for them to do this. And then this is given away. So you think of Texas Instruments, you think of almost anything. So Silicon Valley, which is central to understand the Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, happens because this man had studied, Shockley had studied in Stanford. He goes back to Stanford and opens his own firm. He apparently wasn't, can I say this, an asshole. People hated him, and so he they left. After Trump was elected, you could say anything. Yeah, probably you were right. So they leave and they create their own company. It's an iteration of companies, but one of those is Intel. So that's how that happened. So it's not the idea of the genius. What's behind your notion of it's the individual as a hero. It's the Superman that comes with one sort of big idea and solves all the problems. Whereas I tell my students when we talk about technology class, technology is more like the IKEA chair. So you build one. The first like chair is wobbly. Why? Because you've never done that before. The second one is sort of decent. The third one is perfect. I'm sorry to say you cannot make a career out of that. But most of the technological development is associated to small incremental increasing knowledge, which is a cooperative game. It cannot be done by the individual. The first steam engine is from ancient times. It took us 2,000 years to make it useful. So it takes cooperation. So the idea of the hyper individualistic society is simply not in the facts. How many more of these are we doing? I'm curious. Let me address the question of individualism. I think it's an important one. At some point we can open up for the audience. You can easily make a caricature of individualism. The guy living on the desert island all by himself making everything, inventing everything, God forbid he doesn't read Newton, he doesn't read anything because he has to invent everything from scratch. But that's a caricature. That's not what individualism means. Individualism means that the individual is the moral agent. The individual the purpose of government is to protect that individual's life and the individual's purpose in life is to make his life the best that it can be. Now, what would you rather be as an individualist? You're 100% dedicated to your own life. That's all you care about. Would you rather live in a civilized society and cooperate with people to make things so they trade with them win-win relationships with lots of people to grow and to become better and better and to recognize the fact that you're standing on the shoulders of giants before you or live on a desert island all by yourself in the middle of the woods in Pennsylvania? Well, it's obvious. Society exists because it's good for us. Because as individuals we thrive in society. It's much better to have lots of people with division of labor. If you go back to Adam Smith, then to live in a society where you have to produce everything as we did indeed going back long enough into the past, the human past. We were pretty poor back then. So, cooperation is a feature again of freedom. It's a feature of individualism. But what would you rather work in a team of individualists which means people thinking for themselves people motivated to do the best job that they can because they want to be good at it and were communicating with one another because they want to achieve the greatest results or a group where the group is the point the group is the standing and they're always looking for a leader which always happens in a group where the group is the purpose to tell them what to do which is what collectivists always do. I would rather have a group of individualists any day and I think most technology companies in Silicon Valley have that. Now, this issue about the internet being created by the government and so on. The military did a lot of research universities did a lot of research. Let me just say that even in a free market that I believe in there would still be a military and they would be doing research. Even in a free market as I believe in there would be universities. I hate to say it because it creates a controversy but they would all be private but there would still be universities and they would be doing research. So research would still be happening even in a free market. They were created in the university setting and in DARPA which is a defensive army but none of that affected any of our lives until it became a commercial venture until entrepreneurs figured out how to use it in order to make money and they cooperated doing that so Fairchild Semiconductors which is the company that was created then was the two spin-offs one was Intel and the other spin-off was venture capital. Venture capital was invented from the people who came out and they funded pretty much everything. Yeah, they worked together they cooperated Intel had to cooperate with Microsoft and with IBM Apple had to cooperate with whoever they did again how many different companies make stuff that goes into this iPad? Hundreds, maybe who knows maybe even thousands I don't know but lots they all get paid the beauty of the market system the beauty of capitalism is that everybody who adds value gets paid based on the value that they add and if you add a lot of value you get paid more and if you add less value or the value less value that lots of other people can provide you get paid less that's the way the system works and in that sense it's a virtuous system the more you add the more you get the less you add the less you get so it's a free system in which people choose what to produce who to work for how much to charge for their labor or for their stuff and in my view and again we can discuss the empirical evidence the more the government gets involved the less innovation productivity and economic growth you will get I fly airplanes a lot a lot basically the airplanes I fly in today are the same airplanes we've had for 50 years 807 the greatest best Boeing jet is the same as the 707 it's actually slower I've seen a graph where every 10 years the airplanes get slower the one innovation in aircraft which was the Concorde was killed the automobile, the internal combustion basically the same