Capitalism & Benevolence | Yaron Brook Show - Yaron Brook Show

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Speaker 1 (00:02):
A lot of them quoted of lead flat little cell
members and an individual lots. This is the show. Oh right, everybody,
welcome to your one book show on this what is

(00:25):
it Saturday, December thirteenth. Everybody's having a great start to
your weekend, and uh yeah, you've got a lot, a
lot of planned for the week. Okay, today we're starting
kind of a series. I mean, I've talked about the
fact that Saturday shows when we devoted to three topics

(00:46):
really to Western siev and and religion. Uh to to
the search for meaning, search for meaning, and three is
to a better understanding of capitalism, what it is, how
it applies, where it applies, and so on. So this

(01:06):
is the first one capitalism. But of course, God, there
are hours and hours and hours and hours and hours
and hours and hours of me talking about capitalism online.
There's a ton of content already on this. So this
is not really a start but a continuation of what
I'd be doing for decades now in talking about capitalism.

(01:30):
So we're going to jump in. I will remind you
that you guys, we'll talk about trade a lot, but
this is a this is a trade So remember that
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(01:53):
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questions get to shape the show, right, You get to
get me to talk about what you want me to
talk about. And I do promise to read all the

(02:14):
questions aloud and to answer all the questions in comments
that are put together in the super chat. So feel
free to ask about anything. It could be about this topic,
it could about anything going on in the world. While
this is today is not a new show. If you
want to ask about something in the news, feel free

(02:34):
to do so. Or if you want to ask about
something different, that is fine. Again, don't forget to like
the show, don't forget to subscribe if you're not a subscriber.
And so let's jump in. Let's talk before we get
the benevolence. Let's talk about capitalism because this is a
concept that is so misunderstood out there in the world.

(02:58):
There is so much confusion and about what capitalism actually is.
I just saw a video this morning from some I
don't know Marxist professor saying, most people think capitalism is
about markets and about competition, and then she goes, oh, no, no,
but Carl Marx said that capitalism is about what happens

(03:21):
inside the factory, where capitalists are exploiting labor. And the
reality is, of course, the capitalism properly understood. The things
that indeed Marx was observing when he used the term
capitalism are not about any of those things. Capitalism is

(03:43):
not indeed about markets. So though markets is a feature
of capitalism, but markets existed throughout human history. Markets have
always been around. You wouldn't say capitalism has always been around.
Competition has always been around. And yeah, you wouldn't say
the capitalism has always been around. Now, you know, competition

(04:06):
might have been restrained by various means, but there's always
been some competition. It means nothing to define capitalism in
terms of markets, or to define it in terms of competition,
as so many people do, but particularly conservatives and leftists,
center rights and the left and so on, in terms

(04:30):
of understanding what happens inside the factory, and talking about
this in terms of exploitation doesn't really teach you anything,
because the reality is that again, even if there is
exploitation inside the factory, and there isn't because it's fundamentally voluntary.
We'll get to that. But even if it was, exploitation

(04:52):
can't be because exploitation, again is the whole of human history. Indeed,
capitalism is the first system that exploitation. It's the first political,
economic social system that frees us from exploitation. But to

(05:12):
look inside the factory to see exploitation is bizarre to
begin with, given the fact that the people inside the
factor you seem pretty happy with the fact that they're there,
they voluntarily came there, that people employing them seemed to
be happy, they employed them voluntarily. It seems like mutually
beneficial transaction. No evidence, no science, unless you're a shallow materialist,

(05:38):
as marxis, of any exploitation going on. And indeed, this
is the reason, I mean, the idea that it's not competition,
it's not markets, it's not even you know, the existence
of property rights, property rights to some extent or another

(06:02):
again have existed throughout and and uh, you know, we
today have some property rights, but property rights is at
least getting closer to what it is. Unfortunately, conservatives again
center left, center right, but even even libertarians often confuse

(06:25):
about what capitalism actually is. And in that sense, everybody
thinks of it as an economic system. You know, the
term capitalism is being dominated by economists. They think this
is primarily about economics, but it's not. It's about human life.
It's it's very much a social, political, and economic concept. So,

(06:51):
you know, so what is what defines a capitalism? What
what makes capitalism? What makes capitalism different than other economic systems?
What makes capitalism different than economic systems before it in
all of human history. Well, if you look at capitalism,

(07:22):
if we observe the phenomenon of capitalism, you know, at
its beginning in the early nineteenth century, as capitalism was
spreading in the United States and in England, and it's
no accident it's the United States and it's England where
it's happening. Is what is being recognized, what is being
recognized in society, Well, what is being recognized fundamentally is

(07:48):
that force coercion is not a means by which individuals
should interact. What is recognized is the idea that individuals
have this right to pursue their own happiness, to pursue
their own life, to pursue their own values. There's a

(08:11):
recognition that individuals should and can be free, that is,
act in pursuit of their values in the absence of
cosion and force. Now this is not necessarily explicitly stated,

(08:32):
although the Declaration Independence does a pretty good job job
expressing it explicitly. But it's in the very political I
guess movement that is happening in Britain. And it's certainly
because of the way the United States is established, because
of the Declaration and because of the Constitution. It is
the governing ideology of the United States of America. Freedom, freedom,

(09:02):
and the principle guiding freedom, the principle that defines this
freedom as the principle of individual rights, a principle articulated
by John Locke and developed and explained by John Locke
and then picked up by the Enlightenment, and ultimately it
is at the foundation, at the origin of the founding

(09:23):
of the United States and the establishment of a government
in the United States. It's not an accident the capitalism evolves.
Capitalism comes into being in those places where there is
a recognition of the idea of individual rights, and in

(09:46):
particular of property rights. But individual rights more broadly, and
those two places in the world in the nineteenth century,
in the early part of the nineteenth century, late part
of the eighteenth century were the United States, the two
relatively capitalists places on planet Earth. So individual rights, the freedom,

(10:10):
the freedom to pursue your values, the freedom to act
in pursuit of the values that you rationally believe in
your self interest that they you know that that will
enhance your life. That freedom means the absence, absence of
cosion and force. So what is capitalism. It's a system

(10:34):
that is based on individuals. It's based on the recognition
of individuals. It's a system where the sole purpose of
government is the protection of those individuals. It is a
system where property rights are so dominant that all property

(10:56):
is privately owned. Now we know that in that sense,
no system has ever been capitalists, because no system has
ever achieved this. Early America had slavery. Later America had
regulations and a lot of private a lot of property
that was not privately owned. It was state owned, but

(11:17):
it came close. Much of the property, much of there,
certainly used and usable property, was privately owned post slavery.
The level of cosion within society, the level of cosuing
inflict by government. The level of cosion allowed by between
individuals was indeed minimized, and those economies, the economies of

(11:45):
you know, mid nineteenth century Britain and late nineteenth century
the United States were as close to capitalism as we've come.
But capitalism is a system, a separation of state from
the economy. It's from economics. It's a system where the
state does not have an economic policy. It's where the

(12:05):
state protects individual rights and other than that leaves us
alone to negotiate, to trade, to produce, to create our lives.
It entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships,

