 Today we're going to be having our third conversation with Yaron Brooke, who is the chairman of the Einrand Institute and host of the Yaron Brooke show. This is number three in a series of discussions produced in partnership with the Einrand Institute. We've talked about Einrand and objectivism. We've talked about capitalism and other economic systems. And today we're going to talk a little bit about welfare programs. We will also talk about universal basic income. So maybe for this one, Yaron, maybe I'll lay out my view first and then give you a chance to respond to that. Sure. Sounds good. Okay. So my view on welfare programs in general, and I think we'll start general and then maybe get more specific, is number one, I don't see any moral case against welfare programs in principle. For me, one of the beautiful things about humans getting beyond a state of nature into an era of governments and technology and education and advancement is that we have the political and economic resources to set some floor for the circumstances in which people will live. I don't subscribe to what George Lakoff calls strict father morality, where I'm motivated by the idea of teaching people a lesson by not helping them when we can in principle. I think that there's little about that that I find convincing that the people will be better off in some long run if no one helps them and they either die or figure it out or don't or whatever. I don't buy that. I do believe that once you sort of put aside principles that might be appealing to a 16 year old hearing about libertarian ideas for the first time and think about the real world and people and relationships, I think that there are many positive elements of establishing a welfare system. Now, any welfare system or insurance system has some free riders. There will be some people who will overuse the benefits, people who will be motivated, not really to use these benefits as a bridge to better their circumstances, but they want to hang around and collect 200 bucks in food stamps or whatever. I don't think policy should be made around them. And I think that in total, if you have a properly run program, be it food stamps or unemployment or whatever, I believe economically it's a net stimulus. And I think that when you consider the positive externalities, we're doing something good. And I'll give a couple examples and then turn it over to you. You hear stories about people sitting back and collecting welfare and being thrilled to live on the government dole. I don't think anybody's riding high on food stamps and unemployment. If you want to talk about corporate welfare, then maybe we have something to talk about, but I don't think that's today's subject. The small percentage of people who do find themselves satisfied by what they can make from welfare programs. I'm just not worried about them. I think most people want to do things. Most people want to be productive. You know, the non-existent welfare queen with a Cadillac from the Reagan era never, never existed. And we know that if people can't afford food, they'll commit crimes to get food. This taxes our police departments, our emotions. We feel unsafe in our neighborhoods. We don't go out. So my starting point is everybody is society overall benefits in the short and medium term from properly calibrated thoughtful welfare programs. And in the long run, the sun expands and engulfs the earth. So I'm not super worried about the extreme long run. That's my framework for thinking about this. Sure. And it's, it's the framework on which we are going to disagree because I'm going to, I'm going to defend the 16 year old. I guess I never grew out of, still am that person. And I'm, I'm going to, I, you know, I reject the welfare state not because of the free riders, not because of the welfare Cadillac, whatever. You know, I don't really care about those things. I don't think that's the essential. I don't think it's important whether they exist or not. I think the welfare state is fundamentally and deeply immoral. And it's immoral because it basically negates the rights of individuals to do as they will with the wealth that they have, that they have created. It is somebody else, the government in this case, deciding what is best use for my resources based on some standard of social wellbeing, which I reject, which I reject as, as being an even standard. The role of government, as we discussed last time in my view, is to protect the rights of individuals to be free, to act freely, to think freely, which means to invest freely, to consume freely, to give away their money freely, to do whatever they want with their time, their resources, and their mind. And the state here comes and tells me that they have decided that there is a group over there that needs my help. Now, maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, but they have decided that I should help them. And they're not asking me for help. They're not requesting me to help. They are cursing me. They're forcing me. They're putting a gun to my head and forcing me to help that group. I reject violence. I reject coercion. I reject force. I mean, if you had said, I think there are people who need help, and I'd like to see a society in which there are voluntary organizations that help people that need help, then that's a fruitful conversation to have. But as soon as you're being in the element of, I know what's good. I know what's good for society. I know who needs help, and how much help, and where they need help, and what programs to help them. And I'm going to force you to participate. I think now it's an immoral system, and it's a violation of the very principle on which government was established, or should have been established, which is the principle of protecting individual rights, not violating it. Now, I do want to say something about welfare recipients, because I do think, and I want