car we have today almost no innovation in industries we have heavy heavy regulations huge innovation after AT&T is broken up because you're allowed for a free market that's when the innovation happens the innovation happens when government steps back when government steps back from Silicon Valley boom it exploded if government starts regulating Silicon Valley which it's starting to do you will get constrained taxis have not innovative until Uber showed up and now that Uber is going to get regulated that innovation is going to be crushed as well I might have to let's do one more 5 minutes ok ok so society exists do you like Maggie Thatcher? yeah may we say that society didn't exist? no, she didn't that's not your dad there's a sense in which society doesn't exist that's not your dad, but maybe I'm wrong ok, far enough I'm glad we think society exists that's a step forward I'm thinking you move so talk about caricatures the group is the purpose and only government what I suggested is that technological change depends on the cooperation of government markets she said there's no such thing as society there you go there is such thing as society in the context she said it I agree with her we'll get to that context far enough but the point is that what I suggested is there is a significant amount of cooperation in order to get and again I'm afraid of these sort of absolutes it's free and the only way you get stuff is it's the free market so let me go back to something you said say you said regulation due to sanitary rules it's not it's not regulation that's the free market and that's just the government well it's a good point it's the government saying here's a regulation in any trade agreement there is a regulation that says you cannot sell these sort of things because you're going to be responsible in a court of law and that's written in law so that's a regulation so this is a question of whether you're half pregnant or not you already admitted so this is the debate between Keynes and Hayek and this and the other so now the discussion is whether you want to put the line by the way you're already pregnant you're admitted that you want some sort of regulation how much you want fair enough you want less than one more but you admitted you want some so it's not no regulation so the absolute already vanished I also don't want I don't want to be North Korea who wants to be North Korea so if that's the notion we want to be on the other extreme we want everything and whatnot and we put the teacher chairman Don they're on top and we'll be happy so certainly that's a terrible idea the point is that it's somewhere in the middle I for example would certainly agree that protection of certain quality of certain jobs which is certainly is a good reason to have regulations on trade or certain types of compensation for people that lose in the process of integrating society because again we're part and we're in the same boat and it's not true the incentives which whether you like it or not you end up coming back when you say that taxes and regulation are a problem for growth what's basically suggesting that taxes and regulation distort markets and hands don't get pressed twice and hands we don't get probably then I mean we would have to stop this I'll have to give you a lecture in economics there's no proof in economics that that actually works that way okay that markets eat left through their own devices there's no mathematical proof of that when they get the proof you know the other proof is of a system that has no correlation in anything that you have in the real world is without you know markets you know futures and so on and so forth they cannot prove stability of that thing so it's a mythical idea so that's the risk of basing practical sort of ideas on the basis of fundamentalist ideology I find I find the free market ideology which is in principle in your classical economics and to some version of I suppose what's in the back of your head I cannot sort of I suppose being rendient that it's some version of something that it's akin to Austrian theory so it's some version of that of a general equilibrium in the sense with complexity and this that and the other aspects somehow sort of get there is no evidence there is no theoretical proof that that actually works so let alone a discussion of how it works in practice the other thing that concerns me so now that we are throwing stuff I think the 70s were a terrible decade I had to leave my country in the 70s there was a military coup you know in Argentina I ended up growing up in Brazil similar situation for example in Chile and I don't have much time but the thing that concerns me is that and I'm not suggesting this about you by all means but you know it's that some people that took this sort of idea of individual freedom being essential like Friedrich Hayek he went down to Chile and there are pictures of him visiting Pinochet and whatnot and him saying that you know essentially that economic freedom was more important than economic freedom and economic freedom is the way to get to political freedom and I find again it's the I'll finish here I find the fundamentalist notion the notion that you know that it's only the absolutes that work that lead to these both on the right and on the left that lead to these sort of massive violations of the stuff you say you trust that it's individual rights let's wrap it up closing statements let me just throw by the way I'm not accused I'll clarify Pinochet I'm suggesting that he has led under certain circumstances I don't believe he can force people to be free and I don't think you can kill people in the name of trying to get other people to be free like Pinochet did so I'm very much opposed to Pinochet even though the economic policies you put in place to a large extent by accident not because he believed in them but because he just happened to put in the right people actually led to Chile going from the poorest country in Latin America to being the wealthiest on a per capita basis in Latin America but that does not justify anything else that he did look I'm a fundamentalist I believe in fundamental truths I believe in the sanctity of the individual I