(12:27):
because physical force is the only way in which rights
can be violated. And I'm including under physical force fraud.
And it basically says nobody can initiate force, no group,
no tribe, no collection of individuals, no business, no government, nobody.
The government can only use force to protect those rights

(12:51):
as retaliation. So, as Zion puts it, the only function
of government in such a society is the task of
protecting man's rights. That is, the task of protecting him
from physical force. The government acts as an agent a
man's right of self defense and may use for us
only in retaliation and only against those initiated issues. Thus,

(13:15):
the government is the means of placing retaliated to reuse
of force under objective control. So that is capitalism. It's
again to quote imand a full pure, uncontrolled, unregulated las
efat capitalism with a separation of state and economics. So

(13:45):
when we talk about capitalism, that said, now, when we
think about the modern world, what we see in the
modern world are remnants of this attitude, elements of it.
We have some private property, or at least we have
a pretense to some private property. But you know, those

(14:06):
private property is limited by state initiation, of course, whether
that state invitiation, of course, is through zoning regulations, taxes,
property taxes, you know, in all the other ways in
which the state courses and forces forces us. Now, this

(14:29):
is not you know, well understood out there. I mean,
people believe that this is what we have today is capitalism,
that we are living in a capitalist world. It is not.
We are moving away. We have moved away from capitalism
and are steadily moving further and further away as the state,

(14:50):
our government intervenes more and more and more in all
areas of our life, our economic life. But generally our lives. Now,
what does this all have this have to do with benevolence,
because one of the things that we're seeing out there
in the world, I think quite clearly, is the real

(15:14):
collapse of any kind of benevolence in our society, particularly
if you're in social media. But I think it's in
the world that there is will. People resent one another,
they're angry at one another, they're afraid of one another.
They wonder, you know, are you one of my tribe?

(15:35):
Are you one of the other tribe? Are you are
legal immigrant or just an immigrant? Or you are you know?
Who are you? What are you? What we're seeing is
a real collapse of any kind of sense of what

(15:57):
is benevolence. Benevolence kind of a good will towards man,
goodwill towards others. You know, some definitions a disposition to
good to what being of others, according to these dictionary definitions,

(16:18):
expressed through acts of kindness or generosity. But just I think,
well than anything, it's just a sense of other people
are good, They're good for me, other people are beneficial,
they're beneficial to me. I mean, it really is this
deep sense of hostility. It's why people. It's the only

(16:41):
reason you can explain why people can stand around and
cheer as ICE agents just you know, invade places of
business and just handcuffed people and pull them down onto
the ground and drag them out and put them under arrest.
Whether those people are quote citizens and not citizens, immigrants,

(17:01):
not immigrants, illegal or legal or whatever you want to
call them. The relishing of that, the pride taken by
some people in this activity, the Twitter thing where they
say this is what I've voted for on the videos
of this kind of abuse, is a clear lack of
any kind of benevolence towards those people. Remember, the people

(17:24):
being arrested, for example, by ice, they're not people who
violated rights. They might have violated the law, but they
haven't violated anybody's rights. They've not they've not violated property rights.
So what we get today and what I think we

(17:47):
see really everywhere it is kind of a suspicion of
other people, a distancing and generally and anger at others
targeted at others, a hostility towards other people, particularly if

(18:10):
we suspect in the world in which we live today
that they might belong to the wrong tribe, to the
other tribe. There's no spirit of goodwill, spirit of benevolence,
spirit of treating other people as equal to ourselves, as

(18:32):
human beings, as you know, not knowing anything about them
as an assumption of that they are productive, good, healthy,
I mean healthy in the spiritual sense. Traders who benefit
my life and therefore you know, view them as positive.

(18:55):
The the the whole attitude of people today is again
a negative, angry, malevolent view of other people. Malevolent view
of other people. How does this relate to capitalism? Well,

(19:16):
I think that capitalism is a system of benevolence. It's
a system that encourages, nurtures, and sustains it's sustained well,
it's sustained with ideas, but it's product is benevolence. One

(19:39):
of the great products of capitalism is a benevolent society.
It's society way people feel good about other people, where
they feel good about the relations with other people, They
feel good about just the existence of other people. It's
very much the merria can attitude towards social interaction, which

(20:04):
is benevolent and positive, kindness and generous and even charitable. Now,
why is that? What's the relationship between capitalism and this world.
Capitalism is the exact opposite of what call Marks claims
it is. Capitalism is the first system of government, first
system of economics, first system of social organization, which eliminates

(20:33):
the one threat that other people post to you. The
one threat that people post to you is the threat
of physical force. That is the one thing that destroys
human life, destroyers ability to use our mind, destroys ability
to pursue values, destroys our ability to act based on

(20:55):
our own judgment. Physical force, violence, I mean, that is
what's the big challenge that human beings face when they
form societies, when they come to groups, and you know,
the primitive way of solving the problem of how do
I deal with other people who might use violence against

(21:15):
me is to join a tribe, I mean, tribal society
was a primitive mechanism by which we try to solve
the problem of violence. We appoint a leader who responsibility
is the protection of the tribe from violence. Now, this

(21:39):
only extends the violence one degree further in a sense
of tribes now a violence towards each other. And of course,
by giving the tribal leader too much power, we often
experience the fact that the tribal leader uses his that
power to inflict violence on the tribe members. But that's

(22:03):
the attempt. This is why anarchy it does not work,
cannot work, because the first thing we do when we
get into large groups is we try to come to
arrangements that exclude violence. And if we don't have a
standard by which to do it, the way we do
it is through the joining of tribes and the use

(22:27):
of tribes to inflict violence and on others or others
on ourselves. It doesn't actually solve the problem. The problem
of violence is only solved through a massive intellectual feet,
and that is the discovery of the concept of individual
rights and the creation of a government who's of a government,

(22:47):
an institution, a man made institution whose sole purpose is
to protect those rights. That's the reason it exists. Maybe
it should have a different name other than government, because
government has such a bad rap right, but in an
institution that rejects violence, all violence. So capitalism provides us

(23:22):
with that kind of government. And therefore the one thing
you know is that violence will not be afflicted upon
you in living in a capitalist world. And that is liberating,
that is truly liberating. That you know makes you want

(23:46):
to deal with other people in a much more harmonious, benevolent,
positive way because you know, yes, there's still gonna be cooks,
there's still gonna be bad guys, but the numbers are
going to be shrinking because there's an entity responsible to
catching them, imprisoning them, distancing them from all other interactions.

(24:13):
So almost all your interactions on a day to day
basis are ones that are done in peace, ones that
are done free of violence, and that instills a positive
sense of the world, that instills a benevolent sense of life.
You know, it's now easier and more fun and more
exciting to engage. Whereas if you live in a corrupt

(24:35):
country even today, and you know the police are not
enforcing the laws, you know the laws are co upt
to begin with. You know that, you know, cooks and
criminals and thoughts dos just bribe their way out of
whatever laws against them. You don't know who you're dealing with.