to say something about the economics of it too, but I do think that it's also harmful psychologically in this, and from a self-esteem perspective, from a moral perspective, for people to be on welfare, particularly given that I don't think the state particularly does charity very well. I think that, put aside the borderline cases, but I think that a lot of people who feel like, are institutionalized into welfare, where they expect it, and it becomes an entitlement, and it becomes a way of life. And I think that is horrible for them. I think it's sad for them. I think the one thing about charity is it functions in a way that is usually much more restricted, much more time bound, and usually encourages people to rise up from their state and take control of their own lives. I think what welfare does to most poor people is it makes them dependent, and that destroys their self-esteem. Basically, the state is coming to people and saying, eh, you guys can't take care of yourself, whether it's because of your culture, whether it's because of your IQ, or whether it's because of your mentality, whatever it is. You can't take care of yourself. You need our help, and we're going to help you, and don't worry, we're going to help you. And yes, it's not help enough to be middle class, but it's basically institutionalizing people into poverty and giving them all the wrong messages, and there's no accident that the warm poverty has done very little to reduce poverty. One last point, because you raised a lot of issues, it's not a net stimulus. I mean, we really need to get rid of this bogus economic idea that consumption drives the economy. I mean, it drives me nuts, because everybody repeats it as if this is going to, this is going to, it's the case. What you're doing is you're basically taking, saving an investment, and turning it into consumption. Any decent economist, half honest economist, will tell you that what you're doing is, yes, you're, you're sacrificing long-term economic growth, you're sacrificing long-term economic prosperity for short-term, for short-term economic growth that's fleeting. Consumption, by its nature is destruction. When you eat something, it's gone. It goes away. That's the nature of consumption. Investment is what builds things for the future. Investment and savings are what create economic growth for the future. Wealthy people who you're taxing, or even middle class people who you're taxing, don't consume their money. They invested and save it, and it's that investment and saving that you're taking, and you're turning it into, so it's net for the economy, negative. There's no positive stimulus. I hear Andrew Yang talk about this, and I hear lots of economists from particular persuasion talk about this. This is just not true. It's not economically sound. I don't think Keynes would agree with this. So I think we need to get the economics right on top of everything. Well, I think we do, and I do think you're completely mistating the economics, but let's maybe come back to that, because there were some things you said earlier that I want to focus on. One thing is, I think it's very presumptuous of you to say that the psychological impact of receiving a benefit from a welfare program is that you feel bad about yourself and unworthy and all these things, but that if you get the same from charity, people feel great. I think that that is a distinction that makes no sense whatsoever. I don't even know that it really should have much of a part in our discussion because you can feel okay or not okay if the money comes from government or charity. I don't think it makes a big difference. It's a huge difference. The one comes from government, it's you know that it's money that's been coerced from other people. Most people don't agree with that framing. Most people don't see taxes. Hold on, but you're on. Hold on. Hold on a second. If most people don't see taxes as coercion, how can you say most people see the welfare benefits as having been coerced? Of course, everybody knows taxes are coercion, whether you want to admit it or not. I mean, try not paying your taxes. Taxes are not voluntary. You can't turn something that is forced upon you, whether you like it or not, into something that's somehow voluntary. Hold on a second, but hold, let's explore that a little bit. You're on. For the benefit of the audience, you're originally from Israel. Is that right? That's right. Okay. I'm originally from Argentina. So at a certain point, did you come to the US with your parents or by yourself? I don't know exactly, but it's not hugely relevant, but just so I get the analogy correct. I came by myself. Okay. At a certain point, you made the decision to come to the United States. And when you did that, were you ignorant to the fact that there were taxes here? No, but that doesn't change the fact. Let me make this point. If somebody emigrates, if you emigrates into Germany when they're concentration camps, is it his fault that he gets sent to the emigrate? I mean, it's a stupid thing to do, but the fact is the evil of killing people, the evil of taxing people, of using coercion against people is not diminished by the fact that I know it's going to happen to me when I come. But it's a little bit different. You're, hold on. I don't, I can't imagine you're equating concentration camps to taxes. I'm equating coercion. Accursion is coercion. Now, true, it's a much greater evil, much greater evil to kill people than it is to take their wealth. Okay. But both fine. Both evil. And let me just say this as well. Look, it's not like I have any options, right? Every state in the world today causes people. Well, but then that's so, so, but I think we allow me to at least follow it fully through. So you, you did you concede you chose to come to the U.S. knowing what the system was, but you say that doesn't make the system any more moral. Fine. I