believe this country was founded on the principle of sanctity of the individual unfortunately the founders were not very consistent about that because they had slavery but that is the idea that is crucial and it makes this country exceptional and I do believe in American exceptionalism in that sense I believe in individual freedom and individual liberty and that what the role of government is should be limited to the protection of individual rights so every law that comes before government or Congress should be evaluated not based on its utilitarian benefits or costs not based on which pressure groups want to what which is how it's based today in my view but based on does this law protect individual rights or doesn't and individual rights are very are something very clear they are the freedom to act to gain the values necessary for your own life it's freedom of action that's what individual rights protect your ability to do what you believe is necessary for your life as long as you don't violate other people's rights and the only way to violate other people's rights is by physical force or fraud that's the only way to violate other people's rights so the only job of government is to protect us from physical force or fraud all other economic or social regulations should be gone and that's true of the bedroom as much as it's true of the trade of the boardroom government has no business in our lives no business using its course of power to shape and determine our behavior if I want to buy something from somebody who happened to be in China it's none of the government's business it's none of your business and indeed trade for example doesn't happen between countries the United States doesn't trade with China I trade with some Chinese guy or Walmart trades on my behalf with some Chinese company it's none of anybody's business what happens in that transaction any more than it's in California's business whether I trade with somebody in Arkansas or in Pennsylvania here the government has no war unless what I'm doing is causing is defaulting you or using force on you in some regard or poisoning you in some regard that is violating your rights limiting your ability to act in a physical way so the fundamental here is not there's this distinction between law and regulation but I don't want to get into that the key is is it protecting individual rights or isn't it protecting individual rights so morally government has no business in trade government has no business in the internet or in automobile regulations or any of these government has no business in business now I would like to be able to rewrite the American Constitution and have a separation just like we have a separation of church and state which I think should be taken a lot more seriously than most people do a real separation of church and state I would like to see a separation of economics from state I don't believe the state has a role in economics I don't believe it should try to establish economic behavior I don't think it should try to protect certain workers and not protect other workers or bail out certain firms and not bail out other firms or determine how much money we should have in economy I think the government should be neutral when it comes to economic policy this should be a treasury secretary in that sense the markets we should let markets work unregulated, uncontrolled un without the imposition of coercion as president Washington as president Washington said and I think it is second and I will really address government is a government the essential characteristic of government is force we are not doing government in any other human institution guns don't belong in schools guns don't belong in board rooms guns don't belong in bedrooms guns don't belong in our lives other than to defend ourselves that's the role of government self-defense that's it I have to say something about society because I think Barbara Thatcher was actually quoting Iron Man in a sense and what she said is in reality but individuals come together and they form groups groups in that sense exist but they can't be the primary the primary is the individual groups are there when there should be voluntary groups are there in order to because we voluntarily choose to associate with other people in cooperative ventures in order to enhance our own lives okay so let me say a couple of things and one is going back to something I said in the previous iteration but you repeated here again and I forgot to say something because I wanted to respond to something else but you gave the example of the island versus going to cities in Coventry and a lot of people have to cooperate which thanks God so we sort of agreed on that but now you're bringing something to the table so they're forced to compromise that they cannot as you admitted that technological innovation is not the idea of the genius of Superman it's done in cooperation so you need to the ideas of other people the ideas of people that came before so you admitted that it's not individual it's a group cooperative effort the question of whether who is against individual rights so nobody's suggesting that you eliminate individual rights by accepting that you have to cooperate what you're accepting is that once you enter a group if you enter a group you accept the rules of that group and that's one of the things there are several reasons I assume you will accept the notions of say public goods so there are certain things or maybe not so that's a traditional sort of story of why we accept and there is a debate of what goods are public goods public lighting, whether it's a public defense or not it's traditionally defences that weren't seen as health which many people that are libertarian think it's not I tend to think it's a public good and by the way the government does provide it better so if you look at the cost of Medicare they have been growing much less than say the cost of private insurance so that's one of the things that you know but it might not that's a different question of whether it's a public good or not so I have a question for you at the end but you know so the other important thing that I want to address is the question of government