(24:56):
You're always on the lookout. You're always potentially going to
get screwed. If you live in a war zone, you know,
violence could erupt at any point in time against you.
You could be caught in the middle of it. Between gangs,
you deal with other people with trepidation. You want multiple

(25:19):
ways in which to secure in the arrangement. If you know,
for example, that a contract that you sign with somebody
else is if he in terms of whether it will
ever be protected by a court, it's if he, because
somebody might bribe the courts in a different direction, or
by the police or the government to step in to

(25:42):
disavow the contract. How can you plan long term? How
can you engage with other people on a long term
basis when you know that it all could go up
and smoke because the use of force is implicitly legitimized
in that society. The more fraud, the more corruption, the
more violation of rights, the less your relationship with other

(26:04):
people is based on this non aggression, this idea of
non aggression, this idea of peace, this idea of banishment
of physical force. Physical force now can be used, and
therefore you act, you behave in suspicious ways capitalism by

(26:27):
protecting you, by saying no, no other contracts. We've got a
court system that will protect your contract, your rights. You
could plan for the very long term because that court
system is probably not going to change dramatically. The invitation
of the laws is stable, the protection of your rights
is stable, and therefore we can plan long term. We

(26:49):
can interact with one another not as potential enemies, but
as allies. And the more we interacting with one another
as allies, as jointly working for some for each own interests,
but mutually doing it mutually, the more you're going to

(27:12):
generate goodwill, the more benevolence you're going to have. So
by banishing physical force. By banishing physical force, capitalism creates
an environment in which we can deal with the best
in others, with the best, with the best that they

(27:34):
have to offer. And as a consequence, we are going
to make an assumption about most people that we meet
that they have some value, they have some value to give,
they have some way in which they make my life,
our lives better. So the primary way in which capitalism,

(27:58):
you know, creates an environment of benevolence is by banishing
physical force. That is number one. But it doesn't just banishing.
It banishes physical forts not just from our interactions, but
also for an interaction with the tribal leader, from my
interactions with the government. Banishes all physical forces. What's another

(28:24):
way in which benevolence is encourage supported created under a
capitalist society. Well, it's the very fact that in order
to achieve anything under capitalism, one has to be a
value creator. One has to work, one has to produce,

(28:48):
one has to create something. And the only way in
which you know that becomes something that sustains us is
then we trade it. So the very idea that everybody
in the capitalism is a trader, a value cretor, and

(29:09):
then a trader means that it's likely that when I
meet people in the street, when I'm hanging out with people,
when we're doing stuff together, the people that I'm hanging
out with unlikely to be parasites, unlikely to be living
off of other people. That system just doesn't exist in

(29:32):
a capitalist society where there is no welfare state. I mean,
we live in a world today where our money is
taken from us by for us through courgion, and then
redistributed to who knows whom, and some it's redistributed to
some people who just don't work, some people who are

(29:53):
just completely parasitical on those who do. But it's also
distributed to some people do some work because somebody in
higher ups decided that what they do has more value
than what other people do call it subsidies. I mean,

(30:13):
when you met business leaders, farmers, how many of them
are being subsidized? How much of their value creation is
artificial versus real. We live in a world in which
the dollar, the money that we have, is constantly being

(30:35):
inflated away, its value constantly changing. We live in a
world in which there are moochas and parasites. And it's
not clean in any kind of sense. It's not clear
where the line is. It's not like, Okay, those people
over there, they're that, and then these people. Everything's mixed up.
This is the mixed economy. There is no clean line

(30:58):
because everybody is intertwined with what the government is doing,
with the redistribution of wealth, with the regulations, with the controls,
and therefore it's not clear who's the value creator, how
much value is creating, how much that value is worth
to me? In the world in which we live today,

(31:22):
contracts are not invulnerable, you know, they can be violated.
We're not exactly sure how the courts are going to
treat them, or how Donald Trump is going to treat
a fraudster who he could pardon on a whim and
and and therefore re enter society and commit fraud. Again,

(31:43):
we're not really protected from those people. I mean, we
live in a world in which it's very hard to
tell the value creator, the real trader, from the mucha
and the looter, which means that to some extent, all
their interactions are done with a lot of trepidation. And

(32:05):
you can see that by the way in a lot
of the contracts you sign. I mean, you get a
mortgage contract. You ever signed a mortgage contract, it's like
five hundred pages long, all in language you don't understand.
You never read it. Nobody reads a mortgage contract. You
go and you read where they're real. That tells you
you have to read you know, the interest rate and
the down payment and the things that have immediate monetory impact.

(32:29):
But you're signing a thirty year contract and you don't
read it because there's no way to read it. There's
no way to read it and understand it, comprehend it.
And the reason for that is the regulations, the controls,
and all the overlays of distrust that exists in the

(32:50):
system that are imposed one on top of the other
and create one on top of the other that make
it impossible to have a trust of benevolence with the
institutions that you're dealing with. You don't know if it

(33:13):
ever went to court, what's actually in there, and whether
you'll be in the right or the wrong. I mean
you can kind of estimate. So benevolence is destroyed by
the mixed economy. The mixed economy encourages us, as we've
talked many, many times on the show. It encouraged us to,

(33:36):
you know, to try to figure out which group, which gang,
which tribe we should join in order to try to
access the goodies being handed out by the government, the
stuff that the government is taking from some to give
to others. Well, how can we get in on that.

(34:00):
Inland has a great lecture, really encourage you to listen
to it. It's it's online as part of Inland Instruye
Campus AI Campus. It talked about I think it's called
a nation's unity, a nation's unity, and she describes what
happens to kind of a benevolent neighborhood, a neighborhood where

(34:22):
you know, you like some of your neighbors and you're
kind of nice and friendly to them, and you don't
like others. You don't like other your neighbors so you
just ignore them. But everybody basically lives in peace and
in harmony. But once the mixed economy gets involved, then

(34:43):
some of your neighbors might be organizing, you know, to
to to tax you, or to regulate you, or to
or to re educate your kids, or to do something
that offends you that you you must fight against. Other
neighbors might be doing, you know, some other kind of

(35:06):
political or community activism that might attack you in a
different perspective. And given that they all now have power,
they all have now the ability to use physical force,
i e. Use government force. It is very difficult to

(35:28):
maintain that benevolence nice atmosphere in a government. I mean,
you can understand why the right hates the left so much.
I mean, it's completely understandable when people want to take
away your stuff and redistribute it to groups that they

(35:49):
hold dear and that you don't know anything about and
don't care for and don't want to be involved. And
you know, if you want to do charity, you can
do charity yourself, or more than that, if they want
to take your money and they want to impose on

(36:10):
your kids a type of education and ideas. Let's say
about gender that you find offensive. They go against your principle.
But given that all kids go to be a government schools,
what choices do you have? But now somebody else is

(36:31):
imposing their values on you without you having any kind
of real say in it. So what happens You start
resenting those people. I mean, it's fascinating that they ultimately
would really cause people to get upset at the left
when not it's socialist almost communist ideas about economics, but

(36:56):
it's ideas about culture. That's interesting. But it's the same
since they can impose those ideas by force. I mean,
you're you're making it possible for me to pursue my values.
You're imposing your values on me, and people get upset,

(37:20):
and when they get upset, they look for allies. How
am I going to fight this? I can't fight it alone.
I mean, the whole point of democracy, is the whole
point of you know, a majoritarian democracy, is we form
groups and we need voting blocks. We need numbers. It's
all about numbers, and therefore we have to join tribes

(37:42):
in order to get our way, in order to in
order to defend ourselves. Again, it's almost like we're returning
we're voting back to old tribalism, the tribalism of ten
thousand years ago. We need a tribe in order to
protect us from these forces that in their values on us.