concede that it doesn't. But then to suggest that choosing to come to the U.S. knowing the tax system, choosing to stay in the United States and work and then saying that you were completely coerced into paying American taxes, that seems like a bit of a stretch. Now you're getting to one of the most important elements here, which is, but hold on, David, other countries also have taxes. That's right. And there's a reason why, which is once you have more than a couple hundred people who want to live together as Jared Diamond has written about brilliantly in his book, you need to delegate some decision making power. And that's what we call government, but you're sort of getting to making my case for me. No, I mean, you need to delegate some decision making to government. But if government is then, and the purpose of that is to eliminate coercion, if government is then using coercion in order to so-called eliminate coercion, and it's not, it's just to increase coercion. It's, it's violating the very principle in which it was put together. And therefore it is, it undermines its own legitimacy. But look, you know, there are lots of situations in life where you can imagine where coercion exists and you can get out of it. You know, you have a little storefront in the east side of New York in the early 20th century, and a mafia comes around and collects protection. And, and you know, would you say it's voluntary that you give them the protection money? Well, of course it's not voluntary. You'll be cursed. You know, the consequences if you don't pay the coercion. So people say, well, why don't you leave the store and go somewhere else? Well, because it's expensive to leave the store. It's difficult to leave the store. And there might be protection money after paying the next neighborhood as well. So I'll pay the protection. But you know what? I'm still going to complain about it. I still view it as immoral that I'm paying the protection money because it's unjust. It's not right. It's not fair. And I view what the government does for, takes money from me and give it to somebody else is the equivalent of protection money. Yes. In a sense, they're coming to me and say, you cannot pay and you go to jail. You cannot pay and I'll break your window, bone down your store. It's exactly the same thing. It's exactly the same form of force. Now you, you need to just admit this and say you're okay with some coercion. That is what most people say is, look, when we come together in a society, we accept that there's going to be some coercion placed on some people. And we're okay with that. I'm not. And I think it's wrong. And I think it's okay. It's morally offensive because I think, again, my view is the individual. Cursion against the individual is always going to be morally wrong. Cursion. So the initiation of force against an individual is always morally wrong. And within that framework, government cannot tax the regulate government cannot tax the redistribute wealth. Government cannot use cursive taxation. But so the problem I'm having is you, you've conceded that there is a voluntary nature to your choice to come to the United States knowing the taxation system and to stay here and to work here. And I get it. If you do it and then you don't pay the taxes, eventually someone with a gun will come and bring you to jail. But you still chose to come to the U S knowing there are taxes into work. Now you're saying, I still get to complain about it and you do. And I completely respect and support your, your desire and ability to complain about it. And by the way, but hold on, hold on, but to then take a decision that you concede was a voluntary one, even if you don't like it and say that the entire system is coercive versus saying we live in societies and understand that we are giving up the ability to decide everything that happens in the society because that's how a society works. It's a very, it's a game that is partially linguistic and part ideological that's being played. It's definitely ideological. I'm not against ideology. I'm a big supportive ideology. I have an ideology. And I think my ideology is logically consistent. But no, I think what you're saying is completely illegitimate and not logical. The fact that I chose a less of two evils, I could have stayed in Israel. I considered that a greater evil tax, let's just take taxes. Taxes were higher. I chose a less of two evils doesn't make the less evil, less evil. It's still evil, right? Now, it might be less evil in Israel, but it's still evil. And I will do everything I can to reduce that evil for them. You would do the same thing. Let's say you believe you came here from Argentina. Let's say, let's say you didn't come from Argentina. Let's say you came here from Denmark. You didn't come from Denmark, but I know people who've come to the United States from Denmark. And you have a particular point of view, a pro-welfare state point of view. And you say, I don't think the United States is more because it doesn't redistribute enough. And people say, well, why don't you stay in Denmark? Denmark, they redistribute more. And you would say that's an illegitimate argument. It's okay to come to the US and argue, you're not redistributing enough. We should redistribute more. I'm saying it's fine, but that's the difference you're on. It's fine to show up and argue for whatever you think is best, but to claim that you were coerced into doing it is where I have a problem with what you're saying. Sure, show up and say taxes are too high. But of course it's coercion. It's nothing else but coercion. But hold on. You didn't have to come here. You didn't have to work. This is the fundamental point I brought this last time. And by the way, I live in Puerto Rico for this reason, because I chose to reduce my taxes even further and have reduced my taxes significantly by moving to Puerto Rico. So I am following