has no economic role no business in business if I'm quoting you right so let markets work and that's supposed to be an interesting thing I'm always puzzled by this one teaching economics that there is this notion that markets you know they arrive magically out of thin air that all of a sudden what markets I don't know what happened we already have a market but when you look at the story of markets for example financial markets in the western world financial markets in the western world occur because you have all of these groups that get together in the little city states in Italy their merchants basically that control the local government and they decide to gather resources in order to go and do this venture and they borrow money essentially from themselves and they create a public debt and it's the public debt that generates a secure asset because those public debts were normally backed by taxes so they agreed on something cooperatively we are a poor city you know a general my family comes from general this thing lost in the past it's an old town in between the mountains and the sea there's nothing else to do they throw themselves in this venture together because it's the way of surviving together not because they gave up their individual rights but because that venture that they get together they're accepting not just the public debt but we're going to tax each other and the taxes are going to pay for that debt it's the security of that debt that the debt is guaranteed by taxes of a common people that agree on the form of government that by the way not only gives us democracy a venture way further down the line but give them a financial market because now you know what happens you can trade those bonds in secondary markets and all of a sudden you have what financial markets development so it's the the financial market is a complicated outcome of the relationships of the states the people of society of cooperation and they arise if you look at the there's a famous book that if you haven't read you should read it's a book that everybody in college should read it's called The Great Transformation by Polanyi and he tells you how in the 19th century the three essential markets of capitalism those that we learn in the textbooks you know the labor market it's created the financial market it's created and the land market it's created and regulations are essential to creating markets when you think of the medical story of how they created Wall Street is a bunch of guys after the 1790s sort of crisis that say these are the rules if you want to participate in the market you have to pay a fee so there are rules and those rules are a form of self-government sometimes self-government is essentially self-government but sometimes it's you know what's supposed to be in a democracy is self-government is that so the idea that government is something alien to us alien to market something to be feared although these days it is to be feared it's I think a dangerous idea the government is ourselves you know and you know I think actually you know the current election reflects something on ourselves probably we are a little bit such anistic, xenophobic racist as a society and we should shape up already asked me something oh yes did you say that you think you are against all regulation regarding our automobile so like DUI and those things all so all things are done well DUI is not a regulation on the automobile industry but yes I say DUI is your risk to other people and other people's rights but yes seat belt laws definitely I'm against fuel economy laws weight car weight car distribution there's so many regulations going to automobiles I'd be against all of those and actually I would argue that all of those laws make automobiles less safe far enough but the other thing connected to that so you said we have the same causes before and we have no so the Google challenge actually led to driverless cars and we're having electric cars by the way the electric car was with us in the 90s because of regulation because of regulations it's with us today because of subsidizing it and that's why I resent Tesla and I resent Amon Musk I consider him you know this is a monstrosity so rich people are buying Teslas I see them all over the place I'm subsidizing it me because it's coming out you're subsidizing it less but the state of California gives Tesla hundreds of millions of dollars at my expense that's mind boggling to me you want to build or let you call do it but do it on your own so let's say that we have a problem I think it's a problem the environment so we're going to run into trouble yes or not depending on who you ask but most people think we are and we are do you think for example regulation that so you're certainly against the Paris agreement or any I'm not asking for Paris agreement is a bad threat you are against any kind of regulation regarding the environment it depends what you mean by environment it's a tricky topic because environment covers a lot of things no but the tricky topic is if you want to talk about global warming let me ask the question right then so my question goes back to the question of absolutism so you have this sort of notion the solution is to one extreme we do nothing I don't think we do anything so the point is you think that there should be no kind of regulation in terms to prevent it's zero approach you do nothing about regulation of say what we put factories can put whatever they want out there so again this is the point no no but this is the point of poison but no it's not a regulation if you can prove that when I'm spewing out of my factory is hoarding you physically then I'm hoarding you and there's a long precedent to go civil law well before you needed a regulatory agency to monitor this to address that you can't drop your garbage in my backyard we know that we've known that for a thousand years so you're for a mandate by health insurance because people are hoarding us we're paying more why? because we changed the law in 1986 that said that everybody has to be treated in an emergency room so if somebody doesn't buy health insurance and then walks in and it's got a cold no I don't think this should be a