(38:04):
I mean, none of this happens in a capitalist economy.
If somebody wants to teach I don't know, radical crazy
gender stuff in school, well you pull your kids out
of that school and you send them to another. You
get to choose the school your kids go to, and
there's competition between those schools, and those schools have to

(38:25):
appeal because of competition to at least they have to
make the case for you to send your kid and
your dollars to them, and therefore they have to appeal
to you in one way or another. Under capitalism, you know,
private owners and bathrooms can label exactly who they want

(38:46):
in the bathroom and who they don't want in the bathroom.
It's simple private property. And if you don't like it,
don't go to that establishment with those bathroom rules. It's
the abandonment of capitalism that makes any one of these

(39:06):
cultural issues an issue of coursion. It makes it an
issue of for us. It makes it an issue of
the imposition of values on you. By the way, if
you want to ask a question, Superchat is open. Very
little super Chat is going on, so please be free

(39:28):
to We've got very few We've got three questions. So
but when I'm finished speaking, the show's over. So if
you want richer, longer, more content in the show, ask
us a chat question's that's how you get it. And
I see people have questions in the chat. The way
to get me to answer them is put them in
the super chat. You can do it for two dollars,
five dollars. It's pretty cheap to get me to answer

(39:51):
a question, So do it. Do it. So most of
these issues are issues of Most of the issues that
people get upset about not only really issues because we

(40:15):
lack private property, because we lack capitalism. It makes the economy,
destroys that. It makes the economy in which the government
owns a lot of private a lot of property. It
makes the economy in which the government owns a schooling
owns a healthcare where the government decides on you know,

(40:37):
I don't know. Let's take another controversial issue, vaccines, where
people hate each other over vaccines. It's very simple. In
a free market, you don't want to vaccinate your kids,
don't vaccinate your kids. Private schools will then have vaccination policies.
Some private schools will require vaccines. Other private schools maybe

(40:59):
won't qui vaccines, and you'll seguegate. But more than that,
I mean, they might be private parks that requires your
kids be vaccinated. I don't know. But the point is,
once you take away government ownership, once you take away

(41:20):
all decisions made through the democratic process, but now you
elevate property rights the way they need to be as
an essential right that needs to be protected. A lot
of these disputes, a lot of the angst, a lot
of the disagreement ultimately goes away, and benevolence can fill

(41:40):
in the gap because at least you know that this
person over there, you might not agree with them, you
might have different values, but they do not have the
ability to impose day values on you. They do not
have their ability to impose day values on you. And
that's that's huge. That's the difference between benevolence and lack

(42:08):
of benevolence. If I'm living in a society where all
around me people can impose their will on me, they
can use force to impose their values on me, I'm
always afraid, and I'm always scared, and I'm always angry,
and I'm always worried, and I don't trust anybody. But
if I know, my interactions with everybody else again free,

(42:29):
free of imposition of force, benevolence. Treating other people, you know,
with the assumption that their value create is is natural.
It's just part of it. And look, one of the

(42:50):
greatest evils of call Marks, maybe the worst thing the
car Markus did, of all the things that he advocated for,
in all the things that he uh you know, talks about,
probably the most evil of them, the most destructive of
all of them, is the idea of exploitation, the idea

(43:14):
that people who voluntarily agree to a employment contract are
somehow being exploited, that the managers and the capitalists are
inherently exploitative of the workers. I mean, think of how
much you know suspicion and and and angst that has

(43:41):
created over time, that people hold that and believe that
they resent going to work, employers worried and cautious, and
how they deal with employees. And of course we've to
loge extent institutionalized that in the mixed economy, with all

(44:02):
the label laws, all these label laws are basically created
under the assumption of exploitation, and that makes the whole
employee employee relationship tenuous and filled with suspicion and instead
of harmonious driven by value creation. Marx could not see

(44:26):
this essential in capitalism, which is the traded principle, the
idea that one is providing value for value in voluntary transactions,
again in the absence of fraud and the absence of error,
their mistakes. We all make mistakes, but in the absence
of error and in the absence of fraud, the reason
we engage with other people, the reason we engage in

(44:49):
transactions with other people, is because we're gaining value. We're
giving value, We're gaining value. We're trading value for value,
win win relationships. That's the employee. That's true with you,
you know, in contracts, that's true in you know, going
into store and buying something. Once we understand that these
relationships are fundamentally trade of relationships, value for value, win

(45:14):
win relationships, it changes the entire dynamics, you know, negotiation.
And we want to negotiate because we want to try
to benefit ourselves the most that we can, but we
have no interest in the other side losing. We have

(45:37):
an interesting benefiting the most that we can't, given that
the other side is trying to do exactly the same thing.
And then we settle on the right price, on the
right wage, on the right level. But we do so
in a benevolent, goodwill kind of way, under the assumption
that I don't have to do this. I can walk away.
I don't have to buy your stuff, I don't have

(45:59):
to come to work for you, and I don't have
to employ you. That knowledge that we can walk away,
that knowledge that prosion cannot be placed upon us, that
physical force we cannot be forced, like in feudalism, where
you are forced to be on the land, you were
forced to work, you were forced to do what your

(46:22):
law told you. Businessmen are not lords. You can leave,
you can resign, You can go in and negotiate a
higher wage, and you know, if you don't get it,
and if you feel strongly about it, you leave, you
design or you can be fired if the you know,

(46:44):
the business person doesn't believe that you're adding value. So again,
the whole premise of capitalism is voluntary exchange, win win transactions,
the trade of principle. We trade for everything, and that
is that is an unbelievably benevolent principle. Think about think
about the idea that every transaction in the world in

(47:07):
a free society is at least intended to be when
when intended to be value creating for both parties, For
all parties involved in a transaction, the contract is not
meant to screw you. It's meant to benefit you and
benefit the other party. That's an incredibly benevolent system under

(47:37):
which to live. And every time we move away from that,
anytime we allow physical force to enter into our relationships
with other people, anytime we allow redistribution of wealth, even
a little bit regulation, even a little bit government in position,
government subsidies, government controls, government ownership. Anytime we allow that,

(48:09):
we chip away at the idea of a traded principle.
We chip away at the idea of voluntary exchange. And
therefore we chip away at win win. There's no win
win when you pay your taxes. There's no win win
when the government forces you to fill out, you know,
one hundred different forms in order to get a business license.