this, and I still can look at the United States from Puerto Rico. We're kind of part of the United States, kind of not. And say that's evil what they're doing. That's wrong. That's immoral. But look, I gave this example last time, and I think it holds for welfare, and it holds for the shift of taxation. My neighbor can come and ask me for help, and I can voluntarily supply him help or not. It's up to me. Him getting together with all the neighbors and voting that I have to help him, that is coercion. And that is what democracy does. Democracy does not turn stealing into a virtue. Stealing is stealing is stealing. The fact that a majority voted for it doesn't make it right. Now, you could say, I don't mind, I think that the fact that we steal is okay because there's some greater good achieved by it. Fine. But you have to acknowledge that it's stealing because it is. The fact, when if something is wrong for an individual to do, it's wrong for a group to do. The group doesn't make immorality go away. I don't think that we necessarily disagree about whether you have 100% power, I guess is the way I would call it, to decide every aspect of what it's like to live in a country. Like I just hesitate to apply the words you're using because they have significant values, judgments attached to them that are divorced from the empirical realities of being human and living in a group of more than 150 people. I think that's what maybe becomes frustrating about these arguments where, okay, you, you, we've, you might be, I'm okay with the government saying if you want to live in this country and if you want to work, which they're not forcing me to do, right? I mean, okay, I'm choosing if you want to do those things, then here's the way that it's going to work. And I can decide, well, on that basis, I will or won't work, but here's the, okay. What authority can they do that? So, so I, I mean, the whole, the whole way in which particularly America was founded was on the principle of individual rights. Not you start with the government and then the government decides under what condition it's okay for you to live and the what conditions it's okay for you to work. No, the government, this comes up often. The US government's, the US government's ability, the US government's right to collect taxes is widely established and codified. If I, you know, I'd have the citations in front of me had I known they were going to be necessary. I don't, but I've discussed this on my program. The idea that there is no legal basis for collecting taxes, that that has been widely debunked. No, I'm not going to argue that. Okay. I'm not arguing that. You believe it's legitimate. The fundamental nature, I'm not even arguing the history. I'm talking about the fundamental nature of government. Okay. Government is not there to dictate to me how to live my life. Government is there to serve the one function that's supposed to serve, which is to protect my life and property. And that is it. And everything else that it does in the name of the social welfare is coercive. It is by its very nature forcing me to do things I don't want to do, and thus violating my rights. It's engaged my right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Okay. That that's your interpretation. And many people disagree. But I think our focus has been heavily on your disagreement with welfare on the basis of how it's paid for, because it's coming out of your taxes and you don't have a say. Let's for a second, maybe shift to the other side of this, which is the issues of the function that welfare programs can have in a, in a society. Do you deny the negative externalities of economic despair that I mentioned during sort of my opening? Sure. I'm not going to come out in favor of economic despair. You know, indeed, I believe that the, that the correct way to deal with economic despair is to have, you know, a government that does not tax and redistribute wealth. I believe there's a lot more despair today in America that needs to be. I think people, people that weigh too many people today who are poor in this country. And I think if you unleashed the economic benefits of capitalism, of free markets, of a government that does not tax away my money that I would invest in productive activities, there would be many more jobs. The jobs would be much, and by the way, if we eliminated the regulations that we discussed last time, there would be many more jobs, much more economic activity. There's zero reason why the United States economy should be growing at what is it 1.9% right now. It should be growing at 4 to 5%, at least at 4 to 5% growth. Poor people in this country, this standard of living would grow dramatically. But to achieve that, you would have to completely restructure the way we do things. We would actually have to establish a capitalist economy in this country, which we don't have. We have. So yeah, but hold on a couple of things on four to five. So, so number one, four to 5% growth in any sustained way is extremely rare in countries that are as developed as is the United States. Usually only countries that are not yet as developed can experience that, but, and you'll be able to comment on that. Unsentence, one sentence. Yes. That's because there are no capitalist countries in the world. All right. I know that that's your perspective. The other thing though is there's a reality that if you had four or 5% growth, as we've seen, 60, 70 or 80% of that growth would go only to the very top, and it would do very little actually for the people in the bottom 80 or 90%. I mean, I don't want to get belgedown in the statistics, but that is unbelievably not true. Plus, it's unbelievably not true. And you could read The Financial Times, a Piketty's book, and you could read all the other critiques of Piketty's book. I mean, what that man did with numbers, you know, is fraudulent, is basic