lingo mandate I think the hospital if you were in a life threatening position they treated you because that's what doctors do but if you came into the emergency room with the snivels, with the cold they told you to go home they were going to treat you for free but today we have mandated it that everybody walks into the emergency room for free so yes why buy health insurance you guys don't need to just go to the emergency room and they'll treat you whatever you have now certainly if you're dying and people were not dying in the streets in 1985 before this bill passed it's complete nonsense so yes you mentioned Medicaid right? the reason Medicare is cost the cheaper is because they buy in mass and they squeeze doctors so doctors now in order to make back the money that Medicare squeezed out of them, raise their fees so the insurance company says to pass it on to you so us buying private insurance so of course Medicare is cheaper by the way that's why healthcare in other countries is cheaper because Americans are subsidizing all the research 75% of R&D comes from the United States all drugs we have market prices here they can sell them below market in other countries pharmaceutical companies so we're subsidizing all the R&D pharmaceutical companies for the whole world and that's why they have good healthcare because we're paying a lot of money if you look at pharmaceutical corporations Western Europe has a few there also but it's also funded by the Western European countries and if you go again to the point of that I mean a good if you look at the US sure it's called it's called the coding artifact if the government stops funding something we'll stop let's take some questions Chris, first thank you both for this so you guys brought up the concept of public goods and you know there's probably some lines to draw right but do you believe governments should pay for roads should you ask me ultimately no I mean you can't stop paying for roads tomorrow but ultimately no I see no reason why government would have to pay for roads so how would that happen there's no shortage of ways in which you can fund public roads particularly today 20 years ago this question would be harder for me to answer but today it's much easier because you could put up even if all roads were tow roads which is not what I believe would happen you could put a GPS in a car and you could pay exactly based on how many miles and whose roads you travel so it's easy to solve today but look I live in a community where all the roads are private why are all the roads private because the developer wanted me to live in that community to build all the roads inside the community and you know it's a small gated community and you know we take care of the roads because it's in our interest to take care of the roads I don't need the federal government to build to take care of my roads and I don't need that infrastructure bill in order to take care of roads in my community businesses one roads but look there's no point really I mean talking about roads by the time we get to society where the only thing government is doing is roads we can talk about it then government does so much to me it's in every aspect of my life and 50% of my life's work in terms of my energy, my effort, my talent goes to the government I pay 50% margin of income above 50% margin of income tax there's no justification for that not for roads they don't spend any of it for roads I can guarantee that we tend to respond on the basis of theoretical questions and so why did there build roads in the first place so how do we get the Eisenhower interest rate system why, the justification they did you answered the question so you have it supposedly it's because if the Russians invade us it's alive they never thought the Russians would invade but they sort of pushed that idea in order to do that who's behind that there are three reasons and the government knows and does that so that's fair enough that's capitalism he likes capitalism corporations you had your time let me say this there is a disingenuous thing here so he starts to know that he's all for freedom and the capitalism is fantastic and he has no problem with monopoly he'll have it, that's his inaction that's the history of capitalism by the way capitalism is fine with slavery with all their individualism which wasn't uneducated and equal by the way at least they had the rhetoric of qualities that they sent so for example I'll ask you I'm not sure what you would say but do you think education should be private education should be something people should get probably you're asking me no, not publicly I think they should get it but they should be all private that's consistent so the question is do you think that public education should be something that it's a right as a citizen so a right as a citizen I hear we're going to come to some interesting debate so I think it is so why would you build a road once I was told I was a neoliberal in Ecuador which is funny because as he knows that's preposterous I'm a red commie, he thinks people have this tendency to view me as a red commie or as a neoliberal so they thought I was he's not a neoliberal he's a liberal and you're not a commie, I've met commies so the point is I'm probably more than you think but the point is they said that I was a neoliberal because I was in favor of a certain I was in favor of development banks spending money on infrastructure on roads so my point was do you think that public education is a good idea if you are a poor indigenous person an indigenous person in the middle of Amazon in Ecuador should have access to education why in the states should provide it because the markets will not provide it and he'll be handicapped in life so if you want to do something about the issues at the bottom as he said poverty you have to give them a quality of opportunity and to do that you have to give them education and how in hell are you going to give them education if you give them a road so that they can go to the school and electricity in that school and so that made me a neoliberal and that makes me a commie if you are going to be serious about solving the problems at the bottom you have to deal