(48:32):
There's no win win when you have to go through
years of government bureaucracy in order to get your product approved.
It's lose lose throughout. Maybe some party wins in the
short run, but everybody loses in the long run. So

(48:58):
capitalism is the system of benevolent It's a system of
good will between men. It's a system of harmony. It's
even the system of unity. Were united under a principle,
the principle of individual rights, the principle of the banishment
of physical force, and any move away from that, any

(49:25):
you know, attack by using force on our values is
an attack on benevolence, is an attack an ability to
have these kind of relationships with other people. So a

(49:46):
fight for capitalism is not just a fight for wealth.
It's not just a fight for you know, material values.
You know that would be a lot, But it's also
a fight for benev elevalent kind of life, a life
where we view other people as allies, as trading partners,

(50:07):
as people who add to our lives. It's a fight
for benevolent society, a benevolent world. Socialism is a system
of malevolence. Socialism is the system where the majority can
vote away all of your rights at any point in time.

(50:29):
Socialism slash democracy, real democracy. Majority rule is a system
that can that others can take away your stuff at
any point in time. That mixed the economy is somewhere
in between. But the mixed economy always leans towards the
socialism because it leans towards the democracy. Since rights are

(50:53):
no longer a principle, They're only going to a road.
You're only going to have less of them, and they're
going to erode in the direction of socialism or one
form or another of other groups gangs, collectives, tribes taking

(51:13):
over your stuff, and that that is only going to
generate angst and suspicion and fear and anger and malevolence.
Socialism is a system of malevolence, and the mixed economy
is a mixture of a lot of malevolence and growing
malevolence and some benevolence. And this is the world in

(51:34):
which we live. I mean, the world in which we
live is a world worth growing malevolence. I mean of
tribalism again, tribalism people gang up in tribes as to
some extent, as a way to protect themselves from other tribes.
Now it's it's a self fulfilling loop. Right, everybody forms

(51:56):
a tribe and that only makes things worse. And you
have to form a tribe just to protect yourself from
the other tribes, and that creates other tribes, and it's
there's no end to it. But we you know, all
the angst that were feeling today, all the all the hatred,
all the anger. To a large extent, this is a

(52:18):
cause is caused by the disappearance of freedom, the disappearance
of capitalism, the disappearance of private property. Private property is
an over you know, arching principle that applies to everything,
to healthcare and education. And you know why is there
a housing crisis because a lack of private property. So

(52:43):
you know that the reality is that today when we
see debates going on between left and right and all
these groups, they almost never talk about capitalism. They never
talk about economic freedom. But the reality is that economic freedom,
particularly properly understood as the protection of property rights, the
protection of individual rights, and a shrinking role for government

(53:04):
to just do that, a limitation of what government can
and cannot do. That's the solution to almost all the
problems that we have out there, all the cultural problems,
all the economic problems, all the social problems, I mean,
go away, not all of them, right, You still need

(53:26):
to have a proper understanding of individual rights, so you
can protect an abortion, the right of people to invite
foreigners into the country or to immigrate into the country.
I mean, those issues don't go completely away without a
really good definition of individual rights. But just moving to
a limited government, moving to the idea, I mean, the

(53:47):
idea of limiting government control on the basis of individual
rights solves almost every problem that we have out there
and creates a society it has benevolent and friendly and
positive and filled with love and generosity. And that anger again,

(54:12):
the anger is driven by fear, and the fear is
not completely irrational when physical force is all around us.
All right, you should fight for capitalism because it is,
among other things, the system of benevolence. It's it's it's
a system that just makes life so much easier and

(54:33):
so much better to live under. And all these things
that people are obsessed about. I don't know what was it?
Something reading our You know, why do you care unless

(54:59):
it's forced on you, unless your course to participate. That
causion is what we must eliminate for our lives. All right,
Thank you, guys, I appreciate you being here. We are
almost at the end of the first hour. We're about

(55:20):
almost one hundred dollars short of our first hour goal,
so please consider if you want me to do more
of these Saturday shows and shows on capitalism and its application.
We'll get into economics, we'll do social stuff, will do
a bunch of different things. Then it has to be

(55:40):
worth my while, so remember two fifty an hour is
the way to make it worth my while. You can
also support this show as a trader of value for
value by signing up a Patreon to become a monthly
support of the show, which is incredibly valuable. And or
please consider doing that. Let's see what else. Yeah, well

(56:08):
we'll just we'll stop there. We'll take some of your
questions and oh wow, Troy just stepped in with five
hundred Australian dollars. Thank you, Troy. That that really helps
in terms of the making for our second hour goal.
So I appreciate that, Troy. That's that's fantastic and thank you.

(56:33):
Thank you. All right, we got a few stickers Troy,
thank you in particular. But let's see, we've got a
Nature Observer, thank you. We've got Catherine thank you, and
Jeffrey Miller and Cepy Milking which I think is Jonathan
Honey and Greg Lewis, thank you guys, really really appreciate
the support and that is that is great. All right,

(57:03):
let's jump in with your super chat questions and if
they're particular topics around capitalism that you would like me
to address, So particular topics around capitalism you'd like me
to address, uh, then send me an oates. You can

(57:25):
do that on you're on at your on bookshow dot com.
You're on at your on bookshow dot com. I will
and I will address those issues in the future shows
on capitalism. Also, I want to remind you that I'm
interested to see if they're if there are people in

(57:46):
Austin or people willing to come to Austin in the
first week of February to participate in a half day
seminar with me, so let me know. It could be
public speaking, it could be the rules for life, how
to be a better how to live a self interested life.
It could be just a you know, kind of a

(58:11):
live session, four five hour Q and a there is
a there's a bunch of different ways different a bunch
of different topics we can we cover in doing this,
but please consider doing that. And but you need to
let me know if you're interested in coming, So dropping
an email you're on at yourn bookshow dot com or

(58:33):
text me on Twitter or something to let me know
that you're interested. Either you live in Austin or you're
willing to come to Austin. The price is going to
be somewhere between five hundred and seven and fifty for
the half day, depending on how how many hours we
count half day is. But yes, let me know so
I know if to plan for that and start organizing

(58:55):
it and everything. I need to start making lists of
names of people actually willing to commit you run at
your run brookshow dot com. All right, Chasbat fifty dollars,
Thank you. Chasbat was ted striker on an airplane. A
hero or buffoon? Here's the guy who successfully landed the

(59:17):
plane after the pilots were incapacitated. Well, I mean he's
he's a buffoon in the end, right, I mean to
the extent that he succeeds in landing the plane. It's
all luck. He's only heroic and that he's willing to
even take the initiative. He's willing to try. But everything

(59:39):
else is buffoonery. The whole situation is buffoonery. He is
a buffoon. I don't think a movie like that has
heroes in any meaningful sense. A hero is somebody who
is in a sense self determined. It's somebody who is

(59:59):
driving the plot, who is making decisions that drive the
plot forward. And you know, there's very little of that
in airplanes. So I think we have to really think
carefully about what a hero is. It's not enough to
show bravery or courage in artwork. It's that you are

(01:00:21):
moving things forward, that you are engaged in a struggle,
in a real struggle, but that it is a struggle
that you have initiated that if or not if you
have initiated, but you are driving, you are pushing yourself.
It's your decisions that matter. And it's very difficult to

(01:00:46):
create heroes in a comedy because you're on the one
side of a hero and you're constantly making a fool
of him. Well, there's nothing heroic about a fool, so
it's very difficult. I don't think you can have a
comedy with a real hero. I think the whole point
of a comedy is to make fun of certain characteristics.