fraudulent. But, and the same is true of the latest articles by his co-authors, I can't pronounce his name, S-A-E-Z, and his co-authors. Anyway. You live in Puerto Rico and you can't pronounce size? There's plenty of economic literature, which I read, which is a vast economic, not philosophically, not ideological critique of those studies and what they do. And the whole disengagement of productivity from labor cost is such, these are such wrong ideas that again, I'll repeat it over and over again and become like institutionalized truths. When in the economic literature, they are all being challenged on a daily basis, not by ideologues, but by economists. So I don't think that's true. But again, you're equivocating between two things. You're equivocating between the world we have today and capitalism. We do not have capitalism today. There's no question that today, a disproportionate amount of the wealth created goes to certain people at the expense of other people. A big reason for that is the way our Federal Reserve functions. That is, by pumping money into the financial system, drives up asset prices, which most benefit people who already have assets, and it doesn't benefit people who don't yet have assets. So there's no question that there is a distortion going on today, but that distortion is not driven by capitalism. It is driven by a very statist, I won't call it socialist, but statist institution, which is a Federal Reserve. I don't believe there should be a Federal Reserve. I believe in free markets, which means free markets and money in free markets and banking and unregulated issuance of currencies. So to blame the problems that exist today in the United States on capitalism, it's not what capitalism is. And it's just not true. Well, listen, you're right that we, of course, don't have total unregulated free market capitalism. There are numerous markets where that's, of course, we don't have that, but I think what's deceptive or maybe distorted, distorted about what you're saying is even if at the policy level, you can say the problem is the money that's pumped into the economy by the Fed. And there's lots of people like you who want to get rid of the Fed. The problem with that is the reason that we have those policies is because of the disproportionate influence over government of certain industries that benefit from those policies, like banking and so on and so forth. So while you want to, hold on, hold on. So while you want to say the problem is that the government apparatus exists, really the problem as I see it is that the government apparatus has been captured by certain industries, including the financial world and the financial sector. So I'll partially agree with you. Okay. But your solution is the opposite of what the solution should be. Well, maybe. And the cause and effect is opposite. So I'll give you a quick example, when in 1995, let's say, when Microsoft was the largest corporation in the entire world and massive, how much money were they spending on lobbying and trying to capture politicians? Well, zero, no lobbying, nothing, no lawyers, nobody in Washington, D.C., not a single person, no attempt to capture anything. And they were brought in front of Congress and they were brought in like Zuckerberg has been recently, you know, in front of a panel. And on hatch, a Republican center from Utah got up and started yelling at the Microsoft executives, you guys need to start spending money here. You guys need a lobby. You need to build a building. You need to get engaged. And Microsoft walked away from the meeting basically saying, you leave us alone, we'll leave you alone. We're not interested. We don't want to lobby. We have nothing to gain from you. We're the biggest company in the world. And we're doing a damn good job making money and improving the lives of billions of people around the planet. Six months later, knock on the door, we're here from the government. And we're here to, you know, go accuse you of antitrust violations. What was the thing that Microsoft, God forbid, had done to screw our lives that justified it? Justice Department of Investigation? They gave away a browser for free. The idea was that they were privileging their browser overall others and that it had a, you know, a destructive effect on competition because of Netscape and whatever else. Think about how many browsers you have today all offered you for free. So the argument was bogus, still is bogus. And yet they, for 15, for 20 years, they had to deal with this 10 years in courts and 10 years with a government supervisor at Microsoft. Guess how much money they spent on lobbying today. I'm guessing a lot. A lot. So the lesson Microsoft learned was, government will not leave you alone. The only way to get rid of lobbying, the only way, and the only legitimate model way to get rid of lobbying is to get rid of government power. Now, you know, Iran, that there's a completely different interpretation of your Microsoft story. There's a different interpretation of the Microsoft story, which I'll present. And I don't know that it's the one I would die on a hill defending. But the other interpretation of that would be that Microsoft at that early stage where they were making a ton of money and not doing any lobbying. The reason why they were able to do that is as often as the case, government takes a while to figure out how to regulate new technology and new technology companies. And I know you're shaking your head, but let me at least get it out there because this is an argument that is, it's not a crazy argument. I mean, we can discuss how valid it is. And so what really happened there was once the government figured out, hey, here's how the regulatory infrastructure should be applied to this new industry. Microsoft was no longer floating under the radar and all of a sudden they did what everybody else has to do. That's the other