with the issue of inequality and you have to provide a bunch of public goods we will have a difference in where you draw the line my concern is that the line he wants to draw the line good lord it's got way over there and I think the line is somewhere mind you I think also that not all societies want to have the line in the same place which is a reasonable thing to do and that's why when they are democratic they actually can choose and decide where they put their line and how much you do it but the question here and I'll go back always to the question of pregnancy I don't think pregnancy is a question of it's a discussion of what kind of how are you going to deal, are you going to smoke or are you going to eat only healthy or are you going to have a natural it's a question but you are once you are it's not a question you cannot be half pregnant and so I'm concerned about those issues but I don't think we need public roads I'm not suggesting that it's all good so sometimes it's graft and you know put in their hands I'd like to get everybody in well I just say that's our capitalism that again I define capitalism as a separation of state and economics if the state is not intervening by building these massive roads and yeah people lobby is to get government out of the economy because then business doesn't have anything to lobby government for because they're giving them nothing and thank you for a very stimulating debate so I have two questions the first is would your ideals be the same for both developed and developed bang countries because for the most part those are apples and oranges so would you stand by your arguments in that case for both and then my second question is without a free market society how would you propose incentives isn't there some sort of ideal form that the people at the bottom tend to look up to and become inspired by so oh okay so so if you ask me in general there is a different way of thinking in economics for developed and developing countries I don't I think that surprises many of my colleagues on the left so I do think that economics applies in the same way I do think we have different problems we face different problems but the way the markets sort of work is essentially the same and I would say if I had to say what's the biggest difference is in terms of developing countries I would say two things so one thing is that most of the technological innovation is done in developed countries and that has a tendency to be self-dependent so once you go down one line you reap benefits there is a thing in technology that comes from the discussion of philosophy of science it's called technological paradigms so if you're ahead development is sometimes it's bad by the way sometimes you go down a line and because you are too ahead in this you end up being locked out of some other technology for development so coming late to the process of development of capitalism that's actually creates problems for development the biggest one is that we need always foreign currency and not having strong currency, not having a dollar or the pound before or the Dutch guilder before is a problem so we tend to borrow not in domestic currency which is what we were talking about in general we're borrowing foreign currency so you have cycles of default and what not and essentially stated two collections of the terms of trade and stuff we sort of have so currency crisis and what so what I think about free markets is one of the things the economists do that I don't do is I don't do utopia and that's part of my issue with Yara I think that he does utopia in the real world he thinks that these utopia of solve all the problems and radical individualism and I think that's an utopia and I'm very scared of utopia by the way I'm scared when you say most of the people that go to emergency rooms they don't have full problems workers they avoid going to the emergency room because if they miss a day of work, they pay check they go and they have heavy serious problems but that's my view but fair enough because it leads to serious consequences for people so I don't know what would be the alternative what I tell is that we don't really have a free market society we do have a mixed you know in the western world mixed societies and I'm okay with that the point is how you know so what would be this I do like the idea of Scandinavian social democracy sure is it adaptable and something that you can use in the US or say in Brazil well you know it's problematic there are countries that are multicultural gigantic the histories are different, we have a history of slavery so I'm not sure that's immediately feasible so I don't have an utopia that I can tell you but I'm in favor of societies democratically discussing how they move towards what they think it's a good path for development wait sorry maybe I wasn't clear I meant incentives, not an alternative oh incentives look it's what I said what are incentives so incentives are not just egoistic incentives as he said people do things for all sorts of reasons so so there is a you may decide that you love physics and you want to do this thing and end up doing research in this maybe you end up wealthy in a society that's acceptable or not but you know on the other hand because you got and several of these people talking you know shockly whatever they got public educations you know and so if you got that it means you have to give back something to society how much better it's fair enough it's a question that it's open to debate and it's not going to be by the way it's not going to be the same amount so what we used to do back in the 40s and 50s it's not the same as what we did and what we're doing right now so I'm open for you know I think that also is a question that it's open for the democratic sort of play of ideas okay just a sorry I was running over no we didn't do time I think the economic ideals are the same but there's a structural issue that has to happen before economics and a lot of times when countries go for a very authoritarian towards freedom they forget the structural point which is different because developed countries usually have it already and that is property rights in the rule of