(01:01:08):
Sometimes a lot of comedies are there to make fun
of heroes. It's one of the things I don't like
about many comedies is, for example, Blazing Saddles. The whole
point of Blazing Saddles is to make fun of the
of the model of a hero in a Western. It's
to make fun of the whole, the whole conception of

(01:01:30):
a hero in westerns. So I comedies are great if
they're not making fun of something really good. The comedy
should be making fun of something insignificant, of something bad,
but not of the good, of the good in the good,

(01:01:53):
which is I think, what what to logic extent in Sattles,
for example, does all right? Thank you, Chez batt Andrew,

(01:02:17):
I know I should read ominous parallels. Can you give
the twenty dollars answer to how German culture became right
for nihilism of Hitler? I mean, yes, it's it's what
we talked about yesterday, a question you asked about the
connection between between content nihilism. It's it's a culture that

(01:02:43):
took cont seriously. They took cont seriously in the sense
of the detachment of their own reason from reality, in
a sense that morality was about pursuing duty, and given
that they couldn't find the kind of categoricy competatives. Inside

(01:03:07):
their mind, it was just a matter of who would
provide the categorical imperatives that we must do out of
a sense of complete and utter duty, with no thought
to own well being or to any kind of reason
based sense of what is right, what is just? What

(01:03:27):
is mom And if you combine that with I don't know,
let's say Hegel's emphasis on statism, on the nation, on
the nation as the be all end all, as the primary,

(01:03:49):
as what we should all be sacrificing for, and therefore
the what do you call it, the the thing we
should sacrifice too, the thing that determines how duty. If
you combine kind of content with Hegel, I think what
you get is is kind of a Nazi kind of

(01:04:12):
mentality that is devoid of any kind of sense of
individual value, any kind of sense of individual pursuit of
values to the individual, things that are important to the individual.
And what you get is a commitment to pursuing duties

(01:04:33):
and to doing whatever you are told in the name
of the nation, the state, the race, the collective, which
is kind of straight out of Hegel. You are you know, Hegel,

(01:04:56):
You're ultimately just a pawn for some larger agenda, bigger
than yourself, And how are you going to argue against
that when we have made it impossible utive to reference
reality in your argument. So the combination of I think,
the combination of contin hegel basically eviscerate the individual. Eviscerate

(01:05:21):
the individual. And then it's the question of who fills
the gap. And in Marxist case, what fills the gap
is the politarian and in the Nazis case, what fills
the gap is the Arian race or the German nation
or the state. So you get that kind of you know,

(01:05:50):
Nazi nihilism right out of the philosophy that that came
out of it and looked alternative that the Germans were
we're facing with was the complete subjectivism of the vioument
of republic, which is also a consequence of cont which
since we don't have categoric competatives, anything goes and then

(01:06:12):
there's no more standard, there's no truth. We've separated a
reality from our senses. There's no authority to tell us
what the truth is. Certainly the authority is not ourselves,
it's not our senses, it's not reason, but it's not
other people either. It's just whatever so what you get
is a left in the standard characterizations where anything goes,

(01:06:37):
where you get a hedonism and nihilism of the left.
And that is not sustainable, that can't survive, That can't
we stand. Then somebody coming and say, no, your life
does have purpose, your life does have meaning, and that
purpose and the meaning come from you sacrificing, fulfill in
the blank, God, the Church, your neighbor, the proletarian, the furor,

(01:07:07):
the arian race, the nation. And that's how you get
all these different horrific forms of Viihilism, all these different
horrific ideologies, you all get them from the same source.
You detached. Once you detach morality from reason, you detach

(01:07:29):
morality from reality, you make it impossible to link morality
to reality or to link it to reason. Then really
anything goes, anything goes. And then it's just a question
of which dogma of people are going to follow, the
dogma of the state, the dogma of the proletarian, the
dogma of Christ. Which dogma do they fall? And you know,

(01:07:51):
then argument becomes which dogma is least harmful, which dogma
kills fewer people? But they all kill, all of them,
kill all of them. Are destructive to human beings as individuals,
and it turns out as groups cure. Poland banned the

(01:08:13):
Communist Party of Poland. What do you think about this?
I mean, I think it's wrong to ban a political
party in the context in which we live, where there
is no physical threat of communism, so not agents of
fun power that is trying to invade. I don't believe

(01:08:35):
you should ban a communist party. I don't believe you
should ban a Nazi party. I don't believe you should
ban any politics until it becomes violence, until they're literally
using force. But just the political ideological advocacy for force
is not incitement for violence, is not a reason to

(01:08:59):
violate somebody's free speech or freedom of association. So I
would be against against it for the same reason I'm
not for, you know, banning religion, even though religion least
to force, you know, whatever that religion is, unless it's
a religion that is engaged in active violence against me.

(01:09:21):
Right now, Islamism, for example, you can ban Islamism, jihadism,
ISLAMI to Telitumanism because it is actively engaged in violence
against us. Jennifer says, it's so sad the lack of
imagination nowadays, how could private roads work If people had

(01:09:45):
been liked that in eighteen hundreds, we never would have
accomplished anything. That's absolutely right, you know, and it's you know,
it is important for us to be able to articulate
the case for private roads and for private testy companies
and four private sewer systems and private water systems. Because

(01:10:05):
people have such you know, poor imaginations, we at least
need to be able to articulate kind of the principles
by which they should work, and imagine a few scenarios
in how they work. But it's pretty pathetic that this
is the thing that really gets them, this is the
thing that upsets them. I mean, the first canals, the

(01:10:28):
first road roads, the first bridges were all built by
private enterprise and only then monopolized by government. But what

(01:10:53):
about the poor, oldand asks, Well, the reality is, and
I know he's kidding, but the reality is that the
poor better off under capitalism than any other system. The
poor better off under a benevolent system, a system in
which there are plenty of work. They get paid based

(01:11:14):
on their productivity, not based on this skin color enough,
based on their nation of origin, not based on their
immigration status. Not based on you know, who their parents were.
They get based on their productive ability and a benevolent
society in which when bad things happen, when we are

(01:11:36):
out of luck or whatever, we live in a benevolent
society in which people are much more likely to be
charitable and which much more likely to be helpful, in
which they're much more likely to assist us, assist the poor,
and not resented because they're doing it voluntarily, as compared

(01:11:56):
to the welfare state where we do it. But we
kind of we're not happy about the office there, we're
not happy about our taxes, we're not happy about how
they're spent. We resent it. So the poor better off
because they live in a much more benevolent society and
a society in which they have many, many, many more

(01:12:17):
opportunities to raise themselves up. Thank you orland zg whatever
rung schlang my first super chet ever. Keep thank you,
thank you, thank you, Keep up the great work. We
need more rationality and you're leading the way. I'm trying.