interpretation. Sure. But either way, at least the same conclusion, get government out of regulating business, get government out of the business of business because they're not shouldn't be in the business of coercing us or what products to buy out of buy them and what what information we need and so on. Then you don't have lobbying. So take, take Google, Google learns exactly following your case. It's all what happened to Microsoft and said, oh, you know, government is regulating. So from day one, literally, you can go find this from day one, Google has been spending the money around Republicans, Democrats, everybody gets it. And indeed, until recently, nobody in the United States has gone after Google. The Europeans have gone after Google because it didn't spend the money around there into the same proportion. They didn't bribe themselves out of regulation to the same proportion. And now people are starting to look at Google. Why? Because the regulatory apparatus now it's politically a good for both the left and the right to go after Google for different reasons. They both want to go after them. So, you know, yes, absolutely. There is a there's a whole mechanisms here, but the only solution to it is still right. I want to make politicians impotence when it comes to economics. And if that happens, then there's no incentive for me to lobby. The bigger the government becomes, the more powerful the government becomes, the more intruding the government becomes, the more regulations you have, the more lobbying you will have. There's a different perspective as well, which is if you eliminate the money of lobbying and donations from PACs and so on and so forth, and you set up some term limits, you would free our elected officials because there's nothing on the other end. There's no consulting deal or whatever to just regulate the way that they believe would be best. And for many of them, that is regulated. There is regulation that many of them think would be best. The reason they're convinced out of it is because they need to raise money for that next reelection campaign. But you've got it. You've got a lot of problems there because you think you think as most status do that you can come up with just the right latest dentist. Well, you're a status. I mean, you believe in it in a big role for the state. I believe in a very minimal role for the state. I believe in a slightly bigger role for the state than than a centrist because I'm a social Democrat. So to me, everybody in the political spectrum today is a status. Okay. All of them. Well, then it becomes an irrelevant term if everybody falls under that category. No. I mean, you know, before there was freedom, everybody advocated for un-freedom. You could still advocate for freedom and try to convince everybody to move to your direction. So the fact that nobody agrees with me has no relevance to whether what I say is true or not. Okay. I mean, that's true. If you if you if you think about if you think about it this way, why why does and I don't want to pick just on Hillary. Think about I just heard that because Hillary used to get $250,000 for a speech at Goldman Sachs. I know what's her name. Haley, the former UN ambassador Nikki Haley, Nikki Haley is now getting six figures for speeches. Now, why do you think they get six figures for speeches? Because I know you don't get six figures and I know I don't get six figures and I and I and I bet you both of us are both more interesting and better speakers. They are right. I mean, connections and the potential for future engagements, right? Yeah. How are you going to you're going to outlaw that? I mean, at what point do are you going to say the state is not going to course anymore? I mean, I want to reduce coercion, not increase. I don't want more rules. I don't want to prevent people from using money to express themselves. I believe that is an expression of free speech. If I believe something is wrong, I should be able to shout it out from it. I should be able to buy, be able to buy billboards. I should be able to buy ads. You know, that's a part of my speeches. Sure. But a company giving a company giving Nikki Haley money because she might in the future be involved in regulation. That's not the government coercing anybody. Those are companies coercing Nikki Haley to eventually do what they want because Nikki Haley will have power over them one day and they expect to get favors back. Right. But if they can't give her the money, the starting point is, yeah, no, if you want to prevent companies from paying speaker fees for future politicians, because she's not running for anything right now. That's true. And wasn't running for anything right now. You know, when she got the 250,000, you know, so you're going to have to have a whole system of coercion where you're telling people when they can't speak, when they can't speak, who can pay, who cannot pay. No, the easiest way to get rid of cronyism. And I'm a huge and, you know, talk about corporate welfare. First thing I'll get rid of, if I were, you know, God forbid president would be everything to do with corporate welfare. Zero subsidies, zero deductions from corporate taxes. I'd also allow corporate taxes to zero, but that's another issue. Zero. And then I would start lowering regulations. But the idea that the government should decide, you know, what they should who's they're allowed to pay and who they're not allowed to pay, what they can lobby, what they can't lobby, I think is unbelievably destructive and only leads to worse outcomes. Yeah, I'm against getting so involved. I mean, I, you know, as a sort of left libertarian, leaning progressive, I'm against telling companies you can or can't spend money in this way or that way. I mean, unless they're committing crimes by spending the money, you know, okay. But I just, I think that the framing of it really comes down to you said you