law you cannot have markets until you have property rights in the rule of law and most of undeveloped countries forget that step Russia for example when it went for communism forgot the step of the rule of law so what they got was in a sense the mafia controlling oligarchs controlling all the industries because they had bigger guns than anybody else and then they bribed the government to protect them and they elected Putin and now he's you know he's their boss so it's a corrupt team of things so you have to first establish property rights and you have to establish the rule of law in order to then put together your economic policy and I would say once you do that the economy should be I'm a big fan when it comes to Latin America I guess if you're not but I don't know I've been under the Soto Peruvian economist who says that one of the ways in which you would restructure Latin American economies is by giving property rights to peasants give them capital in a sense they own the land anyway they've been on this land forever they cultivate and give them property rights and then they can use that as capital to do other things and that's how you change the dynamics in Latin America and I'm a big support of that big believer in that but that's a pre-stage and then you establish markets when there's no laws markets or when there's no rule of law then what you have is the rule of the gun then what you have is the gang is the gang with the biggest gun gets all the goodies and that's what happened in Russia for example in the 1990s it wasn't capitalism it was closer to anarchy and I'm not an anarchist by the way as you've noticed I emphasize the rule of government in terms of well incentives I think we somewhat agree here in the sense don't overestimate incentives not everybody's incentivized by money or not to the same degree some of us are incentivized by other passions and I'm honest I told my kids pursue your passion now I'm living to regret that because both of them pursued their entertainment business and they're probably it's hard for them to make money but they're pursuing their passions and not pursuing money so I think you have to watch the reason they have capitalism is not because it provides incentives the reason to have capitalism in my view is because it leads us free to live as we see fit including the choice not to pursue money as a primary or not to do a lot of money as a primary you need some money to live so don't become poppers I will I do want to say this quickly it's not part of the question although it's somewhat related if you're interested in economics of free markets then I would read Ludwig von Mises now it's true that the Austrian economists don't prove this stuff mathematically but that's because we believe that economics is not primarily on mathematical science human behavior cannot be modeled mathematically so von Mises doesn't do math but I still think he proves this case now everything else you teach in economics is the opposite of what I just said so this is just a little bit of counterbalance I mean von Mises if I can say something about that von Mises is a neoclassical economist everything you learn he is he says exactly the same thing so if you go and read Mises and Hayek they basically say look at their theories for example of the rate of interest it's savings and investment it's basically the supply and demand in the capital market and you get it's a lot more of von's theory it's essentially the same as you have in Wichsel you have in any neoclassical economist I mean that leads to your thought so I have read them and here the problem with von Mises is not that he doesn't do mathematics the problem with von Mises is that he doesn't do logic and the logic and evidence doesn't matter man and you know there is no proof of this stuff the notion is generically that markets do wonderful things and you hear angels and they get the prices right but markets don't necessarily I'm not saying that I think that there is a confusion in another thing that you discuss capitalism as an environment in which you can get the right to do what you want that's democracy so capitalism is not a political system although and there have been very different political systems under capitalism democracy is sort of what you want when you want to be able to do what you want and we'll have a difference of that and I would suggest to you that capitalism with some of its tendencies is to generate excessive inequality to generate excessive power in the hands of people so perhaps you think that money is voice and people should have the right to use money in the public arena to buy which I think leads to corruption and colonialism and whatnot since you are paying lip service to the idea of freedom if you believe in that citizens united so in that case capitalism is part of the problem that won't allow certain people to reach their potential and to have democracy I'm not saying that capitalism is the only thing in capitalism that it's really important capitalism is the first system of production that it's really dynamic capitalism because of its inherent need of competition and outpace the others leads to innovation that's one of the incentives if you want to your question and I think that's certainly something that has had a positive effect so not everything that comes from capitalism but it has a downside that it's not much concentration and maybe to people not in it so his kids are free too and my kid too to pursue whatever they want but the counterpart of this is that somewhere there is a girl in Bangladesh that is suing stuff essentially with slave labor wages and so that's a counterpart of capitalism so it's a dangerous system I'm not suggesting that that's my point I don't have an idea that we put this out and we'll solve all the things I'm very scared about notions of this kind of thing in general we'll talk about one more over in the back yes thank you I suppose this isn't a practical snare but the topic of health care regulation and the snivels was interesting and you wrote up recently the expectation that diseases will be treated this is my question the disease will be treated not for emergency rooms or even doctor's