(01:12:41):
We'll keep going and I appreciate the super chat. Lincoln.
How does their pollution work under capitalism? It's simple for
land and water pollution because private owners want to keep
it clean. But you can't divvy up the sky intersections
and sell them off like you can with a plot
of land lake. Well, there's some extent you can, right, So,

(01:13:05):
if I live in a plot of land and somebody
is doing something somewhere and through the air, pollution is
coming to me, and let's say it's blackening my lawn,
it's dropping on my lawn and making it black, then
if I can find the source of that pollution, I
can sue them for violating my property rights. Or if

(01:13:26):
what they're spewing out into the air is clearly harmful
to my health, then again I can sue them demanding
that they stop or they move their factory further away
from people so that they don't, you know, affect the
health of the people breathing in the air that they
are producing the pollution that they are producing. There are

(01:13:50):
other cases where that where it's impossible to do that. So,
for example, the pollution generated by all automobiles on the road,
there's nobody to sue, there's nobody to go after. Now,
if the pollution is such that it's really killing people,
then I think the state has a rule to step

(01:14:11):
in and say Okay, you can't use that pollutant. It's
literally killing people. But if the pollutant is just reducing
the quality of life people have, then people can either
suffer it or move. I mean, one of the real
options that existing life is, and I keep emphasizing this,
is to move. You don't have to be stuck. You

(01:14:34):
don't like the pollution in La Move to Montana. There's
no pollution in Montana. Or move to northern California north
of you know, anything north of the Golden Gate Bridge
is pristine, beautiful and no pollution. So there are a million options.
And part of one of the options you have is
to move away from the pollutants. If that pollutant doesn't

(01:14:57):
have a particular singular source, that pollutant is just necessary
for progress, for civilized life. So you know, those are
the options you have. You have to clearly define the

(01:15:18):
harm and clearly define the source of the harm. So
I don't think it's that hard to do. Stephen Hauffer,
not a lot of questions, guys. So if you'd like
to ask questions, if you have questions on anything on

(01:15:39):
the topic we discussed today or anything else, please feel
free to jump in anytime. We will end when the
questions end. Oh but yeah, thought of a detail in
Atlas during this show, the composer in Gold's gulch tells
Dagni his concert is twenty five cents, and she laughs
as if to say, of course life should be this simple. Yeah,

(01:16:02):
I mean it's a trade and it's benevolent, and you
want to pay for the stuff that you get. I mean,
when you get stuff for free, it should make you
a little uncomfortable, and you want to charge for the
values you produce because you value your own life and
your own time. It's a trade. So yeah, that is

(01:16:28):
a beautiful scene because life in the valley is super
simple because it's all out in the open. It's all explicit,
a lot of what we take as implicit, and all
the garbage is just not there. There's no underlying guilt,
there's no underlying assumption that people are trying to exploit

(01:16:49):
other people. I mean, that benevolence that we talked about
during the show today isn't Gold guilt in spades, because
they've created this community where they all, you know, not
only share values, but physical forces just unaccepted and they
are all under the premise an assumption of voluntary trade.

(01:17:15):
Win win. They're all on the traded principle, and it's
explicit that they're all on a trader principle. Let's see
what I want to say. Yeah, I want to remind
you of a few things. Remind you again, if you're
interested in one of the one of the programs for Austin, Texas,

(01:17:42):
let me know. Remind you also that I'm going to
be at a Florida conference at Rands Day, the Rands
Day Confidence in the last weekend in January, and you
should come. It's going to be a blast. It's going
to be a lot of fun. I will be speaking,
There'll be a bunch of other people, lots of time
to socialize, lots of time to hang out. Last year,

(01:18:03):
I was sick at the beginning of the conference, and
you know, didn't have a lot of time to socialize.
This year, hopefully I won't be and and so I'll
be there and hang out. Lincoln asked, what day in February.
What day in February is what Austin. Yeah, at this point,
just send me an expression of interest. Austin is probably

(01:18:30):
the fourth of the fifth of February. Fourth of the
fifth is February. Yep, not probably those are the dates.
It's either the fourth or the fifth of February would
be in Austin. All right, so yes, so rains Day
you can find information about just by going to ransday

(01:18:51):
dot com. I think you can find information about the
conference on that website. I'm just gonna Ransday, don't come
put it into the browser. Yeah, just go to the
bottom of that page and you'll see Ramsday Weekend Confidence
and click on that and you can get that. I
think prices to attend go up at the end of December,
so sign up now, and yeah, it'll be a lot

(01:19:14):
of fun. And you know, you should come and engage
in person with with other objectivists. There's you know, it's
it's it's fun to do superchats. It's fun to do
by video and interact by video, but in person beats
all of that so much more fun. All right, let's see, Richard,

(01:19:35):
in a pure capitalist system, how would you separate state
from economics. Well, by the very fact that the state
has no economic policy. There's no view about what interestrate
should be. I think Trump said yesterday that interestrate should
be below one percent? Like why by whose standard? Who

(01:20:01):
gets determined. There's no setting up prices, there's no setting
up wages, there's no regulating, there's no controlling. So separate
state from economics is the government passes law to protect
property rights. It doesn't pass laws that are preventive laws.
But it only passes law that deals with real risks,

(01:20:23):
real dangers, real violations or potential real potential violations of rights.
It doesn't tax it in terms of compulsory taxation. It
doesn't regulate. It doesn't control economic activity in any sense

(01:20:49):
other than those things that are necessary for the government
to function. So it enters the market to buy those
things that it needs to provide the protection for individual rights.
It's establishes buildings properly, you know, places, nests, say, for

(01:21:10):
the protection of rights. That's it. But there's no involvement
in the economy beyond that. And again it doesn't have
a position on economics. It's not Keynesian, it's not Austrian.
It's not free market, not free market. It's hands off.

(01:21:33):
There's no federals of the Only thing it cares in
terms of money is it accepts a certain denomination of
money in it, you know, you know, to fund itself.
But that's it. So it's just not involved in our

(01:21:54):
economic decisions. Again, and except for those the spenditship money,
the buying of products, the you know, the securing of
manufacturing necessary for the protection of individual rights. So you know,
in a war, it would buy a lot of stuff
and in you know, promote the manufacturing weapons systems and

(01:22:19):
all this stuff, because it was doing that not for
the purpose of any kind of economic manipulation, but for
the purpose of protection of individual rights and a sign war,
for the protection of raising up for the purpose of
raising an army and defeating an enemy. Andrew Rand strongly
agreed that the great philosophical divide is between between Plato

(01:22:44):
and Aristotle, is that the difference between primacy of consciousness
or existence. Was Aristotle opposed to Plato or did he
build on Plato? Yeah, I mean it's it's it is
the primacy of consciousness existence, but it's primarily epistemologically. It's
where does where does knowledge come from? For Astola comes
from our census, and it comes from from using our

(01:23:07):
reason to observe the world and to integrate the facts
of reality and to induce from it. And for Plato,
knowledge basically comes from a phone of revelation. He calls
it reason, but at the end of the day, it's
a it's a phone of revelation. Uh so it's it's
primarily apistemological. Now in morality again, I think Astola is

(01:23:35):
much more focused on the individual's well being, an individual's happiness,
and what the individual must do to achieve that happiness.
And Plato has the seeds of collectivism already there. So
that but the primary is I think a pistemological And

(01:23:56):
there's an implication of this metaphysical difference. Was Aristot opposed
to Plato? Did he build in Plato? I think both right.
He definitely opposes Plato on some issues, and he builds
and Plato on others, and he embraces certain ideas of Plato.
So he's not a clean break. One of the great
meeknesses is that he doesn't quite have the right epistemology.