chose a different starting point than I did. So depending on what we think is the catalyst that starts the circle, you end up finding a different solution. If you believe the starting point of the problem is the money versus the government, you're going to end up with a different prescription. To some extent, that's true, but, but really fundamentally, it's not the fundamental here is it's the same with welfare. The fundamental here is coercion. Government should not have the power over corporations, whether the corporations lobby or not, government should not be in a position to cause corporations into what they can and cannot do. It shouldn't cause individuals into what they can and cannot do with their money. It shouldn't be taking from some to give to others regulating some. I just don't want people to be dependent on, I think it's immoral for for an entity like government to be dictating our lives to us and telling us what we can and cannot do in every single wrong. So Inran used to criticize the right and in those days, the right, I think was marginally better than it was much better than it is today, but that's because today it's so horrible. It's not because it was good then. She used to say the right kind of wants to leave you free in the boardroom, but wants to regulate you in the bedroom. And the left wants to leave you kind of free in the bedroom and to regulate you in the boardroom. I want to leave you free in every aspect of your life. Yeah, that's a talking point that's common, but it's like, nor I think reasonable people would agree that there it is not equivalent to say that a government telling you that two men can't get married is the same thing as saying a government shouldn't be able to say we use taxation to fund schools like it to pretend that those are the same thing and bear the same relevance in society seems strange to me. Well, it seems to me that the issue of education is much, much worse than the issue of gay marriage. That is, I again, I don't think the government should be involved in marriage. I don't think the government should be involved in education. Okay, I'm an involvement in education is a million times worse and more disastrous in its consequences. The government involved in marriage. I mean, people could still live together, get some sex together, you can still cohabitate and so on. But if you take a poor kid and you inflict on him public education and you do team what the public schools do to kids, I don't think they can ever recover from that. You know, here in Massachusetts, here in Massachusetts where schools are properly funded, public education is pretty good. You know, I went to let me tell you so since we're talking about childhood, I went to school in Massachusetts. I went to two schools in Massachusetts. I went to Brookline High School for one year. Great high school. And I went to a school before Brookline High School, which was considered the top up to eighth grade school in the country, one of the top. And Dukakis's kids went to the same school I did. This is in 75 and 76 74 to 276. And I in two years in the Massachusetts public educational system, I fell basically two years behind my in Israel. No, I'm not kidding. In science and math. So not two years. I'm exaggerating for the rhetoric of flay. You were two weeks behind. Be honest. You missed one assignment. A year and a half. When I went to Brookline High School, I took 11th and 12th grade math and science courses in order to keep up with my Israeli counterparts. I'm not making this up. But no, the educational system, even in the places where we think it's good, yeah, is lousy and educational system for poor kids. By the way, Chicago spends a lot of money on poor kids. A lot of money and educational outcomes are awful. Listen, I think that what you're describing, what you're describing about American kids being behind, I think it's true, but I don't think it's for the reasons you're saying. I think that in the United States, there is not currently a culture. I mean, it the same thing happens in Argentina, where we are teaching critical thinking from a young age. We are teaching kids to figure out why they believe what they believe. I think it's leading to way more people who are tricked into supporting Donald Trump as a result. I think it has political repercussions, but I think that this is a real problem that Donald Trump will agree on. And blaming the educational system for them. I agree with you. We're not teaching the right things, but I think that's what happens when you have a one size fit all system that is and the more we centralize it, the worse it becomes instead of what I would like. Yes, I would like the next entrepreneur not to think about how to create the next stupid app for this and angry boots that 76 right next entrepreneur to be thinking about how to build the school where they can educate, where they can teach, where they can make it affordable, where they can appeal to a large public. I would like to see real competitive and innovative markets where they matter. And I can't think of a realm more where it matters than education. Instead of having that dictated by unions by school units by teaching units, I want to see competition, I want to see innovation, I want to see entrepreneurship. And I want to see the same motivation that goes into the next app going into the next great educational product. And you don't get that as long as government, not just funds education, but actually, in a sense, controls the schools. All right. Well, we're not going to resolve it, but needless to say, my audience knows we are in different positions on this. All right. This is a good point to pause our conversation. We've been speaking with your on Brooke chairman of the Ein Rand Institute and host of the Iran Brooke show. This has been episode three of our discussions and there will be a fourth episode upcoming.