office as a cost for health care for example as making hospitals less safe because of the snivels because of bacteria and viruses that the regulations might lead people by way of expectations that health care will pay and treat anything that this might be a hidden cost is that what you were saying I'll just say quickly just to clarify all I said was because emergency rooms are free they have to treat you no matter what you if you go in the evening to an emergency room you're right they don't take a day off of work they all go in the evening and I mean to emergency rooms with real issues in the evening and what you get is long, long lines of people because they're not feeling well not because they have a life-threatening disease but because they're not feeling well they use it as their primary care physician and that cost has to be borne by somebody he says it's borne by those people who pay insurance and that's the, that's the fee writer problem that you get in the health care markets as they were before Obamacare and it's still long because so many people are still uninsured but that's just the point of clarification I don't think it's essential Bob, do you want to take another question? Sure, do you do that We can have a discussion about it No, Mary Riffley said if you're concerned with that kind of stuff you go to Western Europe the US has a very peculiar system we provide health insurance only for the elderly and that comes with more security that's the only country in the world Medicare, Medicare, yes so it's for the elderly so that doesn't happen if you go to Europe you will see health in most Western European countries on the basis of being a citizen like Astoria said about public care so once you have that and there is a mandate of the state of doing that the costs are lower too and they do treat everybody in hospitals and it's cheaper and they do have better health outcomes and they're more of a polytechnic society Oh, I was for public health So should we debate this since we brought it up So we might as well end with this Yeah, I disagree doubly I come from a socialist medicine country my father was a doctor in a socialist medicine country a country that has more doctors than any country in the world because it's a Jewish country and if you're really sick if you're really sick my father would advise you to get on a plane and get to the Mayo Clinic if you can afford it I agree with all of that If you look at survivability rates if you look at catastrophic stuff if you look at the number of people who are in the NHS in England die waiting for an MRI die waiting for me to be diagnosed Yes, we pay more for healthcare in the United States Cool I paid more for healthcare because I got treated and I got examined and I was told I once had this weird thing going on and I was told there's no problem there was worth the money to be known that if I'd been in Israel I would have waited three weeks and if I had something I would be dead so and as I said the fact that we still have private healthcare in the United States subsidizes the healthcare for the rest of the world so no healthcare outcomes here are much better if you look at the numbers so let's look at the numbers if you're a swede in the United States you live as long as a swede in Sweden or maybe longer look at the data if you're a Japanese in the United States Japanese live longer than 80 people on the planet if you're Japanese in America you live as long or longer than a Japanese in Japan when you control for the fact that we are so diverse and that the enormous genetic factors that determine longevity then the differences in life expectancy disappear in the United States and that's true of a lot of things from Scandinavia to America if you look at Scandinavians in America versus Scandinavians in Scandinavia they're just as happy if not happier they're more wealthier than the Scandinavian brothers it's true if you get Scandinavians they arrive in the 19th century that are white and blonde and they have the best healthcare it doesn't matter if it's private or not and then you're putting together African Americans that we imposed 400 years of slavery it's all tough luck and then and then you have obviously they push down some of the health outcomes and you're telling me, oh you have to screw them and then gambling but let me say this this is an important point because you said who cares who cares about inequality it's all about these three problems poverty at the bottom, cronism on top and growth pay lip service to the solving the problems at the bottom because your solution means those black guys that have higher rates of diabetes screw them it's their problem, it's their responsibility even though part of the reason why they're there is because they're poor because we'll press them over years because we have issues associated to obesity and all of those things that come with low income so if you're not going to pay lip service to that yes, the way to think about and the other thing, you think of medicine as being just curative you don't think of the role, the preventive medicine is a good part of our problems we let the problems accumulate whereas a good chunk of what happens in western Europe is that we have preventive medicine and so most of the problems are caught early on and so you don't need the expensive care so if you wouldn't be there because you wouldn't need the three weeks in advance hopefully because you would have some other thing going on that would help and it wouldn't lead to these sort of stuff so the notion that we have better outcomes it's very hard to defend, it's post-factual I would say it's empirically true and I'll say I don't give lip service to the poor I care about poor kids I care about poor kids that are priced out of the labour market by minimum wages I care about poor kids that are priced out of jobs because of licensing laws I care about poor kids that don't have a job because we've limited growth and jobs are not being created in this country the way to solve the problem of poverty is by more freedom and more jobs not by more regulations and more controls and more redistribution we'll stop it there let's thank our two debaters