(01:24:19):
So he ironmand is the first real clean break from Plato,
and Aristotle doesn't fully do it. Now, I'm not an
expert enough to be able to tell you exactly where
and what and so on. I encourage you to These
are the kind of questions that are good when a

(01:24:39):
philosopher is here to ask them about that, But yeah,
he does this both. Paul, do you think the crackdown
on Spanish speaking truckers results from the rights as you know,
phobic and tribalistic tendencies. Yes, I absolutely think that that's
the case. I mean, who cares if the truckers they

(01:25:03):
make a big deal out of a few cases that
are horrible, But horrible cases exist for non Spanish speaking
truckers as well. So yeah, this is part of their
anti immigration, anti multiculturalism, anti everybody different than I am

(01:25:24):
tendencies on the right, and they're looking they're looking for
any kind of example to paint, you know, people who
look different than them, people coming from other cultures, to
make them look bad, to make them look like they
are disaster to human life, American life, you know, our culture.

(01:25:49):
What else did I want to say? There was something
else I wanted to remind you of, but I think
it has slipped my mind. We talked about the Florida Confidence,
we talked about Austin. By the way, you know, for
those of you in the UK, I'm thinking of doing

(01:26:09):
the same thing in London. You know, we've already done
a seminar in public speaking in London. We've done one
on how to be a rational egoist. I'm thinking in
London on the last weekend of February of doing a
half day seminar which is kind of a kind of
a Q and a a ask Me Anything type thing,

(01:26:29):
but live in person with a small group where we
just go back and forth and you can follow up
on your questions and on any topic you want, and
maybe four or five hours of that on a Saturday afternoon.
So if you're interested in that again, drop me an email.
You're on a your on bookshow dot com so London
and Austin. This is your call to action London and Austin.

(01:26:52):
If you're interested in attending events like this, jump in. Oh, Andrew,
thank you. I wanted to remind you of tomorrow's show.
Tomorrow's show is a member's only show, so you have
to be a member. You can become a member by
clicking on clipping on the member button on here on YouTube.

(01:27:18):
So it's only YouTube members, not Patreon, not what do
you call it? PayPal? Only YouTube members. That's why I
encourage you to do membership data at the minimum level
five dollars, because many of you are already supporting the
show in other places. So do just five dollars, just
see you become a member, and tomorrow will do a show.

(01:27:40):
It'll either be at one or two pm Eastern time.
I'll let you know tomorrow. It'll be on Iinman's essay
The Missing Link, which is one of her most brilliant essays.
So it's the essay The Missing Link. So check it
out and you can read it. You can find it online,
and then join us tomorrow for the show. All right,

(01:28:06):
Lincoln to quote from a song for my mom's favorite
band called the Band is no Doubt. Oh it's my life.
Don't you forget? It's my life. It never ends, it
never ends. That's good. That's good. Your mom has a
good sense of life. Lincoln also says, will legiop ever

(01:28:29):
be able to leave Christianity even in the sixties Goldwater
pretended to be Christian for political benefits, And it's even
worse today. Yeah, it's much worse today. I don't know.
EVA is a long long time, but not in my lifetime.
I can't see them leave Christianity. Dia drevn hell sing whatever.

(01:28:51):
What led to the Great Depression? I mean, that's a
big question. You know, I've got an economists on Monday evening.
We're going to be talking about economics. We're going to
talk about the late nineteenth century, about capitalism, about tariffs.
But this would be a great question to ask him,
if you can make it. It'll be a seven pm
Eastern time, just ask this question, what led to the

(01:29:14):
Great Depression? I mean, I'll tell you what I view
has led to the Great Depression? What led the Great Depression? Primarily,
I mean a lot of a lot of bad policy, right, so,
you know, just a lot of bad policy when Hoover
was around, you know, doubling the income tax or raising taxes,

(01:29:36):
let's put it that way, raising tariffs, trying to regulate
business and control business. And then you know, FDR embracing that.
Another element of the Great Depression is an unbelievably irrational
structure of our banking system in the United States, you know,

(01:29:58):
so a very rational banking system. All of those contributed,
but the main thing that led to the Great Depression,
the thing that caused the Great Depression is really bad
federers of policy. Federals of policy, the cause banking crisis
because of the bad banking structure just spiraled out of control.

(01:30:21):
But you know, eighty percent of the Great Depression is
a federerserve that basically kept the money supply tight, way
too tight, much tighter than a free market would, causing
banks to withdraw their lending capacity and force businesses to
go under in an attempt to pay back their debts,

(01:30:43):
which forced people to lose their jobs and for it
not to consume stuff, which caused businesses to go under,
which then they couldn't pay the banks money. And since
the FED was tight in the monetary policy, money just
got sucked out of the economy. It just disappeared. And

(01:31:03):
now in capitalism, in a free banking system, all of
that is self correcting. But when you have a central planner,
when you have one central entity respons responsible for it all,
there's no self correction, there's no mechanism to fix it.
And so without the FED, and if you have a

(01:31:26):
truly free banking system, there's no Great depression. There's no
great depression. It's unlikely there's a nineteen twenty nine stock
market collapse, but there's certainly no great depression. A great
depression caused the Federals have caused the Great Depression again

(01:31:48):
because the banking system was in many respects broken. They
might have been. There might have been some problems they
might like in nineteen oh seven. They might have been
some businesses going bankrupt. There might have been some banks
going out of business. It might have been all that,

(01:32:08):
But that's because of a badly designed banking system against
central planning. But it would have self corrected. You would
have had some pain, it would have been relatively short lived,
and it would have everything would have been fine, just
like in nineteen oh seven. The reason this could spiral
into a great depression which lasted arguably for fifteen years

(01:32:31):
until the end of World War two. The cause of that,
the reason for that is the federalism Lincoln. The School
of Athens painting in the Vatican is a wonderful showing
of this. Plato points the sky, Aristotle points down to it. Yes, Aristotle,

(01:32:51):
I mean people understood this doesn't take objectives. Don't understand
this that Plato is about that world, the other world
in which you get revealed truths, and Aristotle is about
this world, this world ism Plato. You know, it's why

(01:33:12):
Christianity is ultimately Neoplatonists. It's an adaptation of Plato and
the counter to Christianity as Aristotle. All right, all right,

(01:33:36):
final question, looking forward to seeing the statue of David
in person while I'm in Italy over spring break. Hopefully
it's as wonderful as you say. No, it's much more
wonderful than what I say. It is, much much more.
That's great. You know that's spring break is in a
few months. That'll be fantastic. All right, guys, thank you

(01:33:57):
really appreciate the support. Don't forget to email me you
on at your on bookshow dot com if you have
any interest in face to face seminars either in Austin,
Texas or in London and so I can start organizing those.
Thank you again to Troy in particular for his five

(01:34:23):
hundred Australian dollar sticker. Thank you to all the super
chatters and all the sticker providers. I will see you
tomorrow if you're a member, and on Monday if you're not. Bye,
but you've got time to become a member. Bye, everybody,

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